Kategorie-Archiv: English posts only

Okt
29
2014

When Horst met Doris

Posted by

Nomen est omen, the Latin saying goes. Is it really true that your name tells people more about you than you’d suspect? And what the heck does all of this have to do with Horst and Doris?

The authors of Freakonomics have linked baby names from US-American registry files with the average amount of years the respective mothers have spent in further and higher education. They maintain that your first name reveals your social origin (read more here).

But then there are names that burden their bearers not only as – supposed – telltale tokens of their social background but also as derisive designations, thus having acquired their own separate little picturesque lives as nouns. For example, Horst may be a nice (likely middle-aged) guy in German, but if used in a certain context (Du Horst!), the name is a way of expressing one’s displeasure at the other person’s foolishness. (Even more emphasis can be added by referring to someone as a Vollhorst.) The British, and apparently also US-American, equivalent would be ‘Doris’, as evidenced in a quote from the TV series Life of Crime, ‘You’re not even a constable. You’re a Doris. A plonk.’ (Incidentally, ‘plonk’ in British English may also refer to ‘cheap wine’, Plörre in German.)

I’m sure there are more examples of proper names being used in a derogatory manner in other English-speaking countries, and I’d love to hear from you, dear natives of those lands – do make avid use of the ‘Comment’ section below.

I wonder, though, why it’s a male name in German and a female name in English. Are there more male twonks in Germany and more female wallies in England? Or is it just a matter of Horst & Doris’ respective life partners being less tolerant than their counterparts? This is a mystery we’ll never solve. One mystery that can be solved, however, is that of the guy living in the roof gutter. Read more next week …

The Pommes Buddha says: Don’t put the saddle on the wrong Horst.

 

Listen to this text as a podcast episode:

Okt
15
2014

Of owls and other birds

Posted by

In a recent conversation with friends, the German saying Wat dem eenen sin Uhl [Eule], is dem annern sin Nachtigall (literally: ‘One man’s owl is another man’s nightingale’) came up. When my English husband enquired about the meaning of Nachtigall, our friends’ sixteen-year-old daughter suggested ‘mockingbird’ (Spottdrossel) as a translation. But isn’t that an entirely different kettle of fish?

After some discussion, it turned out that the daughter, who insisted she had verified the translation (‘Generation Y’-style, on her smartphone, of course), based her assumption on the German translation of the book title ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ (Wer die Nachtigall stört). In this specific case, the mockingbird, commonly found in North America and the state bird of several US-American states while rarely sighted in Europe, was replaced in the German book title by the nightingale, a bird more prevalent there and thus more familiar to German-speaking readers. (Besides, Wer die Spottdrossel stört just hasn’t got this certain ring to it, does it?). Translation theorists refer to this seeming mismatch as ‘pragmatic translation’ or ‘cultural substitution’, meaning that a culture-specific word is replaced with a target-language word with a different meaning but a similar impact on the target reader (Mona Baker: In other words. A coursebook on translation. Routledge, 1992, p.31).

Getting back to the German saying, it is maintained that the owl represents doom or death, whereas the nightingale with its beautiful song is a bearer of good news, so an apt translation would indeed be ‘One man’s meat is another man’s poison’.

My favourite use of the German Nachtigall, however, is in the Berlin figure of speech Nachtijall, ick hör’ da trapsen!, which refers to the speaker’s hunch or premonition about something – perhaps a ‘ghost driver’. Read more next week…

The Pommes Buddha says: When the nightingale traipses, there is no escape.

 

Listen to this text as a podcast episode:

Okt
01
2014

Wisdoms of the Pommes Buddha

Posted by

The Pommes Buddha is not, as you might suspect, the guru of some new type of religion in the style of the Spaghetti Monster. Rather, it is based on an acoustic misconstruction.

When my English husband first came to Germany, he misheard the very German concept of the Pommesbude (‘chip shop’) to mean Pommes Buddha, and mused what kind of a wondrous authority this ominous Germanic Buddha may be. Like a number of other words, the word Pommes for chips, or French fries, comes from the French pommes frites, as they are also called on most German menus. In colloquial German, however, we refer to the fried potato sticks as Pommes (with an emphasis on the first syllable and, unlike in French, a distinct pronunciation of the -s) or Fritten (hence the rather nerdy, would-be casual alternative Frittenschmiede, literally a ‘chip forge’ – use only if you also have a penchant to wear white tennis socks with sandals).

This is a good time and place to issue a word of warning, dear reader. The German Pommes have nothing, and I repeat: NOTHING, in common with your good old English chippies, as my husband never gets tired of pointing out. Somewhat larger in diameter than the average French fry (for my German readers who may be unaware: the kind that McDonald’s or Burger King serve), they are neither mushy nor, to use the precise and more appropriate technical term, ‘chippy’ enough for any self-respecting Englishperson to write home about. Even the larger, square and chunky Belgian variety, available at selected Pommesbuden at least in our western part of the country, does not elicit outbreaks of patriotic soppiness worth mentioning. So a call at the local fish and chip shop is first on any agenda when visiting la Grande Bretagne – which brings me to the matter of chip accompaniments. But that’s a whole other story…to be continued next week.

The Pommes Buddha says: One man’s Pommes are another man’s chips.

 

Listen to this text as a podcast episode: