Wort des Jahres / Word of the Year

I saw an interesting article in the ARD Nachrichten about the 2011 "Word of the Year," which not only says a lot about the relationship between language/culture, but also about a language itself. A lot of the German "nominees", as well as last year's winner (Wutbürger), are neologisms, new words that were "invented" or used to describe a particular phenomenon. German is especially suited to making up new words, because of how easily you can form composite nouns. Interestingly, there are also lots of English-influenced words, or examples of "Gerglisch," on the list (#9 is "Killersprossen," or the "killer-sprouts" of this summer's E-Coli food scare). 

This year's winner was "Stresstest," referring to the stress put on various institutions and governments: the article names the banks, nuclear energy, and the Stuttgart train station debates. Personally, I think the choice is a bit lame, and rather vague, but I guess I wasn't here all year and maybe the word has been thrown around a lot. The Süddeutsche Zeitung has a list of all the "words of the year" since 1971 here. 

Also bemerkenswert is #7, "guttenbergen," a new slang word for copying/cheating (abschreiben). Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg was German defense minister, until it was revealed that parts of his dissertation were plagiarized.

In the States, NPR's Geoff Nunberg named "occupy" the word of the year for 2011. Not only because it refers to an event, but to a new kind of phenomenon, a new kind of language, and a new kind of protest (notice how "we are the 99 percent" made #10 above in the German list):

"The word itself can take credit for a lot of its success — this isn't an item like "debt ceiling," which just happened to be hitched to a big story. But give props to the magic of metonymy, too. That's the figure of speech that lets us use names like Wall Street, Hollywood or Seventh Avenue to refer to the things that go on there.

....So why not make "the 99 percent" itself the word of the year? Well, for one thing, occupy is that rare linguistic phenomenon, a word that bubbles up out of nowhere and actually helps to create the very thing it names. And anyway, "the 99 percent" wouldn't be part of our political discussions if occupy hadn't gotten there first."  Entire article here

language and thinking

A friend recently shared an article by Lera Boroditsky (Stanford), who has done research on the relationship between language and cognition across various languages. This article was really fascinating, and she argues that her research shows how language affects the way we are able to think about things. I would questions some of her conclusions, and she is not critical enough about her generalizations about "cultures" as monolithic, but it's still an interesting piece.

Some examples from Boroditsky's article:

language and time:  ...English speakers tend to talk about time using horizontal spatial metaphors (e.g., "The best is ahead of us," "The worst is behind us"), whereas Mandarin speakers have a vertical metaphor for time (e.g., the next month is the "down month" and the last month is the "up month"). Mandarin speakers talk about time vertically more often than English speakers do, so do Mandarin speakers think about time vertically more often than English speakers do? Imagine this simple experiment. I stand next to you, point to a spot in space directly in front of you, and tell you, "This spot, here, is today. Where would you put yesterday? And where would you put tomorrow?" When English speakers are asked to do this, they nearly always point horizontally. But Mandarin speakers often point vertically, about seven or eight times more often than do English speakers.

language and gender: when asked to describe a "key" — a word that is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish — the German speakers were more likely to use words like "hard," "heavy," "jagged," "metal," "serrated," and "useful," whereas Spanish speakers were more likely to say "golden," "intricate," "little," "lovely," "shiny," and "tiny." To describe a "bridge," which is feminine in German and masculine in Spanish, the German speakers said "beautiful," "elegant," "fragile," "peaceful," "pretty," and "slender," and the Spanish speakers said "big," "dangerous," "long," "strong," "sturdy," and "towering."


Link to entire article here:
HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK?

And a similar article in the New York Times from 2010,
Does Your Language Shape How You Think?

formalities: du and Sie

So tonight I went to another cooking class at the VHS, and it started with this strange little scene:

The chef/instructor: "First things first. Some of you I know from other classes, some of you are new...Is it okay with all of you (Sie), that we use the du (you) form?"
General consensus: "Ja, klar..."
And so we proceeded to call him "Sven" and call each other by our first names. 

The German polite you (Sie) and informal you (du) have loose boundaries in certain kinds of settings, such as community ed classes, apparently. It's interesting, because if these same people were to encounter one another outside of this setting, they would obviously use the Sie form. Because I'm a foreigner, and a German instructor, I am hyper-aware of whether I am being gesiezt or geduzt, and I'm always trying to figure out these patterns. But it's hard, because there are no real rules, although there are general rules: Sie = everyone over 18, older people, work/professional settings, du = children, animals, family members, God, people your age if you are young. But you can also use the Sie form to create distance, or be extra polite and show respect. On the other hand, store clerks or restaurant servers who are trying to be young and hip and will use du. And there are settings where it feels strange that they use Sie (I happened to hear in an episode of The X Files that the German voices for Mulder and Scully say "Sie" to each other...although they use their last names, they are very close colleagues and this translation decision really surprised me!) It's fun to watch dubbed American films and wait for the moment where the characters switch from the Sie to the du...usually a romantic scene is involved...

One other big difference between the States and Germany: In the US, people use their first names much more often. Good example: they have their first names on their name tags in stores. You call your server by his/her first name, and, for example, at the grocery checkout (bank counter, too?) they wear tags with first names. In Germany it will say "Frau Müller" or just "Schmidt", or whatever, NO first names!

But because educated Germans are aware of how it is in the States, I have had two "offers" to use the du form when it probably would have been inappropriate (too early) in German. In traditional German culture, switching from the Sie to the du form includes drinking Bruderschaft and is a big milestone.

