American companies divide themselves into functions that generate revenue and functions that consume it, and the language is used openly in budget discussions. Being a cost center is a structural position, and everyone in one knows it.
words
The acquisition
Acquisition. The German word for a significant purchase, and it carries weight — eine Anschaffung fürs Leben, an acquisition for life. Buying is treated as an event with consequences, not as consumption.
Symptom-fighting
Symptom-fighting. A German word that exists in order to criticize.
Das ist reine Symptombekämpfung — that is pure symptom-treatment — is a standard charge in German political and business argument. It means: you have not understood the problem, and what you are doing will not last.
A culture builds a word like that only when it needs to make the accusation often.
Without a plan
Ohne Plan — without a plan, meaning aimless. Planlos — plan-less, an adjective applied to people, and an insult.
Er hat keinen Plan — he has no plan — is colloquial German for he has no idea. The word for a plan became the word for understanding.
Honesty lasts longest
Honesty lasts longest. A German proverb, and the argument in it is about duration rather than virtue. It does not say honesty is right. It says honesty is what survives — which is the same argument the culture makes about agreements, prices and partnerships.
The inherited piece
Erbstück. German households pass down furniture, tools, kitchenware and machines across generations, and the word for such a piece marks it as inherited rather than merely old. The object was bought once, by somebody else, and is still working.
The cross-entrant
Cross-entrant. The German word for somebody who has moved into a field from outside it. It is not hostile, but it is never neutral either. The word marks the person as having arrived by a side door, and it stays attached to them.
Cause-research
Cause-research. German has a single ordinary word for the activity of investigating why something happened, and it appears in news reports as a matter of course. Die Ursachenforschung läuft — the investigation into causes is running.
There is no English equivalent that is not a phrase. Root cause analysis is consultant’s language. Ursachenforschung is what a newsreader says.
Garage sales and flea markets
An ordinary American weekend activity in which private individuals sell household goods and every price is understood to be open. Children learn price negotiation there before they learn it anywhere else.
The original matter
Ur, primal or original. Sache, the matter. The cause is the original matter — the thing that was there first.
English took cause from the Latin causa, which also gave us accuse and because. The German word contains its own instruction: go back to the thing underneath.