Re: CHAT: opposite of "verneinen"

Henrik Theiling said:
> Hi!
>
> "Mark P. Line" <mark@...> writes:
>> Man sagt "der Geek", "die Geekin". Von www.google.de:
>>
>>    Ergebnisse 1 - 10 von ungefähr 85,700 Seiten auf Deutsch für geek
>>    Ergebnisse 1 - 10 von ungefähr 114 Seiten auf Deutsch für geekin
>
> I wouldn't let google decide what's good language so easily.  Further,
> the feminime word is totally uncommon, I've never heard it.
I'm not interested in delineating "good language". I'm interested in
delineating actual usage. For that, google is an excellent tool.


> I also don't think 'der Geek' has the same meaning as 'der Streber'.
Somebody else said that's what it means, not me. I believe that 'der Geek'
has about the same meaning as 'geek' in 21st-century English. English
'geek' *used* to mean something like 'Streber', and that's probably what
somebody found in an English-German dictionary somewhere. That's not what
'geek' means to most English-speakers today.


> So when John wanted to refer to people who are always nice to teachers
> and make all their homework and maybe more, which is what I think he
> wanted to say when saying they 'bejahen' everything, then the German
> word would be more appropriate.
I assume that John was executing a pun that turns on the old meaning of
geek (der Streber, somebody who affirms anybody in authority) and the new
meaning of geek (der Geek, somebody who dreams in Unicode). It was funny
because we all know that John is ein Geek but not ein Streber.

We're used to ignoring the "loanword" status of lexical items once they've
been established in common usage. 'Der Geek' and especially 'die Geekin'
seem uncomfortable to some German speakers precisely because they are so
recent and still in process. The same thing happened with "der Student"
and "die Studentin" hundreds of years ago, and somebody had precisely the
same discussion we're having about it. ("Der Student" is not good German,
and "die Studentin" is totally uncommon -- I've never heard it.)


-- Mark

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