The truth: “I don’t ride, I write!”

The truth interview: As chairman of the German language society, Torsten Breit fights against “so-called English”.

Torsten Breit during a campaign against English in Bad Homburg Photo: reuters

taz: Hi!

Torsten Breit: What? Where? How? Here? In my office?!

Mr Breit, hello! Or should we say: Hello?

Hello is correct. “Hi” is an Anglicism, German means “He”. The English like to pronounce the “e” like an i and the i like an ai, that’s how the shark comes out. Such is the Englishman!

But isn’t “hello” okay?

“Hello” is also an Anglicism, except that the Anglo-Saxons distort it into an affable “hallou”. They want to be special at all costs! German has always been “Holla”.

Holla, Herr Breit! They are declaring war on “so-called English”. Why?

Because this language doesn’t even exist, in fact everything is German. The Englishman just messes it up!

You need evidence for that.

Think bread! It’s called bread, looks like bread, is bread and tastes like bread. But the Englishman, obstinate as he is, does not say bread. He says bread. Mispronunciation is typical, and don’t forget: it’s not a board until it’s old and hard.

All well and good, but one example doesn’t make a summer.

Take the “egg”. The English know it too, but crazy enough they call it the eye, probably because the “eye” is round like an egg! They call the egg itself “egg”. But is it angular? Sometimes you really wonder if the English are kidding us!

Do you think English is just clumsy, distorted or – you know English humor – comically messed up German?

What is certain is that the Anglo-Saxons want to be fools of their own accord. If you can’t do it through willfully wrong choice of words or artificial pronunciation, then just through the typeface. For example, “shoe” instead of just writing “shoe”. This can lead to dangerous mix-ups! If you give an Englishman a capital “Gift”, then he will be happy because he writes it in small letters and thinks the “gift” is a present. That’s how stupid he is.

Mr. Breit, you are very specific about the language. Because you are a writer?

That’s me, and not a “writer”, I don’t ride, I write. And in German and not in Germanic, as these jolly English people want everyone to believe.

Don’t you overlook that English and German are distinct languages ​​that share a common origin but have evolved apart over 1,000 years?

But the development got out of hand! It’s about right or wrong, about correctness, about truth, so that the language accurately reflects reality. But the English say “fed” and mean something else, namely “sat”. You only get fat if you keep eating! That’s what many in America do because they haven’t learned the word “eat” and eat and eat without realizing that they’re already eating.

Can Anglo-Saxons ever have enough? Because when they’re “sad,” they’re just sad, sad.

Maybe because they can’t get anything down! little joke Seriously though, they should be sad because the world doesn’t understand them.

Herr von und zu Breit! The world understands this so-called English, as you call it, better than German, doesn’t it?

Exactly, not! Like when the Englishman messes everything up. He calls the hat “hat”, pronounced “hat”, but the hut “hat”, pronounced “hat”, although not everyone “has” one, but only “likes” it. It’s a miracle that they can find their way around in England, America, Australia at all! The “eagle” is not a hedgehog, but an eagle, the piece of paper is a “sheet”, i.e. Schiet – it is clear that these Americans with abdominal neurotics want nothing to do with printed newspapers and books. And don’t ask me about gender equality now!

Why not?

Because in Anglo-Saxon societies, girls are only recognized if they are guys!

That’s a steep thesis that you have to justify.

Nothing simpler than that. The “girl” is the proof: a “guy” awkwardly repeated by the stunted tongues of English and American.

You probably think the English, Americans and so on are clumsy at all?

The Anglo-Saxon is an eternal child! You see, some sounds are therefore impossible for him. So he says “swim” instead of “swimming” properly, “ship” instead of “Schiff” and “book” for books, because he can’t speak ch at all. Not even the ü, so you enter him through the “door”. He turns our “slippers” into childlike “slips”. And “narrow” becomes “small” for him.

Wait, those are two different words. They mean something else.

That’s on top of that. The Englishman gets everything wrong! But what you can see well from this pair of words is that so-called English has many words that are too short. “Car” instead of the correct cart, “touch” instead of doing the right thing, “bee” instead of the bee – because the Anglo-Saxons have just sunk to an early childhood level of language acquisition.

English children can do the th, the Tie-Äitsch.

The English lisp, that’s all. And with this handicap, they are forced to go through “thick” and “thin” instead of really thick and thin.

Mr. Breit, allow me to conclude with a famous but whispered greeting: “May the force be with you!”

What do you want with me on May Fourth?!

Mr. Breit, thank you for the interview.

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