What do you think?

[sister_luck]

I'm in a bit of a conflict regarding authentic English and using Denglish terms that are clearly translated from the German and turn up in all sorts of material for German students and teachers.

Here's the problem:

I've got to prepare my advanced students for their final exams in 2009. Discussing and analysing poetry is part of that. For some reason, there is quite a difference in the terms used in German and in English to do so. In German, the speaker of the poem is the lyrisches Ich. Rhymes can be Kreuzreime, umarmende Reime and Paarreime.

So, these terms get translated into English. I've got various books at home aimed at German students to help them prepare for their final exams that contain the phrase lyrical I - sometimes with a hyphen as lyrical-I. *shudders*

Here is a list describing rhyme scheme taken from one of those books:

rhyme pairs (aa); cross rhyme (abab); embracing rhyme (abba); tail rhyme (aabccb)

I've found both crossed rhyme and tail rhyme elsewhere, but with very different definitions.

I'm pretty sure that the above terms wouldn't be taught this way in a real English language school setting, either in the States, the UK, the Antipodes or elsewhere. On the one hand, I do want to use authentic English, on the other hand it looks like some of these words are very prevalent in German English teacher jargon and will thus be expected of the students. Also, I don't want to punish them for mistakes that others have made - so I'm currently offering alternatives to the words they use, but don't count them as a mistake.

Does that make sense? Am I right that these terms are bogus?

edited because awarding penalties doesn't mean what I wanted it to say

Comments

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Well, lyrisches Ich is not the lyricist per se, but rather the persona the writer adopts. For example, I might write a poem from the point of view of a teenage boy - then I'd describe the lyrisches Ich as a teenage boy, but the lyricist would still be a 34-year-old woman from Germany!

And even though it might not be obvious from my questions, I actually do know those terms - it's just the Denglish ones that confuse me.