Speaking in tongues

The guardians and shepherds of the French language have, at least according to the Telegraph, apparently decided to officially recognise a new word for what the anglais and américains have long referred to as 'French kissing'.

It sounds a bit...surprisingly unromantic.

Sadly, they have not preserved the 'French' in the kiss, choosing instead 'galocher' - to kiss with tongues - which sounds a bit too close to 'galoshes' for my liking, which are something a bit like Wellington boots, only they go over your shoes instead of in place of them, and is very definitely Not Sexy. 

It is odd, I think, that their version takes no national credit for the practice of kissing with tongues.

You'd think you'd want your country's name on that particular activity.

Minor digression: I think the above-noted author sorely underestimates the sexiness of Wellington boots.

Though whether we need a special verb for that sort of thing is another issue altogether.
 

Words

I've run across various things relating to words recently; they don't really fit together in any way, but I thought I'd mention them here anyway.

1.) The most important German word of the year, at least as determined by the German Language Society is 'Wutbürger', which means 'enraged citizen'. This has been quite a year for Wutbürger in Germany, what with...um...well, the controversial building of train stations. And, um, the lowest unemployment rate in two decades.

Lots to be angry about here, indeed.

Perhaps this word, Wutbürger, will become a glorious part of our export-oriented economy and have a great career in other--potentially more justifiably angry--societies, just as Schadenfreude once did; or perhaps, more like Fremdscham, it may remain an under-utilised gem.

Anyway...

2.) Also under the heading of interesting Germanisms: I ran across something unexpected while walking around in Mainz a few weeks ago. I saw a man in a uniform (and with, I think, a gun) emerge from a car on which was printed the striking phrase word Polizeipuppenbühne.

I read that a couple of times, wondering whether my non-native German had it quite...right: was it really 'police puppet stage'?.

I made a point of looking it up when I got home, and, indeed, there is, in our state of Rhineland-Palatinate, a police puppet theatre. And our state is not the only one: Wikipedia (German only, unfortunately) tells us that police puppet theatres emerged in the 1950s as part of various forces' public education activities.

Now, police puppetry is interesting enough; however, research along these lines led me to the wonderful German word Verkehrserziehung, which means, essentially, 'road safety training', and is, of course, one of the main activities of the police puppeteers.

It's a lot more fun as one word, and the success of childhood Verkehrserziehung is part of the reason for the charming German habit (one that I've taken on for myself) of waiting to cross the street until the light says you can.

Not all Germans do this, of course, but still, a large enough number of them do to make it a national characteristic.

3.) Finally, thanks to Andrew, I have been made aware of Google's new Ngram viewer.

This new toy is a certain way for me to lose hours at a time on intriguing but economically worthless inquiries, so I've been trying to avoid it since finding out about it.

However, having written a recently published article about the (American) origins and use (in Britain) of the phrase 'the third degree' (in the sense of illegitimate interrogation), I couldn't resist putting the comparative phrases 'give him the third degree' and 'give her the third degree' into Ngram. (Submitting 'the third degree' would give too many false positives on this topic, as this might refer either to burns or freemasonry.)

This was the result (click to make it larger):

Which is interesting.

My suggestion in the article is that the concept of 'third degree' interrogation was introduced into Britain around 1900 (the first press reference I found was from The Scotsman commenting on the police treatment of Leon Czolgosz, who assassinated President William McKinley in 1901).

In the graph above, the references emerge first in the late 1890s. The peaks between the 'him' and 'her' versions match in pattern (if not in magnitude) rather well (most of these seem to come from fictional contexts, i.e., crime thrillers), except for the post WWII period, when the 'him' version is clearly dominant.

Given that I'm still not entirely sure of the nature of the source base, I would rather not make too much of this result, but I find it interesting.

My research stopped in 1939: the rise in references to 'the third degree' since 1990 is a bit of a mystery. I'm wondering whether it has to do with an increase of re-prints of early 20th-century works?

Anyway: that was enough thinking for an evening this close to Christmas.

Take heed, Lena ...

... one's "English accent" can always be improved!

Fremdscham is the new Schadenfreude

One of the most interesting things about emigrating to a country where you are not a native speaker is that you will spend probably the rest of your life discovering new and wonderful words that those who grew up with the lingo don't appreciate in quite the same way.

A few, you will find, are words that don't exist in your own language, but, really, should.

My favourite this week is the verb fremdschämen, which I ran across in an article in Der Spiegel about German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle.

The word was, in fact, applied directly to Mr. Westerwelle, so some background is in order, as I don't presume that anyone living outside of Germany has the slightest notion of our domestic politics.

After leading his party, the FDP (or 'Free Democrats' or 'liberals' [in the European 'free market, small government' sense]), to a historic victory in last year's federal elections, Westerwelle has seen his popularity and that of his party slump dramatically, due to 1) giving an impression that they're not very good at running things, seeming to spend most of their time picking fights with their larger (and long-desired) governing partner, the CDU and 2) seeming to be misusing (German) their arrival in government mainly to benefit the well-off and their main business donors (in this case, then, essentially the same group of people).

Matters have reached a bit of a head this week, as Westerwelle has been accused (English) of using his office to benefit party donors, friends and family, who have been accompanying him on his international trips. Politics as usual you might think; however, the foreign minister seems to have a special place in Germany: as a representative of the nation, standards are higher.

Even sneaker-wearing, policeman-beating Joschka Fischer managed to maintain stratospheric levels of popularity during his stewardship of that office as part of a government that was by no means universally loved.

In any case, Roland Nelles, in a commentary (G), referred to Westerwelle and used the word that you find in this title: fremdschämen.

I had never run across it before, though I recognised the components: fremd -- which has a variety of meanings from 'foreign' or 'other' to 'stranger' -- and schämen which I have usually encountered in its reflexive form referring to feeling embarrassed or ashamed.

A quick Google search brought me to a site that explained it (in German, of course), via a quote from Nadia Zaboura's book, Das empathische Gehirn: Spiegelneurone als Grundlage menschlicher Kommunikation (i.e., 'The Empathic Brain: Mirror Neurons as the Basis of Human Communication').

The crucial bit being (my translation):

The phenomenon of 'fremdschämen' refers to an empathic process in which person A feels ashamed in place of person B. Person B is not aware that they are in a situation about which they need to feel shame; person A, however, absolutely is. From this embarrassing feeling of being touched by the situation in which person B finds himself unknowingly, person A feels vicariously ashamed for him.* [Emphasis added]

Nelles, thus, in his Spiegel article, suggests that our Guido should be ashamed, doesn't realise he should, and is running the risk of making other people feel ashamed for him in his place.

Much like the more well-known Schadenfreude, it seems that Germans have invented a word that doesn't exist in English, but, somehow, needs to.

This is a bit difficult, though, as the verb fremdschämen not only has one of those tricky Umlaute (vowels with the two dots over it that change the pronunciation in ways that Anglophone speakers find confusing) but also is a 'separable prefix' verb that (sometimes) separates into different parts when used: i.e., the first part (fremd) moves to the end of the sentence.

(This is a German specialty about which Mark Twain long ago bitched.)

However, it occurs to me that the noun form, Fremdscham (so, something like 'vicarious shame'), seems ready for export.

So, for which public personage do you immediately feel a strong sense of Fremdscham?

I have the feeling that if we work at it, we could introduce a new and entirely useful noun to the English language.

I'm counting on you.

*'Hinter dem Phänomen »fremdschämen« steht ein Einfühlungsprozess, in dem eine Person A sich an Stelle einer anderen Person B schämt. Person B ist sich der schämenswerten Situation nicht bewusst, Person A aber durchaus. Aus dieser peinlichen Berührtheit für die Situation, in der Person B sich unwissend befindet, schämt sich Person A also stellvertretend für diese.'

'The knowledge of German...must be widespread throughout the people.'

A missive from Britain's Daily Herald, 1929:

GERMAN GERMANE

'Too Much French Taught in Our Schools'

Too much French and too little German and Spanish is taught in English secondary schools, according to the Board of Education, which in a report issued yesterday states that at the school certificate examinations in 1928 the number of students offered French was 54,273; German, 3,837; and Spanish, only 719.

Stressing the fact that Germany is again one of the leading commercial countries, the Committee states that 'if Germany after the war is still enterprising, industrious, highly organised, formidable no less in trade than in arms, we cannot afford to neglect or ignore her for a moment; we cannot leave any of her activities unstudied. The knowledge of German by specialists will not suffice; it must be widespread throught the people.'

The importance of German to commercial students is being considered by the Board of Education, and a further report will be issued.

The Daily Herald, 18 September 1929, p. 3

Some issues are evergreen, it would seem.

Essay surfing: Inglourious false consciousness special relationship edition

A few passages from things I've read in the last day or so which I've found interesting.

From Michael Wood's review of Inglourious Basterds in the LRB, which actually makes me enthused about seeing the film, despite what sounds like a fair amount of deranged incoherence (otherwise possibly known as reinventing the grammar of film).

I mean, this sounds intriguing:

Next, the film is spoken in German and French for most of its duration, with large excursions into English and a brief comic scene in Italian. The language in each case is very elaborate, almost baroque, and an essential part of the fun. What are we to do if we have only the subtitles to go by? How shall we grasp, let alone enjoy the moment when a German actor playing an English soldier is caught out by another German because of the imperfections of his German accent?

This, of course, means that I'll have to wait to see the film in its original version, as watching it dubbed into German is going to be...defeating this point.

From Xan Brooks in the Guardian on cinematic nostalgia for the 80s:

My view is this: by and large, the 80s sucked. They made me feel awkward and out-of-joint, and I was not sad to see them go. Yet now I find I miss them. By the same token, I was never particularly enamoured of John Hughes, the bard of the 80s teen genre – until he died earlier this year, at which point I decided that I'd really liked him all along. This is how nostalgia works. It plays tricks on the memory and reorders the past. Nostalgia, wrote the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin, is a false consciousness, "a historical inversion". Those early years look warmer, safer and more seductive when viewed through the rear-view mirror of advancing age.

From Geoffrey Wheatcroft's review of two books on British Palestine and the creation of Israel, also in the LRB.

I can't judge Wheatcroft's larger points in the review, but I was struck by this bit:

After Truman's 'Yom Kippur speech' of October 1946, timed for the midterm elections, in which he demanded the admission of more Jews to Palestine, [British Prime Minister] Attlee lost patience. He bitterly rebuked Truman for not having consulted the prime minister 'of the country which has the actual responsibility for the government of Palestine in order that he might acquaint you with the actual situation and probable results of your action'. But then Attlee had early stumbled on the truth about the 'special relationship', which Gerhard Schroeder has said is so special that only the English know it exists.

Mae fy hofrenfad yn llawn o lyswennod

I'm off tomorrow to participate in a media history conference on 'social fears and moral panics' in Aberystwyth. I'm looking forward to it: not only do the papers look very good, but I've also spent hardly any time in Wales, so this is a chance to remedy that.

But it has brought out a concern (indeed, a social fear) all my own: I have this quite overactive dread of mispronouncing foreign words, names and places. (Is there a word for this anxiety?)

And Welsh...well, lets just say I don't know where to begin:

Genir pawb yn rhydd ac yn gydradd â'i gilydd mewn urddas a hawliau. Fe'u cynysgaeddir â rheswm a chydwybod, a dylai pawb ymddwyn y naill at y llall mewn ysbryd cymodlon.

This is the opening text to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I believe.

I assume, though, that English of some variety will be spoken by the natives. And that they are, at least in large measure, friendly.

(Post title: 'My hovercraft is full of eels'. Source for that and other Welsh on this page. There, you will also find sound files.)

Interest don't come into it, darling!

I'm mildly enraged by the suggestion made by Kate Broad, the new head of Britain's national languages centre" (CILT) that foreign language teaching ought to remain optional in English schools.

In a dazzling display of razor-sharp argumentation and hard-hitting eloquence, she explains her position in an interview with The Independent:

At the end of the day, when it [foreign language learning] was compulsory, were they [pupils] learning or were they just sitting in the classroom? If you stick everybody in the classroom, are they really learning French or are they just sitting in there, getting bored and disruptive?

Now, I'm not only taken aback by the Palinesque incoherence of Mrs Broad's comment (which might be down to Palinesque subediting at The Independent, so I won't nag), I'm also puzzled by the casual calm with which she commits her well-nigh suicidal act of backstabbing.

Above all, however, I'm amazed by her apparent lack of understanding of the minds and psyches of adolescents (especially her firm belief that they might harbour deep interests in anything school related). So 14-16-year olds are more likely to become "bored and disruptive" by an exposure to French than, say, trigonometry or PSHE? Get real!

Methinks Mrs Broad ought to reconsider her take on her new position - as well as, possibly, languages in general. (Or is she speaking from experience? Maybe the new head of CILT was herself bored by her French lessons - which made her apply for the job in the first place?)

But then again, any reconsideration on Mrs Broad's part might be completely hypothetical, given that she seems to be hell bent on torpedoing the institution that she represents - whose motto, by the way, is "promoting a greater national capability in languages".

[UPDATE]: John has drawn my attention to a related post by Norm Geras, inspired by Naomi Alderman's contention "that if children are forced to do something they don't enjoy, it will backfire, turning them against whatever they're forced to do". Norm's laconic comment is spot on: "The problem with the assumption is that often people don't get to know whether they'll enjoy something without there being external pressure on them to do it".

I'm truly tired of this lame "interest" argument, partly because it has repeatedly been turned against me in the past. When certain "colleagues" of mine feel the need to be nasty, they sometimes do so by discounting my courses as being "not interesting" for our students. This is not only nonsensical, but also utterly autodestructive. If my teaching choices were determined by what students find "interesting", I would be spending the next 20 odd years teaching Bridget Jones's Diary and About a Boy and nothing but.