Re: OT: German reputation

On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 05:39:10 -0800, B. Garcia <madyaas@...> wrote:

>Most Americans find German to sound harsh, and will often immitate a
>"German Drill Sargeant" when immitating it. Not a lot of Americans
>find it pleasant to hear.
>
>And to me personally, when I hear friends of mine purposefully
>throwing in German terminology for things that have English
>equivalents in order to sound "Intellectual" they sound more pompous,
>affected, and snobbish to me (Them, _not_ a German Speaker, and in
>situations that really don't require it). I'll stop before someone
>accuses me of being a snob myself :).
Probably it's (much) more common the other way round: That speakers of
German (or other languages) use English terminology where their own language
would have its own terminology. I particularly dislike it in the advertising
language directed to young people and in the slang of big corporations. It's
also typical for youth slang, computer slang, rock music slang, and
different kinds of cientific slang. It's the most common theme for newspaper
comments on language, most of them warning that within a few decades, 100 %
of German will be replaced by English (and, consequently, with a few decades
more, 150 %, 200 %, 300 %, etc.).

============================

On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 14:49:24 +0100, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:

>Quoting Yann Kiraly <yann_kiraly@...>:
>
>> I wonder why some people think of German as a harsh
>> sounding language. As you say, it may be because of the [x], or because
>> they haven't any real German, only imitations of Germans speaking English
>> in some old war films.
>
>I don't think it's [x], which is common enough in Swedish, but the scrappy
>[X] so many German use that gives the harsh impression.
To speakers of many languages, the common consonant sequences sound also
harsh, in words like _Kraft_ [k_hR\aft_h] 'force', _Licht_ [lICt_h] 'light'
(though this is much worse in Swiss German with words like _ds Bschteck_ [ts
pSteqX] 'the cutlery'), or the aspirated consonants (phonetically also a
kind of consonant sequence), and maybe the numerous schwa syllables as well.

It's funny that German speakers may think of Spanish as a harsh language
(most immigrants come from Spain), whereas Spanish speakers think of German
as a harsh language!

Another funny language prejudice is that most tend to consider their own
language to be the most difficult to speak properly. The Spanish speakers I
knew were at least irritated if not offended when I said that Spanish seemed
comparingly easy to me.

>That many people
>know German chiefly from barked orders in old war flicks won't help either,
>of course.
This has become a common way of characterizing German in the movies.
However, it was the standard media language of that time. I think, BTW, that
this harsh language was not only used in German, but also in English (and I
guess in other languages too). Listen to public media of, say, the thirties
(e.g. within films). I imagine it was because the speakers of that time had
teachers who weren't accostumed to artificial amplification yet.

gry@s:
j. 'mach' wust