My name is, my name is (not the real Slim Shady)

I’m sure most of you know what my name is, but I’m also very sure that most English native speakers of you will pronounce my name differently to what I would call myself.

I have been living in England now for over a whole year; adding my Erasmus time, it’s almost two years I have spent on this island.

I think it’s time to do a round-up now to keep you all up-to-date, especially since it got a bit silent on this blog in the past three months.

Putting Merkel and New Order together

...in a blog post. Sounds maniacal, but - oh yes - I have Listomania! My handpicked list for calendar week 9 of the year 2014.

How to do a German accent

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„You may want to do this because you’re in a play or want to impress your friends“ 

Yes, these are convincing reasons to do a German accent whilst speaking English. I, for example, do that all the time. But I have to work on that because people keep on asking me where I come from when I’m speaking English.

Living German II: The mother does nothing. She sits.

After the last trip to Cologne, we are now heading to Miesbach, the village, where “The Family” lives. The Family has no surname. Reminds me a bit of la famiglia, whichoften refers to the Mafia groups. But as the language book is written in post-war Germany, I guess that the Italian guest workers were just about to find themselves miserable in Italy, so there was no scene for la famiglia in Germany – yet.

In chapter 3 “Was macht die Familie?” (“What is the family doing?”), we get to know the family members a bit better. They are:

-       Anton, the father, teaches, tells anecdotes

-       Marie, the mother, sings, domestic habits

-       Liesel, the daughter, characterless

-       Karl, the son, musical

-       the dog, old and lazy

-       the kitten, young and playful
-    Paula, appears mysteriously in the text

All in all an average family in Bavaria. I think the names are becoming en vogue again.

While the readers are sweating over the accusative case of the German language, they are being indoctrinated about roles of old-fashioned German families. Again, the book is written in the 50s but published, like that, in the 80s. By R.W. Buckley, M.A., a „Lecturer in German, Technical College, Coventry. The suffragettes didn’t come to Coventry I guess.

The hobbies of the kids are boring: Liesel is playing in the garden, Karl is playing the violin (first indication of a middle-class family). The mother sings. Hopefully well.

So the story goes like this:

“Anton doesn’t play when Liesel plays: he is working. He is a teacher (second indication of German Bildungsbürgertum, 60 years later also named as Wutbürger). The village has a school and Anton is the schoolteacher there. He is a village schoolteacher (God, yes I think we all got that).

But Anton plays in the evening: he plays the piano: he is musical. Also his son, Karl, is musical and plays the violin. Marie doesn’t play an instrument. She sings. (I guess very badly, because it is not indicated that she is musical too, but probably she doesn’t have a lot of time to practice because:)

What does the mother do, when Anton works and Liesel plays? (probably shagging the postman) She works too. (does the postman give her money?) Her work is big (and sinful), because the house isn’t small. (damn the Bourgeoisie!)

Marie cleans the house. (Booh) She makes every bed and cleans every bedroom. She cooks. (shame that there are no wives of the guest workers yet, they could do the cleaning and Marie could concentrate on her singing and paint some watercolours of the Bavarian landscape) The house has one kitchen, where the mother cooks. The kitchen is nice and clean. (sedulous mother).

The Family, apparently Paula looks like a boy?

Every child has one bedroom but the house only has one living room. The living room is where one sits and lives. (well, I do live also in other rooms, but maybe the family has transcendental experiences in the other rooms and can only be down-to-earth there). Here Anton plays the piano. Here Marie sings in the evenings (you wannabe rockstar). She likes to sing.

The father drinks wine or beer, the mother likes to drink coffee (Marie has to be sober to cook, the father has to relief himself from the school stress), Paula and Karl like to drink tea (Paula??) and Liesel drinks milk. (Wait, who is Paula?)

The day is nice, but it has come to an end (the arc of suspense!). The sun isn't shining anymore. Because it is evening and then comes the night. Liesel doesn’t play in the evening, she sleeps. What does Marie do? She doesn’t do anything. She sits. (no comment) What does Karl do? He also has work. He is studying. (but lives still at home). He likes to study his book. (I think he never had a girlfriend. Or boyfriend.) He works day and night. (At least that’s what the parents think)”

So, a typical evening with the family: father comes home, eats, drinks, plays the piano, drinks, tells anecdotes, drinks. The mother sings a bit, and sits and watches her husband getting drunk. What a middle class family.

Living German I: American pomposity vs German wittiness

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Because I worked for an educational publisher, I still have a thing for language books. Especially when they are serving stereotypes under the guise of German grammar. Which is perfect because German grammar is one of the nasty ones. The syntax is so complicated that you focus on every single ending of a word instead of the content.

So you don’t realise that you are being brainwashed.

In the fabulous book Living German by R.W. Buckley, M.A., who is (or was) a „Lecturer in German, Technical College, Coventry“, first published in 1957, you can see the patriarchy in German families, written by a Brit and feel the resentments of Brits towards Americans after World War Two in Western post-war Germany. I have the third edition from 1981 on my table. It is remarkable how old-fashioned the dialogues are and it makes me wonder how much they changed during the editions or how little. I guess the latter is the case.

Living German: a guide through cultures

The first dialogue I want to show you is about an American in Cologne who gets guided through the city by a local. Chapter 16, “Karl erzählt eine Anekdote (Comparison of Adjectives)” I translated into English:

(…) An American visits Cologne. This man is a very nice guy (You have to make that extra clear when you describe an American). But he has one bad habit: he shows off too much (well…no comment needed on that). His friend from Cologne shows him the oldest buildings in the beautiful city on the river Rhine. The stranger finds everything smaller than in his country (!). The German shows him the Kölner Dom.

-       “What’s the name of this church?”, asks the American. (beginning of teasing)

-       “That’s the cathedral of Cologne”, answers the German. (poor guy, ignoring the rudeness of the American, might be a slip-up?)

-       “The church of Mary in Boston is much bigger and higher than this dome. Also, reinforced concrete is better than stone. (no, no slip-up, it’s simply rudeness) Do you know our skyscraper, the Woolworth building? (yes, it’s an old book) It’s the biggest building in the world.” (told you)

The German gets tired: he is fed up and searches for a practical answer. (oh these task-orientated Germans) They arrive at the Rhine. There’s the Rhine-bridge, the longest of all bridges. (I think this anecdote is full of phallic metaphors)

-       “What’s the name of that bridge there?” asks the American

-       “What bridge?” asks the German. “I can’t see a bridge.” The foreigner points at the bridge. “Ach so” (I didn’t want to translate this part, because it’s… a very good reflection of Germans being surprised) answers the person from Cologne. “That’s new. I was here yesterday and there wasn’t a bridge before.” (how can you respond to that!?)

The American isn’t so stupid at all. (why this sentence, did it occur to the reader that the American might be stupid?) He laughs and says: “I understand. I have everything better than you, (at least that’s what your insisting on) and you’re making a mockery of me (in original it’s und Sie halten mich zum besten which means to mock s.o, but it is also a word game because it is playing with “best”)

That is how Karl’s anecdote ends, and all the family laughs of that word game. (…)

So, while you were learning about the comparison of adjectives, you also learned that Americans are competitive arseholes and Germans are witty and task-orientated. This doesn’t come from me, it comes from the British person R.W. Buckley. What does that say about the relationship between Brits and Americans? I think Buckley has some resentments towards Americans and really does like Germans. Who else would say that Germans have a great sense of humour?