‘Abwrackpramie’ Stimulus for the Economy
December 22nd, 2009 at 2:01 pm By Lee Egerstrom
The end of the year always brings lists, including the new words and phrases that crept into use within the last year. Germans, like Minnesotans, had their language assaulted by new words describing the recession and stimulus programs to help cope with the recession.
Online newspaper www.thelocal.de reports that the Society for German Lanuage (GfdS) has selected ‘Abwrackpramie’ as the most important word for 2009. It means “wrecking premium” and was used to describe Germany’s “cash for clunkers” program. That stimulus program was extended from cars to bikes, furniture and washing machines.
Other new words and phrases making the linguists’ top 10 list included “Schweinegrippe” (swine flu), “Weltklimagipfel” (world climate conference), “twittern” (to tweet), and “bad bank” (bad bank).
Another new phrase takes the “Hey buddy, can you spare a dime” slogan from the Depression and adjusts for inflation with a cynical twist. It goes, “Haste mal ‘ne Milliarde?” and means, “Can you spare a billion?”
A forecast for 2010: The hot new word in German will have something to do with an economic recovery that is not apparent to people on the streets. Such a word would also describe the likely “recovery” we will be seeing in Minnesota.
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