KrautBlog

Guten Rutsch...

2012-01-22T10:16:00.008-05:00

...("good slide"), that's what my German friends—and some Americans who knew enough German—wished me for New Year's Eve. I always thought the phrase referred to the fact that snow or ice may be on the road at that night or that most Germans moved through it in an alcoholic daze. But John Dingly (thanks, John!) pointed out to me that Rutsch, in that context, is most likely a piece of folk etymology that derives, via Yiddish, from Hebrew rosh ("beginning"), as in Rosh-ha-Shana.

Grammatical note: Guten Rutsch is the accusative (direct object case) of guter Rutsch. Why do Germans not use this nominative? Because Guten Rutsch is short for Ich wünsche dir/euch/Ihnen einen guten Rutsch (I wish you a good slide), where (einen) guten Rutsch is the direct object. The same holds BTW for Guten Morgen, Guten Tag, Guten Abend (Good Morning, G'Day, Good Evening).

Word of the month: Schwein(e)hund

2012-01-02T14:05:00.008-05:00

A Schwein is a pig and a Hund a dog. Put the two together and you have a word designating someone who might be called a "bastard" in English. But the meaning can vary considerably depending on context, with a trace of admiration mixed in at one end and a completely derisive, contemptuous connotation at the other end.

I experimented with several ways of drawing the creature in question and show the two I considered the most successful ones—one illustrating the easy approach, where the animal is split into two halves crosswise, and one illustrating a more difficult approach, where the animal is split lengthwise. I have not tried what appears to me to be the most difficult approach, to draw a creature that would result from mating a pig with a dog. One problems is that some dog breeds already look as if they resulted from that kind of union—how does one draw a cartoon of a cartoon? But I haven't given up yet...

In any case, I have run out of words that could lead to the kind of drawings I have been showing every second month, and unless I come across new possibilities—or someone can suggest some—the current drawing concludes that mini-series.

As to spelling: The e between the two constituent nouns is optional and can be added to make the transition from n to h easier to pronounce.

On Free-Riders and Tax Cheats

2011-12-26T12:24:00.004-05:00

A recent article in the NYTimes introduces the free-rider problem as follows:

“You can watch PBS without making a donation; you can enjoy clean air even if you drive a car that pollutes. Such goods, however, give rise to the so-called free-rider problem: acting selfishly makes sense for each individual (why sacrifice if you don’t have to?) but as more and more people choose to act selfishly, the good disappears and everyone loses.”

The article struck a chord with me because I had just met an accountant who stated proudly that he knew how rich people could manage their money in ways that allowed their heirs never to pay any taxes. I was taken aback and remarked, “But will they use the roads built with other people’s taxes?”, to which he answered, gleefully, “Well, the roads will not be built with their taxes!” And when I pointed out that we were currently watching a whole country, Greece, going down the tubes because, among other things, cheating on taxes is endemic there, he replied that everything he would suggest would be legal.

In other words, I had encountered a form of the free-rider problem before I even knew that it had a name. Now, I find it perfectly legitimate to try not to pay more taxes than necessary, and that’s why we employ our own tax planner. But I do consider attempts to avoid paying any taxes while fully using the goods and services created by the taxes paid by others (roads, police protection, food safety supervision, to name a few) a form of sociopathology.

I knew that “cheating the government” was an attitude prevalent in the underground economy of tradespeople, which I deal with frequently. My conversation with the accountant showed me, however, that the attitude goes all the way up to people with the highest income. This is very different in the country I come from, where people are willing to pay taxes as long as they see them used in beneficial ways. In fact, conversations with friends and what I read in online magazines suggest to me that plans of the current German government for tax relief are meeting a less than enthusiastic response. People know that as a result, the public debt would have to increase or some social services be cut, and that’s considered worse by many than having 200 Euros or so more in their pockets.

Euro 2012 (no, not that Euro!)

2011-12-02T22:16:00.004-05:00

Today was the drawing to determine the initial 4 groups of four teams to start competition in next year's European Championship tournament in Poland and the Ukraine. These are the groups that were drawn:

A: Poland, Greece, Russia, Czech Republic (31.5)
B: Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Portugal (5.75)
C: Spain, Italy, Ireland, Croatia (9.75)
D: Ukraine, Sweden, France, England. (23.25)

The numbers in brackets indicate the average team ranking for each group according to the current FIFA rankings (overall, not restricted to Europe, which exaggerates the differences somewhat). The extraordinary spread results from the fact that Poland and the Ukraine, the two lowest-ranked teams in the competition, qualified as host nations and were seated ahead of powerhouses such as Germany and England. Result: We have the mother of all groups of death in group B, where the lowest-ranked team is ranked higher than the highest-ranked team in group A.

Some implications in my comment...

Word of the Month: Kadavergehorsam

2011-12-01T14:51:00.009-05:00

A Kadaver is a cadaver or corpse, and Gehorsam means "obedience". Kadavergehorsam refers to an unquestioning, blind obedience or a total abandonment of ones free will to a higher authority. The term entered German via the constitution of the Jesuit order as written by its founder, St. Ignace of Loyola, which demands from every member that he obey his superiors "as if he were a cadaver that lets itself be carried anywhere and treated in any which way." The term was used in Germany in the 19th century first as an anti-Jesuit catchphrase and later also in polemics against the Prussian military. It serves nowadays as a reference point for an attitude not to be desired, not in the army, not in civilian life, not anywhere. [My source]

According to the Wikipedia article I referenced, the comparison that St. Ignace uses goes back to a formulation from St. Francis of Assissi, who wrote several centuries earlier and, in turn, relied on an even earlier scholastic tradition. But it's the Germans who distilled the underlying image into the compound noun that's our current Word of the Month. This illustrates again how easy it is in German to succinctly express shaded meanings by hitching seemingly unrelated words together. I must also confess that until I did research for this month's word, I thought Kadavergehorsam simply meant obedience till you're dead. The history of the term that I discovered, though, shows that it has a much more interesting pedigree.

'Bout them Germans...

2011-11-20T17:43:00.005-05:00

Posted by reader Heika:

Hi Ulrich, I just finished reading a review of Michael Lewis's book "Boomerang," which discusses the current financial crisis country to country. The reviewer made this comment, which for me rang very true, admittedly based on my very short stay of two years in the country:

“There was no credit boom in Germany,” an official told Lewis. “Real estate prices were completely flat. There was no borrowing for consumption. Because this behavior is totally unacceptable in Germany.”

I don't know if you can address the prices of real estate to verify the unnamed official's accuracy, but what do you think about the claim that "borrowing for consumption" is totally "unacceptable." My personal experience is that Lewis got this right, and this is one very good reason the Germans continue to do well while all around them are in despair.

Loved your latest drawing. Heika

Words of the Month: Hausdrachen, Pantoffelheld

2011-11-06T12:38:00.007-05:00

So far, I have resisted posting WoMs that could be viewed as sexist—I briefly alluded to this when, in a discussion about maulfaul, I was asked about an antonym, i.e. a word referring to someone who can't shut up, and I had to answer that these words do exist, but tend to be clearly aimed at women and therefore could be considered sexist. I do not intend to feature such words, but today, I'm making an exception. It was simply too tempting to illustrate the word in question, sexist as it may be. But in order to be an equal-opportunity sexist, I paired it, upon the suggestion of Laraine, with a word that's sexist w.r.t. the opposite gender.

