The German language

i'm guessing here so wait for one of the more fluent speakers to chime in before mailing any letters, but i just use zu tun haben mit as a direct translation of "to have to do with" and behandeln (in this context) as "to deal with" or "to cover". i'm struggling to think of an example in english that makes the differences between those two clear though. "to have to do with" is certainly a bit more coloquial. i guess it's also a bit less specific about the nature of the connection, whereas "to deal with"/"to cover" implies that the coverage must be comprehensive.

sorgen is something different. or can it be translated as "to concern" kind of like betreffen? in which case, i was not aware of that.

j., i don't personally have seen 'what does that have to do with me?' in an especially negative context yet but i'm no native speaker.
if it should express a negative attitude to a certain topic and is at the same time used for distancing from it the most fitting german equivalent should be "nichts angehen" -> "das geht mich nichts an", esp. "was geht mich das an?"

although "und was hat das mit mir zu tun?" / "damit hab ich nichts zu tun" can be meant negative as well, per se it's more neutral.

i guess i can imagine the question being asked genuinely, presupposing that it doesn't have anything to do with the asker but believing that the answerer is going to be able to provide the relevant connection to the asker. i just usually hear the question as a form of denial ('that has nothing to do with me; what's to say otherwise?').

Umgangssprache

that's a lovely word

Talking of lovely words...

"...when Chancellor Merkel used it at a public meeting, nobody batted an eyelid, our correspondent adds."

Uhhhh, what??!?! *checks calendar to make sure it isn't April 1st*

awesome

nebensächlich

a lovely word

Geheimdienstaffäre

The German for the stiffness you feel the day after exercise is Muskelkater, which word for word means 'muscle hangover'.

das WAP-Handy

BH Ideas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG62zay3kck

ach, schiesse!

Wunderbarbara... Thanks Lo Ambient

i miss germany! it is a good country. everything is very well made.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejuK8_12Fmg

ffs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejuK8_12Fmg

made-up German words: http://www.benschott.com/schottenfreude/

Somehow that reminds me of a friend who said "Es ist fast Food, aber nicht Food"

Special German Words on Mother Language Day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxVcgDMBU94

Thanks for the Special German Words. Some I was familiar with, some were new to me.

Ohrwurm
A personal favorite, Ohrwurm is the phrase you use to describe a song that is stuck in your head.

qvestion:

what sort of a feel is there for a relation/parallel between 'dastehen' (occurring as 'steht da', actually) and the question, 'wo steht…?', used to mean something like 'where does it say…?'?

i have a text where both occur, and i suppose some parallelism could be intended, but 'stehen' seems like -such- a wide-ranging verb to me that i wouldn't want to over-stress any superficial similarity between the two given that a native speaker probably would emphasize what the latter means rather than the fact that it is spelled like w/ dastehen.

or, alternative question: can anyone recommend a good way to get comfortable w/ the crazy range of things 'stehen' is used to say w/r/t the seemingly less-verby english 'stand'?

This is the very thing that defeated me ultimately. My German is not that bad but the pick-a-prefix-any-prefix + verb proliferation combined with the literal and figurative meanings overloaded on each of these makes a dense thicket of meanings very difficult to unpack. I believe Three Word Username, who was indeed able to master this stuff, commented upon this once, although I'm sure he managed to express it way better than I could.

My only consistent advice on getting comfortable with this stuff is that although it is super difficult and a bit of a mind fuck to try to get it together without comparing it to English (or any other first language except maybe Swedish or Dutch, and even then), it is in fact completely impossible to do it while consciously or subconsciously referring yourself to your first language. The "stehen = stand" cognate won't mess you up, but the prefixes will, because although they have meaning, they don't have a meaning that is consistent with any English cognate, really. So you have to train yourself to forget any notion of translating when you are reading, writing, or speaking German. Fluency is associating the word with an abstract or concrete concept, not with an English (or French or Korean or Swahili) word. The first time you know what a word exactly what a word means and can read and use it, but would have to stop and think and say "but not really" a lot to translate it, you are on the right path. Does that make any sense?

it does! i have found myself doing that more often, thanks in large part to getting a feel for syntax and sentence structure so that even phrases with unknown words fall into a natural order. but words like 'stehen' mess me up!

