Occasional musings, Geistesblitze, photos, drawings etc. by a "resident alien", who has landed on American soil from a far-away planet called "Germany".

Friday, September 3, 2010

Word of the month: Seebär

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.

[Source: Wild Things in the German Language: Kindle version | iBook version]

3 comments:

marlene said...

I love the word but I think the drawing is just fabulous. There must be some way you could collect these drawings into a book and get them published. Thank you,

mac said...

That drawing is beautiful. You really should do illustrating!

Ulrich said...

@marlene: Thank you! I'm very hesitant, tho, to turn a hobby into something commercial.

@mac: Thank you, too. I wonder: A great seafaring people like the Dutch should have an equivalent expression, no?