Daily Post | Earthquake Words/Erdbeben Wörter

25/05/2013

Daily Post

Did you get it?!

Since I was a girl and read Bennett Cerf’s Book of Riddles alongside my grandmother Mimi, I’ve enjoyed all sorts of jokes involving wordplay. For example, poised between a chuckle and a groan is “Why do birds fly south?” Answer: “It’s too far to walk.” Today at the library I checked out Witzbuch für Kinder, a collection which contains jokes of a similar nature in German. I found myself taken back in time, and like poetry, I think the economy of language in jokes gives you a special insight to real-world or everyday word use (die Alltagssprache).

WARNING/VORSICHT! You may want to read the examples below in private just in case you let out a loud guffaw (eine Lachsalve or in ein Gelächter ausbrechen – “to erupt in laughter” – or wiehern – ” to bray with laughter” – or gackernd lachen – “to cackle” – or schallendes Gelächter – “peals of laugher”) and then have to explain yourself by telling one of these jokes…

Zwei Flöhe kommen aus dem Kino. Es regnet in Strömen. Was meinst du? fragt der eine Floh. Springen wir zu Fuß, oder nehmen wir uns einen Hund?

Two fleas come out of cinema. It’s pouring rain. “What do you reckon?,” asks the one flea. “Should we walk home (literally jump or leap by foot) or should we take a dog?”

Zwei Spatzen sitzen auf der Fernsehantenne. Sie schluchzt herzerweichend. Er versucht, sie zu beruhigen. Vergeblich. Schließlich schreit er ganz verzweifelt: «Nun glaub mir doch endlich! Ich bin nicht verheiratet. Der Ring ist von der Vogelwarte.»

Two sparrows are sitting on a TV antenna (hmm, a bit dated, that). She is sobbing inconsolably. He is trying to calm her down but in vain. Finally he cries out in despair: “You have to believe me! I’m not married. The ring is from The Audubon Society” (or The European Union for Bird Ringing).

While das Rätsel seems to be the most common translation for “riddle,” I prefer die Scherzfrage – “the question joke” or perhaps “the joke question.” Now hold onto your hats, because here’s my attempt to have a bit of fun by creating a “question joke” in German.

Sf: Wo findet man die Deutschsprachigen Leute?
A: Meisten sind unter dem demselben D-A-CH.

Qj: Where do you find the German-speaking people?
A: Most are under the same roof.

For this to have a chance of being funny you need to know that the word for “roof” is das Dach and that the abbreviations for the three major German-speaking countries are Deutschland, Austria and Confoederatio Helvetica (Switzerland). Therefore while coming up with this pleased me to no end, I’m not going to be outselling Mr. Cerf anytime soon!

Tagged Bennett Cerf, children's books, D-A-CH, das Dach, das Rätsel, die Scherzfrage, flea joke, German-speaking, jokes, peals of laughter, poetry, riddles, roof, sparrow joke, wordplay

24/05/2013

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Daily Post

999

Today when I made a mistake and put on lip balm/salve before, rather than after, brushing my teeth, I shook my head and said to myself „Nein, Nein, Nein.“ Just then I realized that if overheard by a Brit, this exclamation could be taken either as something truly dire or something ironically exaggerated, because to get the emergency services one calls 999 (I started to write “one dials” and then was struck by how rarely this would literally describe the motion one would make in this age of smartphones). Yes, the sounds are a bit more clipped in the German version, but I would add “nine, nine, nine” and nein, nein, nein to my list of English-German/Deutsch-Englisch false friends.

All this put me in mind of when I was taking Japanese back in the early ’80’s because we were taught a bit about word play involving numbers. This type of wordplay is based on the fact that the characters that name the digits 0-9 have three different spoken renderings. This page from Wikipedia gives a number of examples, including the numeral 23 being used as a race car number by Nissan since one rendering of these two digits is pronounced /ni-san/. And as you do, I started to think about how you might put the sounds of the German number names together in order to get something meaningful in English, and at once 69 – sechs nein– came into my head. The bad pun on “head” is fully intended, so here’s hoping no pun-loving and precocious children are reading, or, if they are, perhaps learning German just got a bit more exciting?!

Tagged 69, 999, double entendre, false friend, innuendo, Japanese, Nein, neun, nine, Nissan, pun, sechs, wordplay

23/05/2013

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Daily Post

Einen Versuch Machen

Oder kann man “ein Experiment machen” sagen. Und dieser Versuch ist – Trommelwirbel, bitte – ich probiere schreiben dieses Blog auf Deutsch aus. Ja, du hast das richtig gehört. Ich muss Schreiben üben. Jetzt geht’s los – tut mir leid über mein mangelhaft Deutsch!

