Note on pronunciation : The “ie” try pronounced like English “ee”, nothing like English “eye”

Occasional musings, Geistesblitze, photo, sketches etcetera. by a “resident alien”, having landed on United states dirt from a far-away globe known as “Germany”.

Word of the month: Liebeskummer

A variety of Liebe (really love) and Kummer (sadness, sorrow) that is the state of mind of people whoever relationship is certainly not heading well, especially the sadness believed by jilted devotee.

10 opinions:

Hi Ulrich, i do believe this will be a great phrase, and I cannot imagine an equivalent in English. although at once or some other, all, or at least many, folks bring needed to make use of it. What is the book in regards to? Everyone loves the name.

The succinct title associated with guide, Moselfahrt aus Liebeskummer, is tough to translate gracefully–the literal definition is actually “Moselle River Excursion due to Liebeskummer”. It really is a novella, written in the 30s, explaining a visit alongside and on the Mosel (Moselle) lake where the narrator tries to manage their Liebeskummer. It contains warm explanations in the lake, the villages that line it, therefore the people who grow wines there–I stayed in one of these brilliant communities while I decided to go to elementary class.

Upon rereading passages from it, however, I must confess your name is perhaps the good thing of guide!

“The Germans need a term for this. Doppelgedanken, maybe: the feeling, when checking out, your own thoughts are pregnancy on phrase while they show up on the web page. These types of could be the ego that on these unusual circumstances you ask yourself, a€?How could the author bring known everything I had been thought?a€?

I believe the quote shows that the reviewer shares exacltly what the web log features repeatedly shown, that the Germans is professionals at discovering terminology that properly recognize says of head. Liebeskummer are another sample.

: Thx for directed this evaluation aside. We recovered the assessment from our heap of magazines to-be reprocessed (I had misied it the other day).

Your own offer, generated further powerful b/c it will be the starting section on the review, verifies, whilst say, that it is an easy task to coin latest words immediately in German by hitching along two separate terms (often nouns, not always thus). Doppelgedanke are an example–I’ve not witnessed they in German, but Germans would comprehend it in the perspective by which it really is offered, given they have the allusion with the well-established DoppelgA¤nger.

I’m additionally, however, a whole lot used from the ‘official’ acknowledgment within this capability of German inside the paragraph and astonished that customer believes like that, that she locates it–apparently–convenient, from time to time, to ‘think in German’.

It certainly drives me to continue using my word-of-the-month posts. But I also would you like to claim that English offers coinages which have no similar in German, and I may develop a thread soon handling this complementary topic.

That’s an appealing topic, the English coinages with no actual equal in German. We question for a moment find in English–and maybe you will–the type terminology I find thus wonderful in German, those substances showing, very precisely, a specific mind-set. Not every one of your German advice have done that but a number of bring and I also including all of them better than her English alternatives, if you don’t equivalents, as an instance, fraidy-cat versus Angsthase. I actually do hope could carry on together with your terminology for the period. I truly appreciate them.

The typical samples of English phrases w/o actual equivalent in German include “fair gamble” and “common sense”–they have been used like that in German well before the current tsunami of English terminology began to hit German, including terminology which is why you don’t have at all, like “game”, whose connotations can be found in no way not the same as compared to German Spiel. In adolescent speak, using the internet, marketing etc German presents itself today as a mixture of German and English. I’m, actually, enthusiastic about seeing how all this will pan call at the end–i.e. when this will strike more than as a fad or may have a long-lasting influence on German, e.g. notably build their language. My personal imagine might be that the latter will happen.

The upshot is when i do want to starting a thread on English terms and conditions without any actual cognates in German, the situation is manufactured more complex by this state of affairs. In any case, i am starting a typical page where We gather prospect phrases–I need truly a lot more than “reasonable play” and “good sense”.

Stunning keyword, Liebeskummer, and there’s a Dutch equal, liefdesverdriet. Really it is remarkable that there surely is no English phrase for this. It happens occasionally that I’m attempting to translate an English appearance into Dutch, and there merely is no proper word. I am going to take time to inform you, Ulrich.