Vor ein paar Monaten bekam ich zum wiederholten Mal eine irreführende E-Mail über vermeintliche Fehlentscheidungen von US-Geschworenen (‘hierzulande unfassbar’) im Umlauf. Diese Mails werden zu Urban Legends, dabei sind sie entweder erfunden oder maßlos übertrieben.

Schon der Fall von Stella Liebeck (McDonalds coffee) wird im Internet meist falsch zitiert.

Die E-Mail wurde im Januar von Dirk Olbertz gebloggt, mit deutscher Übersetzung.

There’s an email doing the rounds that runs down the American jury. I received it last a couple of months ago, but it wasn’t the first time. It reminds me of the interest in the Runaway Jury film that I wrote about in the last entry, in that it was circulating in Germany as well as in the USA.

The Stella’s are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonalds. That case inspired the Stella Awards for the most frivolous successful lawsuits in the United States.
The following are this year’s winners:
5th Place (tie): Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded $780,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little toddler was Ms. Robertson’s own son.

Continue reading →

Sometimes the evening news programmes on the ARD and ZDF channels on German TV suddenly showcase a film. Quite a few years ago, it was Koyaanisquatsi. Later, Lola rennt – perhaps understandable that they would be interested in a very successful German film. They even seemed to think that Rossini had an international future – I liked it, but I didn’t think its references would translate outside Germany.

In the last couple of days, there was a very long plug for the latest Grisham film, Runaway Jury. And this plug was constructed to criticize the American jury system. They even had a clip of Dustin Hoffman saying how many mistrials there have been, and all the fault of the jury.

I don’t know why criticisms of the American jury system make me so hot under the collar. But they are based on a lot of untested assumptions. There seems to be a general belief in Germany that the jury system is completely useless. If the jury system were a perpetuation of injustice as these people seem to believe, it would have gone out the window long ago. How can a public news service suddenly drop its pretended impartiality and sell a film on the basis of unsupported assumptions about a foreign country?

And all at the time when they could be selling a good film like Kill Bill!

In A Fistful of Euros, Tobias Schwarz has an interesting entry on Kraut bashing from a German’s point of view, written with enviable tolerance.

bq. There are plenty of stories like the one a young German Navy officer told me. When he went to the UK on NATO business recently, he was greeted with a joyful “Heil Hitler” by his British comrades. However, the British soldiers lifting their right arms in all likelihood did not intend to imply he was actually a Nazi or even seriously insult him. In their eyes, it probably was a joke honouring the tradition of John Cleese’s famous “Don’t mention the war”-episode of Fawlty Towers.

See also my earlier entry about a reaction to Germans in Oklahoma. And a strange weblog by an American whose contract at the Technische Universität in Munich was not extended – this is normal – whose sole purpose seems to be to quote the German press to criticize German academia and Germany in general.

Zwiebelfisch in Spiegel Online (Bastian Sick; thanks to Josip Korbar of the pt mailing list for reminding me) writes about how English words are handled in German text.

How often I wonder something like downgeloadet? gedownloadet? downgeloaded? I recall the alternative gesaugt, but I have a feeling there must be a better one. Yes, heruntergeladen.

In principle, says the article, treat the words just as the English language treats words from the German: bratwurst, bratwursts, abseil, abseiling (but I write Land, Länder in English texts and can’t bring myself to write Amtsgerichts – or bratwursts for that matter).

Sometimes you can avoid the problem by using a German word: not forgewardet or geforwardet, but weitergeleitet; not gevotet, but abgestimmt; not upgedated, but aktualisiert; not gebackupt, but gesichert.

But sometimes the English word is simpler than the German: gestylt, gepixelt, gescannt, simsen (to send SMSs), chatten.

Robin at Carob wonders about what is known in Germany as ‘Oxford English’, while I am bemused by a poster that virtually nobody could understand:

Hier geht es um den “Marmeladenkrieg” (Marmelade oder Konfitüre) und um einen Artikel (deutsch) von Heidemarie Markhardt in Lebenden Sprachen 1/2004.

Apparently the Austrians may call Konfitüre (jam) Marmelade again, despite the fact that when Austria joined the EU, that word was not in the list of Austriacisms they were to keep. The British wanted the term marmalade reserved for orange and lemon marmalade and some such.
Thus dpa reports. Elsewhere it appears that the Council must yet ratify this decision.

I find this odd. In BE, marmalade means the citrus stuff, jam the strawberry stuff, and jelly the strained clear stuff like bramble jelly. In the USA, I believe jelly is the general term for jam, so you get things like Jelly Roll Morton and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. But how can the British want to control German? And has the German word Marmelade (meaning jam or marmalade) stopped being used on jars and been replaced by Konfitüre? Probably it has. Anyway, serve the Germans right if they claim they can produce Parmesan, but then it’s not the Germans here, it’s the Austrians.

See Wikipedia on Konfitüre.

Google reveals an article in taz in January:

bq. Ein “Marmelade-Diktat” aus Brüssel erregt Österreich
Die Kronen Zeitung, Österreichs größtes Kleinformat, sorgte sich wieder einmal um die drohende Überfremdung. Diesmal ging es nicht um Horden aus dem Osten, sondern um der Österreicher liebsten Frühstückaufstrich: die Marmelade. Schuld war natürlich die EU, die mit einem “Marmelade-Diktat” über die Spracheigenheiten des Alpenvolkes drüberfahre. Entrüstet berichtete das Blatt im Oktober, dass einem Wachauer Gastronomen ein Strafverfahren drohe, weil er selbst gemachte Marillenmarmelade nicht – wie vorgeschrieben – als Konfitüre verkauft hatte. Anders als die Marille (Aprikose) steht nämlich die Marmelade nicht auf der Liste der 23 typisch österreichischen Ausdrücke, die von Brüssel anerkannt werden.

(According to an Austrian newspaper, in October 2003, a restaurateur in the Wachau region was threatened with criminal proceedings because he sold apricot jam under the wrong name. Apricot jam is Aprikosenkonfitüre/-marmelade in Germany and Marillenmarmelade in Austria. Brussels recognized 23 typically Austrian terms, Marille being one of them but Marmelade not. Apparently Austria could have done something about this when the Marmalade Directive was implemented, which should have been by 12 July 2003, but it didn’t, so the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ definition prevailed.)

LATER (INTERIM) NOTE:
A comment points out that this is purely an internal Austrian problem. Possibly the newspaper report linked to ‘Elsewhere’ above gives the impression the EU was at fault. See this:

bq. Both Denmark and Greece have arrangements to deal with the fact that, in their languages, the distinction does not exist between marmalade and jam. It seems that in this case over-zealous Austrian officials have fined a businessman for using an incorrect term. Continue reading →