From that impeachable source, NewsBiscuit, Cockneys announce ‘Miley Cyrus’ as official rhyming slang for Coronavirus:
Above a well-known pie and mash shop in London’s East End, the annual summit of cockneys, an oppressed minority group, unveiled their new rhyming slang for this Jeremy Hunt of a virus. After handing out market flyers for a 50% off sale of ‘Cor Blimey’ trousers and dustman’s hats, it was solemnly announced that the term “Miley Cyrus’ would be used for Coronavirus, beating off stiff competition from “Egyptian Papyrus.”
Britain’s leading cockney actor, honorary pearly king, and five-time Oscar-winner, Sir Jason Statham, fresh from his rhyming slang version of Romeo & Juliet at the Old Vic, expressed his relief at the announcement. “This couldn’t come fast enough. There’s been a load of confusion with us cockneys about what to call this virus. Some people were calling it the Billy Ray Cyrus, while others were saying Egyptian Papyrus. You can imagine the tear-ups that created. Both sides felt they were mugging the other side off. It created a lot of division, I can tell you that and we cockneys don’t need much incentive for us to kick off.
So Miley Cyrus is perfect, and of course, we cockneys, in the finest slang tradition only use the first half, so it will be something like, “Oi, love, wash yer brass bands, we don’t want a dose of that Miley.” Sir Jason is currently translating NHS Coronavirus advice pamphlets into rhyming slang for the benefit of his community.
Thanks, Trevor!
Thank you, Language Titfer!
Dickybird Titfer.
I shall now do my celebrated impression of Dick van Dyke.
[Hell and Damnation = Cultural Appropriation]
“Britain’s leading cockney actor…”
Works on English dialectology often point out that the label “cockney” was an anachronism already by the mid 20th century. If Statham calls himself that, are we to see it as as acting just as much as any of his film roles?
Britain’s leading Cockney actor is Michael Caine, unless it’s Idris Elba. I hadn’t heard of Statham. As far as I can tell he’s not been knighted, which is fine with me. Lots of people speak Cockney (and no, I’m not thinking of the Estuary thing).
Who is Trevor? Is it rhyming slang?
If Statham calls himself that, are we to see it as as acting just as much as any of his film roles?
I think Statham calls himself that to the same extent that he was actually in a “rhyming slang version of Romeo & Juliet at the Old Vic”. Then again, he’s a “five-time Oscar winner”, so…
Gosh, is it April already?
Who is Trevor? Is it rhyming slang?
Ha! That’s Trevor Joyce, fine poet and dependable supplier of educational, enjoyable, or (as in this case) just plain silly links.
Poet and Guardian reader it seems from some of the Thanks, Trevor!s. Interesting about spencers being people who dispense things (cf. dispense with things, the opposite).
Well, when you dispense something you don’t have it anymore, so you’ve dispensed with it. With it, by means of it, you have achieved dispensation. No, wait, that’s something different.
You’re right, of course, Stu. I wonder now whether Mike Pence started as a Spence. Pence seems much less common, I think I read it was an Irish name.
Well, you know what they say: take care of the Pence and the Pounds will take care of themselves. Ez certainly did.
Mike Pence’s 6th-great-grandfather was one Michael Bentz, who was born in Bavaria in about 1705. He moved to Lancaster County and had a son of the same name who at some point changed his name to Pence, though his younger siblings remained Bentz. The father’s ancestors may have come from the town of Benz in (what is now) Northwest Mecklenburg, or perhaps one of them took the name of Benedictus or some similar name that got mercilessly squashed.
Is there a German pronunciation difference between Bentz & Benz? According to his Wiki entry David Benedictus, who wrote a Pooh sequel,
I wonder if there are any British surnames that have been altered to seem more German.
No.
Not in spelling, AFAIK.
I wonder if there are any British surnames that have been altered to seem more German.
A well-known case of a German surname having been altered to seem less German: the “literature king” Reich-Ranicki was just Reich. Someone remarked to him after WW2 (or it was his own idea, I can’t recall) that a name reminding people of the Third Reich is unfortunate for a Jew to have. So he added on a Polish bit.
I hadn’t heard of him but according to the German Wiki, right after the war Reich (born in Poland) worked at the Polish embassy in London, and because it wasn’t a great time to have a German name there, he changed it to Ranicki. He defected, to Frankfurt, and “From August 1958 he worked as a literary critic for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The head of its arts section, Hans Schwab-Felisch, suggested that he use the double name Reich-Ranicki, which he did without hesitation.”
