Telagon Sichelputzer

Corporate Blogging - Minor Mistakes create an Uproar?

Corporate Blogging is a wide known aspect of sharing your company’s thoughts to the public audience. Last evening I strumbled upon an announcement of the french company Social Media Group. The company publishes several blogs including their newest additions in German: “Der Auto Blog” and “Der Vintage Blog“. The use of the masculine article “der” in relation to the word “Blog” causes a minor uproar in the germanspeaking Blogosphere, as most people consider the “Blog” as a word with a neutrum gender. To accomplish this, the article “das” would be aligned to the word. The discussion on the correct use of “Blog” continues here and on Loïc Le Meur. My contributions to the discussion were so far these statements mainly in response to Christophe:

Just a smaller note on the naming. Actually, the correct form of naming a blog with an article is “Das Blog” (neutrum) and not “Der Blog” (maskulinum). Sadly, the authors of the mentioned blogs made this mistake… :( In any case, keep in mind that “Blog” is based on “Weblog”. Let’s focus on the word itself. As we all know, it’s German word “Weblog” is based on “das Web” and “das Log” (“das Logbuch”) — if you simplify the language to the roots. Nevertheless, the diary is “das Tagebuch”, and if you consider these words web, log and its combined meaning of an online diary as basic principle for creating the predestined articles in masculine, feminine or neutrum cases, you are already limited to the neutrum gender. The word “Blog” in german is an anglicism, which is a transition from an originally english word into german language. Anglicisms are one-to-one identical transitions and translations of a word into german. To recall this - “Service-Provider”, “Recycling”, “Talk”, “Team”, “Party” are some more common anglicisms in the german language. You would never dare to write i.e. “Riesaickling” instead of “Recycling”, “Tiem” instead of “Team”, or “Paartie” instead of “Party”. If this would be the case, you had to reform “Blog” into “Block” (which is already the word for “block”) or “Blogg” (which is no anglicism anymore). The word “blowg” makes no sense to me due to the anglicism of “Blog” - and it rather reminds me of the voice-sounds created by sheep. If ever, a “blohg” to stress a longer o-sound is acceptable - but its no anglicism anymore. The “unbestimmter Article” (ein, eine, ein) of the word Blog is hinting at it’s neutrum gender.

I believe it is most vital for companies to carefully inspect and evaluate “foreign countries” and specialize in the development of their region, language, culture and society before stepping into their domain of heritage. Perhaps I am able to contribute some more useful input for Blogspirit, too. Let’s see what I can make out of it.

Tags: Anglicism, Blog, Etymology, Weblog