So, here goes: Haus means "house" or "home", and a Drachen is a dragon. A Hausdrachen is a woman who tyrannizes her family, especially her husband—she's a shrew. A Pantoffel is a bedroom slipper, and a Held is a hero (as in Heldentenor). A Pantoffelheld is a guy who talks tough, but takes to his heels at the first sign of danger—he's a hero only in the safety of his own home, unless, of course, he meets a Hausdrachen there. One could say that a Hausdrachen and a Pantoffelheld are a perfectly matched pair, in more than one respect.

We dodged a bullet

2011-11-01T17:57:00.005-04:00

Snowfall on Friday caused more damage to our trees than hurricane Irene did in August—it also left us without electricity for 75 hrs, which meant no water from the well, which meant the toilets stopped working once the water in the tank was used up. But things could have been worse: A white oak behind our house split and one half fell on our roof, but didn't damage the roof itself as far as we can see without the tree being removed.

Why am I reporting all of this? Because the word of the month will be delayed by a few days—I'm too busy dealing with the aftermath of all of the above.

Six Days in Vermont

2011-10-25T20:20:00.005-04:00

Six Days in Vermont by Ulrich Flemming

My latest opus. If the pictures are not as spectacular as those in the Death Valley or Adriatic books, it's because the scenery was not as spectacular (or because I couldn't make more of it). I'm showing the book here anyway because I believe my German friends, in particular, may be interested. Vermont is not on the beaten path, and this was indeed my first visit there ever. But it's only the second continental state I visited in the US (after New Mexico) where I spontaneously thought, "I could live here." (I'm talking about states, not cities!) I hope the images manage to suggest why I thought so.

Word of the month: Lebenslüge

2011-10-02T16:49:00.004-04:00

Here's another addition to Leben ("life") that creates a special meaning: A Lüge is a lie, and a Lebenslüge is a lie people tell themselves in order to be able to live with a clear conscience in spite of the fact that some actions in the past should give them everything but a clear conscience. It appears to be a particular manifestation of cognitive dissonance, which we talked about a while ago. According to the Wikipedia article I consulted, the term goes back to Henrik Ibsen's "The Wild Duck", which means there has to be an initial coinage in Norwegian—I wonder what that would be.

It is interesting to note that in German political discourse, the term has been applied to nations or countries; for example, to countries that go to great lengths to suppress the memory of and references to atrocities that have been committed in the past in the name of the country or were sanctioned by its leaders, or to countries whose self-image or policies are based on false assumptions about events that happened in the past.

Word of the Month: Spaßvogel

2011-09-01T09:03:00.003-04:00

Here’s yet another addition to the KrautBlog aviary. Spaß can mean “fun”, as in “Wir haben Spaß gehabt”(“We’ve had fun”), or “joke”, as in “Es war doch nur Spaß” (“It was only a joke”). A Spaßvogel is a droll or humorous person, one always ready to crack a joke, a wag.

Note on pronounciation. The “v” is pronounced like English “f”, not like English “v”.

Sailing in the Adriatic 2011

2011-08-11T21:39:00.005-04:00

Back from one of the greatest trips I ever took (the preview shows about half of the photo book I created afterwards)--I will open a post soon about the specific allure of the Mediterranean, which becomes even more irresistible when experienced from a sailing boat

Word of the Month: Lebenskünstler

2011-08-04T17:36:00.010-04:00

Leben means "life" and a Künstler is an artist. Lebenskünstler refers not so much to people who turn their life into a piece of art than to people able to face whatever life throws at them with equanimity and a minimum of fuss. It's not so much that they see something positive in every situation (a form of self-delusion); rather, they always seem to find a way out of problems they encounter without kvetching and self-dramatization. It's also not a matter of "grace under pressure"—Lebenskünstler don't let pressure get to them in the first place.

As you may guess, I have great admiration für Lebenskünstler and wish I myself had more of one in me. I'm surprised that there does not seem to exist an English equivalent with exactly the same shade of meaning.

Note: Attentive readers will have noticed that I have been using Lebenskünstler also as a plural. This is correct: It's one of the German -er nouns whose plural is the same as the singular.

Word of the month: Neidhammel

2011-07-01T12:36:00.009-04:00

Neid means "envy", one of the deadly sins (it's also the last name of the coach of the German national women's soccer team that is competing right now for the World Cup). A Hammel is a male sheep, a ram, or a mutton, if it's dead on the table. A Neidhammel is a person of a rather disagreeable kind, one that habitually feels envy towards anybody who seems to have any advantage. I found it very hard to express this feeling graphically, and impossible without providing some context.

By way of explanation, one may observe that if Hammel is combined with a trait or habit, it can connote a person who makes this habit a defining characteristic. Thus, a Streithammel is a person who loves a Streit ("fight"). But I can't explain why a Hammel is considered a particularly obsessive creature. And yes, the "ei" in Neid (and Streit) rhymes with "eye".

Word of the month: Putzfimmel

2011-06-01T13:49:00.005-04:00

Putzen means "to clean" and a Fimmel is a craze for or an obsession with something. Putzflimmel denotes an obsession with keeping things, especially your house, not just clean, but entirely spotless. A person thus afflicted keeps cleaning utensils always in easy reach so that any trace of dirt or dust can be attacked as soon as it is discovered. This kind of person is also know as a Putzteufel (cleaning devil), the opposite of a slob.

...and speaking of slobs: I have found that it is just about impossible to live with someone who has a Putzfimmel.

Note on pronunciation: The "u" in Putz is a short "oo" as in "foot".

Cognitive Dissonance

2011-05-22T10:57:00.011-04:00

I drew the cartoon on the right for a page on Laraine's website, in which she introduces "cognitive dissonance" to readers of her books (as part of a larger effort to "build background knowledge bit-by-bit"). I'm picking up her thread because ever since I learned about this concept from psychology, it has been indispensable in my understanding of how a part of the population functions. All through my life, I have observed with wonderment people who are seemingly able to entertain simultaneously two conflicting opinions about themselves and to do this over extended periods of time. Cognitive dissonance gives a name to this phenomenon, and studies dealing with it investigate the mechanisms people employ to neutralize its effects.

A particular common one is "it's not my fault." This is very popular, for example, with obese people who know they eat too much, but are nevertheless unwilling to change their eating habits. A popular it's-not-my-fault ploy in this case is to blame one's genes—I actually have seen this used explicitly in a food ad! Of course, if genes were to blame for the obesity epidemic hitting the Western countries (the US is not alone in this), we would have to assume that some mega-sized mutations happened over the last two generations—but people looking for an excuse will never question its underlying premises (another common ploy is to dismiss the simple arithmetic underlying the relation between calories burned and units of physical exercise as "useless" or "questionable" math).

More of my musings on this topic (I mean cognitive dissonance, not obese people!) in the comments...

Word of the month: Schluckspecht

2011-05-02T08:47:00.006-04:00

Our Schnapsdrossel (WoM for March) needs a drinking companion, and here he is. A Schluck is a gulp or swig (from schlucken - "to swallow"), and a Specht is a woodpecker. Put the two together and you have another moniker for a boozer or drunk. Again, I do not know how the word originated—perhaps the alliteration of the two components (the S in Specht is pronounced like English "sh") played a role.

Anyway, we have a word that may look daunting to foreigners: 11 consonants and only 2 vowels! Things appear easier when you realize that the "sch", "ck", and "ch" indicate but one phoneme each, which reduces the number of effective consonants in the word to 7. Still, for speakers of languages that avoid consonant clusters (like Japanese) the word is a challenge.

