Speak German! Jawohl!?

Octogenarian linguist Wolf Schneiders guide to the contemporary German language glutted by English loan words that aren't words or phrases but artificial constructs of the advertising industry and Deutsche Bahn, largely. Not as one-sided as I thought it'd be: and does respect many constructions adopted over the years from French and English. A kind of manifesto for thinking out natural German terms for Brainstorming, anti-ageing cream, 'Service Point' (customer service or information desk at the train station) and other such imports. Argument partly is that contemporary Germany denigrates its own linguistic culture, through a confused sense of identity and lack of pride in cultural achievements, stemming in part from obvious disasters of twentieth century history (interesting that he uses a loan word, Desaster, to describe the Nazi period).

A bit right wing (solid CDU/CSU feel to the work) for me at times - too much perhaps on Leitkultur and the dangers of multiculturalism. A treatment of bilingual Turkish Germans and their linguistic contributions would have been interesting.

On the whole, witty and some points well made and with almost English humour (sorry!:)). Ja, er hat Recht: man sollte mehr German speaken, soforth!

"Speak German - warum Deutsch manchmal besser ist" by Wolf Schneider, Rowohlt Taschenbuch.

MEASURING THE WORLD ...

Well, not the world but my Mum's garden. Nice flowers though, and the garden's big enough.

Daniel Kehlmann's bestseller Die Vermessung der Welt. Not time to do this justice here really, an intriguing and, as it nears the end, surprisingly poignant novel about two great minds and men of the 19th century in Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss. The former a well-connected Prussian with a taste for travel and a genius and determination to use surveying and insight to measure, test and research the world via Spain and South America, finally returning via a stay in France to Berlin.

Less one for accomodating society, Gauss - a brilliant mathematician and difficult (to say the least) character who brusquely contacts his wife's best friend to marry him just after his wife's died in childbirth.

Something of an intelligent, well-researched and fluently written boy's own adventure story: it comes into its own as it portrays the two pillars of the scientific world as they age and younger men with newer instruments take over the stage and fete the heroes while sidelining them. Except Humboldt - on an almost ill-fated journey to Russia - is needed to use his techniques to steer the boat he's on to safety when all seems lost. And Gauss continues his astronomical viewings and learning Russian, inspired by Humboldt's trip.

A way to learn some history of science, and history, and well worth the trip.

It's been translated too - see the title of this post. Quercus publishing. Waterstone's etc.

The Reader - read

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Literature
Examinando las escrituras diariamente. Accessed 050609.

The Reader
http://www.amazon.de/Vorleser-Diogenes-Taschenbuch-22953/dp/3257229534/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244154709&sr=1-1

Keywords: Reading and listening, guilt, avoidance, self-knowledge, intimacy and avoidance, honesty, suffering, recognition, atrocities, Holocaust or Shoah.

Der Vorleser by Bernhard Schlink is the novel that was filmed recently, with Kate Winslet as the tram ticket collector with whom the narrator falls in love and has a brief, passionate affair that shapes his whole life.
A chance encounter in the street, while 15-year old Michael is recovering from jaundice, leads to the affair that lasts for a Summer, before ending with Hanna's abrupt unexplained departure from the town.
As a law student, he then follows her trial for complicity in an atrocity while a concentration camp guard at a feeder camp for Auschwitz. Frustrated, he watches her inability to help her own cause by her bluntly honest defence of what she did while a guard - what else could she do? She even asks the trial judge at one point, 'What would you have done' (the judge makes a general moral statement, but doesn't answer the question). As the trial progresses, the other accused ex-guards are only to happy to shift the blame to Hanna, though just as guilty themselves.
The crux of the novel: understanding our actions, how they affect others ... Hanna is illiterate. This emerges during and after the trial. Hence her need for Michael to read literature to her, just as she asked girls in the camp too before they were sent off to Auschwitz and death. Hence her sudden change of jobs - when promotion beckons, she disappears rather than face the humiliation of having her illiteracy revealed.
Imprisoned for life - 18 years in the end, though she is badly aged by the experience - she listens to tapes recorded by Michael which he posts to her, though he sends her no letters. She slowly writes to him, struggling and succeeding to master literacy.
How much does this matter? Jewish women and children were trapped in a church guarded by Hanna and her colleagues who did nothing to let them out - it was bombed, the spire fell in, fire spread and all but two prisoners died.
The whole mentality of following orders, maintaining order, and simply not understanding what was wrong - this is shown all too clearly. Making scapegoats too - were these trials designed to make other Germans feel less guilty?
The two survivors of the atrocity were a mother and daughter. After the shock of Hanna's suicide the day she is due to leave prison - and be collected by Michael who is her only contact in the outside world - Michael visits the daughter in the USA, who cannot accept Hanna's remaining money from her will, but points to finding a charity. Accepting the money would mean offering absolution - she cannot do this.
There is no escape from awful deeds and from complicity - Hanna's tragedy is that in trying to escape the handicap and social shame of illiteracy - by leaving Siemens to become a camp guard - she walks into the crime of active involvement in the horrors of the Nazi holocaust.
Her personal shame blinds her to the national evil of the Shoah.
Her passionate, cold, unsatisfactory but longing relationship with Michael haunts his whole life - he avoids intimacy again, has a broken marriage and other short relationships, unable to allow women to be really close and to hurt and dominate him as did Hanna.
This sounds a heavy book, but it is subtly and beautifully written, with the right balance of compassion and distance, empathy and objectivity.
Life isn't simple, we are complicit by our involvement. But some things are wrong beyond any doubt or challenge.