Comments

On the ugliness of the German language — 179 Comments

1. Can we sub-title this post, “Can of Worms”?

2. Barry Meislin:

   Only if you say it in German.

3. One of the finest comic pieces in the history of American literature is Mark Twain’s “The Awful German Language”, although, in fact, there exists a great deal of beautiful and sublime poetry in that language. Twain makes much fun of gender, being much amused that, in German, the maiden (“it”) peels the turnip (“her”). It really is too good to be neglected.

4. I studied some German in college and also spent about 2 months in Luneburg, Germany in a German language school for foreigners (Das Goethe-Institut).
   I was one of only three Yanks out of about 200 students – all foreigners there to learn German.

   Yes, I have forgotten 99% of the German I learned.

   German is not guttural at all.

   I think Yanks get this notion from the movies or TV which oft times has some Nazi speaking (or more likely shouting and screaming) something auf Deutsch.

   If you want to hear a guttural language listen to Dutch; it sounds like non-stop expectorating .

5. Speaking of diminutives, Hänsel means Little Hans and Gretel means Little Margaret.

6. tcrosse:

   So adding the “lein” makes it “little little.”

7. j e:

   Yes, that’s why that article about making words cute in German mentions that when you add a diminutive it’s a handy way to avoid the gender issue.

8. If you want a guttural language, try Danish. I had a professor in grad school who was a Kierkegaard specialist, and used to say, “Danish isn’t a language– it’s a throat disease.”

9. You can never have too much little.

10. I like the German language. I mean, seriously, a language that has a insults like sitzpinkler isn’t that bad at all.

11. PA Cat:

    That’s funny. Now I’ll have to go listen to Danish.

12. tcrosse:

    That sounds very zen.

13. My favorite German word: Krankenhaus.

    Hospital. Literally sick-house.

14. The first time I heard German, aside from WW II movies, was Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” in Beethoven’s Ninth. There German sounds so grand, vast and mysterious that I could never consider it ugly.

15. What I love about the German language is the polysyllabic compound word that express concepts that we don’t have in English.
    Want an unpleasant sounding language try Chinese or Vietnamese. Words ending in hard”G” is unpleasant
    Words ending in vowels that smoothly transition to the next word like in Italian or Japanese is more pleasant

16. German can be pretty, I think. Women sound prettier in German (and a lot of other languages!) than do men. Men in older recordings and film sounded more “manly” than they do now. Dutch is full of gutteral, more so, I think, than German. You need a lot of spit to speak Dutch.

    I find francophone men from Canada sound “manlier” than the francophone men from France. I think American men sound “manlier” in general than English men do when speaking English. I think Brazilian men sound manlier than Portuguese men, when speaking Portuguese.

    Now, I also think French francophone women sound prettier when speaking French than do francophone Canadian women. English women sound prettier than American worms when speaking English. Brazilian and Portuguese women — it’s a toss up, depending where in Brazil the woman is from.

17. German is my 2nd language, in which I am proudly fluent. Took German to fulfill my college foreign language requirement. I read some German, like Thomas Mann in the original, just to keep my skill from dwindling.
    It is certainly absurd to deem it or Russian, which I studied but barely remember, harsh. Gosposha Neo, dobri Dyen!) Doing so exhibits a rather xenophobic orientation. English is a marvelous language, fluid and inventive. German is more structured, more rule-bound.

18. German is very interesting. I grew up in a very small town in New Mexico. We could study two languages in High School: Spanish and German. All the hispanic kids (most of the students in the school) chose Spanish; those of us who weren’t chose German. Our teacher just happened to be a Fullbright Scholar who was very well versed in the language, as she had a German heritage.

    She conducted the class from day 1 entirely in German. No English was spoken at all. She encouraged all the students to converse in German whenever possible. As a result, we learned very quickly and very well. When her class went to a “language festival” at a state university, most of the students did a creditable job, and scored well. I was chosen to compete in the “extemporaneous speaking” contest, and had to describe my “favorite vacation” in German. The judges were native Germans. After the competition was over, the judges came to me and asked “Where in Germany are you from?” They were shocked that I was a native American. This was not a testament to my capabilities, but rather an honor that should have been given to Frau Hollinger, my teacher. By immersing ourselves in the language, both in class and out (we enjoyed having conversations about those not in German class, because they couldn’t understand what we were saying…)

    Later, when on vacation in the south of France, I was taking a ride on the bullet train from Lyon to Nice. I sat in a compartment with a family from Argentina, who attempted to talk to me, first in French, then Spanish (they spoke no English). Finally, when they tried German, it turned out that we could enjoy talking for the rest of the trip.

    My favorite compound word in German is “armbanduhr”=”wristwatch”

    Arm=arm band=strap uhr=clock “armstrapclock”

    The best teacher I ever had!

19. Barry if you open that can it leads to the Diet of Worms. All sorts of troubles follow.

20. OTOH, if it’s good for Koreans….

    On the third hand,
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujKF85eMWoo

21. It is certainly absurd to deem [German] or Russian, which I studied but barely remember, harsh.

    Cicero:

    Agreed. I find Russian extraordinarily beautiful. When I half-ponder reincarntation, I wonder if I hadn’t had a previous life in Russia.

    Yet I don’t find all languages appealing. It would be convenient — I was born in New Mexico and now live in New Mexico — if I liked Spanish more, but I just don’t.

22. Mary Baker Eddy’s book, Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures, the foundation of Christian Science, is rendered in German as Wissenschaft und Gesundheit.

23. In an effort to avoid teaching my grandchildren too many four-letter words, I try to express my chronic knee pain in other languages. I’m not sure how this correlates with “guttural,” but I find German, Hungarian and Russian satisfactory languages to swear in. Romance languages like Spanish and Italian aren’t so good, while French is at the bottom of my list. “Oh la la la la la la!” just doesn’t come close to what it feels like to stand up on two wonky knees.

24. Stan, that’s a great story.
    (My favorite German word is Gewurztraminer…)
    – – – – – – –
    Regarding Dutch, how can one not love a language that includes such gems as “gracht” (pronounced “khrakht”)….
    BTW, if one aims for accuracy, one would have to pronounce van Gogh’s name “van Khokh” (so I’ve been told, anyway). But say it that way in most places outside the Netherlands and you’ll probably be met by some quizzical responses (or worse).
    – – – – – – –
    Always amusing when speakers of a language that is extremely guttural complain about another language’s guttural character….

25. I find German, Hungarian and Russian satisfactory languages to swear in. Romance languages like Spanish and Italian aren’t so good, while French is at the bottom of my list.

    Apropos of the comparative utilization of [Western European] languages: my high school Latin teacher’s husband was a professor of French and Italian at the nearby college. He had a colleague in the French department who was a native of France; her husband was a native of what was then West Germany who taught in the German department. So the professor asked his French colleague which languages she and her husband spoke at home. “We speak German when we have an Auseinandersetzung [quarrel, argument]; French is for the kitchen and the bedroom, of course.”
    “Don’t you ever speak English at home?”
    “Oh yes! When we do the budget.”

26. The correct pronunciation of Van Gogh sounds like my Grandfather clearing his throat in the morning.

27. The not very common but not super rare English name Gretchen is also a German diminutive of Margaret.

    I spent some time in Denmark in college and Danish, while very difficult for English speakers to pronounce correctly, is not guttural at all.

    As Barry noted, in Dutch the letter “g” is guttural along with “ch”, so that sound occurs much more often than in German. However I think that in some dialects “g” is pronounced as in English.

28. Marisa:
    As to harshness, which G is harsher: George (English) or Georg (Deutsch) as pronounced by those who are fluent in both languages?
    The English G is close to “J” as in Jack or Jim; the German is a much softer G.

29. }}} look at the list of languages that use gutturals.

    This is hardly relevant. Just because they USE them does not mean they dominate them. To use your earlier art reference, sure, any sculptor, almost certainly, is going to use a hammer.

    But the only art you’re going to get if you ONLY use the hammer (and not “dinky” hammers, we’re talking mauls and mallets and deadblow hammers), the resultant sculpture is going to be blocky and brutalist. (which is a legitimate form, mind you… but it can be described, often, as “ugly”)

    To get “fine” artwork is going to require chisels and other finer tools, used as much as, or more than, the mauls and mallets and such.

    When your language consists of mostly mauls, mallets, etc., it’s inherently, by nature, going to be brutalist.

    This is thus so for German and Russian (Can’t speak for others, I do know something of those two). Russian is even worse than German — an instructor in it noted that it was mostly “train sounds” — that is, in addition to the gutturals, you’ll hear lots of “steam release” sounds, and those, by their nature, also tend towards a certain brutalist quality.

    There are other things, mind you — German tends towards the addition of lots of basic things, to make bigger things.

    So flamen and werfer (flame and thrower) is flamenwerfer, a flame thrower
    Blitz and krieg (lightning and war) are the described battle tactics.
    Stall and mann (Steel and man) are Stallmann, aka Superman.

    While this is simple, it’s also kind of clumsy, which makes the language feel clunky.

    Russian, on the other hand, is remarkably primitive in its native words — they really did not have much of technology until after 1900, and by that time they were too late to take the time inventing the intermediate words, they had to bootstrap it to relate to a billion new concepts quickly.

    So if there’s a word in Russian for something more complex than “potato”, it’s usually transliterated English or French. Their word for “subway” is “Metro” in the Cyrillic alphabet. The word for “camouflage” is “maskerova” (mask).

    I’m sure there are arenas since where they’ve created words that have lasted, esp. in techs that have advanced substantially since the 1930s, but their language is the exact opposite of French (which reacts almost immunologically to foreign loan words)… by contrast, Russian is filled with loan words.

30. Anyone who thinks Russian or German sounds guttural and off-putting ought to listen to some Tagalog which sounds like an unsuccessful attempt to clear a blocked drain.

    As for musical languages, Kimchi must be good for the vocal chords:

    DPRK Lunar New Year’s Concert 2022
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcjFL3aVU30

31. }}} let me reiterate that it’s not translated into English because English isn’t that sort of language, but German apparently is

    Mrrrr…. I’m going to argue against this assertion because it’s not a matter of what English allows or encourages, but because of the effect of it as a musical.