Death Valley 2011

2011-04-19T19:26:00.009-04:00

Another photo book I just completed. The preview skips over half of the pages. I included pictures I took from the plane that took me from New York to Las Vegas—I find the images of the varying patterns and landscape formations on the ground mesmerizing [Photoshop makes it all possible bec. it allows me to get rid of the haze that always intervenes when pictures are taken from great distances and through rather dirty airplane windows].

The Snows of 2011

2011-04-07T19:40:00.007-04:00

The Snows of 2011 by Ulrich Flemming

I just finished a photo diary of the extraordinary snow falls we've had this winter. This preview shows about half of the pages.

Word of the month: Prinzipienreiter

2011-04-01T12:52:00.003-04:00

Prinzip is German for “principle” and a Reiter is a “rider” (of horses). Hitch the two words together, and you have a person who acts on principle, as a matter of principle, in the most inflexible, even bone-headed way no matter what the consequences are. I’ve found, both in Germany and in the US, Prinzipienreiter (singular and plural are the same for both nominative and accusative!) especially among the ranks of low-level officials who get their authority not from their expertise or charisma, but solely through their position, and are willing to use what little power they have to the max by following procedures to the tee.

Here’s an incident during this year’s mardi-gras in Cologne that shows beautifully Prinzipienreiter at work (I’ll summarize the incident in my first comment for people who don’t speak German).

Note on pronunciation: Prin·TSEE·pee·en·RYE·ter.

Word of the month: Schnapsdrossel

2011-03-01T13:12:00.006-05:00

Another addition to the KrautBlog aviary: Schnaps (one p!) should be known to English speakers—it's a generic term for any hard liquor; a Drossel is a thrush; and Schnapsdrossel is a colloquial moniker for a boozer. I do not know how the term originated, but it remains a fact, in Germany and elsewhere, that alcohol leads some people to song.

Word of the month: Wutbürger

2011-02-01T19:56:00.005-05:00

The Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (Society for the German Language) made Wutbürger its word of the year for 2010. The term combines Wut (an intense anger that is ready to swing into action at the slightest provocation) and Bürger (citizen). I selected this term for several reasons: It picks up on issues I already introduced in my posts on the current German funk and the Leitkultur discussion. Furthermore, the circumstances in which it is used have parallels in the US. And it demonstrates, again, the ease with which words can be combined in German to create concise expressions for rather nuanced phenomena.

The term was popularized by an essay in the magazine Der Spiegel, whose author used it to describe conservative, if not reactionary, members of the middle class who are deeply dissatisfied with the direction Germany is taking. Specifically, they are disturbed by the fact that it is becoming an immigration country, and they do not see their point of view sufficiently championed by elected officials. However, the term is also applied to groups that do not fit this profile, like the people of Stuttgart who staged massive protests against plans to tear down their old train station and replace it with a more modern structure. As is usual in Germany, this created a debate—more in my first comment...

Chickadee Desperado

2011-02-01T12:12:00.005-05:00

I shot a frontal portrait of a chickadee yesterday that just had to be enhanced as shown.

To my German friends: A chickadee is a Kohlmeise.

Words of the month: Bücherwurm, Leseratte

2011-01-01T11:21:00.006-05:00

Bücher is the plural of Buch (book), and a Bücherwurm is the German equivalent of the English "bookworm"—a person who has no life outside of books. Since the German and English terms are so close both linguistically and semantically, there would be no reason to make Bücherwurm a word of the month.

However, there is also the Leseratte. In German, you can attach certain words to Ratte ("rat") to coin a term for someone who likes something: A Wasserratte (Wasser means "water") is a person who loves to be in the water, while a Landratte is a person who doesn't, or at least doesn't like to set foot on a ship. Lesen means "to read", and a Leseratte is a person who loves to read. In distinction to a Bücherwurm, though, there is no implication that this person has no life outside of books—an "avid reader" comes close in English, but doesn't conjure up the image of a voraciously reading rat, which I find very appealing (and I'm a person who suffers from muriphobia!). Anyway, I think a Leseratte and a Bücherwurm make a nicely contrasting pair.

Wikileaks: My Two Cents

2010-12-09T09:32:00.004-05:00

I have a perspective on this issue (based in part on observations I made when I was living in Germany) that I see rarely voiced—that's why I'm posting, even though I'm late to the party.

I think Assange's argument for total transparency contains a basic fallacy: That when you take one part out of a dynamic system, everything else stays the same. In this case, that when all communication becomes public, it will result in complete transparency. I think this is not the case: If people want to keep their communication secret in plain view, they start to speak in code. Result: Less transparency! Moreover, the communication is now harder to interpret.

More in my comment...

Word of the month: Leitkultur

2010-12-01T14:16:00.014-05:00

I selected the present word of the month after reading, in translation, Jürgen Habermas's essay Leadership and Leitkultur, which recently appeared in the NYT. The term Leitkultur is formed from the verb leiten (to guide, lead) and Kultur (culture). It denotes the "guiding culture" of a people or country or, more accurately, the set of values and beliefs, and the rules of behavior based on them, that govern the way the members of the group view themselves and interact with each other.

The concept of a Leitkultur represents one of the flash points in the discussion currently raging in Germany about the best way to deal with immigrants who seemingly refuse integration into the surrounding society and culture. Habermas has argued—in the past and again in the essay—that it is sufficient for immigrants who want to become permanent residents or citizens that they (a) learn German and (b) accept the constitution. Others believe that this is not enough—they demand, in addition, that immigrants embrace a German Leitkultur. In my first comment, I'll talk about Leitkultur as a useful term to focus this discussion, even if it becomes problematic when it's turned into a cry for political action. In a second comment, I will try to indicate connections with trends I observe in the US.

Note on pronunciation: Again, watch your vowels! The "ei" is a diphthong pronounced like English "eye"; the first "u" in Kultur is a short "oo" as in "good"; and the second "u" is a long "oo" as in "boot". The main stress is on the first and a secondary one on the third syllable.

Words of the month: Dreckspatz, Schmutzfink

2010-11-01T17:46:00.008-04:00

Dreck and Schmutz mean basically the same thing in German: dirt. A Spatz is a sparrow and a Fink a finch. Hitched to a word meaning "dirt", they refer to people who get themselves dirty easily and may not be too eager to clean up after themselves. Dreckspatz, in particular, is often applied to children who actually enjoy playing in the mud and getting it all over themselves.

Note on pronunciation: The "u" in Schmutz is a short "oo" as in "foot" and the "z" in Spatz and Schmutz a very sharp, voiceless "s".

Word of the month: Nibelungentreue

2010-10-01T09:21:00.008-04:00

Let me start with a story: The coach of the German national soccer team, Jogi Löw, nominated two forwards (Podolski and Klose) to the squad he took to the World Cup in South Africa this summer that raised eyebrows: Podolski had just finished a miserable season for his club, and Klose hadn’t even played on a regular basis—he had been warming the bench for players in better form. But when playing for the national team, they had scored reliably year after year—often the winning goal in clutch situations. So, Löw owed them and was subsequently accused, by some critics, of Nibelungentreue when he nominated them. What did the critics mean by that?

The term Nibelungentreue combines two words: Treue, which, in this context, means “loyalty“; and Nibelungen, which refers, in Norse and Germanic myths, to the royal family of the Burgundians, whose capital was Worms on the Rhine river. The tale of their downfall is told in the Nibelungenlied (Song of the Nibelungs), an epic from the middle ages, in which misplaced loyalty plays a major part. Nibelungentreue, then, refers to a form of blind loyalty that persists beyond reason or to a point where it becomes counterproductive. My first comment will give a little more literary and historical background for this altogether interesting term. (And no, Löw's loyalty turned out to be no Nibelungentreue in the end: Both Podolski and Klose played well enough all through the Cup to silence the critics.)

Keep in mind that the Nibelungen in Nibelungentreue should not be confused with the Nibelung in Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung—he is a dwarf (Alberich), and the Nibelungen are a race of dwarfs in the Ring cycle.

Note on pronunciation: Watch your vowels! The i is a long "ee“ as in "see"; the "u“ a short "oo“ as in "foot“; and the "eu“ a diphthong as the "oy“ im "joy“: NEE•bah•loong•en•TROY•ah.

Word of the month: Seebär

2010-09-03T22:09:00.009-04:00

See (fem.) means "sea" and Bär means "bear". Seebär is usually used together with alt (old): Ein alter Seebär is the German equivalent of "an old tar" or "an old salt". I had great fun drawing this one!

BTW See (masc.) means "lake", as in Schwanensee—Swan Lake. And Meer (neut.) also means "sea" in German. In case you wonder how bodies of water can be masculine, feminine and neuter, you may read what I had to say about the difference between natural and grammatical gender on this blog.

German funk

2010-08-26T10:09:00.002-04:00

When I was in Germany this summer, I found the country in a strange funk. I say "strange" because this mood is in contrast to a booming economy, which is bucking the world-wide trend: Unemployment is lower than it has been in years; the carmakers are running extra shifts to meet world-wide demand etc. And besides, the young and inexperienced soccer team did much better than expected during the World Cup. But still, the Germans seem to be unhappy—more in my first comment...

1963 Trip through the Middle East and North Africa

2010-08-10T19:15:00.012-04:00

(Middle East - North Africa by Ulrich Flemming, with contributions by Dirk Schmidt)
I just turned old negatives and slides (of my own and those of a friend) from a 1963 trip into a photobook. The preview is not consecutive, but shows a cross section—from the Balkans to Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya and Tunesia.

Word of the month: Volksverhetzung

2010-08-09T10:42:00.003-04:00

This compound noun hitches together Volk (people--as in "the American people") and Verhetzung (stirring up of hatred, especially against other peoples or minorities; vicious demagoguery). Volksverhetzung is a crime in present-day Germany, no doubt in response to the Nazi rhetoric of the past, in which Volksverhetzung played a major part.

The law is being enforced; i.e. people have been convicted based on it. I remember a case of the recent past, when a Neo-Nazi was convicted under the law for anti-semitic remarks that were considered sufficiently close to Nazi rhetoric. However, I do not know how systematic the prosecution of this type of speech is. More in my first comment...

Note on pronunciation: Both v's are pronounced like English "f". (Remember: A Volkswagen is a Folksvagen in German!).

Sailing in Croatia

2010-07-23T11:17:00.007-04:00

I have been making digital photo books using blurb's cloud now for several years. They recently added a widget that allows people to leaf through such a book from other applications. I'm posting one here for the book I just finished, with pictures from the sailing trip I mentioned in my post on the FIFA World Cup. If it works, it's a nice way for my friends to look at these books—and since I'm not making any money off these books, the link should not be seen as a commercial promotion on my part.

What do Americans make of soccer?

2010-07-21T11:26:00.004-04:00

In a comment on the earlier FIFA World Cup post, I briefly alluded to the quadrennial ritual I have been observing in the US since I moved here: Whenever the World Cup is happening somewhere in the world, some Americans fall over themselves declaring how boring, silly etc the game is. H. Hertzberg has a column in the current New Yorker, in which he describes this as a distinctly right-wing phenomenon. I would like to add two points to this discussion (see my comments)

Word of the month: Unschuldslamm

2010-07-01T03:50:00.009-04:00

Unschuldslamm combines Unschuld (innocence) with Lamm (lamb). The term refers to a person claiming innocence w.r.t. some misdeed. It's typically used in sentences like "he plays (or acts) the Unschuldslamm"; i.e. there is a strong implication that the claim is false, like when someone says, "I didn't do it!".

Both the timing of and the drawing for this WoM were inspired by the current FIFA World Cup held in S. Africa, where we can watch, in match after match, players committing fouls and then acting the Unschuldslamm with precisely the gesture shown.

BTW Unschuld is formed by prefixing Schuld ("guilt") with un, which can be used to turn the meaning of a noun or adjective into its opposite--cf. English "unknown" or "undead".

FIFA World Cup 2010

2010-06-11T16:57:00.004-04:00

We're under way!

A friend sent me the "photo of the year" on the left...

FIFA World Cup 2010: One More Week

2010-06-03T17:26:00.003-04:00

The last preparatory friendlies have been played, each participating country has nominated the 23 players it will take to S.Africa, and suspense is rising among those to who plan to follow the competition. I myself will travel to Germany next week to watch the matches with my brothers and any other soccer enthusiast who will be in the vicinity. I will start a thread on the day of the first match, June 12, where we may post comments and exchange opinions on a day-by-day basis as we have done in the past. The present thread gives us the opportunity to speculate, on the chances of our team or the team we are rooting for, or about anything else pertinent to the Cup before it starts. I will begin with some comments on the German team.

Word of the month: Reisefieber

2010-06-01T09:02:00.006-04:00

This compound word combines Reise (“travel, trip, journey”) and Fieber (“fever”). It denotes the excitement one may feel in anticipation of an upcoming trip. I experience this feeling right now when I think of my trip to Germany next week to visit my family in Cologne and to watch the games of the FIFA World Cup in S. Africa with soccer enthusiasts like me.

Note on pronunciation. Four distinct syllables, with the stress on the first and a secondary stress on the third syllable: RYE•sah•fee•ber. Note also the difference in the pronunciations of the "ei" and "ie"!

Word of the month: Schmusekatze

2010-05-01T11:25:00.006-04:00

Schmusekatze combines the verb schmusen (to snuggle, cuddle) with Katze (cat). It denotes someone who likes to snuggle with or cuddle another person, possibly as prelude to other activities with that person.

It’s interesting to compare German schmusen and Yiddish schmooze, which are clearly related. But they differ in meaning: Schmooze is all talk, while schmusen is all action—talking would break the mood.

Note on pronunciation. Four distinct syllables: SHMOO·zeh·katt·seh. The main stress is on the first syllable, the third one gets a secondary stress.

Word of the month: Kauderwelsch

2010-04-01T09:30:00.002-04:00

The term is used, in the narrower sense, to refer to speech made incomprehensible because it is a mixture of words from different languages, often mispronounced. In the broader sense, it may mean just "gibberish". Welsch is an old-fashioned word for a Romance language or a speaker of such a language. The origin of the Kauder part is not clear. The most convincing explanation, to me, takes into account that in Swiss German, the term is Chuderwälsch and may have originally referred to the speech of the people of Chur in the canton of Graubünden--Martin Luther used the term in this sense.

In any case, this is a favorite word of mine because of the way it sounds--it mimics what it designates (it will never make it into English, though, I think). I was reminded of it when we talked, in a previous post, about Denglish, the mixture of German and English found in the news, in advertising, and in daily speech in present-day Germany--language purists call it, yes, Kauderwelsch, although it's perfectly comprehensible to most.

Word of the month: Frechdachs

2010-03-01T15:07:00.004-05:00

Frechdachs combines Dachs, the German noun for "badger" (because of its short legs, a Dachshund is able to follow a badger into its burrow); and the adjective frech, which can mean anything from "rude" or "impudent" to "sassy" or "cheeky". The latter, almost positive, meaning is implied in Frechdachs, which Germans use in contexts where one would use "whipper-snapper" or "little rascal" in English, i.e. to refer to a somewhat sassy child. And I have no idea how badgers got involved in all of this.