I also found the phrase “hier wird auch nur mit Wasser gekocht”, meaning “they boil their food in water here, nothing fancy (it’s just like home)” .
Thanks, that’s the right story. I remember it, or parts of it, from his autobiography. Here he is in action.
He was a great admirer of Thomas Bernhard’s books. Not a conservative redneck, as you might otherwise have guessed from his antics in the clip, even if you understand the German. He had an enormous store of anecdotes about his dealings with Famous Writers. After a meeting with Bernhard once, he much later said he immediately realized that Bernhard didn’t know shit about philosophy or even literature (which he goes on and on about in his books, especially Schopenhauer) – but so what !
hier wird auch nur mit Wasser gekocht
Compare and contrast the American phrase: “Now you’re cooking with gas!” That came from an old TV commercial for gas stoves, as I recall.
A raconteur. “Herrgott, Mann, muss ich doch nicht selber auf die Bratpfanne legen wenn geschildert wert wie ein Kotelett gebraten?” – He likes cooking metaphors (metaphors about cooking).
What accent is Reich-Ranicki’s?
I mentally say Ra-NITS-ki, à la polonaise, but I presume Deutschpersons say Ra-NIK-i.
So do I, but I meant he used (I thought) a distinctive trilled R in German and I didn’t know where it was from. From the Wiki I’d thought he’d have had maybe a Berlin accent.
So Pence is a Bent. (The Danish eroded form of Benedictus. Swedes are Bengt). One of the Swedish (Scanian) guys on CONLANG in the old days was Bent something-or-other, but he used something else in English because he thought that presenting himself as “Hi, I’m bent!” could get awkward. (Maybe he is still there, but I got too busy to follow the list).
die Bratpfanne
…surprisingly enough, the etymon of Russian противень (initial stress), one of those loans so mangled as to look completely like a native word.
Ra-NITS-ki, à la polonaise
That’s right.
# Marcel Reich-Ranicki [maʁˈsɛl ˌʁaɪ̯ç ʁaˈnɪʦki] (geboren am 2. Juni 1920 als Marceli Reich in Włocławek; #
I meant he used (I thought) a distinctive trilled R in German and I didn’t know where it was from.
Sorry, I wasn’t responding to your question at all, just wandering off on a tangent of my own. Thanks, Stu!
I dropped the word “Pennsylvania” after “Lancaster County”.
I went through Wikipedia’s list of notable Germans of British descent without finding any cases in which British surnames had been changed, with the marginal exception of Tom von Prince (1866-1914), the son of Thomas Henry Prince, the British police governor of Mauritius, and a German mother. After his father died, he was brought up in Germany (though he had some of his education in England). He was known as Tom Prince for most of his life, but was ennobled in 1906.
(I wonder how the wrestler Alex Wright‘s name is pronounced in German. Reit? Wreit? Wricht? I note that the Low German borrowings Wrack ‘wreck’, wringen ‘wring (clothes)’, Wruke ‘rutabaga’ are pronounced as spelled, whereas English-derived Wrap and (as I suppose) Wrestler are given an English pronunciation. I don’t know the etymology or pronunciation of Wrasen ‘Dampf, dichter Dunst’, but I suppose it’s /vr-/.
Swedish (Scanian) guys on CONLANG in the old days was Bent something-or-other
I remember a Swedish Bengt there, but not from Scania, rather near the Norwegian border about halfway up. He told me once (perhaps privately) that one of the problems with his name is that, shouted in noisy circumstances, it sounded like a negation.
a raconteur
That’s how he survived the Warsaw Ghetto. You sure picked up fast on that one !
# Am 22. Juli 1942 erschien SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle im Hauptgebäude des „Judenrats“, um die „Umsiedlung“ des Ghettos anzuordnen, die am selben Tag beginnen sollte. Zur Niederschrift der Bekanntgabe wurde Reich-Ranicki herangezogen. …
Der Deportation im Januar 1943 entkam das Ehepaar, indem es auf dem Weg zum Versammlungsplatz floh. …
Sie fanden nach kurzen Zwischenverstecken für sechzehn Monate einen Unterschlupf bei der Familie des arbeitslosen Schriftsetzers Bolek Gawin und seiner Ehefrau Genia … Durch seine dramatische Nacherzählung von bedeutenden Romanen der deutschen und europäischen Literatur konnte sich Reich-Ranicki des unbeständigen, stets gefährdeten Mitleids seiner Helfer immer wieder aufs Neue versichern. Je besser er erzählte, desto höher waren auch seine Überlebenschancen. Das Um-sein-Leben-Erzählen wurde[4] auch von ihm selbst[5] als Scheherazade-Motiv bezeichnet. #
Yeah, I read that. And poor old Bolek Gawin had to pretend he hadn’t helped the Jews, because the Poles were still anti-Semitic. I couldn’t figure out why he worked for the Poles after WW2, but it must be because as a member of the leftwing ŻOB in the Warsaw Ghetto he didn’t mind the Communists until 1956.
