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The news about uptake of foreign languages in Britain's schools and universities continues to be dismal. Yesterday's "Guardian Education" had an article about the demise of German in our universities. The German department at Leicester University have been told by senior management that the future of their dept. is "unsustainable". Queen's University Belfast has decided that this year's intake of undergraduates in German will be its last. Out of 116 universities in the UK, only 64 still offer German. This is partly driven by the fact that fewer and fewer school pupils are choosing German at A-level and GCSE.
Mind you, some things never lose their appeal - Nottingham Trent University regularly attracts more than 100 students a year for its module on the Third Reich.
Harry
I would go so far as to say that research can be crippled without foreign languages. Take what Harry says about the Third Reich. You can parrot what Shirer, Bullock and the rest say, and read Stern and others in translation. But you can't do any research of your own involving sources.
I will mention no names, but I remember someone at my old university who used to teach seminars on Ibsen and Strindberg without knowing one word of any Scandinavian language. When you're reading a novel for relaxation, you rely on the translator (otherwise I, for one, would be out of a job). But a serious scholar, researcher, lecturer is, in my opinion, a bit of a joke if he is totally cut off from the original text, and his research is supposed to involve the subtleties of syntax, word-play, style, and so on.
If you're going to start doing seriously literary things at university level, you don't really want to spend your first year learning a major language virtually from scratch. It takes a while before you can cope with a wide vocabulary, convoluted syntax, and register.
Even if you don't like the country or its inhabitants, it can be handy to know the language of the enemy. I wonder how British language-teaching plans changed in the 1930s, when it became clear we could soon be fighting a war against Germany. The Germans probably wouldn't have needed the Enigma machine, if there had been too few Brits that could read German. Just pop it in an open envelope. The dumb Brits can't read it anyway: "V2? That must be SMS-speak for 'and a V-sign to you too'. What d'you mean you can see a rocket over the Thames?".
And nowadays, when Germany is once again a pretty serious power, with a rather skilful Chancellor, we should again look to Germany and not pretend that they're all Nazis. It's common courtesy to know one or two languages spoken our fellow Europeans. Otherwise they remain stigmatised as the Krauts, Frogs and Dagos that witter on in their own lingoes, while we speak proper, like.
Is this the article you mean, Harry:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/sep/22/german-university-departments-closure
A quote from that article:
"Monolingualism radically diminishes Britain's ability to compete in the international marketplace and disqualifies the British from many high-level posts that require linguistic fluency. It threatens our ability to look beyond our front doors. Foreign culture can only truly be accessed through a foreign language. Not having that exposure results in an inability to be a global citizen and limits otherwise intelligent people to cultural parochialism. At that point, we have abandoned, paradoxically in the age of globalisation, the desire to reach a certain level of intellectual development and the wish to truly count as world citizens."
I would go so far as to say that research can be crippled without foreign languages. Take what Harry says about the Third Reich. You can parrot what Shirer, Bullock and the rest say, and read Stern and others in translation. But you can't do any research of your own involving sources.
I will mention no names, but I remember someone at my old university who used to teach seminars on Ibsen and Strindberg without knowing one word of any Scandinavian language. When you're reading a novel for relaxation, you rely on the translator (otherwise I, for one, would be out of a job). But a serious scholar, researcher, lecturer is, in my opinion, a bit of a joke if he is totally cut off from the original text, and his research is supposed to involve the subtleties of syntax, word-play, style, and so on.
If you're going to start doing seriously literary things at university level, you don't really want to spend your first year learning a major language virtually from scratch. It takes a while before you can cope with a wide vocabulary, convoluted syntax, and register.
Even if you don't like the country or its inhabitants, it can be handy to know the language of the enemy. I wonder how British language-teaching plans changed in the 1930s, when it became clear we could soon be fighting a war against Germany. The Germans probably wouldn't have needed the Enigma machine, if there had been too few Brits that could read German. Just pop it in an open envelope. The dumb Brits can't read it anyway: "V2? That must be SMS-speak for 'and a V-sign to you too'. What d'you mean you can see a rocket over the Thames?".
And nowadays, when Germany is once again a pretty serious power, with a rather skilful Chancellor, we should again look to Germany and not pretend that they're all Nazis. It's common courtesy to know one or two languages spoken our fellow Europeans. Otherwise they remain stigmatised as the Krauts, Frogs and Dagos that witter on in their own lingoes, while we speak proper, like.
Is this the article you mean, Harry:
Is German on the way out as a university subject? | Education | The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/sep/22/german-university-departments-closure)
A quote from that article:
Yes, that's the article.
One of the academics quoted comments ruefully that Germany doesn't have the lure of Spain's sun, sand and Sangria, or words to that effect, but it can be pretty damned hot in Germany, it has splendid beaches on the Baltic coast, and there is a plentiful selection of excellent drink of all kinds. And you can supply the "sin" yourself, just to complete the alliterative quartet.
Harry
Stewart
23-Sep-2009, 19:54
Interesting. After my weekend away in Munich and digging deep to find my old school German I found that I'd like to try again at learning. I don't have the time to do a night class as I'm already studying a part-time degree, but when the words all started coming back to me, it was a great feeling. My grammar's shocking though.
