German as a Language of Scholarship

The Deutsche Kulturrat announced this week that a scant 1% of publications in the natural sciences appear in German and regretted the fact that using English at international conferences in Germany means that Germans end up speaking English to each other. Admittedly it does seem silly, but the international scholarly community needs a common language. Personally I would not mind if that language were German, French, Spanish or some other broadly used language. I like learning languages. But the fact is it is English.

This has consequences for my students. If they want to have a career that is not strictly local, they need to read English well, to write it at a level that communicates their ideas (even if the grammar is imperfect and the tone not quite native), and to speak and understand it decently enough to take part in discussions. This is hard and we do far too little to train them.

Mere language competence is not, however, quite sufficient. There are cultural norms that adhere to English language discourse that are not quite standard in Germany and vice versa. I tend, for example, to understatement much too often when speaking German -- an English speaker would recognize my intent, but my German students often do not. The reverse happens too: Germans can seem needlessly combative or aggressive in English when they do not mean it. This is odd in its way, because the give-and-take in class or colloquium debate in German sometimes seems excessively polite (especially toward professors) compared to, say, the US go-for-the-throat standard where scholarly issues are concerned.

The language problem affects library publications. German language library journals simply are not read outside of Germany, except by a few German subject specialists, and many of Germany's best library authors write in English for international journals because they want a broader audience for their ideas. Does this mean that the German-only journals are doomed to a local-only significance? It is hard to argue that the answer is not "yes".

1und1 or Telekom -- which is worse?

No question, actually. 1und1 is far worse, even though t-online (Telekom's online service) is maddeningly bureaucratic and inefficient. Here is the story.

I signed up for DSL via 1und1 two years ago when moving into the apartment. Part of the package I got included movies, but it turned out that the movies only played on MS-Windows machines and I had a Mac. It also included a Norton securty package for Windows only. After 6 months they started charging for both services. The charging part was in the fine print, but the Windows only wasn't. When I complained, their answer was basically: tough.

1und1 does not have offices. To communicate with them you go to a website and enter a message that may get answered in a week, or you can call a phone number with special high per-minute rates and sit on hold until they feel like answering. In both cases in my experience their answers to technical problems (which turned out to be at their end) was: try rebooting, try reloading the software, or check for a new release. When I explained that I had done all of that, they recommended that I do it all over again, as if their saying so would work magic.

I also had telefone service through them, but except for local calls, the package worked only for other 1und1 customers. Since it was a two year contract with a clause that forced you to pay the full amount regardless of when you stopped, I let it run out.

Berlin is full of horror stories about Telekom, but I also have friends who have had good service from them. Telekom does have actual physical offices where you can talk with a human for free. They also have a no-cost 800 number. In the last two weeks I used both a lot. My contract with Telekom had the stipulation that I get my DSL connection faster than the standard 6 days (days, not business days) if possible. But 1und1 refused to give up the port for my line, even though they cut off my Internet access two hours early. Ultimately I got them to free the port by threatening them with my lawyer. Then Telekom needed at least three days, which brought us to Friday. On Friday I learned that the very helpful person who arranged speedy service at Telekom forgot to tell one part of the bureaucracy. So on Friday nothing happened. Saturday they told me that nothing could be done until Monday. Today I was told to call back at 18.00 and at 18.00 I was told that the people who could give me the access code were busy and that I should call back (this after calling back 4 times because of calls being dropped). On my 5th try I did finally get passed through three different staff members without anyone losing the call and got my access code.

The basic difference between 1und1 and Telekom, at least in my experience, is that Telekom seems to try while 1und1 is merely trying.