New topic

If you want to start a thread on a topic within the purview of this blog, please post a first comment to that effect. I will then change the title of the thread and add a commet, if I have anything to say.

Wetlands (Feuchtgebiete)

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

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

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

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)

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

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.