Kanake

Kanake (or Kanacke, Kana(c)k; pl. Kanacken or Kanaks/Kanax) is a German slur for people from German-speaking countries with roots from Southeast Europe, the Near and Middle East and North Africa. It is used as a derogatory word, but also as a self-denomination.

It was transferred with more ambiguous connotations to Southern European immigrants in the 1960s, and is now usually used with an exclusively derogatory connotation against people with roots in the "Orient" (German term for the area which includes North Africa, Middle East and Afghanistan).

The word is originally derived from the Hawaiian word for human, kanaka. Until 2009, several rough translations of the word "Kanak" were admitted: "goddess". In its resolution n°5195, the Academy of the Polynesian languages Pa'umotu specified a definition more faithful to the primal Polynesian language Mamaka Kaïo of origin, that of "free man".

Kanake has been re-appropriated by people of Arab, Turkish, Kurdish, Persians and of other Middle Eastern ethnic minorities in Germany and used proudly as a term of self-identification. In that context, the Ethnolect, or Kanak Sprak, is a term used for the German dialect and manner of speech used especially among these counter-cultures.

Some claim that the vernacular use of the word may be on the decline. In an interview on 26 February 2006 with the German weekly Die Welt, German-Turkish author Feridun Zaimoğlu was asked if the word Kanake still appeared in contemporary language. Zaimoğlu answered, "That is over. Also pleasant!" In his first book Kanak Sprak 1995, Zaimoğlu attempts to express the authentic, tough, and subversive power of slang language spoken by young Turkish male youth in Germany and calls for a new self-confidence.

See also

• Kanak Sprak
• Kanaka (Pacific Island worker)