I like the headline because it makes for good philology. An English speaker can almost glean the entire meaning with a few reminders of long-lost English cognate words.
Entthronen: "Ent" is a prefix corresponding to our prefix "ant-" roughly meaning "opposite." Thronen is a verb and pretty much means what you think it does -- "to throne." So entthronen means "dethrone."
Druck: The noun Druck means pressure. The word is now lost in English except for the family name Drucker (Druker) which meant printer. Print being synonymous with Press.
Auf: The word is a preposition meaning both up and upon. Believe it or not, the two words auf and up are related in the murky roots of both languages.
Bundeskanzlerin: A Bund in German is related to our word "bond" in the sense of bonded together as in a federation. Kanzlerin is a female Kanzler and means chancellor.
Wächst: The verb wächst means wax in the sense of "to grow" (cf. waxing moon). This is like old school English!
Weiter: This one is obvious and just means "wider." Taken together, wächst weiter also means "spreads further."
5 comments:
In the last century, the Germans were stupid in a right wing way. This century they will try being stupid in a left wing way. Eventually they'll get it right.
My favorite part is the protest poster reading: nein sei onslaughtenimmigration nicht. Sigh. They make everything sound so romantical.
In German 101 I wondered how many German mood and tense verb rules you could pile up, and came up with (perhaps approximately remembered)
Er satge, dass Deutsch von uns gesprochen zu werden gelernt worden sein sollen haben mussen haben wurde.
Not seeking for umlaut keyboard tricks.
The translation, I think, is supposed to be "He said that German will have had to have been supposed to be learned to be spoken by us."
Anyway the exercise led to doing really well on tests.
I failed to learn to speak German because of compound verbs, which it seemed to me would have to have an obvious meaning, and they don't.
@rhhardin:
Twain did the best parody of this in his humorous essay, The Awful German Language:
...after which comes the VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after the verb -- merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out -- the writer shovels in 'haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden sein,' or words to that effect, and the monument is finished.
I parodied Twain in my essay, The Awful Chemical Language:
...after which comes the parent compound name, and you find out for the first time what the molecule is or at least what some chemical lexicographer thought it should be derived from. Sometimes, often as an afterthought — merely by way of differentiation — the writer shovels in the name of a salt, or in patent parlance "or salts thereof," signifying that the delicate molecular flower has been preserved as a salt, and the monument is finished.
Chip Ahoy said...
My favorite part is the protest poster reading: nein sei onslaughtenimmigration nicht. Sigh. They make everything sound so romantical.
That's Italian, Chip. Everything sounds better in Italian.
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