One other random thing, respect-related, which I find totally endearing. In Germany, they knock on the table/desk instead of clapping as the gesture of applause. At the end of every lecture, the professor gets a round of knocking on desks. Sometimes they will clap as well (at talks/conferences), but I love the sound of the lecture hall filled with knocking. It's so German...

lost in translation

My sister sent me a link to this post from ZsaZsa Bellagio that I wanted to re-post:

This list got me thinking.... You've probably heard of Schadenfreude, Zeitgeist, Gemütlichkeit, unheimlich, and there are tons of words from German philosophy that aren't easily expressed in English but I wanted to add some more German/English "untranslatable" terms that I encounter or think about more often, some of you will have heard these before...When terms are untranslatable, or not directly translatable, it's really interesting to think about the language philosophy, and why you can't express something the same way...and what it means about thinking and feeling if you don't have the same vocabulary to express something. oops I got a little carried away with this list, but I still feel like I'm forgetting the 10 things a day that come to mind! Obviously the list could be infinite...

ausschlafen  - to "sleep out", slightly different meaning than the English "to sleep in", which usually  means to sleep in late. You have time to sleep in on the weekend. The German ausschlafen means you got all the sleep you need. So you can get up at 6:00 and be super awake and someone can say with surprise, "Ausgeschlafen?" (slept out?)

awkward - no good German translation for this English word. Also in English "slang" it's become quite popular to call things awkward...Germans don't have this. The closest words are maybe unangenehm (uncomfortable) or komisch (strange).

ich habe dich lieb - In German there is more of a continuum to express like/love. You can say Ich mag dich, Ich habe dich lieb, Ich liebe dich. In English we don't have this second expression, which is literally "I have you dear", or "you are dear to me".  It's used like "I love you" but less intense.

pumpkin, squash - In German they don't have a distinction between these...they have Zucchini and Kürbis but no other word. There are lots of examples like this, which just reinforces how arbitrary classification systems are! Are squash pumpkins, or pumpkins squash? Who decides? A similar thing is that in German they have multiple words for what we would call a "bug", including both Tier [animal, beast] and Käfer [bug, beetle]. It seems very strange to me to realize you have a bug crawling on you and say, "Bwah, ein Tier!"

Feierabend - it's the time when you get off work. So when you're leaving a business/shop/office in the late afternoon, you can say "Schönen Feierabend", enjoy your "quittin' time". :)

Freund, Bekannte - Related to the variations of "love," above. In English we use the term "friend" quite loosely, especially in this age of Facebook "friends." But in German they distinguish more between Freund and Bekannte, more like "acquaintance".  Of course we have  the word acquaintance in English, but I would never use it, like "oh I met up with an acquaintance of mine at the movie theater last night." I think we are quick to call people friends.

homemade  - German has "hausgemacht" or "selbstgemacht" but doesn't have the same cozy ring to me

ein roter Faden  - literally "red thread," a common theme or topic, something unifying a story or a film or a "thread" running through, giving continuity to something. So you can say "this talk had no 'red thread', I couldn't follow it"

schwimmen - also means "to float" in German. They have no separate word for inanimate things on the surface of the water... "Das Boot schwimmt auf dem See" the boat is swimming on top of the lake. "Fat floats," Fett schwimmt oben. :)

Ohrwurm- a word for "a song stuck in your head," as in Ich habe einen Ohrwurm, I have an "ear worm"! haha, when I first heard this I thought this woman actually had some kind of illness, some kind of bug in her ear...still makes me laugh!

Then there are nouns that have slightly different meanings, like Haus or Brot. If you live in an apartment building, that is also a Haus in German. I say "the facade of this Haus has lots of beautiful balconies," but you couldn't use the English "house" in that way. Also in German you talk about "a" bread, not usually a "loaf" of bread.  So you can say "I would like a bread" or "2 breads", 2 Brote. Again, it's interesting to link language and culture, think about what it means about American culture (or German culture) that we have very different images of what a "house" is, something you think of as being so basic. What to Americans is the classic "house" picture Germans would specify as being a Einfamilien-Haus, a "one-family" house.

And for the real grammar freaks among you (I know some of you are...) there are also lots of English nouns that have German verbs, or vice-versa, or other parts of speech that don't line up. For example, in English we "have breakfast," and in German you use frühstücken, the verb. "I get up and then I breakfast," Ich stehe auf und dann frühstücke ich.  And they have a verb for "shame" and not an adjective, "Ich habe mich geschämt," not "I was ashamed". Really interesting to think about what some of this constructions mean for the way you actually feel or express the feeling of a certain emotion.

This list is evidence of the difficulty of one-to-one translation...and why as a language instructor it's always frustrating when students expect there to always be an easy translation, or a noun-to-noun translation, or whatever. I think it reflects a deeper understanding of the way language works to realize that you have to think about different ways of expressing a feeling, a concept, a thing, or an idea. I think as a teacher it's something we should help our students to recognize, but it takes a while...I think (especially middle or high school students) they think we just don't know the word when we tell them they can't say it like that!

There are so many more examples I can't think of at the moment!  German also has tons of composite nouns (hence the really really long words...), so you can also make up infinite number of combinations. That's why there is no "longest" word in the German language. They can keep getting longer and longer...I know German gets a bad reputation for sounding "harsh" and for being grammatically challenging, but once you really get into the language, you realize how creative it is, and how beautiful and poetic some of the composite nouns are. 

Feel free to comment with more examples!