Books on Politics

2010-02-15T10:07:00.003-05:00

There are some very interesting books out that deal with various aspects of the current political situation. We start with a comment by one of our "regulars" on The Forty Years War by Len Colodny and Tom Schachtman and Bomb Power by Gary Wills.

Word of the month: Vorfreude

2010-02-01T00:22:00.010-05:00

Vorfreude combines the prefix vor (similar to the English prefix "pre") and Freude (joy, pleasure). The term denotes a form of anticipation that imagines future pleasures ahead of time. When we were kids, for example, we experienced an intense Vorfreude in the weeks before Christmas. Right now, I have similar feelings when I think about the soccer World Cup that will start in S. Africa in mid-June.

Note on pronunciation: Vor is pronounced like English "for"—i.e. the "v" sounds like English "f", not like English "v"; the diphthong "eu" is pronounced like the "oy" in "joy"; and the ending "e" with the preceding "d" forms a full third syllable. Try do say "FOR-froy-dah"!

Bauhaus at MOMA

2010-01-12T17:34:00.007-05:00

Reminder: The Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity exhibition closed on Jan. 25 at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. I've been there twice--my later comments were written after my second visit. I would have gone a third time if had had the opportunity--I loved the exhibition so much--it hit me on a very visceral level.

← table lamp by Wilhelm Wagenfeld

Word of the month: Salonlöwe

2010-01-03T11:58:00.011-05:00

A Salonlöwe ("lounge lion") is a socialite displaying more style than substance (all that attention paid to hair!). Eine Person, die zwar sehr elegant und gebildet, aber auch sehr oberflächlich ist ("a person who is very elegant and well-educated, but also very shallow") is one definition I found on the web.

It's tempting to compare the German animal to the English "lounge lizard", but I have the sense that the German expression does not connote a slithering parasite, a gigolo who lives off women, which the English definitions of "lounge lizard" stress.

Happy New Year to all my friends!

The English invasion

2009-12-13T12:22:00.006-05:00

The Liebeskummer thread drifted at the end into comments by me on the avalanche of English words currently hitting German. I think this topic deserves a thread in its own right, and I moved the comment I made there to the no. 1 spot here.

FIFA World Cup 2010: The 8 starting groups

2009-12-02T11:42:00.005-05:00

On Dec. 4, the 8 groups to start the first phase in World Cup play next year will be determined in Cape Town in a ceremony broadcast to the entire world, emceed by one of S. Africa's most notable exports, Charlize Theron. This thread will give readers a chance to comment--I'll start with a preview...

Word of the month: Liebeskummer

2009-12-02T10:48:00.006-05:00

A combination of Liebe (love) and Kummer (grief, sorrow) that refers to the state of mind of people whose love life is not going well, especially the sorrow felt by jilted lovers.

Note on pronunciation: The "ie" is pronounced like English "ee", not like English "eye". The "u" is a short "oo" as in "foot".

Word of the month: Angsthase

2009-11-01T09:28:00.010-05:00

I had a good time two months ago with drawing a Pechvogel and a Glückspilz and decided to add to the series. Angsthase combines Angst (fear) and Hase (hare) and is used to indicate a person who scares easily--a "scare-di-cat" would be its English counterpart.

More in my first comment...

More slants on language

2009-10-24T22:17:00.003-04:00

In the Sachzwang thread, we ended by briefly talking about Heinrich Böll's critique of language as a tool for overt or covert political propaganda. A reader reintroduced the topic under a more general perspective...

FIFA World cup 2010 in S. Africa: Who is qualified?

2009-10-07T17:43:00.009-04:00

I created this thread to keep the soccer fans among my friends up-to-date on the qualifying rounds currently played all over the world. I continue to post updates as soon as new informations comes in. The official FIFA website will give you more details.
Update 11/18: All 32 teams have now been determined--and they include some real surprises. I'll create a new thread on Dec. 4, the day when the 8 groups of four that start competition next year will be set up (through a mixture of seating and random drawing).

Chandler--which novel is the best?

2009-10-05T14:41:00.006-04:00

On a different blog, several fans of Raymond Chandler have outed themselves, which motivated me to start a discussion dear to my heart: Which of his half-dozen or so novels is the best?

Word of the month: Lebensgefährte, Lebensgefährtin

2009-10-02T21:10:00.004-04:00

Both words mean literally "life companion" (male and female form, respectively--they combine Leben ("life") with Gefährte/Gefährtin ("companion"). The words are used to indicate the person one is sharing ones's life with without being married, i.e. a live-in lover. I do not expect these terms ever to enter English usage, but they are interesting to me because they point to a real difference I perceive in the way Americans and Germans deal "officially" with sexual relations. More in my first comment...

Health care here and there

2009-09-15T11:16:00.003-04:00

One thing is for sure: Nowhere in the industrialized world would people put up with a system like the one in the US, and if they had one, they wouldn't resist change to that degree. A reader raised the issue, so let's see...

Words of the Month: Pechvogel, Glückspilz

2009-09-05T09:38:00.007-04:00

Pechvogel combines Pech (misfortune, bad luck) with Vogel (bird). The word denotes a person who has bad luck, like a soccer player who scores an own goal--he or she will be the Pechvogel of the match. More generally, the word denotes a person who seems to have always bad luck. The word is used in German where in English one would perhaps use "bad news bear".

Glückspilz is its antonym. It combines Glück (good fortune, happiness) with Pilz (mushroom) and refers to a person in luck, particularly one who always seems to have luck.

More in my first comment...

Word of the Month: Wanderlust

2009-08-10T08:33:00.003-04:00

This word is in the language, but I like to talk about it anyway (see my first comment). It's composed of two Words: wandern (to hike, stroll, travel by foot) and Lust (desire). In its milder form, Wanderlust indicates a fondness for travelling, especially for travelling abroad; in its stronger form, it implies a real itch or restlessness--people overcome by Wanderlust do not want to stay home, and when they return from a (possibly extended) trip, immediately start thinking about the next one.

Summer food

2009-08-05T13:50:00.000-04:00

Cool tips for hot days...

On race and class relations

2009-07-07T17:57:00.010-04:00

A reader posted a comment about the Crowley/Gates case, and I want to expand the topic somewhat...see my response.

The thread now has drifted to the politics of resentment, a topic I find fascinating as it took me a long time to realize the degree to which resentment permeates perceptions and politics in the US. (8/19)

Wetlands (Feuchtgebiete)

2009-06-19T16:20:00.002-04:00

A reader asked about "Wetlands", which is a translation of the German novel Feuchtgebiete, a bestseller in Germany when I was there the last time. I can't really contribute to a discussion as I haven't read the book except for the first few pages (in a bookstore)--so, it's up to readers to take the lead in this.

Word of the month: Sachzwang

2009-06-01T10:53:00.004-04:00

Here's another something+zwang word without exact English equivalent that I find useful. It's composed of Sach, short for Sache ("thing, object") and Zwang ("compulsion, pressure, constraint"). The term denotes the necessity to do something that is inherent in a situation or, as my dictionary so coyly puts it, a "compulsion by the object in question"--no wonder I'm using the German term even in English!

Examples and pronunciation note in my first comment.

The next 100 days

2009-05-05T11:08:00.004-04:00

I'm grateful to a reader for restarting the political discussion we had last fall on this blog. I don't know if we can muster again the same passion, but much has happened since--and much has stayed the same. Obama continues to be hugely popular, the GOP continues to be clueless, and Washington proves incredibly difficult to change, no matter which party is given the task. But Obama has been a disappointment for a segment of his liberal base, and a huge disappointment for some. So, there's lots to talk about.

