Tag Archives: Unwort
German ‘Language Police’ And Gender Neutrality Posted by Constanze on Feb 9, 2022
Guten Tag! Recently I wrote about the German Unwort des Jahres (‘Non-word of the year’) 2021, which you can read about here. I mentioned in that post that the runner-up was die Sprachpolizei, which literally means ‘language police’. This word was used in 2021 to defame those who were trying to make the German language…
German Unwort Des Jahres 2021 Posted by Constanze on Jan 26, 2022
At the end of every year, the GfdS (German Language Association) picks a word for its Wort des Jahres (Word of the Year). This is a word/topic that’s been highly discussed and prevalent in German society in the year just gone. You can read about the German Wort des Jahres 2021 here. But another ‘word of the year’ also gets picked…
More German ‘Non-Words’ of 2020 Posted by Constanze on Jan 27, 2021
Guten Tag! Today’s post is a follow-up to the Unwort des Jahres 2020 – the German ‘non-word’ of the year 2020. To fall into the category of an ‘Unwort’, the word must do one or more of the following: violate the principles of human dignity; violate the principles of democracy; discriminate against social groups; or…
Germany’s Unwort des Jahres – ‘Non-Word’ of the Year 2020 Posted by Constanze on Jan 13, 2021
Linguists from the Technische Universität Darmstadt have decided on Germany’s Unwort des Jahres (the ‘non-word of the year’) 2020. This year, and for the first year since the Unwort des Jahres started in 1991, there are two of them: Corona-Diktatur and Rückführungspatenschaften. Germany’s Unwort des Jahres – ‘Non-word’ of the year. At the end of…
Austrian and Swiss-German Words of the Year 2019 Posted by Constanze on Jan 27, 2020
Guten Tag! We have previously looked at Germany’s Wort des Jahres (Word of the Year) and its Unwort des Jahres (Non-word of the Year) 2019 in this post, this one (runners up) and this one. But what about other, German-speaking countries? Do they also have ‘words of the year’ in Austria and German-speaking Switzerland? The…
German ‘Non-Word’ of 2019 Posted by Constanze on Jan 15, 2020
Linguists from the Technische Universität Darmstadt have decided on the German Unwort des Jahres (the ‘non-word of the year’) 2019. The Unwort des Jahres is ‘Klimahysterie’. At the end of every year, the GfdS (German Language Association) picks a word for its Wort des Jahres (Word of the Year). This is a word that’s been…
The German non-word of the year Posted by Sandra Rösner on Jan 16, 2014
The time did come again. The German “Unwort des Jahres” (non-word of the year) has been chosen in Darmstadt again. The “Unwort”-jury, whose chairperson is linguist Nina Janich, received 1340 entries with 746 different words. The first place term 2013 is “Sozialtourismus” (social tourism) as the jury informed on Tuesday. Why did the jury…