    You can just as easily translate that into, as you suggest,

    With your little foot you tap tap tap,
    with your little hands you clap clap clap.

    The problem, there, is obvious. The two extra syllables of “little” fucks up the rhythm of the verse, and makes it too long. It flowed nicely before… with “little” added, it does not.

    And “footsies” works, but adds another syllable that still messes it up.

    “Chen” in German, OTOH, is really only kind of a half-syllable. “Handchen” really only sounds like you drew out the end syllable of the word a bit, like going “Gonnnnggggg!”

    If it was prose, you could refer to “little feet”, etc., but not in the middle of song. You have additional constraints that come in by the nature of music.

    It’s one of the reasons I consider My Fair Lady to be an abortion. George Bernard Shaw is, by most lights, the second greatest English language playwright. Adapting his story for Pygmalion to a musical is to screw with his pacing, his rhythm, etc., to an extreme that it just fucks up the story completely (add to that the horrific miscasting across the board, and you get a very poorly accomplished abortion… both the beings involved are dead, dead, dead).

    Making a musical is a very specialized construct of English (yes, and other languages, when done in them). You have to have a certain pacing and rhythm of the story and music together, that isn’t like any other form, including straight singing or normal playwrighting. There are elements of both there, but being capable and highly accomplished at one or the other or even both does not mean you automatically have the power to write a great musical.

    }} “Little children, are you not afraid?”

    And here, I’d assert, English does not use “little” with children too much, because… they’re children! They’re already little by definition!!” 😀

    So tossing in the added diminuitive adds nothing to the english meaning.

32. }}} Japanese is more pleasant

    NOW you’re making me amused. Japanese has a certain harshness to it that is similar in nature to the aforementioned German “gutturalism”, but with the Japanese it just sounds more “actionable” than “demanded”.

    That is, it seems more likely a deeply heartfelt desire that you do something, than a command you do it. Something important for you to do, rather than “do it, or else”.

    If Japanese has a “sound”, I’d suspect it was tied to growling. You hear a Japanese male speaking strongly, it sounds as though he’s growling between words… Kind of tigerish (which sounds counter to what I just said, yes, but somehow it’s not)

    😀

33. My favorite Burns poem is “Scots Wha Hae” which is not at all cutesie-poo.

    As for languages, we should all learn to speak Hungarian, which, besides being a beautiful language, has no gender at all, including no gendered pronouns, thus avoiding many problems.

34. My German is strictly minimal. Jah, nein, guten tag, gute nacht, hallo, auf weidersehen, etc. Hiking in Austria and the northern Dolomites we used to meet other hikers who would say, “Grüß Gott,” as we passed. Sounded to me like Gross Gott. God is Great? God is gross? I asked the owner of the pension where we were staying what it meant. She said it meant “May God bless “or just God bless.” I liked that and started returning the greeting. Trying to fit in. But they undoubtedly knew we were Americans – our clothes and packs were different, and my accent wasn’t right. Oh well, it was fun.

35. When I was in high school, I had a summer job for two summers with a German immigrant (This was 1955). About the same time a comical German/English glossary came out about rocket propulsion, something I was very interested in. I used to tease him with the terms, like “firenschpitter” for rocket engine. For liquid fuel, it was “liquidsqurternkind firenschpitter.” He would get very excited telling me it wasn’t good German.

    I learned just enough German later to book a hotel room.

36. This thread had me remember something:

    The first foreign language I studied was German, in junior high. (We actually learned Bavarian German.) In high school, I studied French and in college I studied French and Hebrew. Israelis thought my Hebrew accent was cute: I spoke it with a French accent. In grad school, I studied Yiddish. By the time I got to Yiddish, I have up on trying to learn it with a good accent: I just spoke it with my flat Midwestern American accent. I didn’t ever try to affect a New York Yiddish accent.

    Well, when I had to speak some German again, I thought the person helping me was going to have a stroke: I spoke it with Yiddish pronunciations, the occasional Bavarian pronunciation, and topped off with a Midwestern American accent. Hahaha!

37. Michael Towns:

    Besides Krankenhaus you can add Krankenwagen (ambulance) and my favorite Krankenschwester (nurse or sick sister).

    My wife is German and I speak a little. I think German is funny and the compound nouns can get ridiculous in their length but it does express some concepts more exactly than English but the reverse is also true. I don’t think German is a particularly beautiful language but it’s definitely better than Dutch. I can usually understand what a Dutch sentence means when I read it but when it is spoken I have no idea.

38. One time I asked German friends, who said they had trouble understanding American English in films, if English (either American or British) sounded to them like funny German. “Yes!” they said, laughing. And to Americans, it’s often the reverse.

    If you want a very gutteral language which often sounds angry, try Arabic. I haven’t heard its distant cousin, Hebrew, spoken, so I don’t know if it sounds similar. Arabic has one consonant produced so deep in the throat that it makes native English speakers feel like throwing up to produce the sound.

39. Per Larry Storch; “There’s “”obergeifrieter”” and that’s a corporal.” Not sure he had the rank right.

40. “English women sound prettier than American worms when speaking English.”
    Can’t argue with that!

41. I studied German in high school (a poor student was I) and thought it a harsh language. After listening to Wagner’s Liebestod in “Tristan und Isolde” and Wotan’s Farewell in “Die Walküre”, I heard a beauty in the language. Or perhaps it’s that beautiful music can make any language sound beautiful.

    Avi:
    Cantonese can sound very harsh, but Mandarin can sound very nice.

42. Hellfire, this evil beast swallowed a big long post I’d written, probably because it thought I was spamming. Donnerwetter!

    I was going to bring up an example of a poem from von Grimmelshausen. Here, maybe I’ll do that in a smaller post. Maybe this evil fiend website will like me then (Mist!). As it happens, this makes liberal use of the diminutives under discussion:

    Komm Trost der Nacht, o Nachtigall!
    Laß deine Stimm mit Freudenschall
    Aufs lieblichste erklingen!
    Komm, komm und lob den Schöpfer dein,
    Weil andre Vöglein schlafen sein
    Und nicht mehr mögen singen:
    Laß dein Stimmlein
    Laut erschallen; denn vor allen
    Kanstu loben
    Gott im Himmel hoch dort oben.

    I also brought up the subject of the older vs. the new modern orthography, since in the latter, from the late 90s or early 2000s, a number of idiomatic grammatical details and some spellings like ‘ß’ for ‘ss’ were modified or done away with entirely. This disappointed me, as I like the older way of writing.

43. And now, in part two, I shall bring forth another example of beauty in German, this time in prose, that being the underappreciated subjunctive verb forms, Konjunktiv I and II. In the stillborn initial version of this comment, I had written that Konjunktiv I is a rather distinctive grammatical register that could almost have been invented for newscasters and journalists, it finding such heavy employment in those professions. The subtleties of these two constructions in formal German (Konjunktiv I tends very much to collapse into Konjunktiv II in everyday practice) have always appealed to me.

    Here is a prose example from the speech given by the German federal president of the time, Richard von Weizsäcker, on the occasion of German reunification, illustrating his rather deft use of Konjunktiv I. When thinking of a postwar German public figure of whom I could reasonably expect good taste in rhetoric, he was the first one to come to my mind.
    
    Für die Deutschen in der ehemaligen DDR ist die Vereinigung ein täglicher, sie ganz unmittelbar und persönlich berührender, ein existentieller Prozeß der Umstellung. Das bringt oft übermenschliche Anforderungen mit sich. Eine Frau schrieb mir, sie seien tief dankbar für die Freiheit und hätten doch nicht gewußt, wie sehr die Veränderung an die Nerven gehe, wenn sie geradezu einen Abschied von sich selbst verlange. Sie wollten ja nichts sehnlicher, als ihr Regime loszuwerden. Aber damit zugleich fast alle Elemente des eigenen Lebens von heute auf morgen durch etwas Neues, Unbekanntes ersetzen zu sollen, übersteigt das menschliche Maß.

    And there is the world of the dialects to consider as well.

44. I suppose I should supply a translation of the von Weizsäcker segment. My own, impromptu:

    
    For the Germans in the former GDR, the reunification is a daily, existential process of adjustment touching them quite directly and personally. This brings demands along with it that often exceed human limits. One woman wrote to me that they are deeply thankful for freedom, but never realized how aggravating the change would be when it demands virtually a departure from one’s own self. They wanted nothing more earnestly than to be rid of their regime. But to be obliged at the same time to replace almost every aspect of their own lives from one day to the next with something new and unknown surpasses human capacity.
    

    I regret that the English here does not quite bring out the intermediary mood of the subjunctive that I mentioned. But then again, no one is paying me for this, so you get what you get. 🙂

45. Stan Smith: My best friend and travelling companion at one time was extremely fluent in “high” German.
    I could order beer, a meal and a room.
    One day, we were sitting in a park in Madrid and he turns to me and starts rattling off in German.
    A guy behind us on another bench starts talking to him as if he’d found a friend.
    The two carry on for a while and then start laughing.
    Each had thought the other was German.
    The guy was Czech.

46. Here’s some testimony about learning German on LSD quoted in a quaint old volume titled, “LSD: The Problem-Solving Psychedelic.”
    ______________________________________

    It was a week before registration and it depressed me tremendously that I had not spent the summer learning German, as I had planned. I had intended to give myself a crash course so I could take second-year German, which I needed for my study in physics. I had heard of a woman who had learned enough Spanish in a few days, via LSD, to speak it fluently when she had to go to Mexico on business. I had taken LSD before, and while I couldn’t see how she did this, I decided it was worth a try.

    I hadn’t even gotten around to picking up a textbook, but I did have a close friend who knew German well and who said he was willing to “sit in” while I took the drug and try to teach me the language. Fortunately, I knew something about conjugation and declension, so I wasn’t completely at sea.

    I wanted to get worked up and feel involved with the language, as it seemed that this must be at least part of the key to the problem, so I asked my friend to tell me about Schiller and Goethe, and why the verb came at the end. Almost immediately, after just a story or two, I knew I had been missing a lot in ignoring the Germans, and I really got excited.

    The thing that impressed me at first was the delicacy of the language (he was now giving me some simple words and phrases), and though I really messed it up, I was trying hard to imitate his pronunciations I had never tried to mimick anything before. For most people German may be “guttural,” but for me it was light and lacey. Before long, I was catching on even to the umlauts. Things were speeding up like mad, and there were floods of associations. My friend had only to give me a German word, and almost immediately I knew what it was through cognates. It turned out that it wasn’t even necessary for him to ask me what it sounded like.

    Memory, of course, is a matter of association, and boy, was I ever linking up to things! I had no difficulty recalling words he had given me—in fact, I was eager to string them together. In a couple of hours after that I was reading even some simple Germans and it all made sense.

    The whole experience was an explosion of discoveries. Normally, when you’ve been working on something for a long time and finally discover a solution,you get excited, and you can see implications everywhere. Much more than if you heard someone else discovering the same thing. Now this discovery thing,that’s what was happening with me—but all the time. The threshold of understanding was extremely low, so that with every new phrase I felt I was making major discoveries. When I was reading, it was as though I had discovered the Rosetta Stone and the world was waiting for my translation. Really wild!

    –P.G. Stafford, B. H. Golightly, “LSD: The Problem-Solving Psychedelic” (1967), pp. 140,141.
    ______________________________________

    The subject went on to read “Dr. Faustus” a week later, then qualify for an intensive German 210 literature course. The instructor was skeptical of a self-taught student, but testing showed the subject’s reading comprehension was well above average.

    Say, whatever happened to that LSD thingie?

    And doesn’t “B.H. Golightly” sound like a fake name?

47. At the risk of linking to this a second time.

    Not too guttural

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7MMytsTslNQ

    ” Tannhäuser: Act III: “Beglückt darf nun dich, o Heimat, ich schau’n – Heil! Heil, der Gnade Wunder” (Chor der älteren Pilger und Chor der jüngeren Pilger)
    Artist
    Chor der Staatsoper Berlin, Staatskapelle Berlin & Otmar Suitner, Chor der Staatsoper Berlin, Staatskapelle Berlin & Otmar Suitner
    Album
    Chöre aus deutschen Opern
    Licensed to YouTube by
    Kontor New Media Music (on behalf of Eterna); UMPG Publishing, …”

48. Some elegant German: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau sings Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s “An den Mond” (To the Moon):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZaDCFWI7_g

    Same singer, “Die Nebensonnen” (The Parhelion):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik6iEbH3TQs

    Finally, Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe) reads a poem by Brecht in “The Lives of Others”:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H82C2RX09tQ

    Not ugly.

    Russian words for man-made objects more complicated than a potato tend to be descriptive. Some examples:

    Machine gun = pulemet (“bullet-thrower”)
    Steamship = parokhod (“steam-goer”)
    Railroad = zheleznaya doroga (“iron road”, cf. German Eisenbahn and French chemin de fer)
    Spacecraft = kosmicheskii korabl’ (“cosmic ship”)
    Airplane = samolet (“self-flyer”)

49. I took two years of German in high school and a year in college. I was a really rotten student, especially the college level, didn’t learn very much, and have forgotten most of that. Which I really regret because now I’m very interested in Wagner and other German texts for music, and in Rilke. And at 73 it’s really too late for me to learn it to a useful point–not if I want to attend to the many other things I’m interested in. A few observations:

    I thought “Krankenhaus” was hilarious when I learned it in high school and still do. If I remember correctly, cold in the sense of head cold is something like “schnupfen,” also rather funny.

    I burst out laughing at Siegfried’s “Das ist kein Mann!” (when he discovers that the sleeping Brunhilde is not the knight (male) he thought) and was pleased when I encountered a knowledgeable Wagnerian who pronounced it the funniest sentence in opera.

    The one and only time I had occasion to try to speak German (beyond “bitte” etc.) to a German in Germany I composed the sentence in my head–it was a question about a train’s destination. Thought I had it down very nicely but when I delivered it the nice fellow answered me in English. I’ve rarely had the wind so completely taken out of my sails.

50. There are also a lot of different Germans pronunciations. Up in Munich, the “ch” letters become a sh sound, where other places it is the gutteral. Go up in the Austrian mountains, and it becomes a hard k sound.

    And Silent Night should always be sung in German.

51. That’s interesting, Ann in L.A., because I was taught the guttural, and am always surprised, when I watch a movie in German, that people don’t usually seem to do that. Mostly it’s something really close to “Ish liebe dish”–a little bit of a grating quality, but not the throat sound that we tried to get in German class.

52. Hubert:

    Fischer-Dieskau is one of my absolute favorites. And he also happens to be the best Father I’ve ever heard in Hansel and Gretel, and I’ve heard a lot of them.

53. We should all remember that Walter Cronkite (Krankheit in German) means “Walter Sickness”…

54. I wonder if languages that English speakers find easier to learn show the inverse, viz. their speakers find English easier to learn?

    Frisian which is spoken by roughly half a million
    people in the northern Netherlands and southern Danish regions is supposed to be the language that is most like English. There are several dialects of Frisian.

    I think I’ve heard it on YouTube and it was quite guttaral.

55. I think a US comedian said something like this, recently…[This is a joke, btw]:
    “German is a very harsh sounding language.
    In English, the word is, “butterfly”.

    In German, the word for butterfly is: “Fooven-Vooven-BOOBEN-Kashhhnooben!”

    😀

56. …In German, Walter “Krankheit” means, “Walter Dirty Water?”
    Ha! I LOVE it!
    😀

57. I agree with those who think women sound beautiful with English accents!
    Of course, many Americans think British accents sound smart, too.
    Looking at their politics, it is clear that is not entirely true.
    If only we could trade some of our lefties for some of their more traditional people!
    I would be willing to trade four or five of our lefties for one conservative English woman or man.

58. I remember when I started studying English, in the Scuola Media – 6th grade, 11 y/o, it was 1978.
    I cannot believe that one had to utter such comical sounds, instead of pronouncing the syllables in the “natural”, “correct” Italian way.

59. “I couldn’t believe”, sorry 🙂

60. Imagine Mozart’s Queen of the night aria, sung in any language different than German.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuBeBjqKSGQ

    German is capable of unbelievable dramatic depths:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBeXF_lnj_M

    I love my dear Europe so much…

61. jon baker said:
    I would be willing to trade four or five of our lefties for one conservative English woman or man.
    _______________________________________

    Agreed. Or substitute any nationality for English, I’d still agree.

    And yes, as the Ode to Joy shows, German can be very beautiful. But it seems to have to work harder at beauty than French, Spanish, or Italian.

62. huxley :

    The Russian language is really very beautiful. But not life in Russia. There are no happy people there, there has always been too much discontent and tension in all the institutions of society. And yes! Despite all this, they have a very cool specific humor 🙂
    I lived in the USSR and I know Russian and Russians very well without being Russian myself 🙂

63. “Imagine….”
    Well, I heard it sung in Hungarian (happened to be in Budapest)….and was wowed…of course(?).

    I would assume it would be enthralling even in English (though it probably would be preferable if the singer did not overly enunciate…).

64. Frisian which is spoken by roughly half a million people in the northern Netherlands and southern Danish regions is supposed to be the language that is most like English. There are several dialects of Frisian.

    I think I’ve heard it on YouTube and it was quite guttaral.”

    I have only listened to a few Frisian speakers and videos on YouTube – the famous Brow Cow snippet among them – but never noticed that aspect of the language, even during more prolonged discourses.

    In fact it sounds to my ear pretty normal in delivery and intonation. Certainly none of that extremely grating pitch accent business as in the Scandinavian languages. And less of that probably than in an old Yorkshireman’s delivery; albeit with some of the same vowel sounds.

    I also recall hearing recorded Irish spoken in a conversational manner by women – in a documentary on the country – and was initially puzzled as to why I could not understand it, being given no warning that the people featured in the scene would be speaking Gaelic. They sounded like Americans speaking some muddled words. Perhaps they were atypical. Maybe most Gaels have that annoying bounciness to their speech too. ( God spare us from Australian proto Valley Girl)

    Of course, German has always been portrayed as a somewhat comical or menacing language in our culture. And that predates any Hollywood treatments that you might imagine featuring, Jack Benny, Danny Kaye, or Mel Brooks.

    I have it on good authority that normal Missourians from 1850s to the 1900s didn’t think much of either the language or of the Germans they encountered there. Though that did not necessarily stop the boys from marrying some of the women.

    I’ll once again refer to an old movie I mentioned here before, which has representations of many of the observations made here earlier: deliberately guttural stage German ( delivered by actors in anachronistic WWI German uniforms) , naturally spoken German and Dutch as delivered by English actresses, and several British accents: The most normal of which to my ear was “Sir George’s” .

    “One of out Aircraft is Missing”.

    Now available on YouTube in a better quality video than the previous abomination.

    Considering it was a wartime British propaganda film, it is remarkably well done and restrained. It is on a par I would say, with Niven’s “The Way Ahead/ The Immortal Battalion”

    As a bonus for the guys, it features a seldom seen Short Stirling 4 engine bomber in the closing moments. Super cool edge of obsolete state of the art.

65. When I began studying German I thought learning a children’s song would help so I memorized, “Brother Come and Dance with Me.” I had no idea it was from an opera! I forget where I encountered it. Maybe in a text book? Although I learned it as, “Lieber Schwester…” “Lovely/Dear sister.”

    Thanks for the background, neo! I had no idea.

66. Regarding diminutives and the sensitivity of German, I came to understand that from listening to my mother-in-law speak. She was a truly wonderful woman, but a bit shy with her English (although she spoke it well). When I grew to understand German I recognized how kind, thoughtful and whimsical her speech was. Along with the “-chen,” neo speaks of, she also used a lot of “-lines,” another diminutive, and she would use a lot of analogies and idioms to soften things. One can understand why so many of our fables and myths come from German. She spoke in a fairy-tale manner. I remember my mother’s Polish mother doing much the same.

67. Regarding Scottis, Welsh, etc…

    When I became conversant in German and began having real conversations with real Germans in Germany I noticed something about their speech that reminded me of something. After some time I figured out what it was. It reminded me of the humor between the Beatles when they spoke. Or the Pythons. Irreverent. Moving in and out of the absurd. Like neo, I came to wonder if that was a connection with the language?

