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Another invasive detail that has become accepted, is the English naming on the centers, on the shops and many items that have an easy translation.  The old "foreign is good" is alive and well in Spain.

Present all across Europe, and annoys me in any language. It is fashion, and a very shallow fashion. In my personal impression it is worst in Germany. The fashion, especially among the elite of managers, politicians and media types (in this order of decreasing severity), is not only to overuse English words (really silly when say when the German expression is much shorter), but to create new English words/word-combinations -- which then neither domestic customers nor US/British tourists understand... This Anglicism is sarcastically called not just by conservatives Neudeutsch (=New German).

But I saw some rather funny examples of foreign language (mis)use from the window near the Austrian/Hungarian border last week: "Guest haus" (Haus=house in German) or "KÁVÉHÁZSHOP" (kávéház = café house), "Jagd shop" (Jagd = hunting, should be Jagdladen or Jäger-Shop)...

I politely refused the branded shopping bags and carried the stuff in my folding, reusable one because I will not provide free publicity, or bring more useless stuff home.  For decades now, I have had this aversion to wearing somebody else´s name on my person, and so far no brand has offered to pay me to wear it, either.

I share that aversion for clothes, but with bags it's different. When I got to then West Germany, I was surprised to see that people throw away shopping bags -- back home, the custom was (and for many people still is) to keep and re-use shopping bags. (Thus you see some rather worn-down bags on the street, and even more worn-down ones full of rubbish in rubbish containers, not sure that is that good a commercial-for-free :-) )

There isn´t a train, nor a bus in sight, because the public transit crowd would probably search for value....

Interesting. The malls in/around Budapest also focus on the lower classes -- in fact I have read tracts by upper-middle-class right-wingers connecting the stereotypic mall girl with plattenbau apartment blocks. The very first US-style mall was built on the edge of a plattenbau quarter, and some not already on mass transit routes paid to have such, in case of one even a tram line.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Mon Mar 26th, 2007 at 03:44:32 AM EST
The use of English for shops names and so on becomes even weirder when the branding style moves to an English speaking country with emigrants and you start getting food shops called "SNAP!" and "WOW!" or whatever. Very strange indeed.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Mar 26th, 2007 at 04:08:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]
keep and re-use shopping bags. (Thus you see some rather worn-down bags on the street, and even more worn-down ones full of rubbish in rubbish containers, not sure that is that good a commercial-for-free :-) )

I forgot to add as example that I just did a sorting of shopping bags this weekend and, as usual, used the three most worn-down ones to collect dog shit...

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Mon Mar 26th, 2007 at 04:24:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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