Days of Heaven

2009-04-25T10:09:00.009-04:00

Here, finally, is the slide show I have been yacking about for days:

Start show

The handsome fellow accompanying me is one of my brothers, Dietrich Gottwald.

Hofmannsthal's poem Vorfrühling (Early Spring)

2009-03-23T19:32:00.006-04:00

The Viennese poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) is perhaps best known outside the German-speaking countries as the librettist of many Strauß operas, notably Der Rosenkavalier. What's less well know is that he also wrote some of the most beautiful and haunting poems in the German language. My favorite is his Vorfrühling (Early Spring), which is one of the three German poems I love most. Here it is, together with a prose line-by-line translation by me.

In response to a reader's comment, I've added since a second poem by Hoffmannsthal at that link, Reiselied (Travel Song).

Grammatical vs. natural gender

2009-03-20T12:42:00.004-04:00

When my (American) wife learned German, I understood for the first time the difficulties posed for English speakers by the gender of German nouns, which, with very few exceptions, has nothing to do with "natural" gender. For example, a sausage (Wurst) is feminine, but an umbrella (Schirm) is masculine--how can this possibly make sense to someone for whom both are neuter? After all, there is nothing inherently "masculine" or "feminine" about either. This thread intends to explore this issue further.

Do-it-myself construction

2009-03-14T19:18:00.007-04:00

Since I'm spending much time again on reconfiguring parts of our Hexenhaus and have less time for this blog, I may as well make a thread of it. Here's a link to detailed descriptions of everything I've done so far and what I'm currently doing.

Word of the month: Nachdichtung

2009-03-02T11:07:00.004-05:00

Nachdichtung combines the preposition nach ("after", "according to") with Dichtung ("poetry"). The word denotes a piece of poetry that tries to re-create the spirit in which another piece of poetry was written and its effect on the reader without being literal about it—what's more important is that the new piece is a successful piece of poetry in its own right while staying "true" to the original in a deeper sense.

The term is particularly useful in discussions about translations, and the discussions we had on this blog about translations (from the German) motivated me to introduce the term, for which I cannot find an English equivalent. I'll give examples and a note on pronunciation in my comments.

Kesselschlacht (word of the week)

2009-02-06T16:31:00.006-05:00

This could have been a word of the month, but since a reader has brought it up, let's look at it now.

Word of the month: Kostümschinken

2009-02-01T11:02:00.005-05:00

Kostümschinken means literally "costume ham", but no, it does not refer to an actor prone to over-act, but to a historical movie distinguished more for the lavishness of its costumes than the quality of the dialogue or acting--think Victor Mature (Samson and Delilah), think Charlton Heston (The Ten Commandments), think Yul Brynner and Gina Lollobrigida (Solomon and Sheba). More recently, Marie Antoinette has been considered by some as a modern version of the genre. More in my first comment...

The role of speeches

2009-01-21T16:04:00.004-05:00

This thread is a spin-off from the Clinton vs. Merkel thread. In the latter, a consensus seems to be emerging that when it comes to the chances of women making a career in politics, the situations in the US and Germany seem to be more similar than different. In the present thread, I would like to pursue the role of speeches in the respective political cultures, where I perceive real differences. For my current thoughts, see my first comment.

Merkel vs. Clinton

2009-01-08T17:27:00.005-05:00

Heika, of whom we haven't heard for a while, posed an interesting question about women as politicians and the expectations they face in different countries, exemplified by Angela Merkel, chancellor (i.e. head of government) of Germany, and Hillary Clinton.

Word of the Month: Zugzwang

2009-01-03T11:00:00.004-05:00

This word is in the language, but I'm still meeting people who don't know what it means. So, let's have a look: It originates in German chess terminology, where it describes a situation in which a player has to make a move (one cannot "pass" in chess), but all legal moves available will make his/her position worse. The word combines Zug ("move" in the context of board games) and Zwang ("compulsion", "being forced to do something"). Zugzwang is now generally used to indicate this sort of dilemma, and this makes it a very useful addition to one's vocabulary.

Note on pronunciation: Tsook-tsvang, where the "oo" is long, as in "fool", and the "a" is open like in "father", not like in "gang".

Hope meets reality

2008-12-06T18:35:00.003-05:00

This is the December version of the political threads that we have had since the end of August—I can't believe that it has been that long!

Word of the month: Dolchstoßlegende

2008-12-01T10:38:00.009-05:00

Dolchstoßlegende means literally "dagger stab legend (or myth)". The phrase has its origin in the aftermath of WWI:
Reactionaries of various stripes claimed that Germany lost the war not on the battlefields, but on the home front, where socialists, communists, liberal democrats, or Jews (i.e. all the usual bugaboos of the German right at the time) "stabbed the fighting troops in the back" by sabotaging the war effort (through strikes, anti-war writings etc.). More on the topicality of this term in my first comment...

Cross-cultural idioms

2008-11-25T19:57:00.005-05:00

In a prior thread, we briefly touched on cross-cultural idioms, a topic I find endlessly fascinating. I have always wanted to turn this into a full-fledged thread, and now I got beaten to the punch (an idiom, BTW, that does not exist in German).

Food shmooze

2008-11-12T14:14:00.005-05:00

No matter what topic we start with, talk will turn eventually to food (happens on Rex's xword blog, too). Mac's mentioning of Grünkohl, Dutch version, in the "Hope won!" thread made not only my mouth water, but also that of another reader (see the first comment). So, let's move the food talk to this new thread and continue with politics on the preceding one (eventually, we'll have to create a new political thread, too. But as long as the old one stays "above the fold", I don't see the need for starting a new one).

Hope won!

2008-11-05T10:00:00.004-05:00

Pictures of Americans crying for joy are going around the world and reactions from all over the world are pouring in: The image of America has changed literally over night. What a night, what a day after!

Word of the month: Maulfaul, mundfaul

2008-11-02T13:58:00.001-05:00

Maulfaul—or mundfaul—is an adjective adding faul ("lazy") to Maul ("mouth" of animals) or Mund ("mouth" of people). It literally means "mouth-lazy" and could be translated as "uncommunicative" or "taciturn". But it connotes taciturnity with an attitude, the result of boredom, or an expression of passive resistance. You could call a student who answers a question by a teacher with a shrug "uncommunicative", but maulfaul captures the underlying attitude in a more graphic way, calling up the image of a mouth too lazy to move. That's why I'm fond of the word.

Word of the month: Schnulze

2008-10-08T19:02:00.007-04:00

So far, all Words of the Month have been compounds that hitch together two seemingly unrelated nouns. This month, I’m introducing a word of a different kind, a neologism that could join the well-established kitsch and schmalz ("shmaltz" in its Yiddish form) to indicate excessive sentimentality in art. Schnulze, in particular, refers to an overly sentimental pop song. I love the word because of its onomatopoetic expressiveness: It mimics the sobbing it’s intended to induce.

Note on pronunciation: The word consists of two syllables—Shnool-tsah—where the "oo" is short as in "foot".

Endgame: Hope vs. fear

2008-10-08T17:03:00.003-04:00

The PUMA thread has far outlived its initial topic, but there seems to exist a real desire among some of my readers to continue a discussion of all things campaign-related. This, then, is the thread where we can do this.

On designing small things

2008-09-16T10:22:00.008-04:00

So far, I have been talking exclusively about topics that do not belong to my specific field of expertise, architecture and design—I have been talking about this stuff for 30 years of teaching and research, and I greatly enjoy the opportunity of finally being able to talk about other things that interest me. But this doesn't mean I lost interest in design issues.

