The German language

There's my friend Rainer Fahrzeit, who tells you how long a trip should take if traffic is normal and you don't take breaks.

when i took a tiny bit of academic german for grad school i heard of instructors who, for feminist reasons, would not teach noun gender and would use the relevant personal pronouns indifferently (or maybe they preferred one to the others, i don't know). of course this was regarded as pedagogically dubious, radical, etc.

given its much more rigorous official standards (duden as centralized authority, uptight speakers in general etc), how has a thing like deliberate contra-grammatical shifts in pronoun usage—'they' instead of 'she' or 'he' for trans subjects or anyone who elects that it be used—been being received in german?

five years ago i taught at a private college, religiously identified but quite liberal, and never heard anything remotely in that direction from administration or anyone else. i just started teaching at a different private college, no less liberal but significantly more secular, and i got some student-elected-pronoun-usage-guidelines thrown in with all the other (optional) policy language that was dumped on me during 'onboarding'.

A national newspaper in Germany (taz) uses ...Innen forms. I think it's still seen as something belonging to the left, even though, govt agencies sometimes use varieties of it.

For those who aren't familiar: there's no simple gender neutral way to refer to a group of people, e.g. the voters = die Wähler implies a group of men. There's a long neutral form: Die Wähler und Wählerinnen (the voters and voteresses), and this is sometimes abbreviated (as by taz) to WählerInnen, Wähler/innen, Wähler*innen.

I can't imagine how gender neutrality could work in speech, like, when referring to a significant other, you can't say mein/e Freund/in

i was always struck by the fact that job ads have to say Xer/erin

and 'eine Freundin von mir'

you could put a stop in there

mein…e freund…in

would be funky

this guide to gender neutral speech really does advocate a glottal stop in that situation, pg. 25 (it's a pdf)
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCMQFjAAahUKEwiFgtPOj53IAhWDGT4KHdkSCis&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gb.uni-koeln.de%2Fe2106%2Fe2113%2Fe5726%2F2014_Leitfaden_UeberzeuGENDEReSprache_11032014.pdf&usg=AFQjCNF_6ZpHwwCY0FldkMYG8iGt8dKPpw&sig2=_fE6h4Y_I0dhBLjsxpLleA

The plural inclusive form (WählerInnen) is gaining a fair amount of ground and is no longer strictly a form used by the Left, but it also remains controversial.

Grammatical gender is not understood as human gender -- the pronoun "es" for "das Mädchen" doesn't sound the same as calling a girl "it" would in English, pencils are not thought of as male and fountain pens are not thought of as female. It remains a little tricky for me as an English native speaker even after all these years over here.

There is feminist writing in German on gender in German, but it's not tumblriffic popular stuff.

oh right i know it's not understood that way, i just figured, that might be an illuminating parallel

i read a cantankerous academic thortpiece complaining about being asked to start using 'they' instead of 'he' or 'she' in english, and the author appealed to the grammatical unnaturalities, a lame argument but one that it seems is bound to have some traction the more widely people are asked to change language-use habits

"... and do you have the name of the book you're looking for, sir?"

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/516VVPSKMWL._SX351_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Good piece: https://theconversation.com/why-the-german-language-has-so-many-great-words-55554

It is full of German words.

kopfkino
weltschmerz

Great article, thanks.

Have never heard kopfkino before. Pantoffelkino though, I am familiar with.

Aztekenexpresszuggesellschaft

Volksverhetzung

Großkotz

Lebenslüge

Ooh, Ibsen! The Norwegian word is Livsløgn.
"Tar De livsløgnen fra et gennemsnitsmenneske, så tar De lykken fra ham med det samme"

~= If you take the life-lie from the average man, you take his happiness with it.

geschmäcklerisch
(pejorative) pretentiously faddish, arrogantly contemptuous of tastes other than one’s own

can anyone explain the difference between "hierhin" and "hierher"?? struggling w/ this at the moment

also the position of "nicht" in a sentence :/

"Hierher" points in the speaker's general direction, while "hierhin" points towards a specific place near the speaker. A politician talking about refugees would say they are coming "hierher" (to his country) but not "hierhin" (to his podium).