Mirabell
23-Sep-2009, 21:11
fuckin Germans. they suck anyway. fuck em.
saliotthomas
23-Sep-2009, 21:23
Interesting. After my weekend away in Munich and digging deep to find my old school German I found that I'd like to try again at learning. I don't have the time to do a night class as I'm already studying a part-time degree, but when the words all started coming back to me, it was a great feeling. My grammar's shocking though.
Girl-friends are best to learn a language.
To be honest i woud rather have my kids learning Cantonese, Arabic or Indi,than Germain,English or Italian(Spanish is different)It would give them an hedge.
Well if i had kids.
fuckin Germans. they suck anyway. fuck em.
Verdammt noch mal, I won't listen to such Schei?e! My wife and I have only good memories of our time in Germany in the 70s, despite going out there with a 17-month-old toddler to live in a ramshackle old farmhouse in the back of beyond with a crooked undischarged bankrupt for a landlord (the first thing his wife told us was to pay our rent to her, 'because my husband is not allowed to handle cheques'), not to mention the unplanned arrival of son no.2 in our second year, a painful forceps delivery by a Turkish doctor aided and abetted by a German nun in the hospital of St. Maria von den Aposteln in M?nchengladbach-Neuwerk. Even being held up at roadblocks by police with machine-pistols every time there was an alleged sighting of a Rote Armee Fraktion terrorist in Cologne gave a certain frisson to life on the Lower Rhine. (In those innocent days we never dreamt there would one day be cops with machine-guns at Edinburgh Airport).
In the 30 years since we came back we have often stuck up for Germany and the Germans against ignorant fools of the Basil Fawlty type who know nothing about them.
mirabell, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but as a German, you have no need to hate yourself - there are plenty of people out there willing to do it for you!
Harry
Mirabell
23-Sep-2009, 23:37
I like myself quite well enough that you very much. ;)
But in general, I'll wager I know the Germans better than you. Just a brief reminder. I don't need lecturing about how Germans are. Basil Fawlty indeed.
heidiadonis
24-Sep-2009, 02:47
Mirabell, you scare me with your language. How can you like Marcel Proust?
Is it because they are not your language? Tell me you are really a very gentle person. :)
Mirabell
24-Sep-2009, 02:54
Mirabell, you scare me with your language. How can you like Marcel Proust?
Is it because they are not your language? Tell me you are really a very gentle person. :)
;)
I am a very nice person. cross my heart and hope to die.
heidiadonis
24-Sep-2009, 03:30
Mirabell is a fruit in Lorraine, France, and I love the 'mirabelle' tart. You must be as sweet as the tart.
Calling someone "sweet as the tart" is a very double-edged compliment in the English language (from "A Dictionary of Slang"):
tart Noun. 1. A prostitute or promiscuous woman. The often unisexual nature of contemporary slang ensures the phrase is now applied to promiscuous males. Derog.
2. Derog. and offensive term for women. Derived from the Cockney rhyming slang jam tart meaning sweetheart.
3. An objectionable person; often used affectionately or playfully.
4. A person who will prostitute their abilities or themselves for any amount of gain.
heidiadonis
27-Sep-2009, 23:12
You made me laugh, Eric. Psst, is Mirabell a female or male? I will abandon my inclination to court him or her.
Heidi, if Mirabell is a lady, she's a bearded one, judging by her blog website, which is called Shigekuni. See:
Photos shigekuni. (http://shigekuni.wordpress.com/category/photos/)
But Mirabell is very secretive about personal matters, so maybe all the photos posted up are of her brother Wolfgang, and she is indeed a woman.
Unlike the soundbites that Mirabell provides here on the WLF, Mirabell is a serious literary scholar by the looks of things, and has written a great number of lengthy reviews about all sorts of literature, in both English and German. The only thing that would be nice were if Mirabell would cultivate a sense of humour. The bearded person looks so sober and grim in all the photos, though this may in itself be a humorous pose.
The bearded person looks so sober and grim in all the photos, though this may in itself be a humorous pose.
Perhaps what's making the bearded person so sober and grim is the news that Mrs. Merkel is probably back in for another four years.
Harry
I'd rather have the Pudgy Lady than the Greasy Gysi. And since that smarmy Russophile left the Chancellorship and sold his birthright to the Baltic pipeline, there seem to be few charismatic male German politicians left over. The President may be a nice chap, but he approaches media invisibility. Curler? Never heard of him.
And 'tis better for Germany do a controlled swing to the right than go over the top and re-introduce the C?sarian salute and eagle, the Indian good luck symbol, and all those dashing kinky jackboots. Plus that catchy song: "the banners high, the serried ranks a-marching". Nice tune, bad associations. Whereas their national anthem is about as soporific as ours and can be droned in like wise.
Actually Gysi wasn't really visible, though his party is very dodgy, but M?nterfering has now fallen on his sword and cleared the path for the German Left to be run by someone else. Maybe he's a role model for our Labour Leader...
Mirabell
28-Sep-2009, 18:32
Perhaps what's making the bearded person so sober and grim is the news that Mrs. Merkel is probably back in for another four years.
Harry
indeed. indeed.
heidiadonis
28-Sep-2009, 19:34
Mirabell, where are your book reviews? This is the second time I read a praise of your book reviews. I am lazy to click around to find your reviews. Could you give me the links or the quick directions to them?
Mirabell
28-Sep-2009, 19:55
they aren't any good. ignore Eric's sarkasm, honey and mourn Germany with me. Awful elections.
Let's get several things straight (ahem!), people.
- Mirabell is a dude.
- He has a beard.
