German official language always has a somewhat complicated relationship with foreign words. Take, for example, the strange terms that buzz around a German notary’s office:
Of course you can say ‘Original’ for an original and call the sheets that come out of the copying machine a ‘Kopie’. But it sounds much more official when an ‘Abschrift’ is made from an ‘Urschrift’. And then there’s the special term ‘Ausfertigung’ of a document, which means an official copy issued by a notary – which still is a copy….
However, my personal favourite word in this word family is ‘Zweitschrift’. We even have a matching stamp in the office, although we don’t use it very often. But it does look official.
And here, the Cologne Commercial Register has an interesting term, too: the don’t use the word ‘Ausdruck’ for printout like all the other registers, but ‘Abdruck’ – although we haven’t yet been able to find out what the difference is but strongly assume that there isn’t any…