German Is Not the Official Language*

It is a bit comical how this all came up this morning, and the consequence effect.....so I'll try to tell the story in a simple way.  I should note....Focus reported this....but mostly as a 10-line story.

The morning at the German Bundestag started with a short debate over this draft bill introduced by the AfD Party (the anti-immigrant party).  They said it was time to have the Basic Law (the German Constitution) amended (they do it once or twice year, so it really doesn't really freak any German political figure out when you suggest this)...and this short one-line added.

The line?  German would be the national language of Germany.

Yeah, it's not in there right now, and you have to wonder why this didn't come up in 1949 when they wrote the first draft of today's Constitution.

After the introduction and explanation....the CDU speak Gitta Connemann came up and called this "gibberish", then noted the AfD as the "Sprachpantscherei".

Why get into this mandating of the German as the national language?  Well....there is a suggestion that the German language is being heavily influenced by outside cultures.

To be honest, this suggestion has been going on for 2,000 years.  The Romans were blamed....the French....the Dutch....the Swiss....the English....the Poles....the Russians....the Greeks....the Turks...and yes, even the evil Americans have done much to harm the German language.

So it is a bit surprising that some folks stood against this and demanded that the effect of outsiders...continue on.  But the other question is....if you made German official....then you'd have to go and dump various words which aren't German (example: Facebook, Google, Tabs, laptops, computers, etc).

The bill?  More or less cancelled out....zero chance to pass.

The one odd aspect to this discussion is that they've mandated that all foreigners study and pass a basic German language class.  To be integrated, you need to be able to handle German.  Oddly, today, they did everything possible to say that German is not the official language of the country.

I suspect that a fair number of Germans will be sitting around this weekend...discussing this matter over a beer, and wondering what exactly was wrong with having a national language.