Sunday, July 19, 2020

Was neues


(1)  It’s not only in our own day that satirists have tossed aside their acid-inked pens,  at the hopeless task of depicting a reality that has outstripped their art.   This, from Bismarckian Germany in 1866:

Ein Berliner Witzblatt erklärte, sein Erscheinen  einstellen zu müssen, denn bessere Witze als Herr von Bismarck könne es nicht machen.
-- Golo Mann, Deutsche Geschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (1958; 1992), p. 352


See:

(2)  From a German grammar:

Die, die die, die die Anlagen beschädigen, zur Anzeige bringen, erhalten fünf Taler Belohnung.
-- G. Curme, A Grammar of the German Language (2nd edn. 1922), p. 198

That sentence isn’t actually at all confusing, if you read it with the correct stress:
    DIE, die DIE, die die ..

See:


*
Für psychologisch tiefgreifende Krimis,
in pikanter amerikanischer Mundart,
und christlich gesinnt,
klicken Sie bitte hier:
 
*
 

(3)  Mensch is a rather friendly-sounding German for any human being;  in Yiddish-English, a mensch is a solid, kind-hearted guy.   In the following, the word is contrasted invidiously with ‘policemen’, who thus are delimited outside the circle of humanity:

“ein Mensch schwer und vier Polizisten leicht verletzt. „ https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article211457365/Stuttgart-Festnahmen-wegen-Auseinandersetzungen-vier-Polizisten-verletzt.html#Comments

Reader comments:

“ein Mensch schwer und vier Polizisten leicht verletzt. „ So klingt linker Sprachgebrauch. Macht ihr Journalisten schon unterbewusst. Als ob Polizisten keine Menschen sind.
-
Ein Mensch und 4 Polizisten- habt ihr das aus Versehen aus einem linksextremen Kampfblatt übernommen??

See:

2 comments:

  1. Street people call non-gangsters and non-cops "citizens," without implying that cops and average people are non-citizens, and that's probably the best translation for "mensch" in this context. For example, in The Wire...

    LEVY: You say you aren't here testifying against the defendant because of any deal you made with police.

    OMAR: True that.

    LEVY: That you are here because you want to tell the truth about what happened to Mr. Gant in that housing project parking lot.

    OMAR: Yup.

    LEVY: When in fact you are exactly the kind of person who would, if you felt you needed to, shoot a man down on a housing project parking lot, and then lie to the police about it, would you not?

    OMAR: Look, I ain't never put my gun to no citizen.

    ReplyDelete