Heute in Dialog in Deutsch haben wir über den Schultag diskutiert. Nur unsere Gruppenleiter ist deutsch, deswegen wir über anderen Länder gehört haben. In China schuften die Kinder ab halb sieben bis zwölf und dann ab halb eins oder eins bis fünf. Nächste haben sie Abendessen zusammen mit ihre Mitschüler (oder Klassenkameraden) und dann lernen sie weiter, bis ungefähr halb zehn oder zehn. Sehr anstrengend! Die Chinesische Kinder mussen viele Ausdauer haben.

In Weißrussland haben die Kinder zwei oder drei Jahre von alle Wissenschaften wie Physik, Biologie und Chemie. Das klingt ja gut, ich lerne gern Wissenschaft.

Weil ich die Internet gern suchen, ich habe [Schule etymologie] gegoogelt (aus “googeln,” obwohl pons.ed hat “ergoogeln” gesagt). Der Eintrag von Wikipedia gibt eine Begriffsklärung:

Schule (lat. schola von griech. σχολή [skʰoˈlɛ:], „freie Zeit“) bezeichnet:

Schule, eine allgemeinbildende Unterrichtseinrichtung
freie Unterrichtseinrichtung
Schulgebäude
Herde, bei Wassertieren
Schule (Künstler), Künstlergruppe
Malerschule (Kunstgeschichte), Künstlergruppe
Schule (Wissenschaft), wissenschaftliche Lehrtradition
Schule (Psychologie), wissenschaftliche Lehrtradition
Schule (Musikpädagogik), ein Lehrbuch für ein bestimmtes Musikinstrument

Aber ist Englisch oder Deutsch die Quelle von diesem Zettel? Es fühlt mir ein bisschen wie Englisch…

Endlich habe ich einen Ausdruck über Schule.
“aus der Schule plaudern” – to talk out of school (“plaudern” ist mehr wie chat oder natter oder gossip als talk)

Ich glaube, dass ich ohne versuchen witzig gewesen. Ich hoffe das stimmt! Bis zum nächsten Mal.

Tagged ausprobieren, China, das Experiment, Der Versuch, Deutsch, die Begriffsklärung, googeln, obwohl, Trommelwirbel, Weißrussland. die Schule

22/05/2013

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Daily Post

Week 7 Anniversary

Earthquakes make the ground tremble and according to Online Etymology, the word “terrible” comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *tres– which means “to tremble.” What both earthquakes and trembling bring to mind for most of us is fear – think of the related word “terror” – thus, it can be rather confusing for people trying to learn English when they come across the adverbial form of “terrible” – “terribly”- as the former usually signals something negative and the latter something positive (think “terrific”).

“That was a terrible meal” VS. “That was a terribly good meal”

Similar issues arise with “awful” and “awfully,” which can be substituted above with no significant change to the meanings of these sentences. In both cases, the adverbial form has come to be used as an intensifier rather like “very” or “really.”

It turns out that there is at least one similar situation in German. Because German does not have a suffix like “-ly” to mark adverbial forms, disambiguating the two meanings/usages is perhaps even more confusing for a non-native speaker; one must rely on the surrounding words to get the correct sense. The word I’m thinking of here is unheimlich. As an adjective, pons.eu says it means “terrible” or “eerie” or “sinister” or “gives you the creeps” and also “incredible” and “terrific.” As an adverb, the meaning given by pons.eu is “incredibly” (or “eerily,” however this meaning is not given in the entry for unheimlich but only when you look up “eerily” itself).

Also note that unhelpful un at the beginning of unheimlich. This prefix usually signals negation as it does in English (you may recall unsichtbar from a previous post, meaning “not (or in-) visible”), thus increasing one’s tendency to believe this word has a negative connotation. However, appearances can be deceiving as heimlich also expresses something on the negative end of the spectrum, among the possibilities dict.cc gives are: “furtive(ly),” “surreptitious(ly),” “secret,” “clandestine,” “steathily” and “covert(ly).” Using heimlich with a verb adds a sense of sneakiness or doing something on the QT, for example, “to elope” – heimlich heiraten, “to plot something in secret” – etwas heimlich planen.

There is a German expression that plays off this pair – Lieber heimlich schlau als unheimlich doof – which means something to the effect of “It is better to be brilliant and keep quiet about it than it is to be an obvious and loud-mouthed idiot” (I did like this effort to preserve the word play: “Better guardedly canny than uncannily stupid” – although I altered the last word as the original made me uncomfortable).

So here’s wishing you an awfully, terribly, tremendously, earth-shakingly, unheimlich good week!

Tagged *tres, awful, awfully, brilliant, canny, clandestine, covert, eerie, furtive, heimlich, heimlich heiraten, idiotic, incredible, incredibly, intensifier, Latin, Lieber heimlich schlau als unheimlich doof, negation, prefix, Proto-Indo-European, QT, really, secret, sinister, stealthily, terrible, terribly, terrific, terror, to elope, tremble, un-, uncannily, unheimlich, very

21/05/2013

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Daily Post

If it’s all the same to you…

We have just finished a holiday weekend (Pfingsten – “Ascension” – see suggestions for how to celebrate here) here in Hamburg and during it people were frequently wishing each other well to which one reply is Danke, gleichfalls – “Thanks, same to you.”

As an adverb, gleichfalls also means “likewise,” “equally” and “in the same way” which makes sense as gleich can mean “same,” “equal/ly,” “similar” and “alike.” According to German is Easy, both gleich and the English word “like” come from the same root. The word falls on its own is a conjunction and can mean “if” or “in case” “or in the event/case of” and it appears in at least two other useful compound words:

jedenfalls – “anyway” or “anyhow” or “in any event”
ebenfalls – “also” or “likewise” or “ditto” or “as well” or, like gleichfalls, “same to you”

There is an additional family of meanings for gleich that refer to time: “in a minute,” “straight away,” “just” or “right.” It can also mean “immediately,” although I’ve usually seen this translated as sofort (or as I just learned from dict.cc schleunigst) and perhaps also “soon,” although again, I’ve more typically seen this translated as bald.

Since I opened with a farewell (der Abschied), I’ll close with another – bis gleich! – meaning in this case “see you here on Earthquake Words tomorrow, similar bat time, same bat channel!”

Tagged alike, also, anyhow, anyway, ascension, bald, Batman, bis gleich, Danke-gleichfalls, der Abschied, ditto, ebenfalls, equal, equality, equally, etymology, falls, farewell, gleich, holiday, if, immediately, in an minute, in case, in the same way, jedenfalls, just, like, likewise, Pfingsten, right, see you soon, similar, similarity, sofort, soon, straight away, Thanks-same to you, time

20/05/2013

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Daily Post

Cats, dogs, buckets and strings

As we’ve been having rain – der Regen – here in Hamburg the last few days, I thought I’d learn more about expressions describing or involving “rain.” First, here are a few that allow you to talk about rainy weather.

Es regnet Bindfäden – “It’s raining cats and dogs” – literally “It’s raining strings”
Es gießt Strippen – “It’s pouring down” – literally “It’s pouring strings”
Es gießt wie aus Kübeln – “It’s pouring like buckets” (this seems to work literally and figuratively)
Es regnet in Strömen – “It’s bucketing down” – literally “It’s raining in streams”
Es schüttet ordentlich – “It’s chucking it down” – literally something like “It’s pouring neatly”
Es nieselt – “It’s drizzling”
der Regentropfen – “raindrops”
der Guss – “downpour”
der Platzregen – “downpour”
der Wolkenbruch – “downpour

Pons.eu served up some nice idioms that involve rain:

jemanden im Regen stehen lassen – “to leave someone in the lurch” – literally “to leave someone standing in the rain”

vom Regen in die Traufe kommen – “out of the frying pan and into the fire” or “to go from bad to worse” – literally something like “to come from [standing in] the rain to [being under] the eaves” which was described as moving from having individual drops falling on you to having a sheet or steam of falling water hitting you by redensarten.net.

ein warmer Regen – “a windfall” – literally “a warm rain,” it is interesting how both expressions refer to the weather

Himmel, Arsch und Wolkenbruch/Zwirn! – “For crying out loud!’ – literally “Heaven, ass and cloudburst/[strong] thread”

Finally, in English we say “Every cloud has a silver lining,” which is surely worth remembering when days of rain are getting to you!

Tagged cats, das Sprichwort, der Guss, der Platzregen, der Regentropfen, der Wolkenbruch, die Bindfäden, die Kübeln, die Redensart, die Strippen, dogs, downpour, ein warmer Regen, Every cloud has a silver lining, For crying out loud, gießen, Himmel Arsch und Wolkenbruch, idoms, im Regen stehen lassen, nieseln, out of the frying pan and into the fire, proverbs, rain, raindrops, Regen, regnen, schütten, Strömen, strings, to drizzle, to leave someone in the lurch, to pour, to rain, vom Regen in die Traufe kommen, weather, windfall

19/05/2013

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Daily Post

Getting lost

Today when I went for a run, I ended up getting lost as a result of my being new to the area and my penchant for trying new paths while on a run in order to avoid repeating part of route unless absolutely necessary. While lost, I began to ponder both “to get lost” and the expression “Get lost!” as I didn’t, until researching this piece, know how to say them in German.