68. I spent three years in Berlin, so I had to learn German. I joked that I could get to where I wanted to go, find a place to stay and order a meal. The first thing you learn is that German has gendered nouns and the article determines the gender so you have to memorize the article with the noun. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to gender assignments that I could see. Anyway, I suffered from gender confusion because some nouns changed gender depending on their us, for instance when they became plural. I asked my instructor how to keep track of these nouns, and she said to forget about it, it even confused the Germans. After that, I never suffered from gender confusion again. That’s why I always ask people who claim to be gendered to explain the physical basis of gender. Haven’t got an answer yet.

69. And I agree with neo that German can genuinely sound beautiful and often sounds soft and pleasant. However, Italian is a beautiful language. I’ve studied a few languages somewhat seriously and quite a few at a surface level, as well as working in over 15 foreign countries getting local exposure by native speakers, and Italian is designed to be beautiful. Spanish also, but I give Italian a slight edge.

    The vowel, consonant see-saw in Italian words and sentences flows like song. And Italian has few hard consonants. And it is a very passionate language. Even when Italians are angry their shouting flows well!

    A common complaint when learning Spanish is the speed with which native speakers speak. And they do. I think that’s attributable to that vowel consonant flow. It just runs out of one’s mouth!

70. I also recall hearing recorded Irish spoken in a conversational manner by women – in a documentary on the country – and was initially puzzled as to why I could not understand it, being given no warning that the people featured in the scene would be speaking Gaelic. They sounded like Americans speaking some muddled words.

    DNW:

    You might enjoy this video of the omni-talented Italian, Adriano Celentano, doing an MTV-like video of a high school teacher singing and dancing a lesson to his class. It sounds like he is singing in English, though one can’t quite make out the words.

    However, except for “all right” (more like “oll rawt”), he is singing gibberish that sounds like English to Italians. Heck, it sounds like English to me and if I listened a little harder I would be able to understand.

    Which was Celentano’s intention.

    –Adriano Celentano, “Prisencolinensinainciusol” (1972)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8

    I’ve watched this one easily twenty times, trying to figure out its secret. The secret is that Celentano is very, very good and entertaining.

    Everytime I encounter that Biden giberrish term, “trunalimunumaprzure,” I think of “Prisencolinensinainciusol.”

71. Regarding the flow of Italian and Spanish, the first phrase that came to my mind is from a song many of you know by Carlos Santana (which I like), but I prefer the original by Tito Puente; “Oye Como Va.” Look at how well that flows off the tongue.

    Vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel. Just like a see-saw or a pendulum. Up-down. Hard soft. The English equivalent would be, “How’s it going?” Consonants slamming together. That weird, “oi” diphthong.

    Not to be argumentative, but I think it’s axiomatically demonstrable that Italian and Spanish are the fairest of modern languages.

72. Regarding neo’s reference to nausea when hearing the lyrics to “Little Brother Dance with Me” in German:

    It made me think of brilliant lyricist, Dorothy Parker’s review of A.A. Milne’s “The House at Pooh Corner”: “Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.”

73. (Sorry, I hadn’t finished neo’s post before writing mine on the -chen and -lein diminutives. So many thoughts were popping into my head I started writing comments while reading. Neo already covered what was in my superfluous comment.)

74. Love Italian. I’ll take “cinque mille, cinque cento” any day over “five thousand five hundred.”

    Really: “chink-way millie, chink-way chento” vs. “five thousand, five hundred.”

    It’s so much fun to say!

75. Regarding,

    “Gretel! Ich weiss den Weg nicht mehr!”

    Another connection with Scottish and Welsh (and some English speakers). German has more, very specific terms about “knowing,” “thinking,” “mind,” “thought” and “brain” than modern English. It’s interesting the librettist uses “weiss” the verb, “wissen”, rather than the verb “kennen.” (Here’s an interesting thread on the topic:
    https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/wissen-kennen-erkennen-to-know.1822113/#:~:text=The%20difference%20between%20%22kennen%22%20and%20%22wissen%22%20is%20that,broken%20heard%20it%20kens%20nae%20second%20spring%20again…%22%29. )

    Scots often speak of “kenning” something, rather than “knowing” something. “Do you ken Italian?” “Do you ken the mayor?” “Do you ken knitting?” We still use the words; “kin” and “kinship” in English from that same root.

    Typically, if a German does not know the way to a location he would use the verb, “kennen.” “Wissen” implies a much deeper truth. He has literally lost his way. Not directionally. Physically, spiritually, completely. Not only has he lost his way in the woods, he has lost his way. He has lost his place in the world.

76. A common complaint when learning Spanish is the speed with which native speakers speak. And they do. I think that’s attributable to that vowel consonant flow. It just runs out of one’s mouth!

    Rufus T. Firefly:

    About all I remember of high school Spanish is “Pero Luisa tiene catarro!” (“But Luisa has a cold!)

    Becasuse I could say it real staccato fast.

77. Regarding, Germans distinct and various terms for “knowing,” “thinking,” “mind,” “thought” and “brain” it makes me wonder if this lends itself to Philosophy? Even as children, Germans are learning explicit distinctions between familiarity, knowing, thinking, mind… The brain as an organ and thought as a concept.

78. JohnTyler,

    I agree regarding Dutch. One of my favorite things when in a car anywhere near the Netherlands is to tune in Dutch radio. It’s hilarious! Sounds like Sid Caesar doing a caricature.

79. trcrosse and neo,

    Adding “-lein” makes it “wee little,” or “tiny little,” “or dear little.”

80. TexasDude,

    Regarding “sitzpinkler.” Believe it or not, there was a big move in Germany about 15 years ago to make all men “sitzpinklers.” I began noticing signs in German restrooms and even homes, “Kein stehpinkeln” (no urinating while standing), including an international symbol depicting the action with the requisite red circle and line: https://stock.adobe.com/images/stehpinkeln-verboten/6638647?as_campaign=ftmigration2&as_channel=dpcft&as_campclass=brand&as_source=ft_web&as_camptype=acquisition&as_audience=users&as_content=closure_asset-detail-page

    From what I can tell, many German men, being an obedient culture, have taken the change to heart, or, er, bladder. I’ve been waiting for the feminists here to get in on the game. Won’t be long.

81. Michael Towns,

    Krankenschwester = nurse = sick sister.
    Krankenwagen = ambulance = sick vehicle.

    For you yiddish speakers:

    German for tow truck = abschleppwagen = up schlepp vehicle

82. Stan Smith,

    Good for Frau Hollinger and it is a literal tragedy that all foreign language instruction is not conducted in that manner. Frau Hollinger’s technique is very common in other countries. Also, starting in school in Kindergarten. High School is way too late.

83. OBloody Hell @ 5:53pm,

    I agree and your analogy explains it well.

84. zaphod @ 6:10pm,

    I disagree. I’ve worked in the Philippines and know a bit of Tagalog. I find it pleasurable, sing-songy.

    Maganda umaga po. Consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel…

85. J.J. @ 6:48pm,

    Spanish, “adios.” “Dios” means, “God.” I believe English “good; morning, evening, afternoon, night, day…” have a similar origin.

86. Gregory Harper,

    When learning German I was surprised I could suddenly comprehend a lot of written Dutch. It seems nearly 50% German, 50% English. Like you, I cannot understand it when spoken.

87. Phillip Sells,

    Regarding the Konjunktiv I. It is perfect for journalism. It naturally implies speculation, “sources say,” “allegedly.” I believe the English subjunctive used to commonly be used in a similar manner.

88. Regarding, Germans distinct and various terms for “knowing,” “thinking,” “mind,” “thought” and “brain” it makes me wonder if this lends itself to Philosophy?

    Rufus:

    Some argue that the philosopher Heidegger should only be read in the original German. Heidegger himself claimed that philosophy can only be done in Greek and German.

    https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/37972/what-is-the-argument-for-heideggers-claim-that-philosophy-can-only-be-done-in-g

    Generally I’m not keen on such arguments. However, Heidegger was quite creative in using German terms and inventing neologisms to suit his philosophical purposes. So I’d say a German speaker has a leg up in reading Heidegger.

89. Ed Bonderenka,

    I was with my family in Xi’an, China. The traditional end of the silk road. There is a large settlement of formerly Arabic, Chinese Muslims there. My family loved the many markets in China with their “designer goods” and culture of haggling over price. Not my cup of tea, so to speak.

    So, while my family were running about the market there I found a convenient spot to stand and bide my time but was eventually spotted by a merchant. He instantly pegged me for American and started speaking perfect English to me, cajoling me to come into his stand and buy something. I first tried to ignore him, but he was very friendly and kept trying different English phrases and jokes to coerce me. Realizing he would not let me enjoy any peace I devised a plan to get him to cease. I had not said a single word to him, so I turned to him, and in German I said, “I am sorry, but I do not understand you.”

    Guy smiled broadly and went into his same, marketing spiel in perfect German! I ended up buying a watch from him! 🙂

    *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi’an_Muslim_Quarter

    The history of the Xi’an Muslim Quarter can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty, when Muslim merchants came to and aggregated in Chang’an, today’s Xi’an, via the Silk Road.

90. Mac @ 9:57pm,

    Much more fun is, “Kopfschmerzen.” “Headache.” “Schmerzen” is a much better descriptor than our word, “ache.”
    A pillow is a “Kopfkissen.” And yes, “kissen” does mean, “to kiss.”

91. Ann in L.A.,

    Agree absolutely regarding, “Stille Nacht!”

92. TR,

    Butterfly is Schmetterling. Even better than the comedian’s humorous take.

93. Paolo Pagliaro,

    I love “your dear Europe” also!

94. DNW,

    I don’t know about the rest of Missouri, but I believe German was the official language of the city of St. Louis (after the state was established) until WWI made it unpopular.

95. “…philosophy can only be done in Greek and German.”

    Interesting; but judging from the development and permutations of Heidegger’s logic, skill and uber-intelligence, one might be forgiven to conclude that philosophy can be done only in Greek….