- He lives in Bonn, Germany.
- He writes excellent reviews.
- Whoever wishes to read any of his stuff should check out his blog.
- There is a link to it included in his SIGNATURE for those of us who can't see and need new prescription glasses.
- Mirabell is a character (a peacock, actually; I think...) which appears in Book II of James Merrill's long "epic" poem The Changing Light at Sandover.
- It is one of M's favorite works of literature, hence--the name.
- It also alliterates quite nicely with his real given name, which he may or may not choose to disclose here...
...
ignore Eric's sarkasm, honey and mourn Germany with me. Awful elections.I don't see what's there to mourn. I think Merkel's win is a cause for celebration, actually. No offence, M., but if it wasn't for Angela, you guys would be FUCKED. Up the ass. Hard. So swallow the bile and welcome your new Chancellor Lady with open arms. She's here to stay--
they aren't any good. ignore Eric's sarkasm, honey and mourn Germany with me. Awful elections.
I'll mourn with you any time. Frickin' liberals. Worst-case scenario, pretty much. :(
Mirabell
28-Sep-2009, 22:03
I'll mourn with you any time. Frickin' liberals. Worst-case scenario, pretty much. :(
Not 'liberals'. Liberale are not liberals. They are libertarians.
Mirabell
28-Sep-2009, 23:27
...
I don't see what's there to mourn. I think Merkel's win is a cause for celebration, actually. No offence, M., but if it wasn't for Angela, you guys would be FUCKED. Up the ass. Hard. So swallow the bile and welcome your new Chancellor Lady with open arms. She's here to stay--
I'm glad you're so well versed in German politics so you know what Merkel's role in recent political decisions was. You do realize that our chancellor nowhere near plays the role that your president does? I mean, golly, your knowledge of German politics must have led you to realize that Merkel's major accomplishment in this crisis was to keep her own party at bay. Almost everything that was done and decided came from the party that was ousted and Merkel let them to keep the coalition quiet. IN the next weeks, starting tomorrow, her party, with her blessing, is, by the way, starting to ship 10.000 Roma back to Kosovo (http://shigekuni.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/rechteinhaber/) where they are, according to the UNHCR in immediate danger. But nooo, we want em gone. Boy-o-boy am I glad they have the whole playing field for themselves now. The FDP is historically spineless, they don't count.
hello dude im as well versed in german politix as anyone living in a neighbouring country can be huh you in bonn know more becoz it woz once the capital im sure liam knows as much as about german politics as germans know about that of the us-of-a golly gosh murkle's party got less votes but get real man they won and are now teaming up with the liberals and the excommies aint nowhere huh dont let my sarkasm psyche you boy o boy i love english idio[ma]tic expressions dont you huh syntax helps me concentrate dude
*
My only dispute with Liam's analysis is that he says that Mirabeard writes "excellent" reviews. As with the curate's egg, some parts of his website are good. He is a serious character; often too self-serious. But some of his reviews are rather long. Too long. When he focusses, his reviews are good. But people can admire their own words a little too much.
*
What is a dude? We British don't use the term?
*
Misabel is a character appearing in Tove Jansson's Moomin book called "Moominsummer Madness".
*
Liam: interesting when you say:
No offence, M., but if it wasn't for Angela, you guys would be FUCKED. Up the ass. Hard.
I do think that those who come from Karl-Marx-Stadt and other chemical holes should be a little grateful that the West Germans have not caved in to the post-Stasi wheedlings of some collaborationist Ossis, some of whom would have turned the whole of Germany into a neo-GDR.
Most normal people in the West want Germany to be strong, united, and self-confident, not paranoid, weak and aggressive, like some countries to the east of Poland. I feel that Merkel is helping keep Germany avoid extremes.
Mirabell
29-Sep-2009, 01:04
master, you are completely right. I bow to your superior use of puns and your ineffable humor and your knowledge and understanding of German politics that clearly outstrips mine, and I thank you for gracing me with the pearls of criticism so I may better my reviewish ways.
beelzebubbles
29-Sep-2009, 01:30
I have consulted the Urban Dictionary for useful definitions of the word dude.
Urban Dictionary: dude (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dude)
My favorite definition of dude:
A brilliant word that has infinite definitions and meanings. The user can say it in almost any situation and still make sense
Dude1: "Sup dude!"
Dude2: "My cat has rabies"
Dudette: "Duuuhhuude" (an expression of shock and sympathy)
Dude1: "Lets go smoke some choop"
It's ubiquitous the way man was in the Sixties and Seventies.
and still make sense
Er, yes, in the same way, as I suggested on the Camus thread, that lol still makes sense. There too the Urban Dictionary suggests that it is a kind of fill-in, stopgap grunt, to cover up the fact that you've got little to say.
lol, dude
master, you are completely right. I bow to your superior use of puns and your ineffable humor and your knowledge and understanding of German politics that clearly outstrips mine, and I thank you for gracing me with the pearls of criticism so I may better my reviewish ways.
Mirabell, there's no need to take this personally. You know there are plenty of people here (including yours truly) who love to read your reviews. I don't agree with HALF the things you say in them, but I do like the way they're written. Eric, I think, is looking for precision and perfection in something that you personally do "for fun." Ergo, he considers your reviews "overwritten."
