Donner Wetter!
Feb. 19th, 2003 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistToday I learned how German people say "hell." Not just the opposite-of-heaven type of hell, but also the expletive kind of hell--such is the joy of having a native German speaker as a professor.
He got off on this tangent (you'd think someone who talks as slowly as he does wouldn't be so digressive--if that's a word--but I don't mind that he is; it makes the class more fun if less efficient) because "hell" is a German word. It means "bright" or "light," and it was in some sentence we saw in our textbooks today. And apparently there was someone there who knew the word for the den-of-Satan-type hell: "Hölle."
Which, without the umlaut, would be one of the few ways I've seen my first name misspelled. Oh, sure, everyone seems to think I spell it with an 'i' or sometimes 'ie,' but they usually ask me and I straighten them out. They're making this too hard! But the place where I work, when they made a sign for my upcoming birthday it said "Happy Birthday Holle." Then when one of the "consumers," who was new then, told me she liked how I spell my name, I thanked her but didn't get it.
I really like the umlauts. I wish I knew a language that used accent marks or tildes (those squiggly things over some Spanish n's and Porugese a's, like this: ã, ñ) or cedillas (those squiggly things under some French c's: ç) or something...but I think I like the umlauts best. They're so interesting.
Anyway, now I'm digressing. My point was that after we heard about "Hölle" the prof told us about the German equivalent to "hell" used as a swear word. That's where the subject of this entry comes from; he told us they'd say "Donner Wetter." "Donner" apparently means "thunder" and "Wetter" (this one I already knew; ha ha) is "weather."
In my next class we ended up talking about cricket, even though it's an English class. I am responsible for this; I had to give a presentation today on "Sports and Empire," and cricket was one of the important, cool sports, apparently. I don't get it. But I felt better to know there were people in my class who are even less enlightened than me; one said, "Isn't that like croquet?"
"No, not really," the professor (who, we'd learn at the end of class, grew up in Australia) said. "It's more like baseball."
"Only you don't have bases," someone else said. "You just run back and forth."
Then there was a bunch of confused talk about "bowling" and "whacking with sticks." All I remember is the prof saying, "Yeah, the ball rolls."
"Oh, so it's like bowling and baseball and croquet?" the girl said.
"Sort of. It's not that much like croquet..."
"...except you have wickets..."
"Right, but the point is not to hit them."
Or something like this. And something about "sticky wickets"...
I think I'll stick with baseball.
He got off on this tangent (you'd think someone who talks as slowly as he does wouldn't be so digressive--if that's a word--but I don't mind that he is; it makes the class more fun if less efficient) because "hell" is a German word. It means "bright" or "light," and it was in some sentence we saw in our textbooks today. And apparently there was someone there who knew the word for the den-of-Satan-type hell: "Hölle."
Which, without the umlaut, would be one of the few ways I've seen my first name misspelled. Oh, sure, everyone seems to think I spell it with an 'i' or sometimes 'ie,' but they usually ask me and I straighten them out. They're making this too hard! But the place where I work, when they made a sign for my upcoming birthday it said "Happy Birthday Holle." Then when one of the "consumers," who was new then, told me she liked how I spell my name, I thanked her but didn't get it.
I really like the umlauts. I wish I knew a language that used accent marks or tildes (those squiggly things over some Spanish n's and Porugese a's, like this: ã, ñ) or cedillas (those squiggly things under some French c's: ç) or something...but I think I like the umlauts best. They're so interesting.
Anyway, now I'm digressing. My point was that after we heard about "Hölle" the prof told us about the German equivalent to "hell" used as a swear word. That's where the subject of this entry comes from; he told us they'd say "Donner Wetter." "Donner" apparently means "thunder" and "Wetter" (this one I already knew; ha ha) is "weather."
In my next class we ended up talking about cricket, even though it's an English class. I am responsible for this; I had to give a presentation today on "Sports and Empire," and cricket was one of the important, cool sports, apparently. I don't get it. But I felt better to know there were people in my class who are even less enlightened than me; one said, "Isn't that like croquet?"
"No, not really," the professor (who, we'd learn at the end of class, grew up in Australia) said. "It's more like baseball."
"Only you don't have bases," someone else said. "You just run back and forth."
Then there was a bunch of confused talk about "bowling" and "whacking with sticks." All I remember is the prof saying, "Yeah, the ball rolls."
"Oh, so it's like bowling and baseball and croquet?" the girl said.
"Sort of. It's not that much like croquet..."
"...except you have wickets..."
"Right, but the point is not to hit them."
Or something like this. And something about "sticky wickets"...
I think I'll stick with baseball.