It's the subtlest of distinctions and most Germans use those terms interchangably.

I don't know about "nicht" because I'm a positive person.

thanks for your answer!

but doesn't "hin" indicate that someone is moving away from the speaker? i.e. "wohin gehst du?"
which would make "hierhin" kind of contradictory...?

"Hierher" is tautological, indicating a larger area / broader meaning. Cf. "vielmehr".
Imagine the speaker pointing "hin" to a specific spot.

Good luck with hinstellen & herstellen!

Hai, der!

"Hierher" points in the speaker's general direction, while "hierhin" points towards a specific place near the speaker. A politician talking about refugees would say they are coming "hierher" (to his country) but not "hierhin" (to his podium).

It's the subtlest of distinctions and most Germans use those terms interchangably.

Like “here, where we are” and “here, where I am”

Yes, functionally it's a little like the difference between "come here" and "come to me".

Japanese also has this distinction but in the other direction: それ “that” for things closer to the lister and あれ “that” for things far way from both speaker and listener.

Just landed in Munich and was complemented on my german by the immigration officer.

Spanish has the same thing you mention Ed, with 'este, ese, aquel' being 'this, that, that over there' (plus other corresponding forms eg esta, esos, aquellas etc).

The Plain People of Ireland: Isn’t the German very like the Irish? Very guttural and so on?
Myself: Yes.
The Plain People of Ireland: People say that the German language and the Irish language is very guttural tongues.
Myself: Yes.
The Plain People of Ireland: The sounds is all guttural do you understand.
Myself: Yes.
The Plain People of Ireland: Very guttural languages the pair of them the Gaelic and the German.

Frühlingstagundnachtgleiche

I have been enjoying hearing newspeople talk about the SPD, because it sounds to me like "sbd", which Beavis & Butthead fans at least will appreciate

So the word “leutselig” seems to be normally translated as “affable” but the usually reliable dict.cc has an added usage

leutselig sein gegen jdn.
to condescend to sb.

Can’t seem to find this anywhere else. Can a native or fluent speaker comment?

Ah, Langenscheidt says “condescending (in a friendly way)”

I don't know that usage, and really hate Langenscheidt. I'll ask around.

I always thought "leutselig" means "affable"; if you add condescension, you're "gönnerhaft." According to Duden leutselig means "wohlwollend, von einer verbindlichen, Anteil nehmenden Freundlichkeit im Umgang mit Untergebenen und einfacheren Menschen" (affable towards people of lower rank or social status).

The Wikipedia entry for Leutseligkeit sheds some light: the definition of "Leute" has shifted much in the same way "common people" has, so leutselig today means "friendly towards your fellow man" when it used to be closer to "fraternizing with the plebes."

Thanks for the help with “leutselig.“ Today’s question has to do with the proper way(s) to say “What’s-his-name” and “Peter so-and-so.”

I see Dingsbums or just Dings in the dictionary but I have never really used or come across these before.

What’s-his-name = wie-hieß-er-noch
So-and-so = soundso
Dings/Dingsbums is reserved for inanimate objects, for people it's Dingens/Dingenskirchen.

That’s perfect, thanks!

nach wie vor

It means “we for natch”

naw wir gegen es mayne

seriously this fkn language

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/world/europe/merkel-storm-translation-germany.html

Speaking at a technology conference on Tuesday, Ms. Merkel, known as a staid, no-drama politician, told a self-deprecating anecdote about being widely mocked online five years ago after she described the internet as some mysterious expanse of “uncharted territory.”

She chuckled at the memory of the digital blowback.

“It generated quite a shitstorm,” she said, using the English term — because Germans, it turns out, do not have one of their own.

Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän

Learned in school, never forgotten.

Um sie den Arm geschlungen zag,
sprach er mit sanftem Zungenschlag,
was war das für ein Schlangenzug,
der mich in deine Zangen schlug.

Es war einmal ein Leibesriese,
der machte eine Liebesreise.
Des Abends sprach er: „Reib es, Liese!“
Und Liese kam und rieb es leise.

Frohe Weihnachten!

wot's german for wobs