On the other hand, Eric does a good job at pointing out why "most normal people in the West" (including plenty of Americans) respect Angela Merkel. She and her party might not be the best thing under the sun, but currently she is the best thing you've got, so deal with it. I don't exactly see Germany falling apart after--how many years has it been?--of her chancellorship. If it wasn't for her and her party, your country would be in a worse economic slump (well, maybe not) than Hungary or Romania. I'm glad that the vast majority of the German people still have their wits about them, and have voted accordingly.
Mirabell
29-Sep-2009, 14:14
you did not read my reply to what you wrote yesterday, right? This is factually skewered. and partly even just plain wrong. facts, huh.
Jayaprakash
29-Sep-2009, 15:28
Nevermind, Marcel. These are the same kinds of arguments I face when people praise Narendra Modi's alleged economic saviourship of Gujarat and ignore the pogrom against the Muslims that his government turned a blind eye to, at the very least. People are quick to praise the money-makers and to turn a blind eye to the inconvenient small fry trampled underfoot.
As to German faculties closing, two points:
Sad but true, the UK has never yet suffered significantly from its monolingualism. I say this as someone who is not a blimp or particularly pro-UK.
This does not mean conscientious scholars cannot learn German, should they wish to. There are always distance learning courses from reputed institutions. Lazy academics will continue to be lazy academics whether or not there are German faculties close at hand.
Mirabell
29-Sep-2009, 15:42
not even moneymakers. the crisis-averting policies were all, without exception, spd. the last gov was one of the two major parties together.
As to German faculties closing, two points:
Sad but true, the UK has never yet suffered significantly from its monolingualism. I say this as someone who is not a blimp or particularly pro-UK.
This does not mean conscientious scholars cannot learn German, should they wish to. There are always distance learning courses from reputed institutions. Lazy academics will continue to be lazy academics whether or not there are German faculties close at hand.
Yes indeed, before we get too suicidal about the falling status of modern languages in Britain's schools, we should acknowledge that there are countless opportunities nowadays to teach oneself languages in later life. Maybe at one time you had to do French or German at school or be monolingual for life, but not any more. Apart from local authority evening classes, which are subject to budgetary constraints and liable to be closed down at a moment's notice, there are some excellent courses in the bookshops. One of my indulgences is buying teach-yourself language courses before going on a week's holiday somewhere I've never been before. That's why I can just about order a meal in Latvian, Slovene and what used to be called Serbo-Croat and is now called Serbian, Croatian or Bosnian depending on who you're talking to. Unfortunately, at the end of the week you come home and never need to use the language again, so you never progress.
Here in Edinburgh, though, and I'm sure this applies throughout the UK, I would find it easier to get served quickly with what I'm actually asking for in shops and restaurants and pubs and concert-hall interval bars if I had kept up my rudimentary Polish. It gets wearying always having to resort to pidgin or sign-language in your own country. (I'm not being xenophobic, just honest).
Harry
This is the best thing I've read today in any of my three daily newspapers. From a "Guardian" article about German FDP leader Guido Westerwelle -
"When a BBC correspondent asked a question in English at a press conference, he replied: "In Great Britain people are expected to speak English and it is the same in Germany, people are expected to speak German."
Way to go, Guido!
Harry
beelzebubbles
29-Sep-2009, 21:08
Er, yes, in the same way, as I suggested on the Camus thread, that lol still makes sense. There too the Urban Dictionary suggests that it is a kind of fill-in, stopgap grunt, to cover up the fact that you've got little to say.
lol, dude
Now you got it. *Smirk silently*
Being a bit more right-wing than Harry I dared to buy the S?ddeutsche Zeitung yesterday. This had a handy pull-out supplement (Die Wahl 2009 - alle Abgeordnete, alle Wahlkreise, alle Bundesl?nder) giving the German election results in detail. There are some 80 million Germans living right plonk in the middle of Europe, so both their language and their politics are worth taking note of.
The amusing thing is that the CDU/CSU is represented in the colour-coding in the results with the colour black. This means that the map of Germany provided is predominantly black with largish patches of red (the SPD) and quite a bit of purple (Linke). Black is a colour that political parties in many countries have shunned since WWII (especially in combination with red and white), but the Germans don't seem to worry. As it is the main colour of printer's ink, it is a handy colour to use.
Green ink wasn't used much. The Greens in Germany seem to have won mostly in the Kreuzberg-Prentzlau district of Berlin (the only patch of green on the map I mentioned). But they have gained slightly nationally, by 2,6 percentage points, leaving them at nearly 11% of the total vote. So they gain by a system of proportional representation. The winners are the centrist liberal FDP (+ 4.7%) and the big losers are the SPD (- 11.2%). The Linke have also made significant gains (+ 3.2%). The CDU/CSU vote actually went down by 1.4%; but they could afford to, as they took 33.8% of the total national vote.
That's enough statistics. The political spectrum looks much the same as in Britain (after the next election given the way Brown is "leading" the Labour Party), except that the former Communists (Linke) are stronger, owing to voters in the former GDR constituencies.
FDP leader Westerwilly will please Liam, I'm sure, given his proclivities. Westerwelle will be Merkel's running mate if not soul mate. But Merkel is insisting that the FDP keeps its hands off various key policy areas, such as the lowering of taxes, the minimum wage, and health insurance. So the FDP will be in government, but she's keeping them on a short leash.