I dropped the word “Pennsylvania” after “Lancaster County”
I figured. I used to spend a lot of time there on weekends in the 1970s.
Tom von Prince (1866-1914), the son of Thomas Henry Prince, the British police governor of Mauritius
I suppose adding a von is a start. I read somewhere that Anna Chancellor (Duckface in 4 Weddings & A Funeral) ‘s grandfather was once Governor General of Mauritius.
The other thing about Marcel Reich-Ranicki is that he’s the cousin of Frank Auerbach. I cannot see that, not physically anyway.
I wonder if your name was Dylan, say, and you went to live in Germany whether you might change it to Zimmermann.
@ajp
https://www.welt.de/print-welt/article298780/Nachbarin-was-brauchst-du-so-viel-Brot.html
This article gives the Gawins’ POV:
1. R-R did not help make cigarettes (er war nicht dafür geeignet).
2. The Gawins applied to the occupiers to be recognised as ethnic Germans. This would get them better food rations, however Bolek had to hide in the cellar with Marcel and Tosia when the German recruiting sergeant came for him.
Slightly Polish, with a bit of a lisp.
Given that his father was British, as opposed to the family being established for generations, I’m sure it’s as close to the original as people can muster.
The Finnish philosopher Georg von Wright was [fɔn vrɪkːt].
Slightly Polish, with a bit of a lisp.
Thanks, David.
@Paddy:
Thanks for the Welt article. Ever since I lived in Germany (3 years in Hamburg, from 1990) and I caught the tail end of it from old people, I’ve found first-hand stories about life in WW2 Poland or Germany – what was going on day-to-day, the social twists and turns, people’s neighbours, illegal cottage industries, the outcomes of convoluted moral choices – to be the most interesting history you can read (or hear, if you’re that lucky).
Someone who took a stand on his name was Lt Col. Bernhardt Basil von Brumsey im Thurn, DSO, MC, of Winchester.
Zur Niederschrift der Bekanntgabe wurde Reich-Ranicki herangezogen.
Does that sound as weird in German as GT’s version does in English? “Reich-Ranicki was used to write the announcement.” I mean, I’m sure the Nazis thought of him as just a tool, but it seems strange for a modern narrator to say that.
The Finnish philosopher Georg von Wright
Technically “the Swedish-speaking Finlander”.
whether you might change it to Zimmermann
~~ chuckle ~~
All the (few) famous people in Wikipedia surnamed Dylan, except for Bob Dylan’s own children, apparently adopted it; they work in the entertainment professions.
A good many Zimmermanns who came to this country in the 19C and early 20C did change their names to Carpenter: “Many a Pennsylvania Carpenter bears a name that is English, from the French, from the Latin, and there a Celtic loanword in origin, and yet is neither English, French, Latin, nor Celt, but an original German [or Jewish] Zimmermann.” —H. L. Mencken
Given that his father was British
I didn’t actually look up Alex Wright’s details, but thanks.
I consulted the 1923 edition of Finlands Ridderskaps och Adels Kalender that stands next to my desk. Or online, or whatever. There are lots of vons in Finland. Georg’s ancestor Mr George Wright moved from Dundee to Narva in Estonia in the 17th century. I’m guessing Georg von Wright has no blood connection to Germany at all. His non-German wife was a von Troil whose mother was a non-German Stjernschantz (the name of a district of Hamburg, originally a star-shaped fortification in German and a fairly common Finnish surname to boot apparently).
Anticipating the Wright Brothers by nearly a century were the Finnish VON WRIGHT Brothers, Magnus, Wilhelm and Ferdinand, who just drew pictures of birds.
Does that sound as weird in German as GT’s version does in English? “Reich-Ranicki was used to write the announcement.” I mean, I’m sure the Nazis thought of him as just a tool, but it seems strange for a modern narrator to say that.
First of all, GT is not a modern narrator, but a first-generation robot.
