Various tidbits
Feb. 4th, 2007 03:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sister_luckI'm in the middle of marking hell and have decided to take a break. I've got nothing to say of great interest, but there are some little things I want to share.
I went to the car wash yesterday and now my car is shiny and sparkly again. I don't know why, but I love going through the car wash. You don't have to do anything - the car moves on its own, there's lots of water splashing on your car and then there are the huge swirly things (is there a word for them? They're not really brushes, are they?). In a way, I think it's very sexy. The boyfriend reckons that's weird. Is there anything that you feel is erotic, but that's not really connected to sex?
Last night they showed the first two episodes of Life on Mars on German tv - dubbed of course. I caught bits and pieces of it. I marvelled at the camera work and was impressed that they got the voices about right. We'll see how it fares on German television. I'm not sure that it will appeal to audiences here.
Many Germans think that we're using too many English words instead of German ones. While I think it's true that advertising slogans don't need to be in English, I think that there are some words that we should adopt. The Aktion für lebendiges Deutsch is always looking for replacements for English terms. They do like some words that we've adopted, but don't like others - sometimes without any good reason. They've been looking for a word to replace Slogan which I learned on Balderdash and Piffle isn't really English, but comes from Gaelic and in its original form meant battle cry. It's a good word as it is and Spruch - their replacement - is just too plain. Currently they're appealing to the public to find a German word for Spam - not the meat, but the emails. Anyone who has seen the Monty Python sketch would be very sad indeed to lose that lovely term. I know that the French are trying to keep their language free from more English words. Any opinions on this you would like to share?
I also watched another episode of 24 and am now wondering why the writers seem to think that an educated black person is also an expert pick-pocket and has no trouble swiping a mobile phone from someone else's pocket.
I went to the car wash yesterday and now my car is shiny and sparkly again. I don't know why, but I love going through the car wash. You don't have to do anything - the car moves on its own, there's lots of water splashing on your car and then there are the huge swirly things (is there a word for them? They're not really brushes, are they?). In a way, I think it's very sexy. The boyfriend reckons that's weird. Is there anything that you feel is erotic, but that's not really connected to sex?
Last night they showed the first two episodes of Life on Mars on German tv - dubbed of course. I caught bits and pieces of it. I marvelled at the camera work and was impressed that they got the voices about right. We'll see how it fares on German television. I'm not sure that it will appeal to audiences here.
Many Germans think that we're using too many English words instead of German ones. While I think it's true that advertising slogans don't need to be in English, I think that there are some words that we should adopt. The Aktion für lebendiges Deutsch is always looking for replacements for English terms. They do like some words that we've adopted, but don't like others - sometimes without any good reason. They've been looking for a word to replace Slogan which I learned on Balderdash and Piffle isn't really English, but comes from Gaelic and in its original form meant battle cry. It's a good word as it is and Spruch - their replacement - is just too plain. Currently they're appealing to the public to find a German word for Spam - not the meat, but the emails. Anyone who has seen the Monty Python sketch would be very sad indeed to lose that lovely term. I know that the French are trying to keep their language free from more English words. Any opinions on this you would like to share?
I also watched another episode of 24 and am now wondering why the writers seem to think that an educated black person is also an expert pick-pocket and has no trouble swiping a mobile phone from someone else's pocket.
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Date: 2007-02-04 03:37 pm (UTC)Hair everything: washing, cutting, braiding....mmmmm - on both ends, of course, giving or receiving
As for keeping the language clean - well, I can't imagine how we could make out some rules, not to mention to keep them.
After so many years here I'm used to the German ability to built strange words - I'll never forget the longest word I learned 17 years ago, 40(!) letters long - but I'm dreading the ersatz we would get for the nice, short "spam" ;-)
PS Pun intended after recalling this one bit:
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that the English language is as pure as a crib-house whore. It not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary."
—James Nicoll, can.general, March 21, 1992
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Date: 2007-02-04 05:50 pm (UTC)I like having my hair washed and my scalp massaged, but don't like the cutting part. I don't know why.
I love that quote about English - German isn't half as creative as English I think - we just string words together to make new ones and when we borrow words we feel like we have to apologize for that. The idea of purity doesn't appeal to me at all - not in languages and not in people. Life is messy after all.