This thread was motivated by a brief discussion I had, via e-mail, about the design of graphical avatars and by the longer discussion we had some days ago on an xword blog about the state quarter program of the US Mint. Different as quarters and avatars may seem, they have one important feature in common: Both are small objects, and their design is more or less successful depending on how the designer took that feature into account. I'll elaborate on this in my first comment

Eggcorns, malaprops, mondegreens, and plain idioms

2008-09-04T09:31:00.009-04:00

This is what a reader posted yesterday on an xword blog: "I remain impressed with how non-native English speakers adopt the language so well, yet there are always some instances of idioms that don't turn out so well. I cite a German guy from last night's dinner party who worried about throwing the kid out with the bathtub, and a former German colleague who asked for ballpoint figures...Anyone can make these minor errors, of course, but I find extra amusement when they're stated in a slightly foreign accent."

I agree, especially about the "slightly foreign accent", and the examples really made me laugh—they definitely struck a chord. Since the puzzle blog does not allow us to have more fun with this, let's do it here. For starters, I will remind everyone in my first comment of what a malapropism, a mondegreen, and an eggcorn is b/c it seems to me that much of the funny stuff falls into one of these categories— I certainly have committed sins in every one of them.

Word of the Month: Notnagel

2008-09-01T08:46:00.012-04:00

A Notnagel (lit. "emergency nail" or "nail in need") is an iron nail carried by firefighters of old—to be used when an escape from an upper floor through the interior was blocked: It could be hammered into an outside window or door frame so that a rope could be put through the hole, allowing the endangered firefighter to rappel down to safety. Now used to indicate a last-minute substitute or remedy, a stopgap solution. I like this modern, figurative use of the term because of its association with a real and remarkable object (Source)

Note on pronunciation: Both the "o" and "a" are long and no diphthongs. Especially the "a" is pronounced like the "a" in "father", not like the "a" in "bagel". But the "g" is voiced as in "bagel".

P.U.M.A.

2008-08-30T14:34:00.006-04:00

In an xword blog today, I introduced pumas ("party unity my ass" people) merely as a humorous aside. But apparently, it struck a chord with some readers. So, this is a thread where we can continue talking about these creatures.

Heine today

2008-08-10T16:55:00.008-04:00

The indefatigable marlene has opend the discussion on another German poet who is of great interest to me, too. I will chime in after trying to get hold of the essay Die Wunde Heine by T. W. Adorno, who should have much to say about this. (Not that I take Adorno as final authority on many subjects, but I find him really illuminating when it comes to literary criticism because of his penchant for debunking established wisdom)

BTW Die Wunde Heine is hard to translate. It means literally "The Wound Heine", which isn't really English. One has a choice between "Heine as [Open] Wound", "Heine's Wound", "Heine, the [Open] Wound" and perhaps other possibilities. I probably like the first one best.

Addendum: Since I started this thread, I have added, in the side bar on the left under Orts and ends, a link to Heine poems I like. They may offer a good way to get into this thread.

For people who love cats

2008-08-05T21:43:00.009-04:00

This blog may need some comic relief. So, here is a poem by me that started out as a parody of Emily Dickinson, but when this proved too hard to do, ended up as a straight cat poem:

There is a corner in my room
where cat prefers to pee-
and then he yawns and walks away,
leaving the mess to me.

And as a wipe I contemplate
the nature of this act;
Was this a form of vengeance or
simply a lack of tact?

But then I look into his eyes
and in his whiskered face-
I gather up my soap and cloth
and sigh and rest my case.

Word of the month: Schlimmbesserung

2008-08-01T13:04:00.002-04:00

This word is different from the ones I talked about before: I had never heard it used until someone mentioned it on another blog. My first reaction was: This must be a neologism that occurred after I left Germany. But then, thanks to the wonders of the web, I found a source that is over 200 years old: Someone complaining--at the beginning of the 19th century--about the editors of the play by Kleist, Der Prinz von Homburg, who, in the attempt to improve upon Kleist’s language, actually made it worse. And that’s exactly what the term means: An intended improvement that has the opposite effect (the adjective schlimm can mean anything from "bad" to "malicious"; the noun Besserung means "improvement"--literally "betterment")--a useful word indeed, given how often we have seen so-called "reforms" that make a situation worse.

Details in my first comment.

German comfort food

2008-07-31T09:48:00.003-04:00

Yesterday in an xword blog, some very disparaging things were said about lima beans. This saddens me because Dicke Bohnen mit Speck (lima beans with bacon) is a classic regional dish in the Rhineland, where I grew up--it was one of the comfort foods of my youth. To kick this thread off, I'll start with the recipe in my first comment.

And speaking about lima beans: my wife makes a very good lima bean dip with cumin, a little cream. and butter.

On Rilke

2008-07-24T10:57:00.004-04:00

Marlene started a post on Rilke, and I am delighted to take her up on this. I am no specialist, though--which should encourage other non-specialists to contribute!

The awful German language

2008-07-21T10:58:00.003-04:00

In a thriller I recently read, the author describes people waiting at an airport and speaking in "ugly German". This was an aside, of no consequence to anything in the plot: It's simply understood that German is ugly. I have encountered this attitude many times while living in the US, and it has motivated me to launch this post.

It's true that German can be ugly. We have our share of poetic hacks that butcher their syntax to make their sentences fit some strict meter or rhyme scheme. German academic prose has a bad reputation that is not entirely undeserved: There are indeed professors (and others) who consider unreadabilty a sign of profundity--I've seen sentences that do not yield their meaning even after a third parsing. But then there are the masters, and it is they who show us how expressive and musical German can be. One would not try to assess the beauty of (American) football by watching one's neighbor quarterbacking a pick-up team--one would watch Joe Montana or Danny Marino. Similarly, one should go to Goethe, and Hölderlin, and Rilke to find out what German can do. And this tradition is neither restricted to poetry nor dead. Among modern prose authors, for example, I find that Christoph Ransmeyer’s language has a beauty that is positively seductive.

Let me, then, kick off this discussion by summoning the great Jose Luis Borges as witness. I'm grateful that Laraine Flemming pointed me to his poem To the German Language. It reads so well in English that I thought at first it was written by Borges like this. But then I found the Spanish original and realized that the English version was a translation by the poet and translator Christopher Mulrooney. I think either version will serve nicely to start a discussion.

Translating Der Erlkönig and such

2008-07-16T10:43:00.009-04:00

Motivated by today's NYT crossword puzzle, I present here, for further discussion, my thoughts on the chances and pitfalls of translating German texts into English--and vice-versa.

Here's the comment I put on the puzzle blog: Der Erlkönig (The Erlking): A Lied (art song) by the greatest composer of such songs in German, Schubert, using as lyrics the perhaps best known ballad by the greatest German poet of all time, Goethe... The ballad/song has not lost its appeal to the present day. Nabokov quotes the first two lines in my favorite Nabokov book, Pale Fire; Hilary Hahn has a wonderful version of it for solo violin; and Kraut Rock is also not immune to its allure.

Among the versions I found on youtube, I liked this audio-only version by the great basso A. Kipnis because of the clarity of his diction. If you do not know the lyrics, here is the German text together with a (workable, if flat-footed) prose translation.

This brings me to the present thread. For starters, please read some of my general thoughts on translation and take a look at my own prose line-by-line translation of this gem by Goethe.

German odds and ends

2008-07-14T13:59:00.001-04:00

Let's make this a free-for-all for whatever comes to anybody's mind relating to something German.

