(now the English version for the global audience...)

If I was at Language Log, I would surely have something wise to say about the uproar against Chancellor Merkel's speech at the Knesset.

Background: The German Chancellor Angela Merkel is on a visit to Israel. There was a heated debate about whether she should be allowed to address the Knesset. In general only foreign heads of state are invited to address the plenary - in the case of Germany, this would be the president; so a special approval was needed. Many people thought it shouldn't be approved, not so much because she was German, but - and that's the interesting point - because she was to speak in German. One MK, Arieh Eldad, was quoted saying that his grandparents "were murdered in that language".

That there is so little objection to visits of German officials, shows that most Israelis think there is "a different Germany", as we put it here. But there seems not to be "a different German language". For many people, the German language seems to evoke Nazism more than anything else contemporary German. And it's funny, but I can somehow relate to that idea myself, even though I think it's completely unreasonable on so many levels. I seriously wonder how and why a language assumes such status.

(At the end the speech of course took place, and chancellor Merkel opened with a Hebrew sentence or two, which I think was a brilliant idea given the importance of language in this story. )