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| words i like (finally!!) |
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There are so many fun words in the world, in every language. How do I pick?? There isn't any set criterion: these are just words that strike my ear in a pleasing manner. Unfortunately, I only know three languages, so if there's something you wanna see in French, Finnish, Faeroese, or Farsi youll have to email me. |
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auf deutsch... |
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My new favorite German word: ausgezeichnet (ows ge TSAI[x] net). It means"excellent", and it certainly is an excellent word! It has all the fun things I like about German: the open, overexaggerated vowels, the crispety crunchety consonants, and even a ch (pronounced like the first H in Hugh)!
Another phrase I really like: Wiederholen Sie, bitte? It means, Repeat that, please, and it's got that whole cool vowel thing going on again. Even though it's most likely to be used by people who don't know much German (me), when you say it, you can make the syllables roll off your tongue with such speed and grace that you feel like you could rival the prose of a Goethe. Awesome stuff.
Fun little words; ich, dich, mich, sich (I, you (direct object), me, and yourself/himself/herself/you/him/her. They're pronounced just as they look, with the [x]sound at the end again. Yay! |
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I used to hate German Rs. Really, really hated 'em-- they're palatalized, done in the back of the mouth with little or no contact between the palate and the tongue. Tilt your head back and gargle: that's what they feel like. You can't bust out with one of those like the fun Spanish flippy Rs; it just geht nicht.* When singing with the William and Mary Choir, I was told by my director to simply flip 'em like a Spanish R, but when I started to learn to speak German that ist auch nicht gegangen*. It's taken me a while to reconcile myself with the gargling, but I have finally begun to master it and have even learned to like it a little. It would be the height of American insolence to reject a language solely on the basis of one difficult consolant, and so I've applied myself and learned to accept it along with the rest of what my lab TA, Andrew, lauds as "the language of thinkers and poets."* |
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*doesn't work.
*doesn't work either. |
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| *that's not Andrew. I think it's Goethe. |
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Of course there are some words in German that just don't work as well as they do in my other two languages. For instance, the words in German for "cute" are niedlich, sch�n or s�ss-- which carry the relative connotations of small, beautiful, and sweet, respectively, but somehow none of those seem to work when you are referring to that tall, sweetly awkward almost-hottie in your English seminar. This unfortunate situation then requires more words, and though variety may be the spice of life, brevity is the soul of wit (especially when discussing almost-hotties).
Ironically, single words doing double- and triple- duty are similiarly problematic. Sch�n, in particular, is difficult-- you use it to describe everything from the weather (pleasant) to a favor granted (nice) to the love of your life (beautiful). Spanish nicely solves the problem with the word bonito (f. bonita) and the adjective has similar versatile connotations to English. It could be that once I learn more German, this particular personal myth will be exploded--but till then, it stands. |
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en espa�ol... |
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I'll make a confession: the reason I love Spanish so much is because I know it. Having taken a total of five and a half years of it in high school and college, I am well acquainted with the vagaries of grammar from the present to the imperfect to the subjunctive. I understand it, and my understanding has lent me a much better understanding of English. I'm sure that this doesn't make Spanish a better language than any other, but one always thinks he belongs to the best club. I have had the amazing experience of turning on a television to a Spanish-language channel and understanding nearly everything I hear, without having to translate it, and even better, of thinking and dreaming in Spanish. Spanish has reached the Nirvana of being something very close to a first-degree language in my head, and it is a wonderful, marvelous thing-- like first learning that one can create art or music. Any language beyond one's first has the capacity of this wonder, of being una lengua de los angeles-- one feels, when one is speaking a second language, that one has stumbled upon a secret angelic society, exclusive of all others. It is a wonder that I pursue in my third language, German, with fierce abandon. |
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*two or more rhyming syllables at the end of each rhymed line, instead of just one. An example of masculine rhyme is "Mary had a little lamb"; an example of feminine rhyme is the limerick that starts, "There once was a man from Nantucket..." |
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| Today (2/5/03) in my Spanish Lit class we read sonnets. I am not very well acquainted with Spanish poetry, but from my experience with the language I know that Spanish doesn't have nearly the potential for clever rhyme and word-play that English or German do. I mean, come on, the majority of the words in the language end in vowels, demanding that any rhymed poem be written with a feminine* rhyme scheme-- and that's a rhyme scheme with serious limits. What I learned today is that Spanish makes up for its rhyme limitations with content: namely, metaphor and imagery. What follows is a love sonnet by Luis de Gongora, a sixteenth-century Spanish poet, that exemplifies this phenomenon: |
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Mientras por competir con tu cabello
oro bru�ido al sol relumbra en vano;
mientras con menosprecio en medio el llano
mira tu blanca frente el lilio bello;
mientras a cada labio, por cogello,
siguen mas ojos que al clavel temprano,
y mientras triunfa con desden lozano
del luciente cristal tu gentil cuello,
goza cuello, cabello, labio y frente,
antes que lo que fue en tu edad dorada
oro, lilio, clavel, cristal luciente,
no solo en plata o viola troncada
se vuelve, mas tu y ello juntamente,
en tierra, en humo, en polvo, en sombra, en nada. |
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Since by competing with the sheen of your hair,
burnished gold in the sun shines in vain;
Since the lily in the field is ashamed
to look at your fair countenance
since to each lip, for kissing,
more eyes gaze than to the carnation of the morning,
and since your throat with high disdain
exceeds the brightness of crystal,
let me joy in throat, hair, lips and countenance
before those which were your golden years,
gold, lily, carnation, bright crystal
are cut off, not only in silver and violet,
but return, both you and they together,
to earth, to smoke, to dust, to shadow, to nothing. |
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That last line is the one I really love. Wow.
more to come soon! |
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