The role of speeches

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

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

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

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

Word of the Month: Index

Our word of the month is composed of three compounds: Dolch (dagger), Stoß (stab, thrust), and Legende (legend, myth). It 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.).

The term is now generally used to characterize efforts to assign blame for a lost cause not to the real culprits, but to those that the blamers consider their adversaries. Right now, we can observe a Dolchstoßlegende in the making when we follow right-wing commentators trying to blame the outcome of the recent election not on the deficiencies of the McCain campaign, but on the (alleged) pro-Obama stance of the so-called "liberal media".



Addendum: Dolchstoßlegenden after the 2016 election.

Cross-cultural idioms

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

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).