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| Graffiti in Tübingen Castle |
She looked startled, not knowing whether to cry or to throw something heavy at me.Was I being cruel or offensive when I uttered those words?
She had spent five years near Marseille in France, became pretty near fluent, and in French je t'aime draws another's heart closer, even if you don't know the language.
So, for her, the grating sound of German offended her sensibilities. I was forbidden to say "I love you" in German ever again.
Which has nothing to do with anything other than that's what came to mind when I saw this video comparing the sound of German with other languages.
71 comments:
It's like Klingon, only real.
Apologies to Trekkies.
German and Arabic are just low throat gutteral languages.
I don't know but to me every sentence sounds like it can be translated;
"Let me see your papers, Raus!"
Liesel Bopp hieb es Schloss der schieb
An Dutzend Noor, wer zu Feind dem,
Lief dem AaL ohn' an Tee willkomm Ohm;
Brenken der Teil Spee ein dem.
Morder Goss Reims, The Gustav Leberwurst Manuscript
I think German sounds sexy.
I have this problem with Rilke. You read a translation and think, wow, great stuff, then you read the German out loud and go: this is Poetry???
deborah said...
I think German sounds sexy.
You'd probably love Dutch too then. I can speak German with a Dutch accent. I'm the Lem Chaney of voices.
I went on a trip to Mexico in high school to work with a school down there for a little bit. I was taking French as a class, but grew up in California, my grandfather had a multi-decade ministry training Mexican pastors, so I had rudimentary Spanish skills.
I introduced myself to the kids in my Spanish. They all laughed. I was bewildered. The translator said I spoke Spanish with a French accent.
It's not what you say, it's how you say it.
German, f'rinstance, sounds lousy coming out of Der Fuhrer (the first one) when he was trying to get everybody wound up enough to conquer Europe, but it probably sounded better when he was trying to get a little from Eva.
Dutch is a lot guttural too. People have unpronounceable names.
"German, f'rinstance, sounds lousy coming out of Der Fuhrer (the first one) when he was trying to get everybody wound up enough to conquer Europe, but it probably sounded better when he was trying to get a little from Eva."
Bingo.
Arabic low guttural language...he should know.
So, chick is it Frankensteen or Frankenstine?
Dieses ist ernsthaft lustig. Danke.
That's a hilarious Twain essay, Paddy O. It gave me an idea.
BTW, he also wrote one called "Italian Without A Master" which is not quite as funny. I think because he found that language more difficult. They both appear in his "A Tramp Abroad" if I recall correctly.
Frankenshtine
deborah said...
So, chick is it Frankensteen or Frankenstine?
Stine like Einstein.
The Swiss Germans do the opposite. They would pronounce Frankenstein like Frankensteen.
But the "s" is like "sh" before a "t", no?
Swiss German is not a written language. It's a secret spoken dialect which lets them discriminate against foreigners. This came by way of necessity defending their "Alpania" over the centuries. Napoleon was the last to conquer the Swiss.
I enjoyed that.
I think it would be nice to have an open thread every evening. Sorry to step on your post to say that, PaddyO. But that's kind of my point.
Otherwise I appreciate the site. It's a little different for me here than it was at Althouse.
Thanks.
Is it Wittgenstein or Vittgenstein?
(Thanks, Basta!)
It was almost Mittgenstein but Obama pulled it off at the last minute.
lol
I think German sounds sexy.
Okay, then, we know what deborah is in to.
So moving along....
Dutch is a lot guttural too. People have unpronounceable names.
Except for that imminent research scientist, Taco B. M. Monster, of course.
Ha ha ha ha.
My daughter spent a semester of college in Salztburg and said that it was a very VERY orderly society. Even when the hosts would ask nicely for the students to get on the bus, or if they would like to stop for ice cream, it always sounded like an order that you'd damned better well obey! and obey quickly!
I'll never know why Germanophiles can't understand why the language sounds so ugly to almost everyone else.
Here's why:
1. It's a language of technical abstraction to the extreme. Yes, it has a scientific legacy which might be sexy to geek-lovers, but the fact that it strings endless series of word particles together to make umpteen-syllable compound words detracts from the very simplicity that is beauty. It's like saying you find the ones and zeros of binary code prettier than a digital image.
2. It's made fricatives out of every plosive. To a non-linguist, that might not sound like a very damning charge, but imagine an English speaker who forcibly over-annunciated every 't' to the point of turning it into a spitting 's', and every 'p' to the point of becoming a bunch of 'ffffff's. Or a bunch of 'pfffff's, is more like it (which is incidentally how we transcribe the blowing of fart noises by vibrating one's tongue between the lips. Not sexy? You're right). That speaker is now well on his way to becoming German, as far as phonology is concerned.