A quite different piece of German news is that there are lots of anti-terrorist security measures around the Oktoberfest beer orgy in Munich that is always held, logically enough, in September. I wouldn't feel comfortable in a huge crowd weilding my Steiner (the mug, not the philosopher), if I knew some nutter was going to blow himself up in his campaign against the drinking of alcohol by the infidel. A kind of latterday Beer Hall Putsch, but rather more messy.
Harry, you can actually combine your urge to Teach Yourself before a holiday and speak to immigrants, by going to that very fine city of Krak?w for a week and then you will, ever after, have a use for your Polish on the streets of Edinburgh.
But I sympathise with you when you say:
It gets wearying always having to resort to pidgin or sign-language in your own country. (I'm not being xenophobic, just honest).
People who are let in to live in any given country should be made to go on a language course immediately on arrival. Otherwise they will form ghettoes, as it is of course easier for people to stick with their compatriots. (Isn't that what Brits do in southern Spain?)
I live in what I term "someone else's country", i.e. I too am an immigrant. But I have learned the local language, Dutch, however useless it may be outside of the Netherlands, Belgium, and a few former colonies. Yet people come from North Africa, Turkey, or Eastern Europe and indeed speak pidgin Dutch. When I'm on the bus into town I often hear young people, ones who attend Dutch schools, speaking some rather clumsy form of the language. These young people will inevitably end up at the bottom of the employment pile for all jobs where speaking skills are required. Yet the Dutch authorities have endless debates about integration and appear to do nothing concrete.
Language is so important for social cohesion. Why is it so often neglected?
Mirabell
30-Sep-2009, 12:08
Black is a colour that political parties in many countries have shunned since WWII (especially in combination with red and white), but the Germans don't seem to worry. As it is the main colour of printer's ink, it is a handy colour to use..
*sigh*
They are black because black is the color most commonly associated with Christianity (at least here. and especially Catholicism, I think).
The Linke are not "the communists". The communists are "the communists". Such as the Deutsche Kummunistische Partei. They are also not "the former communists", but the former socialists.
But facts, eh? Not for you, I gather.
*sigh*
They are black because black is the color most commonly associated with Christianity (at least here. and especially Catholicism, I think).
Interesting, I had never associated black with Christianity, apart from the fact that ministers of religion traditionally wear black suits (tho' not always nowadays, especially in the (presbyterian) Church of Scotland, where they tend to wear lounge suits and ties and resemble middle managers). Purple and red are the colours I would associate with Catholicism, and of course the papal yellow or ochre that you see so much of in central Europe.
Harry
Mirabell
30-Sep-2009, 14:09
Interesting, I had never associated black with Christianity, apart from the fact that ministers of religion traditionally wear black suits (tho' not always nowadays, especially in the (presbyterian) Church of Scotland, where they tend to wear lounge suits and ties and resemble middle managers). Purple and red are the colours I would associate with Catholicism, and of course the papal yellow or ochre that you see so much of in central Europe.
Harry
Yeah that wasn't a clear cut case either. The austrian christian democrats, the ?VP also have black as their color of choice, them as well due to the Catholic history of Christian Democratic movment, I think, and they have always been struggling with it, intoducing blue and green as alternatives. The CDU, as well, has been steering toward Orange lately and blue, of course. The black is more a matter of tradition. Interestingly, the colors of the Zentrumspartei which still exists, are orange/blue/white I think. Black is a very Jesuit color.
Harry, you can actually combine your urge to Teach Yourself before a holiday and speak to immigrants, by going to that very fine city of Krak?w for a week and then you will, ever after, have a use for your Polish on the streets of Edinburgh.
I did go to that very fine city of Krak?w a few years ago and enjoyed it immensely, although it pissed down with rain the whole time we were there. We were constantly sheltering in the Rynek Gł?wny from the downpour. When we went into the city centre on our first morning there, a great crowd of people were lining the parapet of the bridge and gazing down into the river. It was in spate, and whole trees were being swept down in the current. Very dramatic. A few days later we travelled by coach down to Zakopane, and several times we were delayed because of flooding up ahead. A lot of people in Poland and the Czech Republic lost their homes and some their lives that summer.
We saw the Mariacki church in Krak?w where one day in the early Middle Ages the city trumpeter played a warning to the citizenry from an upper window that the Tartars had arrived in town, only to be halted in mid-tune by an arrow in the throat from one of the horsemen below. That fragment of melody, the hejnal, is the call sign on Polish radio. It's still played every hour on the hour from the same window of the church. We loved the story of the local students who heard some Americans lamenting that they had just missed the trumpeter at 1 o'clock. 'Give us some money and we'll go and give it to him and persuade him to play again at 2 o'clock', they said - the Americans paid up, the trumpeter duly blew his horn again at 2 o'clock and everybody was happy.
Harry
Clarissa
30-Sep-2009, 15:14
Even if you don't like the country or its inhabitants, it can be handy to know the language of the enemy. I wonder how British language-teaching plans changed in the 1930s, when it became clear we could soon be fighting a war against Germany.Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood et al. were far closer to German than French, the usual first foreign language in the UK. And Auden went so far as to live - and die - in Austria
Mirabell, you scare me with your language. How can you like Marcel Proust?Have just been to an exhibition dedicated to Marcel Proust at the Jewish Museum here in Vienna. Everything translated into German, a bit disappointing but fascinating to see the original manuscripts and galley proofs with Proust's many corrections. Plus letters to Gide, Roger Martin du Gard etc.
And I was f...... (excuse my French) glad that I am at home in both languages.
