# Why does a German airline have a name in English? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 3, 2015, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-a-german-airline-have-a-name-in-english/716699 "2015-04-03T10:16:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-a-german-airline-have-a-name-in-english/716699/41 "2015-04-05T01:04:04Z")
I’ve got a good one: Blue Air, a low cost airline based in Romania. No non-English name, as far as I can tell. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-a-german-airline-have-a-name-in-english/716699/42 "2015-04-05T03:59:23Z")
STOP signs throughout the galaxy! I found [this page](http://www.ilankelman.org/stopsigns.html) with photos of STOP signs from all over the world. Some observations: [ul][li] The majority of them use the international octagonal red format, clearly recognizable no matter what language they are in – even one in Chinese! But some have oddball other shapes or color patterns.[/li][li] The majority are in English.[/li][li] One photo, said to be in Moscow, is red octagonal with STOP in English.[/li][li] But many others in Russia are shown with СТОП (the English word STOP written with Cyrillic letters), on a rectangular sign with white background.[/li][li] One in Newfoundland has both STOP and ARRÊT in that order.[/li][\*] One in Japan is in Japanese on a red triangular (not octagonal) sign. This one might not be so recognizable by international travelers.[/ul] ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-a-german-airline-have-a-name-in-english/716699/43 "2015-04-05T04:02:25Z")
Pseudo-English is also popular to invent neologisms in non-English-speaking countries, from sports names (_puenting_ = bungee jumping from a bridge; _puente_ = bridge) to airlines (vueling; _vuelo_ = flight, _volar_ = fly). Sometimes the Chinglish (or, in this case, Spanglish) is happenstance and sometimes it’s 100% on purpose. After all, for almost any non-English-speaking culture (there are exceptions), the most common second-language to get in school is English; it’s bound to influence local usage so you may as well just grab it with both hands and run. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-a-german-airline-have-a-name-in-english/716699/44 "2015-04-05T11:14:14Z")
When the Swiss PTT was privatized in the 1990s, they had to choose a name. With three or four Swiss languages to choose from, they chose to call it SwissCom. The situation with STOP signs in Quebec is complicated. “Stop” feels like it is Germanic, but it actually goes right back to Latin and it is a matter of historical fact that English borrowed it from French and it is truly a French word, but not a common one. Disliking bilingualism, they finally ruled that STOP signs could say STOP or ARRET, but not both. My suburb uses STOP, but elsewhere they say ARRET. But they are invariably red octagons and that is the real signal. Incidentally, I can remember the time that stop signs featured the word STOP in black on a yellow diamond. Then, probably, it the late 40s, it became the familiar red octagon with white letters. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-a-german-airline-have-a-name-in-english/716699/45 "2015-06-03T04:43:41Z")
The Wik goes into the topic nicely: [Denglisch](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denglisch). ---
**Author:** ![TallTrees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8baadc/32.png) [@TallTrees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TallTrees)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-a-german-airline-have-a-name-in-english/716699/46 "2015-06-03T15:15:54Z")
Quote: Originally Posted by bob++ View Post If you see a group of Indians and Pakistanis talking, they will almost certainly be using English, as that will be their only common language. The Sub Continent has hundreds of languages and dialects, but English is always taught as the second language in school. I live in Silicon Valley. You think I don’t know that? Reply With Quote I’m late to this party but I’m going to disagree with this. Many Pakistanis are (regionally-speaking) Punjabis. As are Indians from the northern part of the country. First choice in a conversation would be Punjabi. Second choice - The national language of India, Hindi, is nearly the same language (though written using a different alphabet) as the Pakistani language Urdu. They’re mutually intelligible. Third choice - English Also, remember that many “Indians” are Muslims. You can tell from their names. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-a-german-airline-have-a-name-in-english/716699/47 "2015-06-03T16:10:47Z")
1. Punjabi will be a choice at all if you’re speaking with another Panjabi. In Silicon Valley—or anywhere outside an exclusively Panjabi community—a random group of Indians and Pakistanis working together is very unlikely to be made up entirely of Panjabi speakers. 2. Hindi is a national language of India, and, yes, it is mutually intelligible with Urdu (really, it’s the same language), but there are plenty of South Asians who are more comfortable with English in certain professional and social situations than with Hindi. It’s unlikely that co-workers in a Bangalore IT company from all over India are going to prefer Hindi. So again a mixed groups of educated South Asians outside the Hindu-Urdu belt, and especially outside of the Subcontinent, are going to prefer English. 3. About “Indians” bring Muslims — (a) what’s with the scare quotes? (b) so what? When it comes to language preferences, Muslim and Hindu Indians represent the same range of diversity. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-a-german-airline-have-a-name-in-english/716699/48 "2015-06-03T16:57:23Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Surprised? English is still mainly an Anglo-Saxon language at its heart. Yes, English is still a Germanic language in terms of grammar. Adjectives come before the noun (like German), and you are allowed to turn nouns into adjectives without any sort of marker just by putting them in front of the noun they modify. The difference is that in English, you usually have to put spaces between the nouns while in German you don’t. Compare German “Baugenehmigung” with English “building permit”. You can’t do this in Spanish or French (which are Latin/Romance languages) without turning it around and adding an “of” word, e.g. “permiso de construcción”. For reasons most likely related to Vikings romping around England and thinking that they talked just fine, verb placement with respect to word order in English now mostly matches Danish and Norwegian rather than German and Dutch. That doesn’t make English any less Germanic, though, because the Scandinavian languages are just _North_ Germanic languages as opposed to West Germanic languages. The fact that English has a ginormous Latin-based vocabulary doesn’t turn it into a Romance language any more than the fact that Japanese, with its large-scale adoption of Chinese-derived words, is therefore a Sinitic language. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-a-german-airline-have-a-name-in-english/716699/49 "2015-06-03T17:04:50Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > 1. Punjabi will be a choice at all if you’re speaking with another Panjabi. In Silicon Valley—or anywhere outside an exclusively Panjabi community—a random group of Indians and Pakistanis working together is very unlikely to be made up entirely of Panjabi speakers. > > 2. Hindi is a national language of India, and, yes, it is mutually intelligible with Urdu (really, it’s the same language), but there are plenty of South Asians who are more comfortable with English in certain professional and social situations than with Hindi. It’s unlikely that co-workers in a Bangalore IT company from all over India are going to prefer Hindi. So again a mixed groups of educated South Asians outside the Hindu-Urdu belt, and especially outside of the Subcontinent, are going to prefer English. > > 3. About “Indians” bring Muslims — (a) what’s with the scare quotes? (b) so what? When it comes to language preferences, Muslim and Hindu Indians represent the same range of diversity. I’ve also heard, anecdotally, that many speakers of Dravidian languages (e.g. Telugu and Tamil) in the south of India actually prefer English as their #2 language because they associate Hindi with Hindi-speaking nationalism that they feel endangers their distinctive culture. ---
**Author:** ![TallTrees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8baadc/32.png) [@TallTrees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TallTrees)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-a-german-airline-have-a-name-in-english/716699/50 "2015-06-03T18:48:21Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > what’s with the scare quotes? I was trying to point out that the word “Indian” is a nationality, not a religious or ethnic label. If one “Indian” were speaking to a “Pakistani” it could in fact be a conversation between brothers, or sisters, or whatever. There are Hindus in Pakistan, of course a few hundred million Muslim Indians, etc, etc., That’s all. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-a-german-airline-have-a-name-in-english/716699/51 "2015-06-03T19:38:15Z")
There’s still no need for quotes… and as **Acsenray** said, what’s any of that got to do with language? ---
**Author:** ![Quill\_Scroll](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Quill\_Scroll](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quill_Scroll)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2015, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-a-german-airline-have-a-name-in-english/716699/52 "2015-06-04T01:47:28Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > When I was stationed in Dortmund, West Germany with the British Army in the 60s I remember sitting in a local beer-cellar with a couple of friends and idly looking at one of the beermats. It was advertising the local brew, Dortmunder Bier, in German. On the other side it had in small print at the bottom, Made in Germany. > > I’ve been trying to puzzle that one out ever since. Are you sure it didn’t say “Made in W. Germany”? All my stuff from “back then” up until 1990 says “W. Germany or West Germany.” It’s only after the reunification (or of course, before the country was split up into East and West Germany) that it’s been labeled “Made in Germany.” I am saving all my “W. Germany” stuff for future Antiques Roadshows. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![TallTrees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8baadc/32.png) [@TallTrees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TallTrees)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2015, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-a-german-airline-have-a-name-in-english/716699/53 "2015-06-04T03:32:13Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > There’s still no need for quotes… and as **Acsenray** said, what’s any of that got to do with language? Already asked, already answered. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2015, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-a-german-airline-have-a-name-in-english/716699/54 "2015-06-04T12:33:07Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > I’ve also heard, anecdotally, that many speakers of Dravidian languages (e.g. Telugu and Tamil) in the south of India actually prefer English as their #2 language because they associate Hindi with Hindi-speaking nationalism that they feel endangers their distinctive culture. That’s what I was getting at by mentioning Bangalore. In areas of India where Hindi-Urdu (Hindustani) is not the native vernacular, Hindi is not the default second choice. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-a-german-airline-have-a-name-in-english/716699.md?page=2)