The formulation of
# Zur Niederschrift der Bekanntgabe wurde Reich-Ranicki herangezogen. #
is merely a bit formal (! “formulation”, geddit?) and Beamtendeutschy. It’s the “zur Niederschrift herangezogen” wut does it. When we ignore the register, and imagine what is being related, the sentence will be found to mean something like “He was ordered/chosen/brought_in to write down the proclamation [from dictation, I suppose]”.
Adding a bit of registerese: “It fell to his lot to …” A different register, but equally stuffy.
first-generation robot
Second-generation robot.
—Thurber, The Years With Ross
zur Niederschrift herangezogen
In Duden, heranziehen has a remarkably large number of definitions, but Wikt says that as an adjective herangezogen (which is not separately listed in Duden) means either ‘used’ or ‘consulted’. But my impression is that he actually drafted it as opposed to just taking dictation.
Not German, or even Finnish, but there’s Edvard Grieg, whose father or grandfather (or…) was a Scottish Greig.
A son of Scotland ripe for disowning is the loathsome N. Ya. Marr (the subject of Stalin’s best published linguistic work.)
Sal. Also Ber.
(I just looked up the Stalin paper. It starts off remarkably like a Radio Yerevan joke …)
Huh. I had no idea. A lovely man and one of my favourite composers. Wiki says “After the Battle of Culloden in 1746, Grieg’s great-grandfather, Alexander Greig, traveled widely, settling in Norway about 1770 and establishing business interests in Bergen.” So the great grandson of a Jacobite.
There’s a two-for-one bust of Grieg in Seattle that looks very much like Mark Twain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust_of_Edvard_Grieg#/media/File:Edvard_Grieg_(sculpture).jpg
I can also offer “was recruited” or “was drafted”, or “his services were made use of”. It’s all a bit abstract.
It does!
It’s just occurred to me that the form of the Radio Yerevan joke may be deliberately taking the mickey out of Pravda house style. Numerous Hatters will know …
Second-generation robot.
Might actually be third-generation by now; IIRC, there was a major switch in the system circa 2004, and another circa 2018.
EDIT: turns out GT didn’t exist yet in 2004. I’d probably have to go through the Language Log archives again to figure out what I misunderstood…
[Radio Yerevan-related comment deleted due to another misunderstanding on my side.]
There’s a two-for-one bust of Grieg in Seattle that looks very much like Mark Twain.
A cross between Twain and Gorky.
Edvard Grieg, whose father or grandfather (or…) was a Scottish Greig.
It’s possible that his ancestors were part of the banned Clan Macgregor. The Russian Greigs (who included two admirals in the Imperial Navy) definitely were.
I just looked up the Stalin paper.
Interestingly, in that paper Stalin directly contradicted Orwell’s “newspeak” theory stating that Russian language in the Communist USSR does not, should not and could not substantially differ from Russian language under Tsarism (except for small vocabulary additions).
How about ‘drawn upon’? Nicely noncommittal about willingness — and it reflects the main root of the German at least.
@lars,David, stu
I believe sometimes heranziehen has the connotation “dragged in”. Was it on this occasion that the headman in the ghetto had committed suicide because he had failed to prevent large scale liquidations?
second-generation robot: Originally (2005?), Google Translate used Systran. They went to statistical translation starting in 2006 (here’s Language Log checking it out) and then neural network translation in 2016. So that’s three generations.
Perfect.
Much too vivid and violent – I’d render that herbeigezerrt.
A cross between Twain and Gorky.
Gorky looked a lot like Charles Bronson in a Nietzsche moustache. Lose the tie and it’s still not a bad look. It just occurred to me that Mark Twain, a snappy dresser even before the white suits, must have been Tom Wolfe‘s inspiration.
“I wonder if there are any British surnames that have been altered to seem more German.”
Mack is originally Gaelic, but found in Germany (no spelling difference though) .I wonder if Mackensen (as in August von) was originally something Scottish? MacKinnon? MacKinsey?
It’s possible that his ancestors were part of the banned Clan Macgregor.
If you look at Septs, I count about 155 different names, not even counting spelling variations, listed as possible MacGregor descendants. We’re all MacGregors now, Beethoven & Bob Dylan were probably MacGregors. About the ban, I feel the need to add ‘banned by the Scots and then by William of Orange,’ not by Englishpersons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_Gregor#17th_century,_clan_conflicts_and_civil_war
I wonder if Mackensen (as in August von) was originally something Scottish? MacKinnon? MacKinsey?