Was in Bavaria (got back to Vienna late last night) and they were delighted with the election results.
Mirabell #37:
I don't entirely trust your analysis. And I don't think you are so na?ve as to think that a party that has the names Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht on its website is just another happy old socialist organisation, in the honourable Beatrice Webb, Fabian, cooperative way. Look for yourself:
DIE LINKE: Parteivorstand 2008-2010 (http://die-linke.de/partei/organe/parteivorstand/parteivorstand_20082010/)
Only by sleight of hand can you claim that the PDS (one of the founding components of the Die Linke) under the Greasy Gysi was anything other than a Communist Party. I am not an expert on German politics, but nor am I daft. Die Linke is another of those devious parties, like Groen Links in the Netherlands, and V?nsterpartiet in Sweden, that managed to conveniently get rid of the word Communist and similar when the Soviet system fell to bits. A revolutionary party that wants to subvert parliamentary democracy cannot change its spots by altering the terminology.
Everyone knows that Luxemburg and Liebknecht were despicably murdered in cowardly wise by fascist thugs during the German Revolution. But some elements of the German ultra-Left have been playing on that fact for about eight decades now.
I was just taking the piss about the colour black. I accept that Germany uses a colour frowned upon elsewhere, as it doesn't matter any more. There are more evil things on this planet right now than the CDU using, because of tradition, the same colour as the shirts of the SS or the cassocks of clergymen. If black is a ""very Jesuit colour", once again you must explain yourself, otherwise you sink into the mire of quirky subjectivism. The Church of England and the churches of the Netherlands where I live could be said to have the same colour-coding.
Hey now (for that is how it's pronounced), getting an arrow through your throat is perhaps not the nicest way to die. I spent a whole year in that city and have never regretted it, still hoping to visit it again some day. It was one of the best years of my life.
I remember one long-haired young chap from the GDR that told us (Poles, Americans, and me) the simple formula that the nearer you got to the West German border, the more repressive the police were. (And, if you tried to cross it, you'd get shot.) So for him Poland was almost like the West.
The weather in Zakopane wasn't as dramatic when I was there. But it rained like hell, and at times the local telephone exchange didn't dare to open the lines for fear of lightning strikes. I believe that little has changed even now, except you can send messages by e-mail to circumvent the telephone exchange. I'll tell you another time about my very brief and entirely unspectacular role as a transvestite in that mountain resort.
Polish students are inventive. I like that story about conning gullible tourists out of a bit of money to "bribe" the hejnał.
You do realize that our chancellor nowhere near plays the role that your president does?
So she's pretty ineffectual then for someone whom the Forbes magazine calls the most powerful woman in the world (http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/11/06women_Angela-Merkel_34AH.html) (ahead of Condie Rice & Hillary Clinton)? Not that I go around swearing by the Forbes magazine...
I get most of my information about European politics from American newspapers; perhaps because Merkel is so pro-American, her image is slightly skewered (to her advantage) in this country?
I dunno.
Whatever happened to Condie? Can't see Obama giving her a job, given her track record. I always assumed she would return to academia, prob. Harvard or Yale. Or pick up the threads of her stalled concert-pianist career?
Re Hillary Clinton, I used to post on a genetic genealogy (DNA-testing) forum which was full of Americans, many of them latter-day victims of the Ellis Island habit of anglicising European names, so that they were desperate to check out their true ethnicity and find out from their spit where great-grandpa came from and if they were Celts or Anglo-Saxons or Vikings or Slavs or Germano-Slavic-Jews or what the hell. Like this forum, it had a thread where you ease off your shoes, loosen your belt, crack open a can of beer and shoot the breeze about anything under the sun. Unfortunately politics would rear its ugly head, and I was genuinely alarmed sometimes about the things those rednecks came out with about Hillary Clinton. When I mildly demurred, I got torrents of abuse about you fricking liberal commie Brits, we had to save you from Hitler, etc. etc.
Another non-DNA thread was about your favourite guns. Gary from Kansas told us how his mom phoned one night to say she thought she had an intruder, so Gary loaded not one, not two, but three of his guns - sidearms and at least one rifle - and set out in his pick-up truck. Luckily there was nobody there.
Liam, I don't think you would have been happy on that forum!
Surely Michelle Obama is now the most powerful woman in the world? In the UK, Sarah Brown's star is in the ascendant as hubby Gordon's sinks in the west.
Harry
Liam, women are not really powerful. So the most powerful woman in the world merely has command of the cleaning and baby-making parts of the household, unless she is as loony as Alfred Jelly-Neck, as discussed on another thread.
Mirabell told us didactically some postings back that:
The Linke are not "the communists". The communists are "the communists". Such as the Deutsche Kummunistische Partei. They are also not "the former communists", but the former socialists.
He also mentions Jesuits. Jesuits were once noted for casuistry. Pretending that Die Linke have nothing to do with Communism is a perfect piece of Jesuitical logic. I'm sure that Mirabell will now rush to correct the crazy opinion of mine that the PDS had Communist roots in that dodgiest of dodgy r?gimes, the ruling class of the GDR and they, in turn, part-founded Die Linke.
Getting back to women, husbands should keep their wives chaste and concealed, as my typically European neighbour upstairs does with his: keep them in the home and out of sight, and only let them out of the cage to, for instance, go to the supermarket chaperoned by their dear protecting husbands. That's the way to treat women. Don't let women do weird and dangerous things like join political parties, wear funny jackets, and become Chancellor (a pathetic job, not half as butch as that of President of the United States).
