WE Germans owe the English language a debt of gratitude. If English didn’t lend us one or two little words every once in a while, we would probably call blogs “digitale Netztagebücher” and apps “Anwendungen für mobile Endgeräte.” Even for German speakers, those don’t exactly roll off the tongue.

Such linguistic borrowing has been increasing, as technology both creates its own new words and facilitates the global spread of newfangled cultural terminology. Recently the editors of the Duden dictionary, the German equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary, added 5,000 new words to its 26th edition, many of them English or of English origin, including “digital native” and “flashmob.”

The Duden has been around since 1880, and this isn’t the first time English words have been added. But the new edition has caused an uproar among linguistic conservatives. After the additions were announced, the German Language Society, an unofficial organization that has tasked itself with protecting the German language, voted the editors of the Duden the “language adulterers of the year,” accusing them of legitimizing the demise of German.

Most Germans are more liberal in their linguistic views and generally agree that the idea of protecting a country’s language is as megalomaniacal as it is futile.