Zum neuen Jahr
“Wird’s besser? Wird’s schlimmer?”
fragt man alljährlich.
Seien wir ehrlich:
Leben ist immer
lebensgefährlich.
-Erich Kästner
At the turning of the year
Will things get better? Will things get worse?
we wonder every year.
Let’s face it:
life is forever
life-threatening.
Ich hoffe, dass Gedichte übersetzend sich nicht Leben gefährden. Jedenfalls, auf Englisch sagen wir what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger und auf Deutsch “Was dich nicht umbringt macht dich nur stärker.”
I subscribe to a “phrase a day” email service from www.phrasen.com (well, actually it is Phrasen des Tages and there are three phrases per post). Mostly they are idiomatic phrases, which is why I subscribe, but sometimes I have no idea why they believe the phrase is one people might need (or want) to learn. For example, this arrived on the last day of May:
Deutsch: Die Beschaffenheit des Felsens lässt auf einen vulkanischen Ursprung schließen
Englisch: “The nature of the rock implies/suggests that it is volcanic in origin”
Lucky for me, this phrase just happens to be related to earth science and thus is useful given each Wednesday I try to concoct a post that somehow simultaneously discusses learning German and falls under the “earthquake” banner. But for other people without such a particular need, is this a phrase that would make them say, “Gosh, I sure am glad phrasen.com shared that with me!” No, probably not.
Now, I’m assuming that the point of this rather random sentence is to give you meaning for the rather complicated verb form schließen lassen auf – “to be indicative of” or “to imply.” However this feels quite different from expressions such as Probieren geht über Studieren – “The proof is in the pudding” (dict.cc also offers “Suck it and see”) or im Dreck herumwühlen – “to muckrake” – which, while they aren’t things you will be saying each and everyday, are usable “as is” by everyone, not solely geologists, vulcanologists or people whose blogs happen to mention earth science concepts in their titles. Perhaps a little more Studieren is in order at phrasen.com?
Last night I was at my first Irish set dance event in Hamburg (yes, those lower legs are a bit achey today) and was intrigued but not completely surprised to find that the dances were called using the English names for the moves – House, Ladies’ Chain, Advance-Retire, etc. Proper names are for the most part quite arbitrary and translating them may create more problems that it solves, however, as German nouns require a gender or genus (das Geschlecht namely männlich, weiblich and sächlich otherwise known as “masculine,” “feminine” and “neuter”), some conversion is inevitable. Unfortunately in trying to keep up with dances I haven’t done in over a year, I didn’t collect any examples of gender assignment. Therefore, here are some examples from my good friend canoo.net of the (informal) principles by which a genus is conferred.
Principle 1
When the source language has grammatical genders that map onto German, use them.
der Boulevard French “le boulevard”
die Allee French “une allée”
der Pueblo Spanish “el pueblo”
der Cappuccino Italian “il cappuccino”
Principle 2
Use the gender of a German word with the same ending because endings are a clue to the genus (e.g., –er goes with der, –ung goes with die and –chen goes with das).
die Garage like die Blamage, die Passage (contrast French “le garage”)
die Zigarre like die Gitarre an many more in –e (contrast French “le cigare”)
das Duett like das Tablett, das Amulett (contrast Italian “il duetto”)
der Computer like all nouns derived from verbs that end in –er : der Arbeiter, der Rechner (no contrast as English has no genders)
Principle 3
Translate the word and then use the genus of its German equivalent.
der Star via der Stern
das Training via das Trainieren (likewise das Coaching and other English “-ing” words)
der Trafalgar Square via der Platz
Principle 4
Use the genus of other foreign words from the same semantic field, assuming that there is some commonality among the members of this group.
das Marihuana like das Heroin, das Kokain and das Gras
These principles sound good in principle, however, what’s one to do when several of them clash?! For example, how should we award a genus to “grappa” when it comes from a feminine Italian noun but other foreign and native members of this family already take the masculine? This is how we come to find both die Grappa, gendered like the Italian “la grappa,” and der Grappa, gendered like der Whisky, der Cognac and der Schnaps.
Finally, in keeping with the general flexibility needed to cope with a new language, there are occasionally different options in German for expressing the same foreign concept and these do not necessarily have the same genus. Because this blog often focuses on the ups and downs of the language learner, I’m delighted to report that one pair is DER Rollercoaster (on the basis of Principle 2, see the last entry above) and DIE Achterbahn (on the basis of Principle 3 above), and furthermore, the equivalent of the figurative use of “roller coaster” is DAS [ständiges] Auf und Ab, giving us that third genus!
Last night a friend told me that he wouldn’t be staying out too late because he had einen Kater – a hangover. Now der Kater is also a “tomcat” and thus when you say that you have a hangover to someone who knows only this latter meaning (perhaps from having read “Puss in Boots” or Der Gestiefelte Kater), he or she might wonder why you are sharing that you have a male cat at home and why this has resulted in the headache and nausea you’d also mentioned. Tantalizingly, although I couldn’t find an etymological connection to cats or die Katzen, one German word for “vomit,” or perhaps more accurately “puke,” is die Kotze and “to puke” is kotzen.
Now mistaking cats and hangovers would be amusing enough on its own, but somehow der Kater also brought to mind Mr Kotter, the teacher played by Gabe Kaplan in the 70s series “Welcome Back Kotter.” (Note: I probably spent too much time last week talking about the bad old days of television in the US: I was trying to explain the word der Hausmeister and the best I could come up with was Dwayne Schneider (Pat Harrington) from “One Day at a Time” which then spiraled off into whether with the name “Schneider” he was supposed to be of German heritage…). Of course der Kater is /katɐ/ and if “Kotter” were a German word it would be /kɔtɐ/ but for most North American speakers of English this contrast is diluted as /a/ and /ɔ/ rarely appear without being elongated – /a:/ and /ɔ:/ – and without this elongation the sound difference between these vowels can be difficult to perceive. Nevertheless, I think this character is now forever re-christened in my mind as Mr Hangover.
Yesterday I encountered a sign that read:
Unbedingt Hygienebeutel benutzen
I was struck by the economy of words, nothing wasted in this discussion of what to do with your waste. My sense is that in the US we would be likely to say something much more like “Don’t flush sanitary products, please put them in this container” which, in addition to having many more words, also feels significantly less direct.
The word unbedingt is one which I first encountered on another sign; there it was used to leave people in no doubt that dogs must be on leashes/leads. Various sources render its meaning as “absolute(ly),” “unconditional(ly),” “imperative(ly),” “obligator(il)y,” categorical(ly)” and “without fail.” In other words, it’s strong stuff. With these meanings, and given it appears on signage, it also feels that little bit formal to me. It would seem that this intuition is perhaps incorrect, though, as DWDS.de lists some lovely synonyms in umgangssprachlich (ugs.) or colloquial usage and their translations into English are also quite colloquial:
allemal – “every time”
hundert Pro – “sure as the sun rises” or literally “one hundred per[cent]”
ey Alter, ich schwör – “Hey dude, I swear”
todsicher – “dead sure; a dead cert”
auf Gedeih und Verderb – “completely and utterly; for better or for worse” or more literally something like “spanning success and decay”
DWDS also includes the expression ganz und gar – “utterly and completely” – a combination I’d wondered about given the ability in German to verstärken almost everything, including superlatives. What, is that ganz genau, I hear you say?!
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Earthquake Words/Erdbeben Wörter 