The German language

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

(possible future display name)

^ deutsch aufklärungshändler schlagzeile, klicken sie jetzt um herauszufinden!

"enlightenment dealer"?

du kennst… wie die weltberühmt voxjournalist ezra klein, oder die statistikenwunderkind nate silver

ja natürlich!

Pretty essential infographic:
How to Name Animals in German

Though sadly not covering Dickmaulrüssler-territory.

http://www.babbel.com/magazine/favorite-german-words

Original meaning of "toll" is closer to "crazy", which makes tollpatschig an even cooler word.

Keypad slipped into Deutsch mode and "overcome" was autocorrected to Obervolta and Obertönen.

Received a report from my German teacher which concludes "deine Fortschritte ist unverkennbar", except I spent a good couple of minutes staring at it because my first attempt at deciphering the handwriting was "...unverzeihbar"

my favourite recently discovered german word

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konfokalmikroskop

Here is a weird translation thing. If you look up the word "die Wanze" in a German-English dictionary it merely says "bug." But if you look it up in a German-only dictionary it seems to be more specific, that it is a flat, blood or sap-sucking insect.

Huh. DE -> NO dictionary gives what I'll literally translate to English as "wall louse".
Wikipedia DE's Wanzen page points to this English page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteroptera

Heteroptera is a group of about 40,000 species of insects in the order Hemiptera. Sometimes called "true bugs",[1] that name more commonly refers to Hemiptera as a whole, and "typical bugs" might be used as a more unequivocal alternative since among the Hemiptera the heteropterans are most consistently and universally termed "bugs".

Learned about this word the other day: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompetenz-Kompetenz

THanks, Øystein. Guess I should have thought to look at DE Wiki. Actually one reason I decided to start to stabilize my German is I had reached a dead end with the the Scandinavian languages.

funkelnagelneu

Kugelkopfschreibmaschine

Kuckucksuhr

Kuddelmuddel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_placeholder_names_by_language#German

hard to pick one but even on this i found myself bustin up at weitfortistan

Reichhaltige Sammlung.

"The German equivalent to the English John Doe for males and Jane Doe for females would be Max Mustermann (Max Specimen) and Erika Mustermann, respectively."

Erika Mustermann! lol. I had no idea. I did know that Erika is considered a grandma name in Germany but this is pretty funny.

Erica Specimen should be my new alias.