While our apple-polishing friend Scott slaves away, preparing to dazzle his Hamline profs, his pal WoolGatherer is delighted and humbled to be offered a prized spot as a guest blogger on Going 40 in a 20 Zone.Truly, I'm not worthy, and Scott would be the first to tell you as much.
Be that as it may, and knowing that Scott is no doubt doing his best at this very moment to memorize German prepositions he should have learned by heart months ago: i.e. the accusative prepositions (durch, für, gegen, ohne, um), the dative prepositions (aus, außer, bei, mit, nach, zeit, zu) and the two-way (a.k.a. the bisexual) German prepositions (in, an, auf, über, unter, hinter, neben, vor, zwischen), I've decided to relate a little story from my own travails with the German language, lo these many years ago.
[A little background for those who might not know my checkered past: German language prodigy from the age of 11, top German graduate at Macalester College in '89, ABD in German lit from Princeton, subsequent victim of an irreparably shattered ego, grad school drop-out who still speaks sparkling German with little to no outlet for said skill.]
Let us consider the umlaut.
Everyone has seen umlauts, those funny little dots that appear in German over U's A's, and O's. They're a pain in the butt to pronounce correctly, and most American students of German simply refuse to believe that German-speakers really distinguish the word "sagt" from the visually quite similar "sägt."
"What difference could those dots make," my impossibly attractive Princeton students used to ask me, "it's still just an A, and they'll know what a I mean."
Actually, no, that's not entirely true.
In fact "Er sagt" [He says] is semantically quite different from "Er sägt" [He saws].
When my students spoke in class, if they neglected to pronounce the required umlauts, I developed the habit of flexing two fingers in a V-shaped peace sign (as though making air quotation marks) and asking "Was sagt der Umlaut-Hase?" [What does the Umlaut Rabbit say?] I would then wait for the unhappy student to pronounce the word correctly before we moved on.
The Umlaut-Hase was a source of great amusement to the class (if not to the person the rabbit singled out), so I quickly made it an integral part of my pedagogical repertoire.
Near the end of second semester, one of my students raised his hand, and complained in admirably tidy German that he had mentioned the Umlaut-Hase to a German dorm-mate of his, who had laughed himself silly at the notion of a vowel-monitoring rodent.
"SO THERE IS NO UMLAUT-HASE??" the outraged young man finally demanded to know.
"There is in this classroom," I told him, "and he's always listening."
Perhaps that was a painful moment for Chip, or Skip, or Biff, or whatever his name was. But better he should find out the importance of the umlaut in a safe classroom setting than suffer the embarrassment I endured for years when I could never remember the difference between "schwul" [gay] and "schwül" [humid].
Trust me, turn those two words around, and you'll get some very strange looks in a variety of settings.
On that note, let me offer our extremely humid friend Scott all the best as he finishes the academic year. Kick butt, Scooter!
Until we meet again,
WoolGatherer
9 comments:
Oh yah. Them letterndotsen.
They're darlinkincuten, aren't they? I've always thinkened dat dey seemed decorative, gehshprinklen there amongst the unintelligible words formed by the longenrandomlettren patterns of der linguenGermanese.
En der oldendays, I were mitout das understandingnessen, and zuss confusenheaded in eyeballen der Germaner talken.
Oy vey stille nacht, es mas besser now.
Donkey, shane.
For some sad gehreason (I'm blaming it on too klein sleepen), I didn't understand what schamlippen meant so I wrote the wort on the back of ein computerlaboratoriumpassen and showed it to the drei Deutsch exchange studenten in my advisory period.
Right.
I saw the bestunnedlook on Anna-Lena's face and instantly figured out what schamlippen meant. Her reaction (and those of Alex und Serkan, as well) rivaled die allegedly over ershockt reaktion of our bloghost upon hearing the wort in Englisch.
Annya were da gutenteacher mit prospeckten skiesdalimit, right upta untillen the unfortunate computerlabial printenpassen wort debacle.
Zenn, alas, legalharassementsexy suitsky uh oh messert.
Yousabummer. Makes me laughenlaughen.
Mein Gott.
Now ich unable to mehelpen meselfen.
Leik das oldendays of der limericken, gotstakeepen on addenen ein -en to alles worten.
Sigh. May I point out to our blog readers that it is NOT the French resident who has been mocking the language of Goethe here? No, we here in France spent our national May 8 holiday celebrating the fact that none of us has to speak German, unless we want to. (To those of you for whom history class is but a distant memory, May 8 is Victory in Europe Day, the anniversary of the unconditional surrender of the Germans to the Allies in 1945.)
And Sean, I'm sure that many more French people would WANT to speak German if it were being taught to them by a nice dotted bunny with an American accent.
Ann! Did our French major not teach you to search for word similarity when faced with unfamiliar vocabulary? What did you THINK "shame lips" were?! (There are no cute dotted bunnies in French language education, just Accent Bitches to slap you around as required.)
to stephanie: i know. i know. it's the compassionate, politically correct psychologist who cares about the feelings of others who started it.
I think that maybe the Umlaut-Hase could have helped head-off WWII. Or at least shorten it.
Kids, kids, kids. Didn't we learn anything. If you're going to go for the faken deutschen gespeaken, you have to end a sentence in "gehaben". Otherwise it sounds SO fake.
Deb wrote, "En der oldendays, I were mitout das understandingnessen, and zuss confusenheaded in eyeballen der Germaner talken".
Now let's try it with the proven GehabenEndenGehaben Method.
En der oldendays, I were mitout das understandingnessen, and zuss confusenheaded in eyeballen der Germaner talken gehaben.
SEE?!?! Isn't that better?
Der Gehaben Esel ist gelistenen gehaben.
Scott, I must admit to some chagrin/pride at the outpouring my little Umlaut-Rabbit unleashed on your blog.
Perhaps the next time you need a guest blogger, I will relate the tale of how I learned to be passive or active at will with my partners.
(German conversation partners, that is.)
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