Another thing that makes me laugh about the politically correct brigade is that they go on and on and on about "the first Black president". But when Condoleezza Rice, a rather dark-tinted lady who is a classical pianist as Harry mentions, had a powerful job, all the Black claque shut their big gobs - because Condy had had the bad taste to work for the Republicans. So when you support Blacks, remember: only support the ones that are Democrats. Republican Blacks are mere coconuts.
As for Hillary "Two-Ells" Rodham, she sometimes comes across as a bit of a sucker. Though she isn't a patch on Monica in this respect.
[...]Pretending that Die Linke have nothing to do with Communism is a perfect piece of Jesuitical logic. I'm sure that Mirabell will now rush to correct the crazy opinion of mine that the PDS had Communist roots in that dodgiest of dodgy r?gimes, the ruling class of the GDR and they, in turn, part-founded Die Linke.
Die Linke was formed some years ago as a union between PDS and WASG, which contained disappointed unionists and champagne socialists from West Germany. The PDS, formerly SED-PDS, formerly SED (the Socialistic Unity Party, which governed the GDR), evolved from a forced union of SPD and communistic party in the Russian occupation zone. They are socialists, not communists, left but not left wing extremists. These are rather to be found in MLPD and DKP.
beelzebubbles
30-Sep-2009, 22:39
I think Condi is teaching at Harvard.
I am sorry; I was wrong. Condelezza Rice is teaching political science at Stanford.
She always seemed like a fast-talking con artist to me. 'She speaks yet she says nothing.' Compare the African American communities response to Condelezza Rice with that of her predecessor as Secretary of State, Colin Powell, another staunch conservative, but someone who is seen as a man of principle. If Powell had run in 2008, I think there would have been a good chance that our present president would have been Republican as well as African American.
Of course, this has nothing to do with Germany. My apologies.
When I'm on the bus into town I often hear young people, ones who attend Dutch schools, speaking some rather clumsy form of the language. These young people will inevitably end up at the bottom of the employment pile for all jobs where speaking skills are required. Yet the Dutch authorities have endless debates about integration and appear to do nothing concrete.
Language is so important for social cohesion. Why is it so often neglected?
Going off at a tangent from what you say about Dutch, I was watching a TV programme about Scottish history last night and one of the guest academics was a Dutchman I used to know in my previous life as an academic. I knew him as a young Ph.D. student who had come to Scotland to study Older Scots literature, and even then his English accent was flawless. Flawless. No trace of a foreign accent. He told me it was quite common in the Netherlands for postgraduates to write their thesis in English. He hardly seemed to regard it as a foreign language. And as he demonstrated in the TV programme, he is capable of reciting mediaeval Scots verse in a way that very few Scots could do. Rabbie Burns defeats most of us, and he is relatively modern.
But this chap told me a bad story about his native country, which I found rather shocking. He is keen on cycling, and once cycled from his native town in the Catholic deep south of the Netherlands up to the north, to Groningen, I think he said. There, he got lost, and asked directions from some young guys sitting in a car by the side of the road. They answered his question, and he went on his way. A few minutes later they caught up with him in their car, pulled him off his bike, and beat him up, making it clear that they didn't like strangers in town from the south. So much for liberal free-thinking Holland.
Harry
Omo says:
They are socialists, not communists, left but not left wing extremists.
I have rather simplistic opinions about totalitarian r?gimes like the former Russian puppet state (or zone of occupation) the GDR. Whether you call people socialists or Communists makes little difference. You had to kowtow to the Russian-led puppet leaders (Ulbricht, Honecker, etc.) and their lackeys if you wanted a good job. You were watched by creepy people hanging around in pubs and at the workplace who would report the slightest signs of non-Communist, non-socialist, behaviour to the appropriate secret police department.
Anyone in the establishment of the GDR, whether party apparatchik or union leader, would surely be a member of the wannabe classes that hoped to enter the nomenklatura under whatever label. The MLPD (the Stefan Engel Admiration Society) and DKP (4,000 members nowadays) are likely to be the true card-carrying Communists in a united Germany. Sure. But they were and are surely insignificant fringe parties compared with the might of the one party that counted, the SED. See:
http://www.mlpd.de/
German Communist Party - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Communist_Party)
Socialist Unity Party of Germany - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Unity_Party_of_Germany)
This is the same as in Finland during the Cold War. The Communist parties were mere decoration. The Russians actually tried to subvert and influence the Social Democrats, in order to give their manipulations parliamentary credibility. Some people are just born devious. Some leading lights in the Finnish Communist Party did, however, cooperate with the then GDR. There are some 15 people whose names have never been published in Finland who were virtually acting as GDR spies in Finland.
*
As for Condoleezza Rice, I always got quite a different impression of her to that of Beelzebubbles. I thought she was a sensitive person doing a difficult job in a white-male-dominated political party. Her pianist activities seem rather a nice change from the average somewhat brash and philistine politician. The fact she also evidently knows the Russian language will also have made her an asset. But I agree with you about Colin Powell who is no longer raved about because of his race.
*
Harry, not all Groningers are such bastards. There are in fact enclaves or pockets of Catholicism in the north of Groningen province, which is rather unexpected. A friend who's coming round this afternoon comes from there. He has told of how the local Prods used to mock the Papists and vice-versa in that neck of the woods. Whether it ever came to blows I can't remember. But it is true that the Netherlands is, in the main, divided along Protestant-Catholic lines by the River Maas (Meuse) and Rhine across the middle of the country.