Mackeson (a stout) or Mackenzie perhaps. August von Mackensen denied having Scottish ancestors. See here.
His “habit of kissing the Kaiser’s hand … was a practice considered shocking enough for it to find its way into several memoirs and to gain for the hussar officer a not altogether pleasing reputation amongst the more dour members of the officer corps.”
We’re all MacGregors now
Not me. I’m a MacDonald. (Gaelic for “Eric.”)
@ajp
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackensen_(Dassel)
Would say not named for family, family named for place much more typical in noble names. The sen here is really Hausen or Husun (in former Danish speaking areas).
Pad: Would say not named for family, family named for place
@Plastic, Right. But going one step yet further back, ‘wie bei den meisten Ortsnamen mit der Endung -hausen ist auch das Bestimmungswort bei Mackensen ein alter Personenname’, in this case some bloke called Makko (just before he met John Lennon).
family named for place much more typical in noble names
I’m not sure Mackensen is really THAT noble a family.
I’m not sure Mackensen is really THAT noble a family.
Indeed – August was a von, but his father was not.
@ajay, ajp
Thanks. I obviously posted too quickly, assuming high ranking general with stellar promotion was from landed gentry, but he only hung out with them. I am curious about that, also about the fact he was considered disloyal to the Third Reich when he was a rebellious young man of only 84 years.
@PlasticPaddy: Von Mackensen is often described as the last surviving field marshal from the kaiser’s army, after von Hindenburg’s death.* That gave him a tremendous amount of moral authority among the officer corps, even if he was not from an old noble family, and he was openly disdainful toward the Nazi rabble, especially in the form of the brownshirts. The SA was made up mostly of poor and lower middle class men, often from southern Germany, where the Nazis got their start, neither of which endeared them to the Prussian-dominated officer corps. Röhm’s increasingly open homosexuality had a similar effect. However, his talk of basing the new German army around a SA core angered them the most. Mackensen was not overtly political, but he apparently made it clear in private that he shared as these concerns.
After the SA was purged, Hitler 1935 announcements of the creation of the Wehrmacht as a fully constituted modern military were accompanied by a number of large-scale formal events for military officers and veterans. At the massive celebration that Von Mackensen attended in East Prussia, he was reported to have been enthusiastic about the purely military elements but standoffish from the more dogmatically Nazi parts.
There was also an organizational issue surrounding von Mackensen, which may have made the Nazi potentates uneasy, although it turned out that it never actually mattered. Field marshals at that time were still felt to be outside any chain of command, reporting directly to the head of state. Had von Mackensen wanted direct access to Hitler, it might have been difficult to prevent.
* There is no clear-cut criterion for determining which promotions to the rank of field marshal in the Reichswehr should be considered honorary rather than substantive.** Rupprecht (died 1955), the last crown prince of Bavaria, was a field marshal; and while his promotions were certainly accelerated by his royal status, he was also a genuinely successful army group commander on the western front. However, as he was definitively opposed to the Nazis, it was in their interest to portray him as purely a member of the old royalty, rather than an authentic field marshal.
** Even members of the imperial dynasty were not promoted to field marshal until they had commanded victorious troops in battle. The rank of General Oberst was originally created to allow for promotion of royals to an alternative five-star rank before they had met the requirements for the marshalate. This was why, even in the Nazi era, promotions to field marshal could be made either to holders of the ranks of general or colonel general.
That’s the properly High German form of Robert, BTW.
Naturally spelled Generaloberst; it’s a prefixed noun.
@O’Plastic, You won’t find anything worth reading in English on the web about August von Mackensen – I couldn’t, anyway. There are potted biographies on many WW2 websites but they’ve got mistakes, misunderstandings and gaps (they’re all misleading about the Nazi years and don’t seem to know that he really liked & admired Hitler), and as you might expect they’re not particularly well written. Eventually I found a book review in Die Zeit, from 1996: https://www.zeit.de/1996/12/Treu_bis_in_den_Hoellensturz
I had to register to read it, but it’s free. Anyone who wants my downloaded version should say & I’ll email it or put it up here (it’s quite long). The book it’s reviewing is by Theo Schwarzmüller:
Zwischen Kaiser und “Führer” Generalfeldmarschall August von Mackensen. Eine politische Biographie Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 1995; 463 S., (68,- DM back then).