96. Ray @ 10:34am,

    I quickly learned if I said “deh” quickly before nouns, Germans heard it as “der, die, das, dem or des,” based on whatever was, actually correct. Their ears were so used to hearing the correct article that my quick, “deh” sounds correct to their ears. 😉

97. Rufus T: And then there’s the oh-so-useful to poets and songwriters rhyme of “herz” and “schmerz.” And “weltschmerz” is way cooler than “world pain”. I had forgotten Krankenwagen–even funnier than Krankenhaus, because “wagen” is so close to “wagon,” which for us now has mildly ridiculous connotations: “Quick, somebody call the sickwagon!”

98. huxley, DNW,

    There’s a scene in “The Quiet Man” where Maureen O’Hara and her Priest lapse into Gaelic. It’s a lovely scene. The Brits outlawed speaking Gaelic for about a century.

99. huxley,

    I use “Cierra la boca” rather than “shut up” for similar reasons. It just flows. I also memorized an even more polite idiom, “En boca cierrado non entran moscas.” “Flies do not enter a closed mouth.”
    The German is hilarious, “Halt dein Schnabel!” Literally, “stop your beak!”

100. huxley @ 12:09pm,

     I agree that when one understands the German meanings for the concepts of “thought” and “knowing” it is a much more diverse and deep understanding than the English. Using multiple words in English can get you there, but I imagine native German speakers have a more innate foundation regarding philosophy and psychology from childhood on. Freud and Jung. German speakers.

101. Also huxley @ 12:09pm,

     I have a German friend who insists Shakespeare is better in German. My friend is very bright and thoughtful, but I cannot imagine he is correct. In argument I’ll say, “That’s like me claiming Goethe is better in English.”

102. And, zaphod, regarding my comment at 12:32pm, and the merchant instantly pegging me for American.

     No, I was not wearing sneakers.
     Nor a baseball cap!

103. Mac @ 12:57pm,

     Mark Steyn wrote a great piece about the problem of the English word, “love” being not particularly sonorous and having almost no practical rhymes. Lots of dove analogies in English love songs, and references to things above. Steyn even pontificates on one or two songs managing to fit “glove” into the theme.

     “Love’s” translation in most other languages invites endless, native rhymes; Italian, French, German…

104. Long post, I’ll read it all when I get home. I discussed this topic (too briefly) with my friend Chazz online some long while ago. I don’t speak or read German, but it has a lovely sound. I didn’t always think so. Those associations! But figure this: German songs are among the most beautiful in the world. Could an ugly-sounding language fit words to music as aptly as in the Lieder of Schubert, Wolf, Brahms, Schumann, Mahler? And the Brechtian songs of Kurt Weil, and other theatrical and popular songs of their era? I don’t mean these as proofs — you can’t prove beauty, you either experience it or not — but I think these are good and ample reasons to suspect that the beauty is there, and to try to disregard the associations and look for it.

105. DNW,

     I don’t know about the rest of Missouri, but I believe German was the official language of the city of St. Louis (after the state was established) until WWI made it unpopular.”

     First I ever heard of German being the official language of St Louis. It was founded by the French.

     Of course, in the 1830’s it was flooded by Germans who arrived in Missouri as part of an organized settlement program, aiming to create a German state. So, maybe so as “an officially recognized” language.

     You are right that things having German associations became unpopular as a result of WWI. I note that my grandmother’s brother, who fought in the war, and came back reporting that Germans lived in the same houses with their livestock, married a woman surnamed “Miller”, two of whose grandparents were Muellers.

     That said, I’m not sure how well regarded Germans were before that, unless one reckons that “damned squareheads” was applied admiringly.

     That said, the young American men apparently had no problem with the young German ancestry girls. I believe that 4 great uncles married fhem. Though one probably lived to regret it as much as everyone else who had to associate with her did.

     ( I’ve obviously been reviewing the updates in my usually ignored Ancestry account, recently. LOL )

106. DNW, during world war I a lot of German city names became anglicized. Pittsburg, Kansas is one of the few American cities that retains the German spelling for the English equivalent of “borough.”

107. Regarding the flow of spoken German and it’s singability, it should also be noted that many German speakers do the same thing that Bostonians do; adding an “r” sound to words that end in a vowel, and dropping the “r” sound from words that end in “r.”. So, “Mutter” (mother) becomes, “Mutteh” when spoken and “Lieber” (love) becomes, “liebeh.” (Think of a Bostonian saying, “harbor” and “idea.”)

108. St. Louis is the home of Anheuser-Busch if I’m not mistaken.
     (Though most Germans today would quaff the stuff in distinct horror, I would think, though be too polite not to finish it to the very last drop….).

     Regarding cities that underwent name changes during or after WWI, Berlin, Ontario became…Kitchener (though if they had had any prior inklings about his meat-grinding tactics, they likely would have chosen something else…).

109. Baceseras,

     I think it’s coincidental due to Germany and Austria having a love of classical music, a wealth of brilliant composers and legions of wealthy patrons willing to finance personal works.

     I don’t want to put words in their mouths, but I’ll bet even native, German speakers Mozart and Beethoven preferred Italian!

110. Regarding the guttural nature of German, let’s not forget several German Kings and Queens never even bothered to learn it, preferring French.

111. Thanks for the info, Rufus T. Firefly!
     😀 😀

112. I challenge everyone to pronounce the Russian vowel represented by letter ? ))

     https://youtu.be/AAQXIm_3eew

113. Ooops, the messaging engine apparently do not support non-Latin characters.

114. Hears the brilliant Mark Steyn essay on English lyrics and the word, “love.” (Published, appropriately enough, on Valentine’s Day, six years ago.)

     https://www.steynonline.com/7463/the-language-of-love

115. Barry Meislin,

     Germans would agree with the Australian joke:

     Q: Why is American beer like making love in a canoe?
     A: Because it’s f***ing close to water.

     There’s a reason we Americans drink our beer cold. That’s the only way to make it palatable.

116. Barry Meislin,

     Actually, AB-Inbev is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium. Thank goodness Ed McMahon didn’t live to see this travesty of globalization!

117. Just a sec; don’t the Germans (and the Czechs, and others) drink their beers, ales and pilsners ice cold, too?

     And why on earth would the Belgians have bought Anheuser-Busch (unless they decided to improve the recipe…which shouldn’t have been too hard to do)?…

118. LadderLogic,

     I was working in the Czech Republic and taking a run at learning Czech. Though polite, the native speakers mostly encouraged me to not bother. First, they would say, it’s simply not possible. 😉 Second, they would state it’s only spoken in the Czech Republic, a rather small country, and even Czechs don’t like it. Third, they stated every Czech under the age of 40 speaks fluent English and all of them over 50 speak Russian and/or German.

     Then they would tell me about a certain letter, a r with a smiley on top. They said there is no way possible any non-Czech native could ever reproduce the sound successfully. I certainly agreed with them on that point and it seems to be in the middle of every other word.

     Think of the composer’s name, “Dvo?ak” and how English speakers say it with a sort-of “z-sh-ch-j” sound all matted together.

     (Hopefully Tom Grey will weigh in to see if I’ve got this right. 😉 )

     Here’s a nice essay on it: (The letter ” ? ” is said to be one of the most difficult letters to pronounce in the world.”

     https://edl.ecml.at/Facts/LanguageTrivia/tabid/3129/TagID/9/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

119. @RTF

     “Oye Como Va.”

     It took me ages to realize that it was a local version of ‘Oyez, comment ca va’.

120. “In 1852, a Viennese researcher, Karl von Rokitansky, developed what he called the encrustation hypothesis of heart disease.”
     [I wonder how you might say that in German….]
     “Today, this hypothesis has been renamed the thrombogenic hypothesis. ‘Thrombo’ stands for thrombosis, i.e., blood clots, and ‘genesis’ means the cause of, or the start of. So, the thrombogenic hypothesis is that blood clots are the basic pathology that causes all heart disease….”

     And so, in Karl von Rokitansky’s honor, here’s something that some of you may find of interest:
     “Blood Clots May Be the Root Cause of All Heart Disease”
     https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/02/13/root-cause-of-all-heart-disease.aspx

121. Hi, Rufus. Regarding Konjunktiv I, the usage in the von Weizsäcker speech that I mentioned is more interesting than a mere extrapolation from the news reporting practice would suggest. I was reflecting on its import further this morning and it seems to me that its deftness in that context lies in the fact that there is a stretch of time, while von Weizsäcker was quoting from the woman’s letter, in which, through the use of that subjunctive, he was serving as a conduit for his correspondent’s thought without being overly emotionally committal. That moment in which he then resumed his own voice (indicative) was an interesting shift, almost a form of code-switching. This goes a bit beyond mere reportage and I think it’s not such an easy matter to generate this affect* in any English translation of that paragraph.

     Your excursion into Czech sounds fascinating!

     LadderLogic, I guess we’ll just have to imagine the letter. But that’s a good video you pointed out. It seems very similar to that Turkish iota-looking character, as in ‘Topkapi’ (except not really with an ‘i’ – again another non-Latin character). I have a Turkish coworker whose name contains that letter, so I get to work on it from time to time.

     * (not a typo)

122. Rufus:

     Yup, I am aware of that Czech letter although I do not speak Czech. It just so happened that both the famous composer and the inventor of an alternative computer keyboard layout share the same (quite common in those parts) last name. However, the keyboard guy has always been called “Dvorak” in English, while the composer is more correct “Dvorjak” (or “Dvorzhak” if one prefers a different way to represent this amalgram of “r” and “j” in writing.

     Which, BTW, reminded me that native Russian speakers are always confounded when they hear for the first time that “J” in English is just ONE phoneme. For them, there are clearly TWO: a “D” and a “ZH” and it takes them time to learn to pronounce it as a single one. Same is with “X” – it is a “K” and an “S” for them.

123. If you think about it carefully, I suspect that Krankenhaus, Krankenwagen, and Krankenwschwester are implied possessives.

     In English we tend to imply that the the meaning is “sick house” (i.e., “house which is sick,” “wagon which is sick,” or “sister who is sick”) but I suspect that the underlying structure is possessive; i.e., “house of the, sick,' "wagon of the sick,” and “sister (nun?) of the sick.”

     Think about the German Flusspferd, hippopotamus. Directly translated it is “river horse,” that is horse of the river, not horse which is a river.

124. Well, so far no one has talked about those long German words where they just run words together, like “Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän”. I used to be confused regularly by them’.