For “to get lost” I discovered several options, two of which are reflexive, sich verirren – for which no meaning other than “to get lost” is given – and sich verlaufen – which can also mean “to disperse” or in the case of a crowd “to thin out.” This second was particularly appealing given that I happened to get lost while “running” which can be translated as laufen.

There are also options that appear to apply more to things getting lost such as abhandenkommen (which appears in the phrase Diebstahl Plünderung Abhandenkommen – “theft, pilferage and non-delivery”) or verlorengehen – “to go astray” – which it appears is typically used to refer to something lost in the post/mail.

There is also hopsgehen which is a slang term that can mean “to die” (think “to kick the bucket”) or “to get broken/break down” as well as “to get lost.” One thing I loved about this is its past tense – ging hops.

And of course, just as in English, there are also figurative versions of “getting lost” such as nicht mehr weiter wissen – “to be [all] at sea” – or “to be lost in a book/in thought” – in Gedanken/ein Buch versunken sein.

And given the command form “Get lost!” means something quite different, I couldn’t resist searching for German parallels for this phrase. One that I uncovered is Zieh Leine! (literally something like “Pull the rope!”) for which pons.eu also offers the translations “Go fly a kite!” and “Take a hike.” A second is Mach dich vom Acker! (literally something like “Make/Take yourself from the field!”) and appears to come from military slang for leaving the practice field and possible going AWOL. (For more slang from this part of the alphabet see this page from the Goethe Institute).

Once again it has been a pleasure getting lost in both English and German, proving to me the proverb that Der Weg ist das Ziel.

Tagged abhandenkommen, Der Weg ist das Ziel, get lost!, hopsgehen, in Gedanken/ein Buch versunken sein, laufen, Mach dich vom Acker!, nicht mehr weiter wissen, post, proverb, running, sich verirren, sich verlaufen, to be all at sea, to be lost in thought/in a book, to get lost, to go astray, to kick the bucket, verlorengehen, Zieh Leine!

18/05/2013

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Daily Post

Unfortunate songs?!

Tonight is one of my favorite kitsch classics – The Eurovision Song Contest – which puts me in mind of an error I made a few months ago when talking about this event. Instead of saying “songs” – die Lieder – I said *die Leider which, if it were a noun, would perhaps mean something like “the unfortunates” as the most common meaning of leider is “unfortunately.” Now this is an error that should only be common among people whose native tongue includes both “ei” and “ie” as vowel combinations and who have some idea of how the word “song” is spelled in German. In other words, I made this error as a result of mis-recalling how the word das Lied – “song” – is spelt, rather than mis-recalling how it sounds.

It is also possible that pushing me away from the correct spelling, and thus the correct pronunciation, is the English false friend “lied” which shares the spelling but neither the meaning nor the sound of das Lied. Or perhaps some interference was caused by the fact that we use “lied” in English to talk about a type of music, but keep the English pronunciation so that it matches the past tense for “to lie” (lügen – past participle gelogen)?! (You may know the “lied” as the “art song” – it is usually a poem on a romantic or pastoral theme that has been set to music: http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/.)

Of course, doing the research for today’s post also allowed me to discover something else new and wonderful, namely this blog about die Rechtschreibung (“correct spelling” but somehow also something more than that since this was the result of a planned to change to German in 1996) : http://woerter.germanblogs.de/archive/2012/09/23/es-tut-mir-leid-oder-es-tut-mir-leid-wie-schreibt-man-das-richtig.htm I have to say that I am impressed that someone would make a series of videos about spelling – Rechtschreib TV.

Not to be too critical of the Eurovision, as it is certainly a cultural phenomenon worth understanding – Abba got their start this way and Bonnie Tyler is performing this year’s British entry – if for no other reason than then one can say nil point with authority, but I have to think that there might be more value in watching a couple hours of Rechtschreib TV!

Tagged Abba, art song, Bonnie Tyler, das Lied, die Rechtschreibung, Eurovision Song Contest, false friend, gelogen, lügen, leider, lied, Rechtschreib TV, sound errors, spelling errors, spelling reform, to lie

17/05/2013

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Daily Post

Harboring fools?

