What is awesome in German?
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From: Richard Owlett on 25 Nov 2009 12:21 Rune Allnor wrote: > [snip] >> 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 But then the reference gets moved to another language - English. I grew up with a comic strip titled "Katzenjammer kids" q.v. http://www.google.com/search?q=Katzenjammer+kids Evidently it was created by a German immigrant. Was title a joke referring to a hangover or to a squealing cat?
From: Rich Grise on 25 Nov 2009 12:21 On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:14:35 +0000, Heinrich Wolf wrote: > > 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. So, what's the derivation of "The Katzenjammer Kids?" http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/katzkids/about.htm ;-) Rich
From: Rich Grise on 25 Nov 2009 12:27 On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:46:25 -0800, Rune Allnor wrote: > > 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. Yikes! I'm 60 freakin' years old, and I swear, as Goddess is my witness, that this is the first time in my life I realized that this refers to a gun! All my life, I've assumed that it had something to do with shipping, meaning "a full load of cargo." "Stock" - well, compare "stockroom", and "barrel", well, that's a container with staves, used for shipping all manner of stuff. The "Lock" part, I simply assumed was something I didn't know about, maybe the padlock on a treasure chest or something. Thanks, Rich
From: Jim Wilkins on 25 Nov 2009 12:42 On Nov 25, 12:27 pm, Rich Grise <richgr...(a)example.net> wrote: > On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:46:25 -0800, Rune Allnor wrote: > > > 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. > > Yikes! I'm 60 freakin' years old, and I swear, as Goddess is my witness, > that this is the first time in my life I realized that this refers to a > gun! ... > > Rich Specifically it refers to a muzzle-loader's main subassemblies.
From: Tauno Voipio on 25 Nov 2009 12:51
Jim Wilkins wrote: > On Nov 24, 8:40 pm, Rune Allnor <all...(a)tele.ntnu.no> wrote: >> On 25 Nov, 02:12, Jim Wilkins <kb1...(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> ... >> >> 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. 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. >> >> Rune > > Also Dutch, after learning the voiced-unvoiced shifts etc. I can't > really make much sense of Swedish and Finnish is of course impossible. > Cannot resist ... Finnish is a totally different beast from the germanic (or old Viking) languages: The only living language resembling Finnish so far that I can guess about half of it is Estonian. Hungarian is a distant relative: from a distance it sounds familiar, but I cannot catch a word. The whole group of Fenno-Ugrian languages should have gone the way of dinosaurs aeons ago. Maybe the rescue has been the remote location we are in, similarly as the original Viking language is deep-frozen in Icelandic. For me, with Swedish as second native language, Norwegian sounds like funny Swedish, but Danish pronounciation is impossible, though written Danish can be understood with some guesswork (or a dictionary). -- Tauno Voipio tauno voipio (at) iki fi |