In my last post, I talked about how German authorities have a “somewhat difficult” relationship with foreign words. This is also true for other areas: In technology, for example, only German laypeople talk about a ‘Computer’ when they mean the calculating machine or a ‘Box’ when they have a HiFi speaker in mind. Experts prefer the term ‘Rechner’ and ‘Lautsprecher’, which means that, in this case, we are dealing with the distinction between technical and general language, with the unique situation that insiders use the German word and outsiders the foreign one.
As a rule, however, the system works the other way round. Take doctors and medical staff, among whom you will very rarely hear the very German word ‘Blinddarm’ (literally meaning the blind gut) from a doctor’s mouth, but rather the Latinism ‘Appendix’. And even if you might think that ‘Magenspiegelung’ is actually a very handy German term for saying that your tummy is being mirrored, the doctors and nurses will call the whole thing a ‘gastroscopy’, whether you like it or not (the word, not the procedure).