Last week the Hamburg harbor had its annual birthday celebration (for some photos, click here) and as a result there has been much talk of ships, sailing and cargo. In these discussions, a couple of words have stood out for me. The first is the word for tugboat – der Schlepper – because in English we can talk about moving things about by saying that we are “shlepping them.” This happens to be another example of the connection between Yiddish and German which both have the verb schleppen, meaning “to drag.” What I hadn’t realized until working on this post, however, is that there is an additional meaning of “schlepper” beyond the notion of someone who is doing the “schlepping.” Various sources gives the meanings as “fool,” “idiot” and something a bit like “slovenly” or “slacker” as well as “someone who wanders aimlessly” which feels like a distant but perhaps not totally unrelated notion (I see someone being dragged in several directions and as a result never ending up anywhere).

The second is the word die Schifffahrt – and no, your eyes don’t deceive you, in the spelling reform process this word was awarded a third “f” to ensure that its compound status was clear (see this page for a list of new triple letter words) – meaning “shipping” or “navigation,” and, when you are at a scenic location like the Hamburg harbor, “boat trip.”

The third is the German word for “steamship” or “steamboat” – der Dampfer. This is a partial cognate as one of its other meanings is “damper” in the sense of the muting action on piano strings or in the figurative sense of “putting a damper on someone’s spirits.” But the image in my mind that helps me remember this word in its nautical sense relies on the relationship between der Dampfer and “damp” (which is actually translated either as feucht or klamm): I see a ship that is damp not solely from being afloat, but also from the condensation of the steam that is powering it.

Quite fabulously, according to the Guardian, the Guinness Book of World Records gives a combination of der Dampfer and die Schifffahrt together with a just few other words as the longest in German:
die Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft – “the association for subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services” – which although likely apocryphal didn’t bring up any of that red underlining WordPress uses to warn you of a misspelling!

I was also intrigued to find that der Dampfer appears in the idiom auf dem falschen Dampfer sein/sitzen – “to be barking up the wrong tree” or “to have gotten the wrong end of the stick” – something of which I’ve had no shortage of opportunities to do as I work on learning German!

Tagged auf dem falschen Dampfer sein, boat trip, damper, der Dampfer, der Schlepper, die Schifffahrt, Guardian, Guinness Book of World Records, harbor, idiot, longest word, schlepping, shipping, slacker, steamboat, to be barking up the wrong tree, to drag, to have gotten the wrong end of the stick, triple letter words, tugboat, Yiddish

16/05/2013

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Daily Post

Correct or auto-correct? No worries!

I thought I’d had a bit of a breakthrough in German the other day when I received this text message (SMS):

Kein Thema, bis gleich.

Now, to me, the German learner, this was first baffling, and then, because it had stumped me, I felt sure it must the result of auto-correction of:

Kein Problem, bis gleich – “No problem, see you shortly.”

But no! Although I was aware of the meaning of das Thema as “topic,” “theme” (gotta love those cognates!) or “subject,” I had never heard it used in the expression Kein Thema! meaning “Not a problem!” Perhaps this use of das Thema stems from it having the meaning “issue” in the sense of “topic” – in English one can say that something is “not an issue” and mean that it is “not a problem.” Whatever the source of this meaning of kein Thema, researching it led to two other nifty things.

First, I discovered this podcast from PukkaGerman about colloquial expressions for saying things like “Sure, no problem” and in listening I finally learned why my friends Julia and Wiebke were saying stimmt so when they paid their bills for Kaffee und Kuchen (basically “keep the change”); as well as that to answer “with pleasure” to a suggestion one can say either gern or gerne (I’d heard both and thought that there might be some distinction in meaning between them – a whole post or two needs to be done on this useful adverb).

Second, dict.cc offered me several other ways to say “no problem” beyond my newest friend kein Thema:

Keine Ursache – “no problem” or “you’re welcome” or “no worries” or “don’t mention it” or “no bother at all”
Wird gemacht – “no problem” or “will do” (this is not too far from a literal translation)
Ist nicht schlimm – “no problem” or “don’t worry”
Nichts leichter als das – “no problem” or “no problem at all”

With language learning it seems that there is kein Thema finding new themes to explore!

Tagged auto-correct, colloquialisms, das Thema, gern(e), ist nicht schlimm, kein Problem, kein Thema, kein Ursache, nichts leichter als das, no problem, no worries, PukkaGerman, SMS, stimmt so, subject, text message, theme, topic, wird gemacht

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Earthquake Words/Erdbeben Wörter

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Category Archives: Daily Post

Did you get it?!

999

Einen Versuch Machen

Week 7 Anniversary

If it’s all the same to you…

Cats, dogs, buckets and strings

Getting lost

Unfortunate songs?!

Harboring fools?

Correct or auto-correct? No worries!