Brett: Had von Mackensen wanted direct access to Hitler, it might have been difficult to prevent. From Karl-Heinz Janssen’s book review:
@ajp, Brett
Sources seem to be diverging on the attitude of our good General to Germany’s new masters. Or perhaps his extreme youth resulted in equally extreme vacillating on his part! But I think someone is telling a porky. Is it Gröfaz colluding with his official stenographer or a clique of military men, seeking to create a conspiracy to murder Gröfaz (perhaps murdering also the stenographer)? More research is needed.
John C.: I remember a Swedish Bengt there, but not from Scania, rather near the Norwegian border about halfway up. He told me once (perhaps privately) that one of the problems with his name is that, shouted in noisy circumstances, it sounded like a negation.
This is an interesting rebus, at least to a half-informed Norwegian. Bengt doesn’t sound like any negation I can think of, but -nt could be the clitic form of East-Central Scandinavian inte “not” with North-Central Scandinavian apocope. The part before would then have to be a verb in stem form, probably an imperative but possibly something else, either because it’s a strong verb or because of the same apocope. But that would work better with bent “don’t pray!” or bernt “don’t carry!” than bengt.
Another idea could be the (Romani-derived?) curse beng “the devil” with the “High Swedish” clitic neuter deictic/pronoun -t — i.e. bengt! “to hell with it!” — but I don’t know if “beng” can be verbed like that.
Sources seem to be diverging on the attitude of our good General to Germany’s new masters. Or perhaps his extreme youth resulted in equally extreme vacillating on his part!
Extreme youth? Are you being ironic here?
In any case, from what I read, it’s not too complicated – he was an old-style conservative and monarchist and regarded the Nazis as vulgar upstarts, but he admired Hitler as a person and leader. It seems he was a devout Protestant and sometimes interceded against harassment of church men, and also recoiled from some excesses against civilians in occupied Poland. On the whole, he seems to have been an enabler of the Nazi regime and not a secret resistance fighter, but he probably was awkward enough to be seen as not totally reliable.
Bengt doesn’t sound like any negation I can think of
My (completely wild-ass) guess is that the noisy channel distorted Bengt to simply [mẽ], which was then erroneously reconstructed by the hearer as nej. But of course I know nothing.
he was an old-style conservative and monarchist and regarded the Nazis as vulgar upstarts, but he admired Hitler as a person and leader.
Rather like von Hindenburg, it seems.
Extreme youth? Are you being ironic here?
Of course; see his earlier comment (March 10, 2020 at 1:55 pm): “I am curious about that, also about the fact he was considered disloyal to the Third Reich when he was a rebellious young man of only 84 years.”
@hans
Thank you for reminding me that totalitarian governments were a new thing in the 1930s and that many people assumed that populist leaders would rise to power with support from “gesindel” but would fall back on “tried and true” methods of government and that the “gesindel” would be forced to go back to their Stammkneipen or to beating their wives. Those people were wrong, and it can be argued that they should not be judged harshly by others who have the benefit of hindsight.
Rather like von Hindenburg, it seems.
it can be argued that they should not be judged harshly by others who have the benefit of hindsight.
August von Mackensen was a horrible man.
Held the dignity of being the most senior officer.
Actually in the old meaning “witty wit” here.
After [his] flight from Pomerania that was ordered by Hitler.
Like (literally “together with”) the author, you will have to ask yourself.
David, thanks. After google-translating I fixed some switches similar to Hitler’s escape from Pomerania but missed that one. Dignity just seemed too peculiar so I guessed that rank was the main point. Perhaps ‘glamour and glory’ for Glanz und Gloria could be improved? Google says ‘splendour’ but G&G looks like it may be a familiar phrase in German.
And about that enormous moth-eaten Prussian Lancers’ furry hat with the death’s head,
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5uhf9g
@dm, ajp
Würde tragen, Verantwortung tragen etc. You can bear responsibility but for a role or for dignity you can assume it. I would suggest here “assumed the mantle of senior officer of the Reichswehr (or was it the Wehrmacht?)”.
That sounds right to me!
Hindenburg 1847 – 1934
Reichswehr 1919 – 1935
Wehrmacht 1935 – 1945,
so ‘Reichswehr’.
Reichswehr (English: Realm Defence)
It’s odd that Germany kept, or was allowed to keep, “Reich” after Versailles. It’s essentially ‘Empire’ (Heiliges Römisches Reich) but for the length of the Weimar Republic ’empire’ seems unsuitable as a translation. A thesaurus is required.
