Linguae francae

Last weekend Elisabeth and I visited my son in Zürich. On our way, we had coffee at a rest stop. The guy serving was a Yugoslavian speaking a rudimentary High German, with a client trying Swiss German on him. Since no communication was possible, the Swiss guy eventually switched to a guttural-sounding High German. While meditating on the scene, an even better example came to my mind. The other day, I overheard two charming ladies living in our housing complex —one English and the other Spanish— conversing in German, their lingua franca.

In the Middle Ages, educated Christians used Latin as a common language, particularly useful for travel. As my neighbor, a former Latin professor, pointed out, this was not Cicero's language but Küchenlatein (dog Latin). Latin was not only the language of the Church but also the language for writing treaties. Not only one but two peace treaties ended the Thirty Years' War in 1648. For the Protestants, it was the Instrumentum Pacis Caesareo-Suecicum Osnabrugense in Osnabrück; for the Catholics, it was the Instrumentum Pacis Caesareo-Gallicum Monasteriense in Münster.

This practice changed with the Rastatt Peace Treaty of 1714, which ended the Spanish Succession War, written in French. The politically dominant power in Europe, France, imposed the use of its language and greatly influenced manners and culture in the 18th century. 

Frederic the Great spoke better French than German, though his written texts often passed Voltaire's scrutiny and required corrections. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, French was not only the diplomatic language but the lingua franca of Europe's educated circles. 

A mixture of Low German and French is the old consul's opening line in Thomas Mann's Nobel Prize-winning novel Die Buddenbrooks, set in the nineteenth century: "Je, den Düwel ook, c'est la question, ma très chére demoiselle!" Is this a reminder that the Hanseatic city of Lübeck was part of the French Empire from 1811 to 1813?

Born out of the resistance against the Napoleonic occupation, a strong aversion for the French developed in Germany that Turnvater (father of gymnastics) Jahn articulated as follows, "Deutsche, fühlt wieder mit männlichem Hochsinn den Wert eurer edlen, lebendigen Sprache, schöpft aus ihrem nie versiegenden Urborn, grabt die alten Quellen auf und lasset Lutetiens stehende Lache in Ruhe! (Germans, feel manly and high-mindedly the value of your noble, living language again, scoop from its primitive never drying up spring, dig up those old sources, and leave Lutetia's puddle alone!)."

The dominance of the French in Europe slowly changed after the First World War, when American English replaced Voltaire's idiom as the lingua franca. There was only one field in which German was a must at the time: physics. The geniuses of New Physics, like Hans Bethe, Max Born, Walther Bothe, Albert Einstein, James Franck, Pascual Jordan, young Werner Heisenberg, and even Niels Bohr, the Dane,  lectured in German. So the Americans coming to Göttingen to study quantum mechanics also trudged through Goethe's language.

In those days, transatlantic communication was by letter. A young American scientist had prepared a thick letter, but he wanted to know its weight to determine the necessary postage before posting. So he went downtown Göttingen, entered a stationery shop, letter in hand, and addressed the attractive young lady on the other side of the counter, "Fraulein, haben sie eine Wiege, ich möchte etwas wagen (Young lady, do you have a cradle, I would like to dare something)." Even when she blushed, he did not notice that he had mixed up the vowels, "Fräulein, haben sie eine Waage, ich möchte etwas wiegen (Young lady, do you have a pair of scales I want to weigh something)."

Nowadays, English is the lingua franca of the world, although Professor Henry Higgins once claimed, "In America, they haven't used it for years." 

Luther saw in a language above all a communication vehicle when he promoted die gemeine deutsche sprache, das mich beide, Ober- und Niderlender, verstehen mögen (the common German language such that those speaking High German and Low German may both understand me). But he also continued, "Die sprachen sind die scheyden darynn dis messer des geysts stickt (Languages are like sheaths in which stick the spiritual knives of understanding)." 

Luther's remark makes me sometimes feel sorry for the English language used by so many for communication, but spoken by so few. This is why I always admire those who master a language perfectly.

At CERN, where I worked, the two official languages were French and English, but we mainly used a mixture, Franglais, for communication. During meetings, I read the lips of native speakers arguing in their mother tongues, sometimes paying more attention to their formulations than to what they actually said. 

Once, I was mistaken about one of my colleagues, let us call him Fred, whom I admired for his perfect English and his beautiful handwriting. Fred once went to England with another Englishman, Frank, and a German to discuss a delicate technical problem with a British firm. 

In the evening, after a few glasses of whiskey, the firm's boss pointed to the German and said, "You are German." Then he addressed Frank and declared, "You are British." Finally, he turned to Fred, saying, "And you nearly fooled me!" This was not gentleman like, for later, I learned that Fred had fled Nazi Germany as a young guy and made a particular effort to make English his mother tongue during his schooling in the UK.

Another colleague at CERN I admired not only for his perfect French. Albert, a Grande Ecole graduate, was in charge of the authorization process for the LEP storage ring with the French authorities. The main document had been submitted, but the French administration requested clarifications, which my staff and I provided in the form of Technical Memoranda (TM) written in French. 

One morning, my telephone rang, "Albert here. Could you see me in my office? We should discuss your recent document." I asked, "Is something wrong technically?" He retorted, "No, it's the French." I replied, "But the French was polished by my French secretary, and I have other things to do." He became so angry that I had to give in. So I spent the whole morning going through the French text of the TM with Albert.

 

When he retired five years later, he threw a party. On that occasion, I thanked him, "Albert, avec toi j'ai bien appris le français (Albert, with you, I have learned French well)." He looked at me and sounded disappointed, "C'est tout ce que tu as appris de moi? (Is that all that you have learned from me?)."

Coming back to my original topic. Clearly, American English is today's lingua franca. Many English technical terms have been directly integrated into German. But resistance is building up. The Deutsche Bahn was particularly eager to replace German words with what they considered English terms. So they changed Fahrkartenschalter to Ticket Counter, Auskunft to Service Point, Kurzzeitparken to Kiss and Ride, and Mieträder to Call-a-Bike. Recently, Die Bahn started paddling back, applying a Teutonic face-lifting to their naming practice.

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