Let's talk about language, dear readers.

Our children are now learning about terms that were previously meaningless to them.

War.

NATO.

Disarmament.

appeasement.

Air-raid shelter.

EU external borders.

air raid alert.

amphibious vehicles.

civilians.

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Cold War.

conscription.

melt down

Bettina Weiguny

Freelance author in the business section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

  • Follow I follow

The list could easily be continued to the end of this text.

Lots of vocabulary that young people, if they have paid attention, know from history books.

Post-war history chapter.

And so, as our offspring would say, "totally 20th century".

But now the terms are filled with meaning in no time at all.

A semantics crash course.

Every day new words are added that we parents have packed way back in our heads.

Wasn't everything so nice and quiet here?

A few fairy lights and everything stays peaceful.

"A Global Bunch of Kids"

This was going well until Putin decided to invade Ukraine.

Now we have to explain to our 15-year-old what is happening and what that means – for the Ukrainians, for him, for us, for the world.

The boy is in boarding school in England – with boys and girls from the Ukraine, Russia, Poland, China, the Baltic States, England, France, Switzerland and America.

A global bunch of kids.

War was far away for him, a concept of the Beatles and the game consoles.

Now (how militaristic our language is...) he bombards us with questions: "Will war come to Germany or England?", "Will Putin use nuclear weapons?", "How likely is a world war?".

According to Putin, there is no war.

No civilian casualties.

Just a "military special operation".

Small and justified.

Minimally invasive and bloodless.

Language is also part of the war: aggressive war here is called “peace mission” there.

They don't talk much about it at boarding school.

"We don't know how, with what words." Which reminds me of Hugo von Hofmannsthal over 100 years ago.

Then the poet's world crumbled into sheer individual parts, he was no longer able to describe them in language because the words crumbled "in his mouth like musty mushrooms".

So let's stick to it: a war of aggression is a war of aggression is a war of aggression.