Umlauts and mood
am 23.07.2006 von http://transblawg.eu
Sind die Deutschen wegen der Umlaute in ihrer Sprache depressiv?
The BBC once claimed an American psychology professor had proved Germans are depressive because of umlauts.
Mark Liberman has done a great job of writing this story up at Language Log (here, and here for Professor David Myers’ reply (beginning in true transatlantic fashion ‘Hoo boy, Mark’).
Languagehat has also taken the story up, and there are comments.
Some seem to think the Turks should be even more depressive, but then they should be bipolar, since by the rules of vowel harmony a sequence of words will either have lots of umlauts or none.
Mark shows that there is a (very remote) …
Bright line
Transblawg / Mark Liberman at Language Log establishes that the noun phrase ‘bright line’ and the adjective ‘bright-line’ are missing in most general English dictionaries: Here’s another common expression that’s not in the stan…
Anus motion/Übersetzungsprobleme
Transblawg / Matthew Baldwin of The Morning News reports - or reported - that Spanish-speaking drivers have been getting out of drunk driving cases because of a deficiency in Spanish-language cards used by traffic cops: “But the defense somehow got a copy…
Reznikoff: Testimony - found poem based on law reports
Transblawg / Gail Armstrong at Open Brackets, writing on plagiarism, mentions a work unknown to me: Charles Reznikoff’s ‘Testimony: The United States (1885-1915): Recitative’, which ‘consists of hundreds of stories taken from law reports&#…
Spelling book aims for high sales
Transblawg / Lynne Truss’ publishers have now published Vivian Cook’s ‘Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary or why can’t anybody spell?’ (I pasted that. I can’t be bothered to misspell). Amazon.co.uk already has a five-star re…
You say tomayto and I say tomato
Transblawg / At the legal translation seminar in Munich I learnt that people at the European Patent Office don’t mind whether they or I write trade mark or trademark. (I had learnt that trade mark is British and trademark is American - perhaps I’m too…
Germans pronouncing Hurrikan
Transblawg / It has been pointed out to me by Anon. of Frankfurt am Main that, as with ‘curry’, German newscasters have difficulty pronouncing ‘Hurrikan’ or ‘hurricane’. Some pronounce it in an acceptable English way, but other…
» Language Log: We feel sad because we say ü
» Language Log: Sad knights who say nü
» BBC News | EUROPE | 'Vowels to blame' for German grumpiness
» languagehat.com: UMLAUTS MAKE YOU SAD.
© 2004-2008 JuraBlogs | Impressum
