LL-L 'Etymology' 2007.01.16 (05) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L - 16 January 2007 - Volume 05

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From: "dmahling at comcast.net"
Subject: LL-L 'Etymology' 2007.01.16 (04) [E/LS]

Cng: Brits snickering over "Ausfahrt".

This gets particularly bad when people (marketing people) want to look
"supercool" by using English in German. Matching and mixing without
understanding what are saying in the end.

Yesterday nite on Leno, there was a german ad for "california pizza" or
something like that; It said:

(English): California Pizza
(German): Extra dick, extra ueppig, extra soft.

well that gave a laugh.

drd
[Dirk Mahling]

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L 'Etymology' 2007.01.16 (03) [E]

On Tue, 2007-01-16 at 08:58 -0800, Lowlands-L List wrote:
> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Etymology
>
> Thanks a lot for clarifying that, Marcus.
>
> In my experience, many British people find certain "German" names and
> signs funny, and some get the giggles like primary school kids
> everytime they see the sign Ausfahrt ((freeway) exit).

Ausfahrt doesn't make me laugh because I know very well that the
similarity to English words is coincidental and irrelevant. Similarly
Chinese names that sound coincidentally rude in English - I think there
has to be a certain bigotry involved with people who laugh at this sort
of thing, as if the English context was significant in interpreting
Chinese names.

"Butzfletherbutendiek" does make me laugh, though - it's just the sound
of it. I think that English (and it equally applies to Scots) speakers
are used to long compounds being made in the Graeco-Romance section of
the vocabulary, and it sounds incongruous to hear long "Saxon"
compounds. I think the sheer length helps to add to the humour, although
one that always used to make me smile was "Diefenbacker", the dog in the
TV series "Due South", which of course was named after a Canadian prime
minister. I think the name was chosen as much for the sound of it as for
the logic. "Due South" was a bit unusual, I've heard: unpopular in the
States, the Americans kept making it for the British market.

But I do think it's just the sound of these words that strike us as
funny: syllables that sound like they should belong to short words being
found in long words undermine our expectations.

I should say that I'm well known for laughing at things that other
people don't even notice, so it might just be me!

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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

Sandy,

I think you're on to something there.

Laughing about foreign words or names because they sound like something
"rude" in your own language should stop somewhere in one's late teens.

However, what you seem to be talking about is what I would describe as
"funny due to formidable."  For one thing, there's the spelling of a compond
as one word, which looks really weird to English speakers.  This heightens
the perception that such a word is nearly impossible to pronounce.

Sometimes when I pronounce a foreign word, name or phrase, especially a
German or Yiddish one, that has "unusual" sound sequences and/or seems very
long to the non-speaker, English speakers tend to be amused and say joking
things like "That's easy for you to say" or "But can you say this ten times
in a row?"  This is a good-natured sort of thing, nothing ridiculing or
deriding.

It seems that English speakers tend to get a kick out of hearing or seeing
other Germanic languages, perhaps because they seem close to English but
aren't quite, are "weirdly" similar.  I think this goes particularly for
German and Yiddish.

I believe that this was also a the reason the German word
Fahrvergnügen("driving pleasure") in the North American Volkswagen ad
campaigns, and
people pasted all types of permutations of it as stickers on their cars
(many of them with the inevitable "rude" twist of course).

As I've related earlier, some people "embellish" the spelling of my German
first name, this being "Rheinhardt" to its farthest extent.  I have been
told that the actual spelling is somewhat short of "satisfyingly" German.
So there's an expectation (stereotyping) angle there as well.

Cheers!
Reinhard/Ron
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