So yeah, if anal-retentive precision in your sentence structure and coercive over-annunciation of hard consonants to the point where they implode into spitting sounds is your bag, then I guess that's a sexy language.
Dutch is kind of like a middle-ground between German and English. And if you're into really abstract comparative linguistics, the Frisian Islands north of Holland are inhabited by people speaking a dialect of Dutch so similar to English that there are entire verses of phrases that are nearly mutually intelligible to the English ear.
It's not as guttural as German in the sense that I described, but does retain original velar fricatives (that English used to pronounce in consonant clusters such as the 'gh' in 'night') and trills the r at whichever point in the front or the back of the mouth that the speaker wants to.
Nice work R & B.
Here is another example Paddy O...
I like Japanese and Cantonese for different reasons.
I like the way Japanese can sound extremely feminine or extremely masculine depending depending on how the speaker wields it.
I like the way Cantonese sounds so musical, and there is no language in which one can whine so amusingly which is excellent for comedies.
I think it is amusing which words British dislike hearing, seem to have Germanic origin, top of the list, and I heard this several times, "gotten" grates on their ears.
I just have one word for you R&B, just one word.
Are you listening R&B?
Scheveningen
Balls:
"So yeah, if anal-retentive precision in your sentence structure and coercive over-annunciation of hard consonants to the point where they implode into spitting sounds is your bag, then I guess that's a sexy language."
Merci, monsieur.
Thanks phx.
Languages are interesting to study. I can imagine appreciating languages as diverse as Japanese or Cantonese (or even, when I'm feeling generous enough - German) as it's like witnessing different architectural styles. Some places have pagodas, others marble columns. And some have voiced glottal fricatives (Indian languages - a very unusual feature that's very common to them) whereas others pharangealize everything (Arabic).
And then there's the way the Russians palatize a bunch of their speech (the way you hear them make a high "ee" or "yi" sound with nearly every other vowel or consonant).
It's as distinct as St. Basils.
You get the picture.
Learning to first imitate the sounds and accents is one of the best ways of building a solid foundation for fluently speaking the language. It's that same imitation that gets the children to take to it as "natives" - that they so is so difficult for adults.
Arabic is interesting because once you learn the alphabet well, you can take dictation without knowing the language. When I took it, a guy in our class got a summer job writing down transcripts in Arabic at an embassy once we finished the alphabet and could spell decently. (Maybe lots of other languages are like that. I don't know. I always thought it was interesting though.)
And what of that district of The Hague, Chickie?
Mozart has some German operas. They sound so much harsher than the Italian ones. If Mozart can't help you sound melodious, you're doomed.
It's easy to get an ear for Cantonese because there are so many wonderful, popular movies in Cantonese. Anyone with any sort of taste in movies (drama, horror, action, comedy) can switch to Hong Kong films for a time, watch tons of great movies, and pick up an ear for the sounds in the language.
Scheveningen
A very interesting variation of the Sicilian Defense - notably played by Karpov in the 70s and 80s I believe. Lost some favour in contemporary chess.
Well look if you guys are gonna show off about languages, I have to make something up.
@R&B: Many Dutch use its correct pronunciation as a litmus test for mastery of their language -- especially Germans, who tend to mess it up.
Of course the Germans laugh at the sound of Dutch (and Swiss German) and love to mock it (at least the Germans I hung out with).
I guess I'm weird in that I actually found the strange sounds of Arabic more interesting than the script. It's so cursive and makes me pine for the early-original Kufic script, which is much more angled.
I guess that's a part of Latin orthography that I do appreciate: Straight lines!
The other really cool thing about Semitic languages: Triliteral roots! The meaning of nearly every word can be anticipated as long as you can identify the basic three consonant "stem" inside that was elaborated upon to form the specific word. It makes for very predictable vocabulary formation. The easy part!
Learning to first imitate the sounds and accents is one of the best ways of building a solid foundation for fluently speaking the language.
This is true. German pronunciation can be mastered by imitating Sgt. Schultz from "Hogan's Heroes." Ditto for La Beau with the French.
Well, I say the "easy" part because I'd think that accumulating/building vocabulary is usually the hard part.
Semitic languages make that a bit easier for you.
Hey, check this out!
If you nerds hadn't yet caught a glimpse of this clip, you really should. I think I first saw it about a month or month and a half (time flies so fast these days) ago.
Pretty impressive stuff.
