Swinglish

Expats (actually, not expats, just my wife) here are fond of apologizing for butchering the local language by adding their own words to it. They like to say "oh, please forgive my Swinglish." They are trying to be clever. Truth be told, it's not even a Swiss German and English mixture. It's more an attempt at Highglish Germanglish.

For someone like me who hardly knows a few words in German, the clever Swinglish phrasing is still lost on me. I told my son the other day, who is quickly learning German and singing German songs around the place...

me: You are speaking like a third grade German.
him: Come on, Dad, you say something now. You're supposed to be advanced.
me: Ha. I speak worse German than a little German baby.
him: Oh DAD!

Really, this is how we learn languages. Mimicking, speaking, then reading. I'm going to study this a bit more. I have two colleagues who know more languages than I have fingers. I have one colleague who can describe which language was popular during the 1700s and what the socio-economic status of the majority European population was. I am completely dumbfounded by this, with immense feelings of inadequacy.

Leave it to stupid me to read restaurant signs in mixed English and German, and ask "Why do they have special menus for 2 gang members and 3 gang members?"