1776: The Explanation of Independence

Germans, operating with a somewhat more limited vocabulary than English speakers,* sometimes have to make do with one word where English speakers would prefer to use two or more to better differentiate between nuanced concepts. Sometimes this difference is fairly minor and maybe slightly comical. For example, where English has tennis rackets, ping-pong paddles, and baseball bats, German has Tennisschläger (tennis-hitters), Pingpongschläger (ping-pong-hitters), and Baseballschläger (baseball-hitters). Now, you could argue that there is a subtle difference between a racket, a paddle, and a bat, but at the end of the day they're all for hitting things. Point goes to Germany.

Other times, it seems like two words might have been a good idea. For example, the German word Erklärung, which means both explanation and declaration. When you go through German customs, you're asked to fill out a Zollerklärung: a customs declaration, or should I say a customs explanation. Fine - customs are a pretty dry subject; nothing to get excited about.

But what about this: "He chased her through the airport, scattering passengers and their suitcases in his wake. Catching her just before she boarded the plane, he took her trembling hand in his, got down on one knee, and explained his love."

Yup, in German, a declaration of love is a Liebeserklärung - an explanation of love. And while I'm sure if you grew up German, a Liebeserklärung is every bit as exciting (or horrifying, as the case may be) as a declaration of love, the word itself seems strangely dispassionate. A declaration of love is romantic and reckless, while an explanation of love seems like it would be accompanied by a lot of graphs and stats.

Oh yeah, she's feelin' it.

* Exact numbers are hard to come by (the prevalence of compound words in German makes it difficult to get a precise count of how many German words there are, plus half of English words are just straight-up stolen from other languages), but the general consensus is that English has a significantly larger vocabulary than German.

YOLNT (or ST)

When you move to a new country, there are cultural differences that affect your whole life. They can make you think twice before speaking, wonder if you'll ever make friends, and eventually have only-half-joking fights with those friends about which culture got it "right."

And then there are the the little differences, the weird ones, the curiosities. I like those the best. Things like this: You know how cats have nine lives? FALSCH! In Germany they only have seven.

What??? That's probably half the reason this German cat looks so sad.

Part of what interests me so much about these little differences is wondering where they came from. I mean, how did it happen that we all agree that cats have multiple lives (weird enough on its own) but somehow settled on different numbers? Is there an epic story behind this - a tale of conflicting interpretations where we finally, maturely, agreed to disagree (although not before a great deal of blood had been shed and a number of impassioned speeches made)? Or was there just a translation mistake somewhere down the line that took root in the public consciousness and affected the entire course of the future (cat-related myths being an important subset of the future)? We may never know...

Eyecatching

If you've been searching for a way to attract curious, suspicious, and sometimes hostile stares at bus stops and in waiting rooms, I've got a hot tip for you. Just borrow my copy of "Heil Hitler, das Schwein ist tot!" ("Heil Hitler, the Pig is Dead!") People will only recognize the first two words and won't know what to make of them (and, by extension, you). Good times will be had by all!

I just finished reading it and if it weren't in German, I would say READ IT! READ IT NOW! Since it's in German, though, I'll say LEARN GERMAN! LEARN GERMAN NOW! THEN READ IT! READ IT THEN!

The book chronicles the evolution of jokes about the Nazis (and also of the punishments for telling these jokes) from the earliest years of the party up to the 1990s. Herzog gives lots of examples and makes some good points about the nature of many "anti-Nazi" jokes told during the Third Reich - namely, that they weren't actually political in nature; they focused on the personal foibles of the Nazi leadership (Goebbels walked with a limp, Göring loved his military service medals, etc.) and weren't seen as any real threat to the regime.

To draw a parallel, when I make a joke about how Stephen Harper had to have his picture taken with a kitten to prove he's not a robot, this is in no way dangerous to Stephen Harper's government because it's not aimed at his policies. In fact, if I basically support Stephen Harper,* this joke might even make me like him better - after all, we tease the people we love.

I'm going to leave you with a translation of the titular joke, which was told in the closing days of the war, as Germans began to realize that they were going to lose the war and some jokes became more openly hostile to the Nazi leadership.

Hitler and his chauffeur are driving through the countryside when, all of a sudden, they feel a bump and realize they've run over a chicken. Hitler says to his chauffeur, "We've got to tell the farmer. I'll do it - I'm the Führer, he will understand." Two minutes later Hitler comes running back to the car, rubbing his jaw - the farmer punched him. They drive on. A few miles down the road, they feel another bump - they've run over a pig. Hitler says to his chauffeur, "This time, you get to tell the farmer." The chauffeur obeys this order and comes back to the car an hour later, drunk on good wine and carrying a basket full of sausages and cheese. Hitler is amazed and says, "What did you tell them?" The chauffeur responds, "All I said was 'Heil Hitler! The pig is dead!' and they gave me all these presents!"

* I don't, just so we're clear.

Germany solves the problems of the first world

You know what's the worst? Like, actually, no exaggeration, the very worst thing that happens in the world? It's when you run out of shampoo before you run out of conditioner and then you either buy both and have an extra bottle of conditioner cluttering up the bathroom for weeks or you just buy shampoo and have to make an extra trip to the drugstore two days later when you run out of conditioner after all. That's the worst.

But you know who fixed that? The Germans. In Germany, they just make the shampoo bottles bigger than the conditioner bottles. Problem solved, world - you can go back to worrying about things like global poverty and child soldiers. See below and marvel. So simple, and yet...

Now you may say, "Calculating the perfect ratio of shampoo to conditioner is a fool's errand - there are too many factors to do it with any degree of accuracy for any significant proportion of the population." But I say, "Just because we may never achieve perfection, doesn't mean we shouldn't try. WHO'S WITH ME?"

Not content to blow my mind just once, the Germans also designed conditioner bottles that stand upside-down, so you don't have to try to figure out which identical bottle is shampoo and which is conditioner, squinting through the spray, ultimately shampooing your hair a third time, and living with the frizzy mess that ensues. And you know how conditioner tends to be thicker and sometimes you have trouble getting the last little bit out of the container? It solves that problem too! Seriously, people say "German engineering" so reverentially when they're talking about their BMWs and Mercedes, but check out these shampoo bottles and shut up about your Porsche!

Another pig-cool blog post

Pork and potatoes are the twin mainstays of German cuisine, but pigs, at least, seem to have infiltrated the German language as well. In addition to the aforementioned saugeil (pig-horny, aka cool), Germans can describe winters as saukalt (pig-cold)*, concert tickets as sauteuer (pig-expensive), and people they don't like as saudumm (pig-stupid). This doesn't make sense, of course - are pigs cold? Are they horny? They're definitely not stupid - but logic hasn't played a role in the development of most languages, and German is no exception.

And just in case you needed any more proof, please refer to the German dubbing of Die Hard, in which German John McClane utters the immortal line, "Yippee-ki-yay, du Schweinebacke!" (Yippee-ki-yay, you pig cheek!). QED. Game, set, match. Checkmate.

As a bonus, please enjoy this picture of me looking worried about dinner (and the prevalence of pig imagery in the German language).

*if it's a long winter and you need to switch it up, you can also say arschkalt (ass-cold).

P.S. My go-to online dictionary suggests "colder than a brass toilet seat in the Yukon" as the best/only translation for saukalt, so apparently Germans aren't the only ones with colourful cold imagery.