He actually says that German is a very popular language in the polyglot community. So there's something for the Germanophiles to feel good about.
Here's a primer for correct Italian pronunciation: Down By Law
Scheveningen
Yes, how could I forget that! after spending so many nights at the bars on that beach.. not to drink but to eat dutch pancakes with fork and knife (they are thin) by the fire side and play billairds -- a girl on her first trip abroad who didn't know how to eat with a fork and knife (you see, we ate with our fingers in India).
I'm not sure why, but in that video, I notice that some languages he tends to practice (or "speak?") in higher pitches and some in lower pitches. Maybe that makes it just a bit easier to differentiate once you get up to twenty damn languages - imagining a different "voice" in each.
But I do think that just reinforces the idea of how important/helpful it is to learn about how to get the sounds right.
"The easy part!"
Yeah, except when you get to the categories of triliterals where one of the consonants is missing. And it can be in first, second or third place, each of which trigger totally different morphological reactions. And then there are the notorious double-weak roots, where you're reduced to essentially a single letter. Have fun conjugating that!
A very interesting variation of the Sicilian Defense - notably played by Karpov in the 70s and 80s I believe. Lost some favour in contemporary chess.
It was a specialty of the young Kasparov (who wrote a book about it), before he switched over to the Najdorf.
These days people try avoiding those older open Sicilian lines a lot (especially more recently popular lines like the Kalashnikov and the Sveshnikov), so we see the Rossolimo a lot more often than in the past.
I miss the old days, with the Poisoned Pawn and Polugaevsky Variations in the Najdorf, but with preparation as deep as it is these days, it's easy to understand why those just don't get played much anymore. (And the Polu was never that popular, despite being the most fun variation out there.)
I dunno why, but I think out of all the ones he speaks that I'm not as familiar with, I find Indonesian the most interesting. The morphology is very simple, as I recall. Also, he uses it as a transition into Dutch, as Indonesia was a former Dutch colony.
When he starts speaking isiXhosa, watch out!
Is the lull in commenting because everyone's watching the video?
Good post on the state of the contemporary Sicilian, Icepick. I would say I don't think there's ever been a time when one variation of the Sicilian was so dominant, i.e., the Najdorf, as it is today. I don't play the Sicilian much as White so I'm not as familiar, but I gather that the contemporary variations of the Scheveningen have evolved into variations of the Najdorf.
I miss the old days of the Poisoned Pawn as well - the Star Wars defense someone once called it. I gather it was all worked out to a draw over 30 moves deep for the GMs.
In my casual play I like the old Richter-Rauzer.
For me, yeah, I just finished watching. I really noticed the difference in pitch when he switched from Pashto to Farsi.
You know, I finally watched the video in the post, and I've got to say they're being pretty unfair to the German guy. Yes, they're making visual stereotypes of all, but there's no need to pump up the volume and stress of every word he's pronouncing. It's ok to do all that sotto voce, you know? The incredibly different vocabulary and sounds would still be evident, if not caricatured. And as an English speaker, it is interesting to see words made of very simple roots that we can relate to: Nature-wisdom, etc.
I think they just meant it as comedy, right?
Cantonese (as well as Mandarin, Vietnamese) are difficult languages to master since they are tonal. But I also like how Cantonese (and Vietnamese) sound.
Arabic is written in consonants, so it is easy for dictation. It is like English was taught to be spelled in steno. Which given how difficult English is to spell, perhaps there would be some benefit in that.
The French HATE it when blacks yell at them to get their une fuckin' cafe' "SCHNELL!"
How do I know?
Oh, no reason - just one of those things,...
Ha!
I met a member of my fraternity in the AF whose Father was head of the Scandinavian languages Dept at the Univ of Washington who majored in Japanese and was so fluent he was reaching Japanese history to Japanese at the Univ of Osaka when he was drafted by the AF. I asked him why Japanese considering his Father, and he explained that there are a lot of tonal similarities between Japanese and the Scandinavian languages, so it wasn't that big a stretch. Go figure.
(The AF, in its infinite wisdom, took this fluent Japanese speaker who wore coke-bottle lens glasses out of intel school and made him a photo-interpreter in the bunker at
SAC HQ in Omaha during the Vietnam war, natch, lol, He later became the State of Washington's trade Rep to Japan and married a Japanese national.)
How do I know?
Oh, no reason - just one of those things,...
Oh so innocent, LOL!
Crack, I am pretty sure yelling that from anyone (but especially an American) would get a rise out of a frog.
Sgt. Schultz was my favorite kraut. "I see nothing, I hear nothing!"
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