« The Story in a Colophon, Part I
Main
With Just One Exception He Taught Values »
June 18, 2008
The German Language and Involuntary Swearing
I've mentioned before that my ability to read German is limited by frequent outbursts of involuntary swearing. I'm sure that a native speaker or anyone who truly knows the language does not have this problem; but I do. Just last evening while reading a couple of pages in Hunger's work on Babylonian and Assyrian colophons this involuntary affliction overcame me.
Hunger was discussing curses that occur in some colophons and used the word "Talionsbestimmungen." When I first saw it, I was baffled. So I read it aloud. And then, out of nowhere came a lengthy burst of extremely vile involuntary swearing. And when that unfortunate episode subsided, I knew, without going to any dictionary, what the word meant. In fact, had I gone to any dictionary that I own, I would not have found Talionsbestimmungen. If you haven't figured it out, the word means "retaliation regulations" or if you prefer your "English" (or your German) in its purist form "lex talionis" in the broad sense. Notice that I use italics to indicate that a foreign word just might be involved. I think it the moral thing to do.
Now, the first time I came across this particular catalyst for vocal immorality was in the mid to late 1960's when I was very new to both German and Hebrew. Prof. Knierim assigned Rudolf Kilian's monograph on the Holiness Code as required reading. One barely gets past the Vorwort, when one encounters "Karetstrafe." Now look that one up in your best German dictionary. I've already given a clue to its decipherment. The "Karet" part of the "German" word is Hebrew. The whole "German" word means something like "banishment" from Hebrew כרת meaning "cut off" and German Strafe meaning "punishment" or the like. But as I said, when I first ran across this made-up word I was new to both Hebrew and German and it took me longer than I care to remember, perhaps longer than it should have, to figure it out. And when I did, a lengthy outburst of uncontrollable swearing overcame me. It was of a type that would make a pirate blush as he headed for his dictionary. By the way, Kilian also used "Talionsformel" without any indication that he understood the possible consequence of such compounds on the morals of his English speaking readers.
I'm sure the Germans have a compound word for these kinds of compounds and so do I. But in the interest of maintaining the moral climate of the blogosphere, I will not share mine.
Posted by Duane Smith at June 18, 2008 11:02 AM | Read more on Humor |
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telecomtally.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2536
Comments
Too funny! I have these problems as well. In fact, I don't work on the dissertation when the kids are around for exactly this reason!
BTW: I find it's at least gratifying when the uncontrollable swearing also occurs in German. (I have a Pennsylvania Dutch grandmother to thank for my extensive ensemble of German expletives.)
Posted by: Jim Getz at June 18, 2008 1:42 PM
Reading this post gave me a strong sense of... oh how do you say?... Schadenfreude. Alas, it's the only cool German word I know.
Posted by: Glen Gordon at June 18, 2008 5:34 PM
As suspected, the German-English dictionary I use (http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/) didn't have "Talionsbestimmungen". After I broke it into talion & bestimmungen, I got "talon rules".
"Karetstrafe" isn't there either. If you broke it into "Karet + trafe" it becomes "diamond trade".
Posted by: Aydin at June 19, 2008 11:16 AM
Excellent piece. Danke
Posted by: Gary Hurd at June 19, 2008 2:23 PM
My problem with reading German is that all nouns are capitalised. I can sometimes waste significant amounts of time scouring a dictionary for the meaning of a word (especially if it's long enough to be a compound which I might need to break into pieces and look up separately), only to realise that it's actually a person or place with which I am not familiar.
Posted by: Judy Redman at June 30, 2008 2:19 PM
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.
Send me an email if it is important.