125. About opera, in German or any other language, see Mark Twain: “Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.”

126. @Rufus:

     Love the story about the Hui merchant in Xi’an! A brilliant salesman.

     Have to continue to disagree with you about Tagalog.

     Exhibit A: Pinakanakapagpapabagbagdamdamin

     That more properly belongs in Finnegan’s Wake and not anyone’s language.

     I’ve got a soft spot for the song Anak. That’s about it.

127. One can argue day and night about sung German vs. Italian… but German comes out of it pretty well when singing of Italy:

     Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn,
     Im dunklen Laub die Goldorangen glühn,
     Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht,
     Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht?
     Kennst du es wohl?
     Dahin, dahin
     Möcht ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn!

     Kennst du das Haus? Auf Säulen ruht sein Dach.
     Es glänzt der Saal, es schimmert das Gemach,
     Und Marmorbilder stehn und sehn mich an:
     Was hat man dir, du armes Kind, getan?-
     Kennst du es wohl?
     Dahin, dahin
     Möcht ich mit dir, o mein Beschützer, ziehn!
     .
     .
     .

128. Ray, oh, there’s plenty of merit in those. Aufenthaltserlaubnis… Studentenermäßigung… Eisenbahnnetzerweiterungsbeauftragter (I just made that one up, but who knows, such a person could exist – there is a potential need for that type of position, I suppose)… they’re rather neat constructions that are also economical. Thanks for pointing out the lack of attention to this.

     Connected with these is a German love for a certain type of abbreviation, based on often using first syllables of the component words rather than first letters merely, as is the Anglospheric habit.

129. Sad I only found this blog entry after the comments got past 100!

     I’m married to a German lass and I speak a little. But generally, my wife prefers not to speak German, since she is an American citizen. I usually only speak it when her relatives come to visit. They still live in Bremen. I enjoy listening to them speak and I have never thought of it as a harsh language. It only sounds harsh i Indiana Jones movies.

     My favorite German words:

     The aforementioned ‘sitzpinkler’ (which is hilarious to me) and ‘Backpfiefengesicht’ (for those who don’t know, it means ‘A face in need of a fist’)

     Also, I lived in the city of Leeuwarden, in the Netherlands as an exchange student. I used to be fluent in Dutch about 25 years ago. Leeuwarden is the capital of Friesland, My host family was Frisian and I learned a little bit of that too.

     Both Dutch and Frisian are quite close to English, Frisian being even closer. I picture something like a Venn Diagram with three circles: Dutch overlapping Frisian and Frisian overlapping English. If we added a fourth back at Dutch, we could probably add German. There were times before I learned much of the Dutch language that if a Dutch speaker spoke slowly, I could almost understand them. The trick was knowing how certain pronunciation of letters worked:

     For instance, ‘G’. A number of commenters have mentioned Van Gogh’s name. In Dutch, the G is usually a hard H/CH.

     ‘J’ is ‘Y’, which most know. ‘F’ and ‘W’ can be confusing at first. The ‘F’ is pronounced more like a ‘V’ and the ‘W’ more like an ‘V’… sometimes. Knowing those rules, an English speaker can almost puzzle out written Dutch too. It is definitely a guttural language, though not quite as guttural as Danish, which always struck me as sounding like Klingons from Star Trek.

     One thing the Dutch taught me- and it’s entirely possible this is apocryphal- is that the hardest thing to pronounce in Dutch, even for Dutch speakers, is the number 888. The story goes that in times of war, the Dutch use the number in conversation, to flush out non-native speakers because only a native Dutch speaker can pronounce it correctly.

130. Fractal! Glad to see you again. You’re helping push this thread to a bicentenary!

     It would interest me to go to Friesland. I’m more interested in the Wolvega area, though, rather than Leeuwarden. That’s neat that you were there. Do you find much similarity between Frisian and the Bremen-area dialect?

131. For a bit o’ good fun, google “ugliest accent.”

     I thought it was mainly inhabitants of the UK who enjoyed the pastime of voting for ugliest accents, but apparently it’s reached the US.

     According to Gawker, in 2014 the Ugliest American City Accent match came down to Pittsburgh vs Scranton.

     The BBC reports that Pittsburgh won.

     https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-30571262

     I would have gone with Scranton, given that is Biden’s accent.

132. Philip Sells and Ray,

     I was initially dumbfounded by those long, compound nouns also, but after a bit it seemed logical to me. I think the Germans view every, unique thing as a unique thing. If it is unique it should have its own name. A simple example; an apple tree is not the same as a pear tree. One bears apples, the other pears. So why not give each a unique name? Apfelbaum. Birnenbaum.

133. T,

     I learned hippopotamus as “Nilpferd,” “Nile horse,” but I just googled it and “Flusspferd” “river horse” does mean the same thing. I wonder what the difference is? Now that I’ve said it a few times, I like flusspferd better. It’s nearly alliterative. pfluss pferd.

     Regardless, it must have been a very nearsighted German who mistook either for a horse!

134. Phillip and Fractal,

     I’ve been among the Walloons in the Wallonia region of Belgium where the locals speak Walloon. Then traveled a hundred kilometers to Flanders where the Flemish speak West and East Flemish, Brabantian and Limburgish.

     I spent some time in Luxembourg. Have yet to get to Lichtenstein and the very illusive Andorra.

135. huxley,

     Pennsylvania had three of the sixteen contenders.

136. Rufus T Firefly,

     Never heard Nilpferd before your post but even seeing it for the first time it is immediately identifiable. I learned it as Flusspferd but my studies were all high German and half a century ago. At that time Sie was still the formal and expected form of “you” and one had to receive permission from a person to duzen them (i.e., use the familiar for of “you” which is du). I suspect this is all outdated now.

137. Yes Philip, there is such a person as Eisenbahnnetzerweiterungsbeauftragter. I worked under him in Berlin 1995-1996 during my stay at Deutsche Bahn. Exciting times.

     The German Unification Transport Projects or German Unity Transport Projects (German: Verkehrsprojekte Deutsche Einheit), commonly known by their German initials VDE, are a set of major construction projects to increase and improve transport links between Eastern and Western Germany after German reunification.

138. “If you want to hear a guttural language listen to Dutch; it sounds like non-stop expectorating .”

     It isn’t, just as German isn’t. I am Dutch, know Dutch, German, English, some French, and some Spanish (and forgotten most of my Latin and classical Greek).

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5cntzEZo1w some GOOD Dutch music… RIP Liesbeth and Ramses.

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU4mrTwWafE and this. RIP Boudewijn.

139. “I learned hippopotamus as “Nilpferd,” “Nile horse,” but I just googled it and “Flusspferd” “river horse” does mean the same thing.”

     Might be regional. In Dutch it is nijlpaard, which is identical to the German Nilpferd.
     Dutch and German are so closely linked that regional dialects merge the language across the border, with people from 30-50km on the Dutch side who know no German being able to speak perfectly with people from 30-50km on the German side who speak no Dutch.
     E.g. my grandmother would know instantly what a “Pferd” is, as in her local dialect a horse is a “peerd” (paard in high Dutch).

140. “Both Dutch and Frisian are quite close to English, Frisian being even closer. I picture something like a Venn Diagram with three circles: Dutch overlapping Frisian and Frisian overlapping English. If we added a fourth back at Dutch, we could probably add German. ”

     Dutch is actually much closer to German than it is to English, though there have been a lot of word exchanges between Dutch and English so the vocabulary has absorbed more than a few English words (and French ones too) just as English has absorbed its share of Dutch words (especially nautical terms).

     “For instance, ‘G’. A number of commenters have mentioned Van Gogh’s name. In Dutch, the G is usually a hard H/CH.”

     Yes, or like a guttural soft G.

     “The ‘F’ is pronounced more like a ‘V’ and the ‘W’ more like an ‘V’… sometimes.”

     F is hard but softer than the English F, V is soft and again softer than the English V tends to be, W is a softer version of the English W.

     “the number 888. The story goes that in times of war, the Dutch use the number in conversation, to flush out non-native speakers because only a native Dutch speaker can pronounce it correctly.”

     Try to pronounce “Scheveningen” correctly as a non-native Dutch speaker…
     Or any name containing the vowel “OE” 🙂

141. “Spanish, “adios.” “Dios” means, “God.” I believe English “good; morning, evening, afternoon, night, day…” have a similar origin.”

     You are probably correct. “Good day” has its origins in the same roots as the German “Guten Tag” which is the old Germanic “Gottag”, “God’s day”.
     And oh, in French of course “adios” translates into “adieu” with “dieu” meaning God as well.

142. Philip Sells! How are you my geographical friend?

     To answer your question regarding the Bremen area dialect, sadly I don’t speak enough German or have an ear for it like my ear for Dutch. Also, I didn’t get together with my wife until after my time as an exchange student. The times did not overlap. She speaks English, German, French, and Polish. But no Dutch. So she really has no ear for it either.

     While I always attempt to say some things in German with her family, they’re comfortable with English and we usually just fall back onto my language.

143. Rufus,

     I loved Belgium, on my few trips through it. Very friendly people. Although, I know this will shock many Americans due to our pop culture’s biases and expectations, but I have found the rural French to be the friendliest, most down to Earth people in the world, in all my travels. The closer one gets to Paris, the less true that is. Somewhat like the effect NYC has on American manners; It destroys them.

     JTW,

     Hoi! I will defer to your native cultural expertise regarding German and Dutch. I miss your country a great deal!The only thing about the Netherlands I don’t miss is how flat it is. I’m from the Adirondack mountains of NYS, and the flatness almost made me uneasy at times when I first arrived. I need mountains!

144. But is there any word in German as cutesie-poo as cutesie-poo its very own self?

145. Fractal Rabbit,

     I too found the French friendly, even in Paris. I don’t find the Parisians any ruder than denizens of any large city. Try walking up to a New Yorker or Chicagoan busy on their way, stopping them and blurting out, in French, “Where is the train station?” You likely won’t be received well.

     I do find the French sticklers for their language, however. Even though I’d make an effort with my phrasebook French they would generally pretend to not understand me at all. After a particularly difficult exchange with a hotel owner where I was trying to discern what a mysterious charge on my bill was, she shouted in broken English, “You should not come to France without knowing the language.”