I presume that had to do with its incorporating quasi-autonomous polities like the Free State of Bavaria (WP: “Nowadays, aside from the minority Bavaria Party, most Bavarians accept that Bavaria is part of Germany”), Free State of Saxony, Free People’s State of Württemberg, etc. But yes, it’s hard to render it in English.
Incidentally, does anybody know why the French closed so many universities at the end of the 18th century? From Zachary Purvis, Theology and the University in Nineteenth-Century Germany:
Doesn’t seem very Enlightened, does it?
I didn’t know that. But it led to the founding of a different kind, Humboldt University in Berlin among others, so wasn’t all bad
https://blog.oup.com/2016/10/university-past-present-future/
Typical Napoleon: on the one hand, a very bad man; on the other, good at maths.
Perhaps Jesuitic and other noumenal hedgemoneys were onslaughtered. We’re not missing any today, though, are we ? Is the number of universities in a country a reliable sign of enlightenment ?
Weimar Republic = two-and-a-halfth* Reich
* second-and-a-half? two-point-fifth?
two-and-a-halfth Reich
Go home, Molly, you’re drunk.
This covers a lot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Reich
So Napoleon was the first national leader to promote STEM education over all those useless arts and humanities subjects?
So it would appear!
Germany’s political subdivisions even to this day include e.g. die Freie Hansestadt Bremen, where Hansestadt = “Hanseatic city.” And I believe the same for Hamburg, these many many centuries after the actual Hanseatic League stopped being a thing. A Reich without a monarch hardly seems weirder than that.
The new-fangled post-Napoleonic model of research university that sprang up in Germany was a wicked thing responsible for all manner of ills, at least according to that dispassionate critic E. Pound. Some of the relevant rant may be found toward the bottom of this excerpt: https://thecantosproject.ed.ac.uk/index.php/a-draft-of-xvi-cantos-overview/canto-xiii/xiii-sources/226-provincialism-the-enemy
Ah, that’s the (prose) Ez I love:
WP.en s.v. German Reich is interesting:
The etymological connection between Reich and English rich I knew about, but the link to reach had escaped me. Wikt confirms it, though, tracing the first two to PGmc rīkiją and the last to raikijaną. The shape of these words show that they are Celtic, though whether this derivation happened in Celtic or Germanic is a question.
Long before the British Empire was formed or heard of, Henry VIII was proclaiming that the Crown of England was a “Crown Imperiall”; that is, that he held England directly from God (the original meaning of the term “divine right of kings”) without any overlord spiritual or temporal. Unfortunately, Henry’s physical crown was stripped of its ornaments by the Commonwealth (partly because they considered it a superstitious relic, partly for money) and melted down, the metal being then coined into sovereigns. (The Commonwealth’s coinage mostly showed the Cross of St. George and the Irish harp on the obverse, though some later coins were struck with Cromwell wearing a laurel wreath in the manner of Roman emperors.)
Of all the crown jewels, only three swords and the anointing spoon predate the Restoration. Most of the older pieces had been sold off by Charles I with his “insatiable demand for money, money, and more money”, but he got only about 25% of what they were worth.
where Hansestadt = “Hanseatic city.”
…I darn well hope that I’m not the only person bothered by Stadt “town, city”… I keep thinking of it as referring to a much larger area, confusing it with the English word state.
(Apparently – I didn’t know that before – those two words aren’t actually directly cognate, though they do ultimately come from the same PIE root; the actual direct English cognate of Stadt is stead, as in instead).
As “false friends” that trip up Anglophones learning German go, Stadt not meaning “state” is small potatoes compared to Gift not meaning “gift.” Just realized I’m 40 years on from my first academic year of formal instruction in German (and 36 years on from my final such year …), and my fluency may be almost entirely lost but those sorts of false-friend-avoidance bits of trivia I have retained.
For me, See ‘lake’ is worse than either; I can’t shake the feeling it should mean ‘sea.’
It’s “zay”. No sea there. Free yourself from English phonography !! Embrace the foid.
Gift is ‘poison’ in German.
Gift is ‘married’ in Norwegian.
Gift is a verb in English.
(I’ve seen it all.)
For me, See ‘lake’ is worse than either; I can’t shake the feeling it should mean ‘sea.’
But that firs nicely Caspian sea.
Trust me, it sounds just as weird in the original German. Nowadays, and already at the same time in Austria, everything Reichs- has become Bundes- “Federal”.
Reich is applicable to imperialistic constructs without a monarch, but those are unlikely to be democracies.
HH on its numberplates, for Hansestadt Hamburg. H alone is Hanover.
