Uppercase ß/Neuer Buchstabe

Posted on by
7

Some topics I mentioned earlier have been taken up elsewhere recently.

Uppercase ß: earlier entry

I was a bit early on this. The way for capital ß has now been opened (Tagesspiegel)

Düsseldorf/ Berlin – Die letzte Lücke im deutschen Alphabet ist geschlossen – zumindest technisch. Das ß gibt es nun auch als Großbuchstaben erstmals verankert in den internationalen Zeichensätzen ISO-10646 und Unicode 5.1. Es hat dort den Platz mit der Bezeichnung 1E9E. Das bestätigten das Deutsche Institut für Normung (DIN) und die Internationale Organisation für Normung (ISO). Die Änderung werde in Kürze veröffentlicht, sagte ein ISO-Sprecher. Damit hatte ein Antrag der DIN-Leute, eine Norm für das große ß zu schaffen, teilweise Erfolg.

As Cherry point out, it’s not so easy on the keyboard.

See also Bremer Sprachblog

LATER NOTE: see this justification for uppercase ß (quoted in comments; English)

Fürth sites/Fürther Webseiten

Posted on by
Reply

I seem to have missed the Kantinenblogger, who posts photos of his canteen meals every day, mainly from Fürth, but also from Nuremberg, Munich and Auburn Hills (I assume the large proportion of sweetcorn kernels is a matter of choice).

(Discovered from print edition of Fürther Nachrichten)

Another site that has started is about the natural surroundings: www.natuerlich-fuerth.de

In the Stadtzeitung, the Oberbürgermeister reports on how many birds have been seen along the railway line: the black stork (Schwarzstorch), nightingale (Nachtigall), green-footed moorhens (Grünfüßige Teichhühner), the golden oriole (Pirol) and the curlew (Großer Brachvogel).

I wasn’t hopeful of seeing nightingales, a search for the black stork has failed so far – have seen a kingfisher though – I doubt the curlew will be strolling around close, but I was interested by the green-footed moorhen – until I realized that all moorhens are green-footed.

Here is a juvenile moorhen hiding its feet:

and here a muskrat (they must have heard there is no price on their heads at the moment):

Lawsuit, Shmawsuit/Yiddisch

Posted on by
Reply

Judge Alex Kozinski and Eugene Volokh on the use of Yiddish in court decisions:

Searching through the LEXIS legal opinions database reveals that “chutzpah” (sometimes also spelled “chutzpa,” “hutzpah,” or “hutzpa”) has appeared in 231 reported court decisions. Curiously, all but eleven of them have been filed since 1980. There are two possible explanations for this. One is that during the last 21 years there has been a dramatic increase in the actual amount of chutzpah in the United States–or at least in the U.S. legal system. This explanation seems possible, but unlikely.

The more likely explanation is that Yiddish is quickly supplanting Latin as the spice in American legal argot. As recently as 1970, a federal court not only felt the need to define “bagels”; it misdefined them, calling them “hard rolls shaped like doughnuts.” All right-thinking people know good bagels are rather soft. (Day-old bagels are rather hard, but right-thinking people do not eat day-olds, even when they are only 10 cents each.) We’ve come a long way since then.

Mind you, there’s no comparison with US language outside lawsuits.

This is a 1993 article, Lawsuit, Shmawsuit, available online.

(Via Ruth Morris, who writes on Interpreting in legal contexts and Interpreting in the Israel legal system – and has published on the same topic in England and Wales)

Ingeborg Bachmann prize/Preis

Posted on by
Reply

Yet again I was too busy to digest the Bachmann prize contenders’ texts in advance and come to my own conclusion. Every time I switched on or played back, the texts seemed rather pedestrian and descriptive. The NZZ referred to belangloser Realismus, which seemed right (links in Perlentaucher).

I liked the winning entry by Tilman Rammstedt a lot, but perhaps it won by default. It was notable that only men won prizes, although probably justified in this case. I had the chance of listening to it live, but the reading was dreadfully fast and irritating.

As mentioned before, the texts can be read in English (and other languages) this year. Here’s the winning one.

So what translators did they choose? Only two into English: Martin Chalmers, who has translated Jelinek, Kluge, Enzensberger, Klemperer and more, and Stefan Tobler, who translates from German and Portuguese.

I can’t say I’ve spent long reading the translations, and what I have seened looked OK – in any case, the texts are not of the most demanding kind. But my suspicions were aroused by the translation of Wissenschaft as science at the beginning of the text by Dagrun Hintze (I would have chosen the adjectives academic or scholarly for wissenschaftlich).

Du hast vergessen, wie man das auseinander hält, Definition für Definition, aber wundern kann dich das nicht, mit der Wissenschaft gab es von Anfang an diese Schwierigkeit, dieses Fehlverhalten auf deiner Seite, weißt du noch, der Dozent in Bart und Sandalen, gleich unter die erste Hausarbeit nur ein Satz, dafür in Rot, dein erstes präzis formuliertes, scharlachfarbenes Waterloo: Das ist kein wissenschaftliches Arbeiten. Du hingegen hattest gedacht, der Text würde leuchten, als Beispiel, und so verflucht viel Brillanz bei einer Erstsemesterin, stattdessen dieser scharlachfarbene Satz, du hast zwei Wochen zu Hause gelegen, geheult, den Dozenten dann nicht mehr gegrüßt, das Seminar penibel geschwänzt, als ob das irgendwas nützte.

You have forgotten how to distinguish between things, definition by definition, but that shouldn’t surprise you, you always had this difficulty with science right from the start, this abnormal behaviour, do you remember the bearded, sandal-wearing lecturer, just one sentence at the bottom of your first essay, but in red, your first, precisely formulated, scarlet Waterloo: This is not a scientific approach. You, however, had thought that the text shone, was a beacon, for a first semester student so damned full of brilliance, instead that scarlet sentence, you lay at home for two weeks, you wailed, then didn’t ever say hello to the lecturer again, embarrassingly you skived the seminar, as if that helped.

I’m not sure who’s going to be reading these translations. Perhaps it will start with the Goethe Institutes. Perhaps Klagenfurt has a broader competition in mind in future – an amazing and probably doomed idea.

Don Dahlmann links to a list (German) of tips on how to win and how to lose the competition – I’m not sure of their origin (the ‘open mike’ recommendation didn’t work this time:

Pluspunkte:
Autorenporträt und Textform:
1. Lastenausgleich: Autor hat nicht in der NVA gedient
2. Lastenausgleich: Autor ist kein junges Mädchen
3. Lastenausgleich: Autor hat am Leipziger Literaturinstitut studiert
4. schnörkelloser Lebenslauf ohne Preise, ohne Aufenthalte, ohne Hobbys (“Schreiben”, “Breakdance”, “Leichenwaschen”)
5. Gute Typo
6. Autor ist Träger interessanter Preise (Stipendium der Raketenstation Hombroich, Walter-Fick-Preis)
7. Keine “open mike”-Teilnahme / Teilnahme wird im Lebenslauf verschwiegen
…
Minuspunkte:
Autorenporträt und Textform:

1. Multiple Wohnorte in der Biografie (jeder Wohnort > 1 bringt einen Minuspunkt)
2. Hand im Gesicht auf dem Autorenfoto
3. Lastenausgleich: Autor sieht außergewöhnlich gut aus
4. Brücken, Flüsse, Seen, Ufer im Autorenporträt
5. Bahnhöfe, Züge, Gleise, Bahnsteige, Flughäfen im Autorenporträt
6. Rolltreppen, Rollbänder, Aufzüge, Großaufnahme gehender Füße im Autorenporträt
7. Bücherregale im Autorenporträt