     And I agree that Belgium is wonderful.

146. JTW,

     Regarding Dutch pronunciation I spent two weeks in the town of Schoorl and never came close to stating the city name properly. I would listen very carefully when the locals said it, and practice it on long walks… No luck. I had that issue with many Dutch words.

147. Factual Rabbit & Rufus, I too have also found the French to be very friendly – even in Paris – especially over a glass of wine! I agree that some French are indeed sticklers for their language. Several years ago I made a special visit to the Bastille Metro station in Paris to examine parts of the original prison walls exposed in the station. I asked the man at the info counter in the station to direct me to the walls – as the station is quite large. He pretended not to speak English. I persisted, as I knew he could speak English – probably very well. Finally, exasperated with me he shouted (in good English) You should speak French when you come to France! I set off on my own and eventually found what I was looking for. On the way out I passed the info desk once again and found my man chatting happily with a couple of good looking American girls. Passing, I shouted Bastard! 🙂

148. Xylourgos,

     In a foreign country I make it a point to always ask, “Excuse me, do you speak English?” in the native tongue before asking a question of a stranger.

     I landed at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam and proceeded to the car rental counter and approached the young woman working there. It was an American company (Avis or Hertz) and I knew most Dutch were good with languages; it’s a seafaring nation built on international trade. So, being Dutch and working for an American company it was a certainty she spoke English well. However, to be polite I asked, “Pardon, spreek je Engels?”

     A blank stare.
     I said it again.
     The same, blank stare.

     I was fairly certain my pronunciation was decent enough to be understood and it wasn’t a question out of left field, but I thought maybe I was butchering it and maybe, against all odds, Avis or Hertz had hired the one young woman in the Netherlands who does not speak English. So I pulled out my phrase book and pointed to the phrase, repeating it slowly.

     It was as if she came out of a trance. She shook her head, smiled, and in perfect English said, “Yes, I do. But I have never had an American ask me that question!”

149. Rufus, whether Mozart or Beethoven preferred Italian for singability I don’t know. Mozart composed for a cosmopolitan court, so internationalism would condition his choices. Certain languages were conventional for different kinds of vocal music, but these conventions weren’t enforced, merely expected. In the case of Mozart’s operas, I believe it was the librettist who chose the language, writing in whatever language he knew best; and translations, as needed, could follow once the music was set.

     I mentioned Lieder because this body of work, based on German poetry, presents simply too many masterpieces for us to ignore the aptness of the German language for singing. Now, you may say, “Well, these composers were musical geniuses..” — and yes, true, but even geniuses can’t work miracles every time: there must be something inherent in the German language, to lend them the means of composing so many perfect gems.

150. I had some co-workers working outside of Bonn, Germany, who spoke no English. They were staying at a hotel in Bonn. At the end of their first workday they got into a taxi and quickly discovered their driver spoke no English. (This was in the days before mobile phones and GPS were ubiquitous.) They said, “Bonn.” After a few minutes the driver stopped and motioned they had arrived. My co-workers looked out the window and saw they were at a train station, still in the same city, not Bonn. They repeated, “Bonn.” The driver said affirmative sounding words in German, pointing out the window.

     Eventually one of my co-workers remembered he had a card from the hotel concierge so he pulled it out of his wallet and showed it to the taxi driver who then took them straight to their hotel. My co-workers called me to ask what had happened. It took me a few seconds to piece together, but when I did I laughed and said, “Ahhh. The German word for train is ‘Bahn,’ and train station is, ‘Bahnhof.’ To English speakers they sound the same, but to Germans they are different. When you say, ‘Bonn’ it sounds like their ‘Bahn’ so that’s where he took you!”

151. Another co-worker story. A woman I worked with had been working in England for a bit, then traveled to Spain for her next assignment. She took a taxi to her hotel from the airport and upon arrival opened the taxi door where it was immediately struck and ripped from her hand and the taxi. Fortunately she was unhurt, but the taxi driver was not happy. At all!

     She had grown so used to the opposite traffic flow in England she absent-mindedly thought she was exiting the taxi on the curbside rather than the street side!

     When working in countries with opposite traffic flow I am very pedantic and methodical when crossing streets. I am absent minded with things like that and more than once I’ve stepped off a curb into oncoming traffic, so I try to force myself to slow down and check both ways multiple times. I’ve always assumed American pedestrian injuries are so common in England that the Bobbies must have some clever term for such incidents.

152. Ray, Learning the gender of German nouns is a daunting task for non native speakers of German. A little book to help is “Der, Die, Das – The Secrets of German Gender” by Constantin Vayenas.

153. Baceseras,

     I agree there are a lot of beautiful German songs and poems, but “famous” or “popular” music-wise, on the classical side, I still attribute it more to proximity than preference.

     English is the standard for rock. Even groups in other countries tend(ed) to write rock songs in English. Rock really took off in America and England, so that’s the template. Is English ideal for lyrics? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Mark Steyn’s example of the paucity of rhymes for “love” is a good example of a shortcoming, but, typically, if it’s rock it’s English*. The same for jazz, another musical form that originated in America.

     So, I think it’s similar for classical and the German language. Proximity more than preference.

     And, I truly think this is objective, not subjective. You probably know English singers avoid singing the “s” sound. It hisses and lingers. Singers swallow “s’s” or elide them. And a lot of English words end in “s” and it’s a common letter in general, so this is a challenge when singing in English.

     Now think about German! Not just “s’s” everywhere, but “s’s” appended to all kinds of consonants; “sprechen,” “schlussen…” And then the “k’s!” And “z’s!” And “k’s” and “z’s” with “s’s!”

     Do you want to dance? “Tanzen.” Sing? “Singen.” Does your unrequited love for your gal have you in agony? “Liebesqual!” The familiar “you” form of verbs typically ends in “st.” You want your gal to speak with you? “Bitte, schotzchen, sprichst mit mir.” Try singing, “sprichst!” Try singing, “schotzen!”

     Italian: “Ballare,” “cantare,” “dolore.” “Parlami, mia cara.” Everything ends in vowel sounds making it so easy to hold a note at the end of a phrase and glide into the next lyric.

     *Now, I know there are plenty of rock and pop songs in other languages, but the international hits tend(ed) to be English (before KPOP became all the rage).

154. I don’t know about ugly. I had never thought of German as sounding ugly. What strikes me about the German language is its propensity to have long, multisyllabic words. One semester I had a German roommate. One time in speaking with him I created some nonsense multisyllabic word that sounded as if it might be in German. He agreed that German’s propensity for long multi-syllabic words is worth poking fun at.

     I’d say that of all the languages, a native speaker of English learning a second language would have the highest probability of sounding like a native speaker were he to learn German.

     (It is very difficult to sound like a native speaker in any language if you learn it as an adult. I knew one person who, learning English as an adult, sounded like a native speaker. He was a German national who had spent most of his life in Peru- his father was a mining engineer. After getting his mining engineering degree in Germany, he learned English on drilling rigs in South America. Though his English didn’t sound like the Texans from whom he had learned English on the rigs, his accent sounded like a like that someone from the Southern US. Just not the Texas twang.)

     One time I attended a recital of Handel’s opera songs. For about 5 minutes, I could follow the singer and the German and English texts in the program. After 5 minutes, I got exhausted and stopped trying to follow. (I have never taken any German courses.)

155. Gringo,

     I disagree about sounding like a native. I personally found Italian much easier than German. I now often fool native Germans, especially when speaking short sentences, but it took years to get there. I was doing it in Italian in weeks.

     But I do think that can vary among individual. What I’ve found from my own experience and asking foreigners who speak English; there are two ways to lose an accent.
     1. Some folks are just naturally good at it. They have an ear for it. My wife is like this. Germans think she grew up there. Americans think she grew up here. Take her to Alabama for a week and you’ll think she grew up there. Some folks are not, naturally good at it. I know well educated foreigners, very well read in English literature with bigger, English vocabularies than mine, who I and everyone else, struggles to understand when speaking.
     2. Anyone can improve by focusing specifically on pronunciation. There are drills and practice techniques specifically for this. I’ve known several people who learned English as adults and spent a lot of time drilling those techniques and they sound like natives.

     And we know the above because actors and actresses do this all the time. English, American, Australian, Shakespearean, Dickensian, Bostonian, Californian, Southern… Meryl Streep is famous for her ability to do this.

156. Fractal Rabbit

     I have found the rural French to be the friendliest, most down to Earth people in the world, in all my travels. The closer one gets to Paris, the less true that is. Somewhat like the effect NYC has on American manners; It destroys them.

     I have read that about rural French. I have had some unpleasant experiences with French in the US and in Latin America, and I suspect that not all were from Paris. (Not to mention in Ecuador, a Quebecker Canadian who had the gall to correct my Spanish. I informed him that his correction was mistaken, as I was using subjunctive mode. That shut him up.The next day, he got assaulted by a local who didn’t like the Quebecker putting the moves on his girlfriend. )

     When I did my backpacking tour of South America I spent several weeks with some French. Friendly people. One of them told me that some of her fellow Frenchmen had visited the US, and had hitched around. (This was in the ’70s, when hitching was much more common.) She told me that some of the people who had given the hitchiking French a ride had invited them to spend the night at their homes. That was also my experience hitching at that time. She told me that Americans were SICK to be so friendly to a stranger as to invite them to spend the night. I made no reply, but chuckled inside. But the French have had unpleasant experiences with German guests. 🙂

157. Rufus T. Firefly

     I disagree about sounding like a native. I personally found Italian much easier than German

     I have never taken any German courses, so I am not exactly an expert. My opinion comes from looking at German texts.
     I am reminded of arriving in the Miami airport after 10 months working in Argentina. In the process of purchasing a slice of pizza, I asked a question of the vendor and, having spoken Spanish for 10 months, said “Como?” How? The vendor replied. “Parle Italiano?” Do you speak Italian? No, but as a result of living in Argentina, my Spanish had an Italian accent.

     My mother lost her Okie accent after living in the North. Her cousin, who married a Yankee flyboy during WW2, did not lose her Okie accent. I asked my mother why she lost her Okie accent. “I got tired of total strangers coming up to me, putting their arms around my shoulders, and asking, ‘What part of Texas are you from, honey?”