Clarissa
01-Oct-2009, 10:26
Sick to death of Obama first black President.:mad:
He himself credits his mother, a white woman, as the driving influence in his life
plus
mater semper certa ist :)
Sorry folks, feminist streak coming out in me!:p
Sick to death of Obama first black President.:mad:
He himself credits his mother, a white woman, as the driving influence in his life
plus
mater semper certa ist :)
Sorry folks, feminist streak coming out in me!:p
It's like the golfer Tiger Woods - he gets quite shirty when people try to make him into a black icon. As he points out himself, his ethnic mix is quite diverse.
Harry
Obama himself identifies as black, though. It's silly that you have to be one or the other, but it's not like there isn't a fairly important historical backdrop to it...
Clarissa
01-Oct-2009, 12:01
Obama himself identifies as blackBecause it's better PR?
Don't get me wrong here, I admire him tremendously. Just when you read about him, his father had hardly any influence on him.
Obama himself was a brilliant student and an astute politician. Everyone knows that. It's just this constant insistence on the 'black' that bugs me. His mother's second husband, who probably had more to do with hs upbringing, was Indonesian.
Barack Obama was born at Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapi%27olani_Medical_Center_for_Women_%26_Children ) in Honolulu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honolulu), Hawaii (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii), United States,[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama#cite_note-maraniss-3) to Stanley Ann Dunham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Dunham),[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama#cite_note-4) an American of mainly English descent from Wichita, Kansas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wichita,_Kansas),[6] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama#cite_note-Kansas-5) and Barack Obama, Sr. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama,_Sr.), a Luo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luo_%28Kenya_and_Tanzania%29) from Nyang?oma Kogelo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyang%E2%80%99oma_Kogelo), Nyanza Province (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyanza_Province), Kenya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenya). Obama's parents met in 1960 in a Russian language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language) class at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Hawaii_at_Manoa), where his father was a foreign student on scholarship.[7] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama#cite_note-6)[8] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama#cite_note-baltimoresun2007-7) The couple married on February 2, 1961,[9] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama#cite_note-8) and Barack was born later that year. His parents separated when he was two years old and they divorced in 1964.[8] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama#cite_note-baltimoresun2007-7) Obama's father returned to Kenya and saw his son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982.[10] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama#cite_note-9)
The problem is with terming anyone a Black anything is that you slide down the slippery slope of racism and mental apartheid yourself.
As Clarissa suggests, you can call Obama half-White or half-Black, depending on whether the bottle is half-empty or half-full. Nor is Colin Powell particularly dark-skinned. But once you start making all these gradations, you are surely beginning to fall into the trap of colour-coding, as they used to do in South Africa, where you were White, Coloured, Asian, or Black. Condoleezza Rice was brought up in a White family, as far as I know. One amusing but intrinsically racist term that Blacks use about such people as Condy is "coconut": brown on the outside, white within. That means: dark-skinned but with White values. And the terms "mulatto" and "octroon" are regarded as unspeakably racist nowadays.
Values are not Black or White. Values don't have skin colour. It is true that many of the fruits of the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution were invented or discovered by White European males (so: sexist as well!). But surely the idea is to create a society where race and gender don't matter when aspiring to equality. People should aspire to the most civilised values. Looking down on such values because they were originally created by Whites is racism in itself. Democracy, human rights and so on belong to everyone.
Race shouldn't matter, while cultural values should. But we don't live in an ideal world. Some people use the accusation of racism to prevent you from criticising the more abhorrent aspects of their culture.
Question: is Germany better or worse when it comes to the integration of non-European immigrants compared to Britain? That's one aspect of Germany I can never quite find out about.
Mirabell
01-Oct-2009, 12:33
I have rather simplistic opinions
correct. wow. second time in two days I agree with you.
beelzebubbles
02-Oct-2009, 04:04
Bjorn says,
Obama identifies himself as black.
Because it's better PR?
Obama identifies himself as black because when another American white or black or Asian looks at him that is what he/she sees.
If he were fair enough, he could pass and that would be another kettle of fish entirely.
That he is biracial carries it's own onus. I know quite a few biracial children and have had heart to heart talks with them about their feelings concerning their cumbersome racial identity. Imagine one half of your blood denies you, you can never be considered white or Asian and the other half is suspicious and, dare I say it, jealous of you. In both the black and white communities, biracial children are often seen as more beautiful than their white/black/Asian counterparts. Light skin and 'good' hair are prized in the black community. In many ways, they have to carry the madness of our racial paranoia, hatreds and distortions as a part of their self-identity.
It's a goddamn burden not PR!
Sorry, didn't mean to get so excited.
Congratulations USA on electing your first non-WASP or non-Irish president let alone a black man. It's a freaking miracle.
Still waiting on our first Jewish, avowedly Muslim, atheist, female or Asian president.
Sorry off topic again.
Sorry off topic again.
Well, this is the Off Topic thread. Be as off as you want. Who cares about books anyway. As Anthony Powell said, "Books do furnish a room". Can't think of any other use for them.
Harry
Clarissa
02-Oct-2009, 13:50
"Books do furnish a room"
Better than anything else... Antiques be damned!
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