Around 5,000 new words were officially added to the German language as the country’s iconic dictionary, Duden, launched its first new edition for three years.
The new version, containing 135,000 words, includes many new words an English-speaker would find familiar, several inspired by the financial crisis and a few that reflect 21st century life, such as twittern — to twitter.
As of today, Germans can now officially have der Babyblues and go to eine After-Show-Party, — while hoping that it is not eine No-Go Area.
Der Nickname and das It-Girl are other new German words taken from English that have found their way into the language of Goethe.
The financial crisis and its effects account for many of the new German entries.
Die Bad Bank requires no translation, and also appearing for the first time are Kreditklemme (credit crunch), Konjunkturpaket (stimulus package) and Abwrackpraemie (car scrappage bonus).
High profile tensions with the country’s large and poorly integrated Turkish community are also reflected in two new words Ehrenmord (honor killing) and Integrationsgipfel (integration summit).
German is infamous for its incredibly long compound nouns, and while no new words challenge the 39-letter monster Rechtschutzversicherungsgesellschaften, roughly meaning “legal insurance companies”, this year’s edition has offered Vorratsdatenspeicherung or “the saving of data relating to supplies.”
The first Duden dictionary, produced in 1880, consisted of a mere 200 pages and 27,000 words, according to the book’s Web site.(AFP)
德國代表性字典Duden三年來首度推出新版，當中收錄了近五千個新字彙。
新版字典彙編了十三萬五千個單字，英語人士對其中許多新字應該不會陌生，好些字彙是來自於金融海嘯，還有些則反映了二十一世紀的生活，例如「twittern」指的就是twitter。
德國人現在可以正式使用「der babyblues」（嬰兒淡藍色眼睛�產後憂鬱症），也可以參加「eine After-Show-Party」（慶功宴）──但希望那裡不是「eine No-Go Area」（禁止進入）。
「der Nickname」和「das It-Girl」是另外兩個從英文衍生的生字，顯示英文已經影響了德文。
這次新增的生字中，許多是和和金融危機及其影響有關的單字。
「Die Bad Bank」（不良債權銀行）這個字的意思顯而易懂，另外「Kreditklemme」（信用緊縮）、「Konjunkturpaket」（財政刺激方案），以及「Abwrackpraemie」（車輛報廢獎金）等則是首次出現。
另外「Ehrenmord」（為了捍衛名譽而殺人）和「Integrationsgipfel」（融合高峰會）這兩個生字，則反映了德國社會中，為數眾多卻低度融合的土耳其移民所衍生的高度緊張情勢。
德文的複合名詞以又臭又長出名，雖然今年沒有一個新單字打破由三十九個字母拼成的龐然大物「Rechtschutzversicherungsgesellschaften」（簡單的說，是「合法的保險公司」之意），但今年的新版本中出現了「Vorratsdatenspeicherung」這個字，意思就是「庫存資料儲存」。
據Duden網站的資料顯示，首版Duden字典於一八八Ｏ年發行，當時僅有兩百頁和兩萬七千個單字。（法新社╱翻譯：袁星塵）
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