(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:
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...
ReplyDeleteLEVY: 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.
Prima, danke.
ReplyDelete