We have that word, too – as Staat.
Stadt is a 17th-century Dutch spelling of what occurs as (an)statt “instead of”, in a number of compounds, and as Stätte “place”.
It does if you change its gender!
North:
die See “sea”
das Meer “lake”
South:
das Meer “sea”
der See “lake”
Standard:
die See “sea” in special or poetic contexts
der See “lake”
das Meer “sea”
die Nordsee “North Sea”
die Ostsee “Baltic Sea”
das Mittelmeer “Mediterranean Sea”
das Schwarze Meer “Black Sea”
die Südsee “South Sea”
Lots of terms like Seefahrt “seafaring”, zur See “at sea”, in See stechen “to set sail”*, Hochsee “high seas”, Tiefsee “deep sea”, Seestern “starfish” don’t have alternatives with Meer. But die See does not have a plural, and so the seven seas are only die sieben Meere/Weltmeere, “mermaid” is Meerjungfrau, and “thalattosuchian” is Meerkrokodil.
And so, if you consider the Caspian Sea a sea, it’s das Kaspische Meer; if you follow the Russian government in considering it a lake, it’s der Kaspi-See.
(FWIW, it’s got some actual ocean floor.)
* hacerse a la mar
And then there are the cognates that are not easily recognizable as such because their pronunciations and spellings have diverged a bit more and their meanings have diverged wildly. Clean = klein “small” is the poster child. Minutes ago I learned that glad = glatt “smooth”…
Gift is ‘poison’ in German.
Gift is ‘married’ in Norwegian.
Gift is a verb in English.
Actually it all makes total sense, and started out with the meaning of English ‘gift’. One of the things you can give someone is medicine or poison. Indeed, dose started out the same way in Ancient Greek as δόσις ‘a giving’, but was used by Greek doctors to mean ‘prescribed portion’. In English you can still get a dose of medicine, a dose of poison, or a dose of clap.
In German the sense ‘poison’ has completely taken over Gift, but (historical) Mitgift is ‘bride price’ (amount paid by the bride’s family to her or her husband or both), from which the transition to the sense ‘marriage’ is easy.
As for gift as a verb, it means ‘give as a gift’, which is not the same as just ‘give’. When I say “Give me that chair, please”, I don’t expect it to be a gift, just something I can use temporarily.
Mitgift is “dowry”, that which is mitgegeben to the bride by her parents. Interestingly, it’s die Mitgift, perhaps with the gender of Gabe “gift, donation”, but das Gift. Or der Gift in Goethe’s Faust.
> das Meer ‘sea’
In OE, mere was masculine, not neuter, and in English generally it could mean ‘sea’ or ‘lake’, though most surviving uses in place names are clearly ‘lake’. All of mere, sea, lake are reconstructible to PGmc, but we don’t really understand whatever semantic nuances there were between them.
But most IE cognates of mere are firmly ‘sea’, and of lake are ‘pond, reservoir, basin, tank, vat’. Sea is a bit more mysterious, but it may be connected with G seihen ‘strain, filter’, the older Modern English form of which is sie (pronounced like, but probably not connected with, sigh).
Yes, I tend to confuse ‘dowry’ with ‘bride price’.
Actually it all makes total sense
Sure, I don’t object, but I have been confused for a moment occasionally, esp. in Norwegian, about whether someone has been married or poisoned. I’m resigned to ‘gift’ as a verb but I’d never use it myself. I was never misled by ‘to give’ and anyway I’ve always preferred a present to a gift (a gift and ‘free gift’ sound to me like department store terminology).
Don’t forget seetang for seaweed. I’d never eat pondweed.
One of my brothers in England just emailed to say that he and one of his daughters have a bit of a fever and sore throat, but they are also congested and have runny noses, which means, he thinks, “it’s not the Miley.”
Mitgift “dowry” is perhaps analogous to the West African trader’s civilised habit of adding a small gift (“dash”) to your purchase after the haggling is done, to show that there are no hard feelings and to encourage return customers.
Like so.
One is medgift, the other tilgift (now illegal because of competition laws); MLG had togift it says, but if it survives to Dutch or German (?Zugift) I don’t see it .
I can only confirm that Zugift doesn’t exist in contemporary Standard German, but Grimm has it as an obsolete word meaning “1) dowry 2) add-on, extra (with a purchase)”.
Zugabe exists and might be a present from Miley herself, but not a dowry.
(Specifically an encore demanded by the audience after a successful performance.)