Hanover - Does the little girl want to go on holiday with the boy? "Klaro" (natch, naturally, of course), she says in a current German commercial, but only on a holiday that a particular tour operator is offering. Most German children these days would hardly use the term "klaro," a rather outdated slang expression that was very popular in the 1970s and '80s. Other buzzwords from that era were "cool" and "geil" (randy is its first definition, but it took on a secondary meaning of great, fantastic, terrific).
Sometimes German advertisers resurrect words like this, employing "retrospeak" to attract attention, remarked Peter Schlobinski, a professor of Germanic linguistics at the University of Hanover.
The "klaro" commercial has two target groups. "The small child using the expression addresses children and youths, and the expression itself is directed at parents and grandparents," said Franco Rota, a professor of marketing communications at Stuttgart Media University. People over 50 years of age "were young in the '70s and used this lingo themselves," he explained.
Other teenage slang expressions back then included "flippig" (funky, hip, flighty, way-out) and freaky, which are seldom heard these days. Slang terms ending in "y" generally date from the 1970s, Rota said.
Schlobinski noted that the buzzwords "dufte" (great, cool, groovy) and "knorke" (great, marvellous, swell) had been around since the beginning of the 20th century - particularly in Berlin.
Some passe words re-enter everyday speech via advertising. "The word 'geil' waned somewhat in the '90s but has been revitalised by an electronics chain's advertising slogan "Geiz ist geil!" ("Stinginess is terrific!"), Rota remarked.
Similarly, Rota said, the expression "cool" - use of which peaked in the '80s - was revived in the '90s by a chocolate maker's advertising slogan of "it's cool man."
Sometimes advertisers coin new words. One example, according to Annette Trabold of the Mannheim-based German Language Institute, is "unkaputtbar" (unbustable).
Adspeak can influence people. "There's hardly another message category in mass communications that's so ubiquitous," Rota said. He added, however, that there was no general trend toward retrospeak. Advertising, Rota said, had managed with great effort to anchor only a few terms in everyday speech.
Every generation has its own youth fashion, including a lingo meant to set it apart. "That's why vogue words seldom return," Trabold noted.