Try this: "stehen" is "stand", sure, why not; look at the prefixes and see if you can associate them with a hand gesture, a certain kind of motion. So "dastehen" is to stand (thrusts my hand downward, securely, indicating "here we are").

That looks like pretty good advice. Thanks.

Fever in the Funkhaus now.

http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/10-extraordinarily-german-phrases/

langsam langsam...?

OK, that's pretty good.

to have pig : )

Warning; "bescheuert" is very close to "retarded" in meaning and usage; I avoid it.

This seems like the best thread to ask this:

I am currently reading quite a lot of German Lit in translation. Partly its to further the depth of what I know, a mixture of re-reading and reading more by writers I love: Kafka, Rilke, Schnitzler, Musil, Joseph Roth, Bernhard.

But also finding new writers, some of whom are poets: Bachmann, Trakl, Heine, Peter Weiss, Brecht (what a poet he was, had no idea!)

I wasn't really going to tackle Goethe. I read Faust years ago, making little impression. ...Werther just isn't appealing. I told myself Buchner made much more of an impact upon the 'expressionist' mode of German writing and thought that appeals to me (I love the essay by Canetti detailing his encounter w/Lenz).

Upon reading The Diaries of Franz Kafka this isn't going to do. His notes on him, his awe of him...I need to read some of his poetry but what else is there? Any partic translations. He is someone who is quite hard to get a handle on.

there is an older penguin selected verse, available only used in the u.s., that pairs originals with prose paraphrases. i think the newer penguin is from the same translator david luke, but there apparently the verse is all translated.

faust can make an impact but, i dunno, i think you have to see it as more pop / mythic. i used to maybe read the kaufmann, or taylor, translations and they didn't do much for me. i had better luck with the oxford one, which i think is also (coincidentally, i don't have any great love for him) david luke. iirc luke emphasizes his effort to preserve the verse-forms: different speakers (and the same at different times) will say each part in its own little poem, so certain translation choices (or worse, prosification) will obscure one of the charms of the thing.

i've been poking away at the thomas carlyle (yes that one) translation of wilhelm meister for several years (i want to get a handle on mignon's character because of some shit schopenhauer said about one of the songs she sings). i couldn't really say why, but it has such an odd texture.

Can't speak to the accuracy of any of the translations but vol. 1 in the Princeton Collected Works, ed. Middleton, has a good spread of contemporary takes and a few older ones, all in verse and set against the original. I like Middleton's "Song To Mahomet" there.

Thanks both.

bentelec you've just reminded me I used to have one of the Princeton vols, studies on colour. Never felt inclined to crack that open.

Frohe Ostern Euch allen.

Speaking of Kafka, I probably just got this link off ILX in the first place, but it doesn't seem to be on this thread, so:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/01/on-translating-kafkas-the-metamorphosis.html

That's a great link, thanks.

Thanks, earlier this week I was just reading Susan's intro to her translation of Walser's Berlin Stories (NYRB books), part of my lol project.

Yes, thanks for the link. Didn't Nabokov actually claim to know the type if insect, some sort of beetle? This makes more sense.

nabokov always claimed the beetle had wings, and could have flown out the window, but gregor didn't know.

Oh yeah

How often is there a new translation? Seems like every few years. Maybe not quite as often as Can reissues but...

Truth be told it took me ages to parse the second sentence of Die Verwandlung- classic overstuffed German syntax.

part of my lol project.
What lol project? lol = learn other language?

http://www.vox.de/cms/index.html

^ for lovers of the fernsehen

Hier Komme Die Warum Jetzt

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