[NOTE: This post was inspired by a discussion in the comments in this thread.]
I don’t speak German at all except for a few words. In fact, foreign languages aren’t my forte, although I’m sensitive to sounds.
Until a few years ago I’d always considered German to be an ugly language. It’s got all those gutturals, for example:
In popular consciousness, languages that make extensive use of guttural consonants are often considered to be guttural languages. English-speakers sometimes find such languages strange and even hard on the ear.
But then I had a long talk with a relative who was a linguistics major and who said that German was not really ugly or uglier than other languages, it was the associations it had, both historic and social. We argued about that for a while.
Later I came to agree at least somewhat with him. There’s of course the Nazi connection, but there’s also a tendency to hear the language (in American movies, for example) uttered very harshly even by non-Nazis, and with a barking quality. Was that influencing my perceptions of the sound of the language?
Here’s a person who speaks many languages, and who contends that increased familiarity with a language breeds both contempt and acceptance, tempering the sound of languages originally thought ugly, and uglifying the sound of those originally thought beautiful:
The Italian language isn’t an beautiful art piece being produced by an Italian, it’s the brush used to paint it. The Spanish language isn’t a sculpture presented by Spaniards and Mexicans and Columbians, et al., it’s the chisel being used to form it. It’s a tool.
And the same thing is true in reverse: German and Russian and Polish aren’t the brutal thuggish languages they seem like either. We only assume that because our own attempts to make their sounds feel unnatural. But to the native speaker, these languages are tools. They flow. They glide over those difficult sounds, and in that flow, when you listen, you’ll hear the beauty that you yourself failed to produce in your early attempts to speak it.
Although I still have no idea how to speak German, something of the sort happened to me as I became more familiar with the language through repeated listenings to the opera “Hansel and Gretel,” as well as reading certain German poems. The more I heard German and read the translations, the less ugly it sounded to me and the more neutral (not exactly beautiful, but sometimes bordering on it).
And as my linguistics relation pointed out – look at the list of languages that use gutturals. It contains several languages that many people find rather beautiful or at least charming, such as French (the R sound), Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh. So I really think there’s something about other associations with a language, both good and bad, that make us hear it a certain way.
With “Hansel and Gretel,” at first I much preferred the English version of the opera (there have been many translations over the years). The German sounded alternately harsh, silly, obscure, or almost comical (sometimes it was meant to sound comical).
But as I grew to know the opera better, I began to notice a few things. One was the frequent use of diminutives in the German. I was already familiar with this from Scottish – “wee” this and “wee” that, and in my favorite poem by Robert Burns, “To A Mouse,” it’s really apparent. I challenge you to find any lines in any major poem in any language that are more cutesie-poo than the following by Burns in that poem, and yet I love the poem intensely (including those diminutives which stopped seeming strange and ended up enhancing the effect). The entire poem actually expresses some extremely deep insights into the nature of existence, both human and animal:
Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,.
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Likewise, in the “Hansel and Gretel” opera, the libretto is chock full of the suffix “chen,” which isn’t usually translated at all in the English librettos. For example, take the famous “Brother, Come and Dance With Me” song the siblings sing towards the beginning of the opera. In German we have:
Brüderchen, komm, tanz’ mit mir,
beide Händchen reich’ ich Dir;
It’s usually translated into the English version of the song as something like “Brother, come and dance with me, both my hands I offer thee” (that’s what I learned in grade school anyway). Instead, you should have something like “Little brother (or “wee brother”?), come and dance with me, both my little hands (or handsies?) I offer thee…”
Then later in the song we have:
Mit den Füsschen tapp tapp tapp,
mit den Händchen klapp klapp klapp,
That’s usually rendered as “with your foot you tap tap tap/With your hands you clap clap clap” (sung with suitable accompanying gestures). But – and I bet now you’ve got the idea – it’s really something like “With your little foot (your footsie!) you tap tap tap, with your little hands (handsies) you clap clap clap.” In a later verse we get your “Köpfchen” going “nick nick nick,” and your “Fingerchen” going tick tick tick.
Lest you feel that’s so cloying you might just barf this very instant, let me reiterate that it’s not translated into English because English isn’t that sort of language, but German apparently is (like Burns’ Scottish vernacular). Or was. After all, kitsch is a German word (as is schadenfreude, but that’s a very different story). I’ll add that, for whatever reason, all those “chens” are a perfect fit for Hansel and Gretel, and only highlight the contrast between the little children and the evil they encounter – and triumph over – later on.
But “chen” was hardly diminutive enough for the librettist (who was composer Humperdincks’s sister, by the way). And it certainly isn’t enough for German, because when we get tired of “chen” we still have “lein.” Same deal: a “suffix used to create a diminutive form; e.g. Kind ? Kindlein…”
And kindlein it is for “Hansel and Gretel,” a suffix that appears often in the opera (such as, of course, to make Hanselein and Gretelein, nicknames the children call each other but which are never transferred to the English versions, as far as I know). Apparently in modern-day Germany “lein” is considered a bit archaic and poetic, and “chen” is more popular, but back when the opera was composed, “lein” must have been more common.
I’m not making this stuff up. Here’s an article called “How To Make Words Cute in German” that explains it for you:
By adding “chen” to the end of any word, it will automatically become the German Diminutive (meaning, a tiny version of itself) — and always carry the article “das”…
Even though Germans may applaud your grammatical accuracy, if you speak like this too much they will question your sanity and wonder what kind of adorable miniature wonderland you take this place for.
But it’s hardly just cutesiness that made me grow fond of the German used in the opera. There’s a certain gravity to it, as well, for the scary parts. For example, when the children are lost in the forest, and Gretel is getting especially scared – as is Hansel, but although he tries to cover it up – he sings:
Horch, wie rauscht es in den Bäumen! —
Weisst Du, was der Wald jetzt spricht?
„Kindlein!“ sagt er, „fürchtet ihr euch nicht?“
Hark, what a noise in the bushes!
Know you what the forest says?
“Children, children,” it says,
“Are you not afraid?”
The English translation leaves out the diminutive, as usual, but I find it more moving if the forest says “Little children, are you not afraid?” in German. The accompanying music sends a shiver down my spine, being both gentle and ominous. It’s followed by one of the most frightening transitional lines in the opera, the moment when the children go from the world of childhood and home and playing lightheartedly in the forest, to the whiff of very real danger. Hansel sings, very simply:
Gretel! Ich weiss den Weg nicht mehr!
The stage directions in English go like this: “Hänsel spies all around uneasily, at last he turns in despair to Gretel” and makes this terrible admission: “Gretel, I cannot find the way!” (no diminutives, no cutesy stuff at all) as the music slows down and gets rather quiet, and the pitch lowers in a series of steps.
Once I learned what the characters were saying in German – having read the translation – I found the original lyrics more powerful and meaningful than any translation. The German ceased to sound strange and began sounding expressive – and authentic; after all, this is based on a German folktale.
Here’s one version, showing the part where the children get frightened and realize they are lost and at the mercy of the forces of the dark forest. I’ve chosen this one because it’s in German but has handy English subtitles, not because it’s necessarily my favorite version:
[NOTE: I’m not at all sure I’m finished with this topic, but I’ll stop for now. I think I may do another post on translation, particularly in this opera but not limited to it.]