158. Gringo,

     I think what you may mean is German has a lot of cognates with English, and that is very true and a great help with vocabulary when learning. However, many of them are pronounced differently. But, yes, reading German may be easier than other languages for a beginning English speaker. Maybe?

     Speaking of cognates, one thing I’m puzzled by; English has cognates with some German and with some Spanish words, and all three share some; especially modern words like computer. But there is a German/Spanish cognate I think I’ve uncovered that has no English equivalent. I’d love to know how German and Spanish came to share this word; “furniture.” My guess is our English word comes from the French, a Romance language like Spanish. But in Spanish it’s Muebles and in German it’s, Möbel (that’s an o with an umlaut if the character doesn’t come through). Well, I just looked up the French, Meubles. I guess English just grabbed a word out of thin air?!

159. Gringo,

     Apparently, I had a horrendous, mockable Chicago accent. Even Chicagoans would single me out for ridicule. I moved to Texas when I was 23 and they really found it amusing. I never put a conscious thought into it, but after two years there it was pretty much gone. I still do slip into it a bit when I’m in Chicago for more than a day.

     Before I moved to Texas all Southerners sounded the same to me but now I can often distinguish Texas from Georgia from Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee… Not too good with the Carolinas or Virginia.

160. I don’t think this thread will reach 200, but I’ll certainly respond to Rufus if I read him.
     ? is the hacheck accent mark (probably not visible, an upside down carrot exponential sign over c, s, z, and in Czech but not Slovak, r.)
     ? is c hacheck smile, said like ch in church. Also like Cz in Czech, where the Czech and Slovak “ch” is a single letter sound, like at the end of Czech. You know they recently officially added Czechia as a place.
     š is s hacheck, like sh in shoot. The hockey player was “Shatan”, but without the diacritic, Satan on the jersey. (Diacritic is the word for accent marks in general) Šatan in Slovak.
     ž is z hacheck, like Zhivago from the Russian.

     But I wanted to mention diminutives; Slovaks can make just about any noun a diminutive, and often do – and they’re not in most dictionaries. (Slovnik) Table, chair, silverware. I’m getting ready to start teaching my grandkids (waiting for #2 in March) to speak English, perhaps as their grandpa language, along with Slovak. We were told it was best, so we did, and believe, that having different adults speak different languages was the best way to imprint that “native speaking accent” on the kids. So I spoke to them in English. It also reduced the times when they would use both languages in the same sentence (there are quite a few words English doesn’t have a single word for.)

     Diminutives are both for kids and for more friendly informal. They often add an “echko” or “echka” (F) to the end of their gendered nouns. So “Tomashko” for Thomas (M) Sort of like Tommy. Lots of (wife) Eva’s friends call her Evka, or Evichka – but I don’t have that habit. Not even on Valentine’s Day – tho she got flowers, chocolate, and Bailey’s Irish Cream… and a sauna.

     I recall liking to hear from my daughter, “Daddy, give me a spoonechko”.
     I smile as I write it, making it worth writing and sharing.

161. Rufus T. Firefly:

     Here you are:

     furniture (n.)

     1520s, “act of supplying or providing,” from French fourniture “a supply; act of furnishing,” from Old French forneture (13c.), from fornir “to furnish” (see furnish). Sense of “chairs, tables, etc.; household stuff; movables required or ornamental in a dwelling-place” (1570s) is unique to English; most other European languages derive their words for this from Latin mobile “movable.”

162. Xylourgos: daß es den Eisenbahnnetzerweiterungsbeauftragter gibt (oder jedenfalls einst gab, wenn auch eventuell nicht mehr), freue ich mich darauf! Danke! 🙂

     JTW, glad to hear from you here. Scheveningen, the site of the famous tournament in 1923! Also one of my favorite Sicilian variations. So I’ve had reason to learn the name of the place. 🙂

     Rufus, Gringo: great and instructive stories you have!

     Tom Grey, don’t give up – come on, we can do it! 200!!

163. Argh, I meant ‘den EisenbahnnetzerweiterungsbeauftragteN’! Sorry. (See the Monty Python sketch about Johann ….. etc. of Ulm for an explanation of my current feeling of awkwardness.)

     Fractal, things are okay down here, it seems. In order to connect the north country to the topic of German language, how about we start calling the Adirondacks the ‘New-Yorksche Schweiz’?

164. Philip Sells,

     When I learned German I was so excited I could finally translate Python’s deadly joke from the WWII sketch. I sought out the teleplay script. Turns out it’s complete gibberish!

165. JTW,

     Regarding Dutch and German blending at the border:

     Well, the Germans do refer to their own country as, “Dutchland.”

166. Tom Grey,

     Regarding raising children multilingual:

     When our oldest was born I went to a Berlitz Institute (anyone remember them?) to ask them how to raise our children bi-lingual. Do the Frau and I speak German Monday, Wednesday, Friday and English Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday? One in the morning, the other in the afternoon?

     What she replied was brilliant and I’ve never forgotten it. I’m convinced she’s correct (and it’s what you’re doing). “No, she answered. Infants don’t know there are countries or languages. It’s all cause and affect. They hear certain sounds and then certain things happen and they can readily associate different sounds with different people. So whomever speaks whichever language must stick with that language (at least until they are older).”

     Your grandkids will quickly figure out saying, “colachke” gets them a treat from babichka but uttering “cookie” is how to motivate grandpa.

167. Nothing particularly constructive to add as I pile one small stone on the heap for those who hope for two hundred.

     Having had a couple of years of German in HS, I could not now even recite that very phrase in grammatically correct German: having no idea which definite article form goes with Gymnasium or if it requires one in that context. And do I want, Habe or habst? Im or auf?

     In class we had one daughter of a German immigrant couple, and she sat across from me both years. Why she was allowed to take German as foreign language I don’t know. But, she was an attractive and amiable blond, with whom I got along well.

     She once gibed that I was the only person she had ever heard who spoke German with “cowboy accent”. Now, being a Yankee, I have no idea where she thought she was hearing that.

     Germans I have met socially over the years have been embarrassingly generous, when after a few drinks I ventured a short response to something they had said in English, with my pidgin German. Probably they were dispensing the same pleased congratulations and encouragement they’d offer a none too bright child asking for a cookie.

     As cinematic and parody German have been discussed, I’d like to mention two additional old movies which are fascinating: less for their employment of the German language, than for the use of genuine and unrepaired Berlin and other cityscapes in the immediate post-war period.

     Those of us who as kids watched TV Saturday afternoons, before Ted Turner bought all the old movies up, have probably seen them both without remembering it.

     The people in the scenes are in part professional actors. The ruins are real.

     1. Decision at Dawn. Oskar Werner and Richard Basehart

     2. The Big Lift. Montgomery Clift and Paul Douglas.

     Real war ruins, real brick piles, real Germans.

168. I’ll be damned. Rufus says “cookie” in relation to a grandchild.

     I write, “cookie” never having read his comment, and reference a none too bright child.

     What the hell?

169. DNW,

     I was suspicious you may have been in class with my wife until you mentioned “attractive and amiable blond,” rather than “attractive and amiable redhead.”

     And, in my wife’s defense, even though she did opt for an easy A in German while in High School in the states she finished out “Gymnasium” im Deutschland. She also got As there, but it was a struggle. “Sure I knew the language,” she says, “but my parents never talked about photosynthesis or Trigonometry at home!”

170. Regarding “cowboy accent,”

     One of the Little Fireflies recently returned from Austria and when driving her home from the airport I started speaking German with a country “cowboy” accent. I’m not sure why. I think I may have been teasing her about what Austrians assume Americans sound like. Anyway, she got a huge kick out of it. The more I did it the more she laughed so it’s something I lapse into every few days now to make her smile.

171. neo @ 7:19pm,

     Unbelievable! You’ve made my week! I knew something was up when I first made the connection with Spanish and German, years ago, and “furniture” to me, just sounded like a French word. I can’t believe I was right!?!

172. Rufus T Firefly:

     It’s another language alltogether, but I am led to believe that the Swedish Chef’s recipes are quite good. If only he spoke a bit slower. Uffda! 🙂

173. Philip, Nichts zu danken!

174. So many good stories in this thread – I can sing in several different languages, but don’t speak any of them very well.

175. om,

     Those Swiss… they have a different word for everything!

     On my first trip to Germany, when I did not speak the language, driving back to our hotel after meeting some of my wife’s relatives for the first time I started singing the Swedish chef’s song from the Muppet Show. My wife was not amused!

     Bork! Bork! Bork!!

176. On TEXAS accents, + on “accents from the South”-

     This is a story from the Reader’s Digest[tm] magazine, I think-

     A woman works in an office.
     One of her coworkers likes to wear: jeans, cowboy boots, + Roy Rogers-like cowboy shirts.

     People like to call this man, “Tex”.

     She asked this man:

     “Jim, some people call you Tex. Are you from Texas?”

     Jim’s reply was:

     “Well, actually, I’m from Louisiana!…But I’m not gonna let [anybody] call me, “Louise”!

     🙂

177. AesopFan,

     I’ve had several foreigners who learned English as a second language state that song lyrics were one of the biggest hurdles for them, and even some who were excellent English speakers still struggled with it.

     I guess we English speakers have that a bit too. “‘Scuse me, While I Kiss this Guy” is an entire book devoted to the topic.

178. Rufus, well, there is that Texas German community that I’ve heard tell of. I wonder what their speech sounds like. And then of course we could bring in the concept of Bavaria as the Texas of Germany if we wanted to make other frivolous connections.

179. Philip Sells on February 15, 2022 at 6:26 pm said:

     Rufus, well, there is that Texas German community that I’ve heard tell of.”

     New Braunfels. That was another misfired scheme by a German aristocrat to set up a German ethno-state within the US.

     Great barbecue there. Some of the best I have ever had.

     The Natural Bridge caverns were kind of interesting. Take a bottle or two of water with you. I was dying of thirst and made the mistake of drinking out of a fountain hung on the wall. Didn’t notice the sign above it explaining that you drank at your own risk.

     They have probably done something about that by now.

     There are those Moravian colonies in Texas too. Czechs and Choimans in Texas. Who would have thought it.

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