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If memory serves me right, Caesar described the Germanii as a large, hardy, ferocious people who inhabited the gloomy forests to the east of Gaul, wore hardly any clothes and were perpetually on the move. Well, if he were able to have a look around the seashores of Spain, Portugal or Italy today, he might say exactly the same thing, although this time around the context would be rather more peaceable. The descendents of those redoubtable forest-dwelling savages are probably the world's number-one travelers today, still gripped by an extraordinary wanderlust that sends them to the four corners of the earth in apparent flight from the serious, orderly and slightly boring society they have constructed for themselves in their geopolitical sandwich between the Latins to the west and the Slavs to the east. The Germans have done a lot of fighting and a lot of thinking about that sandwich over the centuries since Caesar reported on them, and the words that have entered the English language from their experience frequently reflect those military and intellectual struggles: they are light on things like play, gastronomy, fashion and frivolity but top heavy in philosophy, political thought and struggle in general: serious, consequential stuff. If these words tend to be a little ponderous and hard to pronounce, they are marvelously apt expressions of what could never be expressed so well if our English tongue just minded its own business and never wandered abroad to steal from others. -Rudolph Chelminski ( rudychelminski@compuserve.com) (This week's Guest Wordsmith, Rudolph Chelminski, is an American freelance writer living in France.)
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Carpal Tunnel
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marvelously apt expressions of what could never be expressed so well if our English tongue just minded its own business
I look forward to this argument’s development, and certainly relish the contribution made to the English language over the centuries by German, both in etymological history and through more recent ‘loan words’.
It strikes me that an alternate view is that these sorts of expressions rarely only do what is suggested above in actual practise. It is notable that the quoted example leant on an immediate Anglican explanation of the term. For me at least, this suggests the writer is seeking a more complex meaning – not merely “clarification” (which stems from the Latinate roots far more directly) but the more self-reflective “upwelling of clarification”. In other words, the writer wanted to draw attention both to his state of enlightenment and also to the frisson of the epiphany.
I also believe Germanic loan words are often introduced by English speakers to lend sometimes-artificial gravitas (another good Latin word!). However, there are some words that spring to mind as particularly useful – name your favourites or pet hates here…?
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old hand
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old hand
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Some very obvious likes:
schadenfreude
angst
zeitgeist
doppelganger (to which another thread somewhere has become devoted)
And I wish it were more common: gotterdamerung
Would a word like 'Marxism' be German or English?
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Carpal Tunnel
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and some more:
gemutlich schwarmerei weltanschauung weltschmerz zwischenzug
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yes, I particularly love the sheer sound (and conciseness of meaning) of weltschmerz, schadenfreude, and zeitgeist. German's ability to jam short words together like this makes for a great rhythmic sense as well.
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Christolf Wolff, in his gigantic tome on Bach, includes a diagram from 1800, the "sun of composers." In the center is Bach. Around him, three rays: Franz Joseph Haydn, George Friederick Handel, and Carl Heinrich Graun. Graun? Who Graun? Are we missing something?
Carl Heinrich Graun was one of those artists, like Per Luigi Zucchini or my uncle Sid, whose fame flickered all too briefly, a candleflame on the tavern wall. A boon companion of King Frederick the Great of Prussia, Graun celebrated the king's conquest of Upper and Lower Silesia with the first Ode to Joy --- Joy Maedelbachen Graun being his Graunmother. In return, Frederick wrote the story-board for Graun's celebrated, autobiographical operas Lohengraun and Das Rheingraun. They were produced in off-Berlin but flopped so badly that they were moved to off-off-Baden-Baden.
Here the composer's fortune improved. The city of Baden-Baden had just been overrun by rats, who packed the streets, took over the gutters, ate up the sidewalks, and refused to get out of the bierstuben. But the rodents were so enchanted by Graun's music that they flocked to the operahouse to hear his new song cycle Die Liederhosenlaudenflauffen, BMW 240. The rodents were rendered quiescent by the music, so that the city building department was able to squash them with a steam roller. The composer immediately memorialized the great day in his new opera, Die Flattermaus, which was a popular success with the townspeople as well. The critics compared Graun to the greatest masters, and the grateful city of Baden-Baden appointed him Kapellkapellmeister-meister. It was during this time that he produced his greatest secular Cantata, Ich bin ein Doppelgänger, BVD 36-long.
After this triumph, Graun produced a symphony of some note (possibly E-flat, although it is hard to be sure), the moving Theme and Variations on 'Graun Grow the Grässes-Oh?' and a cycle of quartets. Unfortunately, his balance was not what it had been, and he fell off the cycle going around a corner, and had to switch to a tricycle. Next, he began his famous experiments in edible counterpoint, which he illustrated in his Tafelmusik, BFD 1212, for various ensembles of coldcuts. Works included the Openface Sonata for pastrami and headcheese, a set of trio sonatas with basso continuo and potato salad on the side, and the merry Sauerkraut Dances. These too were a great success with his public, which ate them up.
In his Golden Years, Graun dropped music entirely to work on developing new foods for senior citizens. His crowning achievment was the cereal Graunola, the popularity of which keeps his name alive today. If you ever visit Baden-Baden, you will find a statue of Graun in the Rathausplatz, with a band of rodents (after whom the square is named) dancing happily about, nipping at his toesies.
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addict
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Ta, Pa!
I detect a touch of the Schickeles here. Can't wait for the CD.
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Bravo, Vater. Sehr gut! Schickele would be proud.
I also am awaiting the CD. I hope it will include Graun's lesser-known Consonant Cluster for the Clavier, BCD .3
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interestingly, Schickele and Graun turn up mutually on 36 google hits!
-joe (it's what I do) friday
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stranger
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stranger
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Does Fahrvergnügen count?
Hi, I'm new to AWDtalk but have over 35 years experience in struggling to make sense in English, with a Teutonic mind.
Fahrvergnügen, IMHO, masterly expresses the joy derived from driving a well handling car, and this shoe easily fits a lot of German vehicles. Which is why Volkswagen chose it as its claim for English speaking markets.
Audi, another brand of this corporation, has earlier used Vorsprung durch Technik (leading through technology) in Great Britain (don't know about other markets), so the urge to Germanize their international advertising has a history.
Life is a beach, and then you dive.
Life is a beach, and then you dive.
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