BERLIN — Some words can’t be translated easily. But they
can cross national borders, lose their original context along the journey,
assume different meanings and crop up in unlikely places.
This week, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany proved
that point — memorably.
Speaking at a technology conference on Tuesday, Ms.
Merkel, known as a staid, no-drama politician, told a self-deprecating anecdote
about being widely mocked online five years ago after she described the
internet as some mysterious expanse of “uncharted territory.”
She chuckled at the memory of the digital blowback.
“It generated quite a shitstorm,” she said, using the
English term — because Germans, it turns out, do not have one of their own.
That, as you might imagine, stirred yet another online
reaction, at least among many English speakers in Britain and the United
States.
“I can die happy now that Merkel has used the word,” Anne
McElvoy, a senior editor with The Economist, wrote on Twitter.
The writer David Simon wondered why the Germans had not
devised their own term. “These guys have a word for everything,” he said on
Twitter.
click on the shitstorm for a closer look
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