Wild Things now available as paperback ...

... at the Create Space store.

I've now explored self-publishing using various venues: iBooks Author and Kindle Direct Publishing for digital books; and Create Space, an Amazon affiliate, for the above paperback version, which will be sold also in the Amazon store. Since most of the material was readily available through work I had done before, I could concentrate on the technicalities of the software platforms I had to use, rather than worrying about content. This helped me greatly in my efforts; i.e., it kept me sane;-)

Found Art Around the World now an iBook

Finally, more than two months after I submitted it, the iBooks version is also available!

And if I may say so myself, it looks great on an iPad;-)

Word of the Month: Oberlehrer

Word of the Month: Index

Sie wissen nichts, aber wissen alles besser. (They know nothing, but know everything better.) Comment by Czech students after being visited, during the anti-Soviet revolt of 1968, by a delegation of students from West Berlin, who had immediately proceeded to lecture the Czechs about everything they were doing wrong.

A Lehrer is a teacher. Ober, as a prefix, can mean several things. In front of geographical names, for instance, it means “upper”, as in Oberbayern (Upper Bavaria). In front of words indicating a profession, it indicates a senior rank. Thus, an Oberlehrer is a senior or head teacher. The position no longer exists in the German educational system. But the word remains very much in the language as a derogatory term for an obnoxious know-it-all who lectures and corrects people, even when he was not asked to do so, and tends to do this in a tone veering between smugness and condescension—the infamous Oberlehrerton. (I use “he” because I never met a female Oberlehrer.)

I have a particular dislike for Oberlehrer types because of what my wife and I experienced when we were living in West Berlin during the 1970s. She is American, and the Oberlehrer (the plural is the same as the singular) in the left-liberal milieu I used to move in tried their best to make her life miserable. As soon as they learned she was an American, they would launch into long (and largely uninformed) lectures about everything that was wrong with her country. We reached a point where we wouldn’t go to parties anymore and decided, in the end, to move back to the US (where we had met as graduate students).

All of this was vividly brought back to me a week ago when I posted an announcement about my latest ebook, Wild Things in the German Language (see column on the right), on an (American) blog targeted at Americans interested in learning German. I did not know that it was also a playground for German Oberlehrer. No sooner had I posted my announcement than two of them started to chastise me for the bad English in my book. This came as a surprise to me because my English tends to get compliments from Americans for its clarity and grace. And sure enough, when I looked at the particular complaints I received in a lengthy e-mail from one of the Germans, I realized they were all wrong—no, not all of them: I had misspelled “scaredy cat” in my book—so shoot me!  [more in my first comment]

Apparently, blogs have given Oberlehrer an entire new venue to regale people with lectures they did not ask for. My advice: Avoid those blogs because you cannot argue with Oberlehrer—they are loath to admitting mistakes and always try to have the last word.

PS.  Clearly, this post is longer and more heartfelt than my usual Word-of-the-Month posts—I hope readers will understand the reasons why.

Addendum (3/5/2015) for people able to read German. I just read an article that reflects on the love affair between social media and German Oberlehrer: Diskussionskultur im Netz. Deutschland, eine Belehrtenrepublik. I agree!