In connection with a post of languagehat’s on Fraktur (Gothic script), there is a mention of a website on Sütterlin, the old-ish form of German handwriting. It’s Peter Dörling’s site: English Deutsch. The site has some texts to practise reading. There is also a link to download suetter.ttf, a font for Windows.

Mark Liberman of the Language Log takes me to task in the nicest possible way for not expressing myself clearly.

Let me explain ‘unreasonable behaviour’ again. It is a misnomer, a false abbreviation. Here are the facts on which a divorce petition can be based in England and Wales. This is the second:

bq. That the other party to the marriage (the respondent) has:
(b) behaved in such a way that the other party (the petitioner) cannot reasonably be expected to live with the respondent.
Behaviour during the marriage may involve one major incident or a series of acts, the cumulative effect of which is considered to be unreasonable in the eyes of the court.

This is called ‘unreasonable behaviour’ for short, but that’s misleading. The behaviour of the respondent does not have to be found to be unreasonable: what is required is that the behaviour of the respondent is such that the petitioner (this particular petitioner) cannot reasonable be expected to live with the respondent. And a homosexual relationship would fit the definition.

Of course, there is a lot of mudslinging with this b), although the idea is supposed to be that it’s not a question of fault, just a question of proving the marriage has irretrievably broken down.

Language Log:

bq. This is a curious bit of adjectival semantics: a homosexual relationship is “not actually unreasonable [behavior]”, but would be construed as “unreasonable behavior” for the purposes of a divorce case. Is this just because the legal definition is not the ordinary language definition? Or is it because reasonableness is always relative to an evaluator and a situation? Some behavior can seem reasonable to me and not to you, or reasonable in the shower and distinctly eccentric in the grocery store; and the two dimensions interact, so that you and I might have quite different ideas of what is reasonable in a grocery store. Or in a marriage.

It’s not a question of whether it’s reasonable or not, it’s a question of whether it’s tolerable or not (it translates very well into German as unzumutbares Verhalten). The problem is, they needed a short term to refer to it. Perhaps it should have been called ‘unputuppable with behaviour’.

About the title reference to ‘U.S. divorce law’, well, there’s no such thing, but the case itself referred to Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and New Jersey for a different approach, or at least the dissenting opinion did, so I was wondering about the disagreements within the U.S.A. At least, that’s my story.

The German periodical for law students, justament (there are others) is online. Alexander Hartmann refers to the current issue, dealing with women in law.

I have previously occasionally picked up a copy in a law bookshop. These also have free copies of other journals.

Justament contains interviews and descriptions by trainees of periods spent training with law firms abroad – in the current issue there’s an article on a period spent with White & Case LLP in Washington D.C.

The section on women contains an article on the Deutscher Juristinnenbund, in particular its work today; short profiles of women law students and their career hopes; an interview with two practising women lawyers; and articles on the chances of a university career for women lawyers and flexible working hours.

I have never managed to learn a phonetic alphabet, although it would be useful on the phone. But I know where to find them! In the Dark Ages I used to use the lists in the back of the two-volume Langenscheidt dictionary known as the big Muret-Sanders. But for some years I have used this list on the Internet, from Brian Kelk in Cambridge. Here is a very small part of it:

bq. The NATO phonetic alphabet:
Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot Golf Hotel India
Juliet Kilo Lima Mike November Oscar Papa Quebec Romeo
Sierra Tango Uniform Victor Whiskey Xray Yankee Zulu
[This alphabet dates from about 1955 and is approved by the
International Civil Aviation Organization, the FAA and the
International Telecommunication Union; note that different
bodies prefer different spellings, so one also sees:
Alfa Juliett Juliette Oskar Viktor]

bq. [The alphabet above is from the Cambridge Encyclopedia of
Language. An alphabet with Alfa X-ray can be found in The
U.S. Department of Defense Dictionary of Military Terms.
Alfa Juliett X-ray, which is the ICAO version, appears in
A Concise Dictionary Of Slang And Unconventional English
and also two Langenscheidt dictionaries]

bq. [There is one report of UK police using Indigo instead
of India.
German army handbook 90/91: Alfa Foxtrott Juliett.
Italian version: Alfa Charly FoxTrot Giuliet Romio Wiskey.
An Indonesian phrase book: Beta Ultra Volvo Whisky X-ray.
A precursor of the present alphabet (1952?) had: Alfa Coca
Metro Nectar Siera Union Whisky Extra]

Actually, there’s a better version at Kelk’s own site. Better because it contains what Kelk calls ‘further material’. It contains superb links and also ‘silly alphabets’. This includes a group attempt to create the world’s worst phonetic alphabet, and a version of the Cockney alphabet:

bq. ‘Ay fer ‘orses
Beef or mutton
Seaforth highlanders
Deaf or dumb
‘Eave a brick
Effervescence
Chief of police
‘Ate yer for it
Eye fer an eye
J fer oranges
Kafe fer a cuppa
‘Ell fer leather
Emphasis
N fer a penny . . .
Over my dead body
Pee fer a penny
Q fer the flicks
‘arf a mo
S fer me
T fer two
Euphemism
Viva la France
Double you for it
Wife or girlfriend?
‘s ‘ead fer ‘s ‘at

Here’s another list, but it seems to lack the international ones.

JURIST reports that New Zealand’s judges for its new supreme court (see earlier entry here) have been appointed.

The New Zealand Ministry of Justice website has information on the courts, but it has not yet been updated – naturally, because the change doesn’t take effect till July 1, 2004.