On grammar and grammarians

2008-07-12T12:46:00.004-04:00

It's not surprising that our spirited debate about the English gerund has broadened. Once you realize that, as I said in that thread, grammars are not divine laws handed down to us by some higher authority, but human constructs afflicted with all the beauty and flaws such constructs often have, the differences between the approaches underlying various grammars (especially if they deal with the same language!) become indeed an intriguing topic. So, let's talk about grammars and grammarians under a more general perspective.

As an introduction, I suggest that you read my comment from July 8, 10:32 am, on the post named "Gerund vs. present participle" below.

Gerund vs. present participle

2008-07-03T19:03:00.000-04:00

The charge (raised in an xword blog on Sunday) is that "[something] may have to do with me not being too fond of forced puns..." is grammatically wrong and should read "..with MY [instead of ME] not being fond of.."

First a general principle: If you claim that something is grammatically wrong, state the rule that is being violated, not just what you think the correct version should be like--in the present case, WHY should ME be replaced by MY?

I can think of no reason b/c both versions appear correct to me. In "with me being not too fond of..." "being" is the present participle of "to be", which modifies "me", the object case of the pronoun "I", which has to be selected after "with" b/c "with" is a preposition and requires the object case (so much for people who think "between you and I" is correct--nonsense! "between you and me" is correct--but I digress).

But "with my being not too fond of.." is also correct b/c now "being" is the object of the preposition, specifically, it is a verb turned into a noun, i.e. it is a gerund, which can take a possesive pronoun like "my" as well as direct and indirect objects.

When I write comments for a blog, I prefer colloquial English (within the limitations that come with me [sic!] not being a native speaker), which by and large makes me avoid gerunds b/c they sound, to me at least, always somewhat stilted.

Word of the month: Zweckpessimismus

2008-07-03T18:36:00.000-04:00

I promised to use my recent trip to Germany to clarify the status of Schlimmbesserung. I’ll make it the word of the month in the near future and explain what I found out. For this month, I selected a different word, though, because I thought of it a lot during Euro 2008: Zweckpessimismus (literally "purpose[ful] pessimism", or better, "pessimism with a purpose"). The term refers to the sort of pessimism one adopts when in doubt about the outcome of an event one is personally interested in: At worst, things turn out as expected, and at best, one is positively surprised.

There was quite a bit of Zweckpessimismus in the attitude with which I looked forward to the final of Euro 2008 between Spain and Germany!

A note on pronunciation: Unlike the (voiced) English "z", the German "z" is very sharp (voiceless)--you almost spit it out with the tip of your tongue pressed against the back of your upper incisors. The Chinese apparently have a consonant that sounds exactly like German "z". One of my PhD students from Taiwan, Jonah Tsai, always told me to pronounce the "Ts" in his name like German "z".

Word of the month: Angstgegner

2008-06-13T04:45:00.000-04:00

One reason why a foreign word enters the vocabulary of a language is that this vocabulary does not have a word or expression with exactly the same meaning. Examples of German words that have entered English apparently for that reason are Gestalt, Zeitgeist, Weltschmerz or Schadenfreude. Examples in the opposite direction are "fair play" or "common sense".

[In parenthesis: Right now, German is experiencing an outright invasion of English terms, some of which are used--for whatever reasons--to replace perfectly adequate German terms; for example, there is no reason in the world to speak of a "game" instead of a Spiel in German. But this issue and its ramifications--endlessly discussed in German blogs--do not concern us here.]

Each month, I will identify a German word that has entered--or could/should enter--English for legitimate reasons, i.e. there does not appear to exist an exact English equivalent. Given the prominence of soccer news this month, I select Angstgegner (lit. "anxiety opponent") for June. The word is used in German sports to denote an opponent a team tends to lose to on a regular basis, even if the odds would predict otherwise. Given Croatia's win yesterday over a favored German side, together with Germany's 0:3 loss against Croatia in the quarterfinals of the 1998 World Cup and the fact that Germany always seems to struggle against them, Croatia can now be considered Germany's Angstgegner.

Euro 2008

2008-06-02T10:20:00.000-04:00

The European Soccer Championship 2008 will start on June 7 with the match between Switzerland and the Czech Republic. I'll travel to Germany to be closer to the action, perhaps even catch a game live in Austria, one of the host countries (together with Switzerland). I hope this will be a lively thread throughout the tournament (which ends on June 29) and that I will be able to contribute from over there.

For starters, here are the four groups in the preliminary round:
A: Switzerland, Czech Republic, Portugal, Turkey
B: Austria, Croatia, Germany, Poland
C: Netherlands, Italy, Romania, France
D: Greece (the def. champion), Sweden, Spain, Russia

Conspicuous by its absence is England, basically b/c of a chronic weakness, goalkeeping. Their goalie managed to lose the decisive match in the qualifying round against a team (Croatia) already qualified.

In the preliminary round, the teams in each group play each other, round-robin fashion. A win gets you 3 points and a tie 1 point. The two teams with the most points in each group advance to the quarterfinals (I'm not going into the tie-breaking rules here). Group C is generally considered this year's "group of death"--it is indeed a pity that at least one of the perennial European power-houses (Italy, France and the Netherlands) will not make it past the first round--and Romania is no slouch, either. I also think that Germany's group is stronger than the Germans want to believe.

So, let's see what happens...

Tristan und Isolde

2008-06-01T13:47:00.001-04:00

Live from the Met!

"Ich bin ein Berliner"

2008-05-31T22:03:00.003-04:00

There is a persistent rumor in English-speaking countries that President Kennedy made a terrible gaffe in a speech he delivered in 1963 in what was then West-Berlin when he said (in German) "Ich bin ein Berliner" (I am a Berliner). According to the rumor, he said, in fact, "I am a jelly donut" b/c "Berliner" is short for "Berliner Pfannkuchen" (Berlin pancake). The claim is that he should have said "Ich bin Berliner" (i.e. leave out the indef. article "ein").

Well, this is utter nonsense, and the first time I heard the story, my reaction was: How silly! "Ich bin Berliner" means "I was born/grew up/live in Berlin" (i.e. it's the same as "I am from Berlin"), which is certainly not what Kennedy wanted to say. What he did say was grammatically and idiomatically correct--the association with jelly donuts is far-fetched, especially since Berliners do not call the things "Berliner", they simply call them "Pfannkuchen". I am sure that no one in the crowd of tens of thousands who listened misunderstood the sentence.

A friend of mine was there and told me that people were standing on each others' feet b/c it was so crowded, but that excitement was so great that he noticed only when he got home that his feet were bleeding. My own association with the event is much less direct: My (American) wife and I got married in the same city hall (Rathaus Schöneberg) from where Kennedy delivered the speech.

Fink

2008-05-31T14:37:00.000-04:00

The issue has come up whether "fink" in slang has something to do with German "Fink"--the German word for "finch." The dictionaries on the web I have looked at (quickly) claim that the origin of fink is unknown, but my German dictionary suggests something interesting: It lists under "Fink" not only the primary meaning, the songbird "finch", but also a slang meaning, "tosher". Now, I have never heard of "tosher," but this is what my friend Wiki says: "A tosher is someone who scavenges in the sewers, especially in London during the Victorian period." This is interesting b/c German "Dreckfink" means a dirty person who loves to play in the mud. This suggests to me that English "fink" may actually have something to do with German "Fink". But then again, why hasn't someone found this out yet?

More on the Ode to Joy

2008-05-31T08:27:00.000-04:00

We follow-up on stuff from the Hello World thread