We have had two extremely hot spells this summer. Now there have been a few cool days and the German press is full of complaints and suggestions we will have no summer this year. Are memories so short? taz even suggests the bad weather explains the blogging craze:

bq. Doch bei all dem Hype, der um die neuen Webtechniken gemacht wird: Je mehr mitmachen, umso höher ist naturgemäß auch das Grundrauschen – also der prozentuale Anteil der völlig unnützen und belanglosen Beiträge und Blogs. Aber der Sommer dieses Jahr ist trüb. Und kalt. Das Freibad fällt also aus, und viele haben schon jetzt die Heizung angeworfen. Die richtige Zeit also, mal einen wirklich guten Blog zu bauen.

The mysterious Abnu of Wordlab pointed out to me that there was an article on German rap in the New York Times this week. Bushido’s music has been labelled only suitable for those over 18.

bq. German parents and the news media have expressed shock at hardcore lyrics, which, they say, glorify a dangerous American ghetto fantasy that doesn’t exist in Germany and shouldn’t be encouraged.
In response, the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons, an agency set up in 1954 in the sensitive era of post-Nazi reconstruction, has expanded its mandate to rap after spending most of the past two decades monitoring neo-Nazi music. Four rap titles have been added in the last year, joining seven others recently added to the more than 450 songs or albums the department has put on its list since the 1980’s. Inclusion is more serious than an explicit lyrics sticker on a CD cover. It means that the offending album can’t be advertised and stores can’t sell it to anyone younger than 18.

(Here’s an article in German about that office, the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien.)

I’ll skip over the political concerns and go straight to the linguistic ones:

bq. German rap has traditionally ceded ground to imports from across the Atlantic. Though some German hip-hop groups found success in the 1990’s, German, unlike French and English, is not a language that accommodates the genre, say some artists.

bq. The language features many combination words with an avalanche of syllables that don’t rhyme well together, Bushido said. That impairs a rapper’s ability to let loose a smooth and creative flow. That, combined with inferior production quality and beats, kept young people listening to rap imports, said Eric Remberg, the head of label Aggro Berlin, who prefers to go by the monicker Specter.

See German hip hop (Wikipedia) Deutscher Hip Hop (Wikipedia)

Why do Germans normally pronounce the word Curry differently from the English pronunciation – after all, the latter contains no foreign sounds. Is it the spelling that puts them off? Do all nationalities have this problem with words with foreign spelling?

The large Duden confirms my impression from watching German TV cooks that the main pronunciation is a bit like Körri, with a secondary pronunciation more like the English one.

1) ‘koeri (the o and e are supposed to be joined)
2) ‘kari

Perhaps Phonoloblog would know?

‘Comes now the plaintiff’ is an American expression – perhaps that’s why I find it so weird. There was a discussion on avoiding Latinisms in The Illinois Trial Practice Weblog (I link to Evan Schaeffer’s other blog, Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground (hmm, it used to be called Notes from…).

One of the commenters there writes:

For example, the phrase “Comes Now” at the start of a pleading. If the pleading was actually read in open court to the illiterate masses it makes sense. Otherwise, i’t’s just a really odd phrase. “Comes Now Mr. Brown, by and and through his attorney. . .” I routinely banish that from my pleadings if the secretary, used to other lawyers, includes it.

But the thing is, to me it wouldn’t even make sense if it was read in open court. It would have to be ‘Here comes the plaintiff’. Why not? I mean, even one of those American comedy shows had the punchline ‘Here come de judge’, didn’t it? Of course, that wouldn’t make it any easier to translate. In Romain I found ‘comes and defends: es erscheint (der Beklagte) und läßt sich wie folgt auf die Klage ein’.

To quote another comment:

Re: silly antiquated English pleading — I gained incredible respect for a (female) probate commissioner I met last summer, who said flatly, “no one is going to come or pray on any of my paperwork.”

The Spiegel column by Bastian Sick has turned to common translation errors.

I have complained about the trivialization of translation before. Sick, in an article on false friends, looks at the old chestnuts Silikon / Silizium, Billion and sensitiv, and a few other terms too. Well, for those who like this kind of thing, this is probably the kind of thing they like.

The column is called Zwiebelfisch, literally onion fish, a term meaning WF (wrong font) and similar to widow or orphan (both Schusterjunge – cobbler’s boy – in English, I believe – but what is Hurenkind?)