LL-L "Language politics" 2004.09.16 (08) [E]

Fri Sep 17 03:29:26 UTC 2004

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From: Ed Alexander <edsells at cogeco.ca>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.09.16 (01) [A/E]

At 11:56 AM 09/16/04 -0700, you wrote:
>Did that guy emigrate before WWII?  If not, did he slip through the
>"denazification" cracks during immigration (to Canada?)?  What sort of hole
>did he crawl out of?  If he was younger, might he have been a Skinhead?  If
>neither
>of the above, what kind of substance was he on?

Actually, all three of them were alive and living in Germany during the
war.  First, let me apologize for the impression I gave that these people
were the norm.  I was simply trying to show my own experience that racism
is a very insidious thing and transcends all "races" (which in reality do
not exist, of course) and "nationalities".  I could go on and on with more
such stories about subtle racism among every single ethnicity that I've
every encountered.  The amazing thing, which I think was the original
point, was the assumption of where it was "safe" to be more public about
one's prejudices.  I spent one year selling new houses here in Canada for a
contractor who was Jewish but was tall, blonde, and blue eyed - a perfect
Swede!  It was interesting on occasion when talking about price with
subcontractors (none of them "German", by the way) to hear them speak about
"jewing" someone.  My friend never once flinched.

>I would never claim that no antisemitism remains in Germany, but I hazard a
>guess that its rate is no higher, is probably lower (if for nothing else
but
>a tradition of guilt), than in many other European countries.  At any rate,
>very, very few people would openly display their antisemitism that way.
In
>my experience, for a German to come out and behave in that way is quite
>unusual, certainly in the presence of someone who is not in on it.

They made the quite erroneous assumption that I was in on it, and I believe
that it was because we were all speaking German at the time, though I could
be quite wrong about that.

Another funny story, which has a particularly Canadian twist, is one I tell
about a fellow with the accent of one who had just stepped off the plane
from Glas-gow.  He was calling about a particular house I had for
sale.  However, when he heard the location, he said he wasn't
interested.  When I asked him why, he said, "Ach, they-ers too many ethnics
doun they-re."  I guess only a Scotsman could come to Canada and say such a
thing in all innocence.

Ed Alexander

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.09.16 (01) [A/E]

Ed Alexander wrote:
> I once walked into a conversation among three German expatriates, and one
of
> them was regaling the others about how, on his last trip to Germany, he
made
> fun of some Yeshiva students by speaking Yiddish with them and mocking
them.
> I joined in the laughter, then told them about the Jewish man I worked for
> in Philadelphia who was chosen by his regiment to do the initial
> interrogations of the guards and officials of a concentration camp they
had
> just liberated at the close of WWII, because he was the only one who spoke
> German, and wasn't that a funny turn of events.  You should have seen the
> looks on their faces.

My (ethnically American Jewish, but not religious) husband and I both once
worked for a software quality test lab in Oregon. We had a coworker of 24 or
so who was nice enough, but extremely naive and ignorant in many ways (his
geography was a hoot) - we still quote him to this day. He was like a
caricature of the all-American kid, bubble gum, sunny attitude, abject
cluelessness and all...

Anyway, he once told me that he was amazed to find that I actually seemed to
have a sense of humour, because "everybody knows that Germans just don't",
and he even "knew that for sure" because his friend who was in the US army
near Frankfurt had told him: "I tried to break the ice by telling them a
bunch of really good concentration camp jokes, but what do you know - no one
ever laughed!"

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From: john feather <johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Language politics

Ingmar wrote (it could have been anybody):
>Esperanto is absoluut niet zo eenvoudig te leren als men altijd zegt,
bovendien doet het zeer onnatuurlijk en onesthetisch aan.

So, Esperanto is absolutely neat so one-promisedly to leer all's men all
tide cut, cows eating doubt it very unnaturally an anaesthetic one.

Just a thought.

I wonder about Gabriele being "ogled": shades of "Maedchen in Uniform". But
this word seems to have had a resurgence in the UK recently, usually
mispronounced "oggled". Why? There was a vogue a few years ago for "tryst"
but pronounced "triest" (ie with the diphthong of  "try" rather than as
"trist").

Is Ron applying a double standard to Bavarians? If he addressed a Frisian
speaker in Dutch or German and they said they didn't speak it, would that
make them xenophobic? And of course "Preusse" used by a Bavarian has its
Bavarian meaning, not Ron's. People can be rude or impatient or just having
a bad hair day without being xenophobes.

John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language politics

John (above):

> Is Ron applying a double standard to Bavarians?

Uh-oh! Not the dreaded, ominous third-person reference!  <8-[

> If he addressed a Frisian
> speaker in Dutch or German and they said they didn't speak it, would that
> make them xenophobic?

Yep.  The assumption here was that *no* one born and educated in Austria and
Germany -- and this includes ethnic and linguistic Slovenians, Croatians,
Hungarians, Poles, Sorbs, Frisians, Danes, Turks and Roma – can understand
and in one way or another speak Standard German.  The average person of
those groups would be very unlikely to refuse information in German, would
at least understand the question and respond in their variety.  Furthermore,
speakers of Bayuvarian dialects know that other German speakers can
understand their dialects pretty well.  Either the lady was indeed a
monolingual Bayuvarian speaker and assumed I would not understand her (which
is very, very remotely possible), or her answer (and mannerism, for which
you’d have had to be there) expressed hostile sentiments leveled at an
individual.  It’s not a far stretch to take it as a hostile act.  (And I had
my fair share of that while traveling around Europe as a youngster, so I
know it when I see it).  Well, maybe you are right and she simply had a bad
day, hair or otherwise.  The possibility that she thought I was trying to
hit on her is remote, because I was barely 20 and she at least in her 60s.
(Well, but then again ... you never know.)

The closest analogy I can come up with right now is a Cornish, Welsh or Manx
person using English in asking a person in Lowlands Scotland for directions
and getting a curt "A dinna unnerstaund Southron (~ Sassanach)."

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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