What is awesome in German?
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From: Heinrich Wolf on 25 Nov 2009 08:14 Rune Allnor <allnor(a)tele.ntnu.no> writes: > If you know both German and English, you should be able to > come a long way understanding written Norwegian and Danish, > and presumably also Swedish. Right. While at university, I read an article on the wolverine (Gulo gulo) in Swedish in a volume on wildlife biology published by the Swedish Hunter's Association using my knowledge of (southern) German and English. I found that I have to imagine how the words would sound when spoken. Meanwhile I studied some Swedish and can read Swedish newspapers at a somewhat slow pace and think Swedish is much closer to German than to English. Knowledge of English is useful because other than the southern and middle German dialects from which Hochdeutsch mostly evolved (``hoch'' originally refered to height above sea level), Swedisch and English did not take part in the second sound shift. (And to me Swedish and Norwegian seem similar enough that I avoid reading the second as not to mess them, except for articles that are of special interest to me.) > The grammar is a simplified > version of the German grammar, words are concatenated > in much the same way as in German, and the vocabulary is > partially Germanic, with increasing amounts of anglicisms. I guess grammar is the other way round. German dialects, that still exist today (and may be spoken by young people who came e.g. from the Lebanon with their parents) reflect the languages of the Germanic tribes more than 1000 years ago and construct sentences much simpler than Hochdeutsch. Hochdeutsch has evolved a lot as the language of bureaucrats of whom were plenty as there were hundreds of local governments. Those guys tend to demonstrate their importance by using a special language, nouns instead of verbs, etc. Written Swedish has stayed much closer to the daily language of common people. (Ah, and I remember an article by a Swedish ``spr�kv�rdare'' who writes that they have a hard time to translate the EU bureaucrats into comprehensible Swedish.) What I find remarkable is the germanic (miss)habit of concatenating nouns. On the one side this seems to make it especially easy in German to formulate nonsense that looks meaningful to an uncritical reader/hearer. This is used a lot in advertising and politics. You encounter things like ``Wohnwelt''. ``Wohnen'' means living/dwelling and ``Welt'' means world. The ordinary German will ``feel something'' when he hears ``Wohnwelt'' and this is exploited by the advertiser to address him. Another rather new concatenation, used a lot as a political club, is ``Erinnerungskultur''. On the other side it is especially easy in German to introduce new terms in science by naming an abstraction through a concatenation of nouns that hint at the contents of the abstraction. Finally, we have already seen a funny concatenation within the current thread: ``Katzenjammer''. Resolving it into the two words will not lead to the meaning which is hangover or, in a wider sense, when someone feels bad and complains though this is the consequence of something that he originally welcomed and where the consequence should have been obvious. I thought a little over that strange expression and it quicly occured to me that the usual translation of hangover is ``Kater''. Now that word means also (in the first place) a male cat! And there is also ``Muskelkater'' meaning delayed onset muscle soreness. But phonetically ``Kater'' is close to greek ``katharsis'' and there is a German Wikipedia artikel saying the word ``Kater'' started to be used in the 19-th century by university students to describe their state after an evening of drinking. Making ``Katzenjammer'' from ``Kater'' was then a straightforward ``Verballhornung'' (cacography). Lang lebe die deutsche Sprache! -- hw
From: Rune Allnor on 25 Nov 2009 08:46 On 25 Nov, 14:14, Heinrich Wolf <mu...(a)hemedarwa.de> wrote: > Rune Allnor <all...(a)tele.ntnu.no> writes: > > The grammar is a simplified > > version of the German grammar, words are concatenated > > in much the same way as in German, and the vocabulary is > > partially Germanic, with increasing amounts of anglicisms. > > I guess grammar is the other way round. German correct grammar is definately more complicted than the Scandinavian grammars. The Scandinavian grammars sort nouns in genuses, masculine, feminine, and neutral, and use grammar rules accordingly. But unlike German, the Scandinavian languages has no mechanism to indicate dative, accusative and the likes. There are still traces of such forms, at least in certain Norwegian dialects, but the main languages have long since lost them. > Written Swedish has stayed much closer to the daily language of common > people. (Ah, and I remember an article by a Swedish ``språkvårdare'' > who writes that they have a hard time to translate the EU bureaucrats > into comprehensible Swedish.) Sure. Language equals expression. Different languages invite different expressions. I can write phrases in both Norwegian and English I would never dream of saying orally (I am talking about *phrasing*, not contents), simply because written and spoken languages are different. If you have seen the movie "lock, stock and two smoking barrels" you know what I mean. The dialogue in that film might look good in text, but just sounds awkward, construed and stylized in the flesh. > Finally, we have already seen a funny concatenation within the current > thread: ``Katzenjammer''. Resolving it into the two words will not > lead to the meaning which is hangover or, in a wider sense, when > someone feels bad and complains though this is the consequence of > something that he originally welcomed and where the consequence should > have been obvious. I thought a little over that strange expression > and it quicly occured to me that the usual translation of hangover is > ``Kater''. Now that word means also (in the first place) a male cat! > And there is also ``Muskelkater'' meaning delayed onset muscle > soreness. > > But phonetically ``Kater'' is close to greek ``katharsis'' and there > is a German Wikipedia artikel saying the word ``Kater'' started to be > used in the 19-th century by university students to describe their > state after an evening of drinking. > > Making ``Katzenjammer'' from ``Kater'' was then a straightforward > ``Verballhornung'' (cacography). Lang lebe die deutsche Sprache! I would have guessed "Katze" = "cat". In that case, "katzenjammer" means something like "squealing sounds made by cats". But I have got burned on etymological speculations in the past. Rune
From: Jim Wilkins on 25 Nov 2009 09:16 On Nov 25, 8:46 am, Rune Allnor <all...(a)tele.ntnu.no> wrote: > > But I have got burned on etymological speculations > in the past. > > Rune Translations can be much harder when the phrase is from literature. Referring again to the Moscow-Washington Hot Line article I've been reading, they used "Horses, people" from Lermontov's poem "Borodino" (a Napoleonic battle) to describe a chaotic political situation. Luckily it was only a training exercise, that one confounded the translators for a while. The call sign of one of the Soviets in the KAL007 incident was "Trikotazh" To me it suggests the French word for knitting, or perhaps his home-made sweater. I asked an Air Force Russian translator about it and he was stumped. Lermontov was originally Learmont, a Scottish refugee from some political mishmash. jsw
From: Jerry Avins on 25 Nov 2009 11:27 Rune Allnor wrote: > On 25 Nov, 14:14, Heinrich Wolf <mu...(a)hemedarwa.de> wrote: ... >> Making ``Katzenjammer'' from ``Kater'' was then a straightforward >> ``Verballhornung'' (cacography). Lang lebe die deutsche Sprache! > > I would have guessed "Katze" = "cat". In that case, > "katzenjammer" means something like "squealing sounds > made by cats". > > But I have got burned on etymological speculations > in the past. In New York at least, katzenjammer includes "noisy hubbub" among its meanings. "Yammer" means lament; wail; shriek. Perhaps http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/katzkids/about.htm led to the local (and colloquial) meaning. Jerry -- Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get. �����������������������������������������������������������������������
From: Rich Grise on 25 Nov 2009 12:17
On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:40:11 -0800, Rune Allnor wrote: > > One trap to be aware of, though, is Norw. "�l" vs German "�l". The > former means "beer", the latter "oil". > Well, sometimes "well-oiled" means "quite drunk." ;-) Cheers! Rich |