Re: "Kauderwelsch" (was: LUNATIC SURVEY: 2005)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Mills" <rfmilly@...>


> Andreas Neumann wrote:
>
>>I love to study other languages. In the German speaking area there's a
> series of little books (called "Kauderwelsch" which means gibberish).
> Every
> issue deals with a language and presents the grammar, some vocabulary,
> useful phrases and a little background on the respective society. I think
> there are almost 200 issues. I don't want to spend all my money on these
> books (they are not so cheap), but from time to time I add a new issue to
> my
> collection. So far I have Bahasa Indonesia, Finnish, Irish-Gaelic,
> American
> Slang, Modern Latin, Maltese, Quechua and Hungarian.>
>
> Ha! Not a very complimentary title, but an interesting concept. I suppose
> the nearest thing in English is the Teach Yourself....books. Or the more
> professionally oriented "Great Languages" series that various University
> presses occasionally undertake (but don't usually continue for very long
> :-(( ).
I was intrigued by this, too, Andreas.  My copy of Kluge's Etymological
German Dictionary says that Kauderwelsch, "jargon," was first used in early
modern German, and that "kauder" comes from a verb of unattested origins:
kaudern, "to talk unintelligibly"--hence "strange, unintelligible, foreign
tongue."  So the meaning might actually have meant in an earlier century
"non-German," in much the same way that "barbarous" meant "non-Greek."  The
second element in the compound is welsch: "foreign and outlandish" (of
course; the OE cognate was wealh, weallas, "foreign, foreigners," i.e., the
Welsh.)  Old High German was "walhisc," MHG: "walch"--these words according
to Kluge were variously applied to the Romance languages and peoples.  So
Kauderwelsch may mean "gibberish" now, but it may have meant "weird foreign
language" in previous eras.  Do you think the title of the series is a
reference to that older meaning?

I think Kauderwelsch is an excellent application to what we do, here, and I
don't find it uncomplimentary at all! :)

Sally

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