BS: Germans--No offense intended !

Subject: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Art Thieme
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 07:22 PM

Please, I intend no slight to the German people. But I heard this last week--- As God might say, "And it was good."

Now that Arnold Schwarzenegger is a politician, we just might finally get to hear the Bush administration's take on civil liberties in the original German !

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: RichM
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 07:54 PM

?

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 08:08 PM

??

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: michaelr
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 08:11 PM

Hahahahahaha! Good one!!

(Rich and Bill -- it'll come to you.)

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 08:13 PM

Isn't Arnold Swarzeneger Austrian?

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Noreen
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 08:20 PM

Sorry Art, it's not funny.

Strange how when something's prefaced by No offense intended more offense is caused?

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 11:18 PM

LOL!! That one kind of takes you aback!! :>) Good joke.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: LadyJean
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 11:23 PM

They speak German in Austria Ostereich (I hope I've spelled that right. I can't spell in English!) too. Hitler, as I remember was an Austrian. In that the same could be said for Mozart, and several Strauses, I'm inclined to be forgiving.
Apparently the right wingers aren't too crazy about Ah-nold, but I still like the joke.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Mark Clark
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 11:30 PM

Art, That's great! We understand that the Resident is only giving us a wattered down translation.

I remember hearing, years ago, that the Kennedy family referred to Arnold as Conan the Republican.

      - Mark

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Art Thieme
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 01:02 AM

I thought it was quite funny and very much on target when one thinks of what this damn Patriot Act crap is doing to civil liberties. It's not demeaning to today's Germans or to Arnold. It simply connects Hitler's Nazis with what his Gestapo did to German culture in the 1940s to what the Bush administration is doing to our civil liberties. I resent it and believe strongly that we MUST fight back. We're broke these days, but I found cash to keep up a membership in the ACLU. I do believe the connection between the two is valid as hell and the situation is quite scary.

By the way, I was told the line was from Bill Maher.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Art Thieme
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 01:07 AM

Thieme is a German name.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: nager
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 01:38 AM

Art: Perhaps it got lost in the translation ...

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Wolfgang
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 05:18 AM

Germans never feel offended if you make jokes about Austrians. They do. Do US-Americans feel offended if you tell jokes about Canadians??

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: gnu
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 05:27 AM

Not if they're funny.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 05:27 AM

Do Austrians feel offended if you make a joke about Germans?

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Wolfgang
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 06:22 AM

Not at all. Unless someone apologises to them before telling the joke.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Rapparee
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 09:07 AM

I'm of German ancestry, clear back (according to my Uncle) to around 850 CE. I'm a descendant, too, of Ludwig Von Horst, president of the German senate back in the 19th Century, among others.

I'm not offended by very many jokes at all.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 12:44 PM

I don't like all jokes, but I 'get' most of them...and I confess, I still don't follow the oblique reference...is Arnold known for some line which parodies Bush, Hitler or conservatives in general? (I somehow doubt I am gonna think it's funny)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 12:55 PM

I'm not the one to answer this Bill but I think that Maher as a proponent of his perpetual guest arrianna is pumping up her (probably correct) line that ahnold is a Bush Republican. And he just happens to speak German, and he's a little Austrian.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Amos
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 01:24 PM

Well, there's also the factor that Arnold's father was a member of the National Socialists party in Germany during the war. Mudslingers love that kind of thing. IMHO, the only problem with Arnold is that he doesn't have two thoughts to rub together. But since that seems to be a prereq for political success these days, perhaps fate is showing us the way of the future. Shudder...

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 01:51 PM

If the joke is about tarring him with the deeds of his dead father then Noreen is right.

As for having two thoughts: It is rather pathetic to watch those commercials where they stage question and answer events and "act" as if he is capable of handling direct questions.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 07:30 PM

I don't understand any of this! Perhaps the humour is beyond us Gnomes. Can someone explain, in words of one sylabub, why this is funny/offensive/not funny/green amd purple striped or whatever?

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: catspaw49
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 09:15 PM

Hey Bill.......It's kinda' like the old line about the South Vietnamese Constitution which you could get a copy of by writing to their embassy. They sent it to you in the original English.

Bush policies are reminiscent of Nazi Germany, hence the "original German." Arnold is a Bush supporter....also an athletic supporter.

You shouldn't have pre-apologized Art.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: MAG
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 09:47 PM

According to Al Franken Ah-nulld also has good friends not allowed into this country because of war crimes. That's why HE doesn't like him. (With good reason.)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Art Thieme
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 12:00 AM

Kids,

I made no apology. Just stated that I meant no offense-----and I didn't. This had nothing to do with Arnold. It had everything to do with Bush's attacks on American civil liberties in the guise of it being a logical and necessary way of increasing security so other 9/11 stuff won't come to fruition. Arnold, like Bush,is a Republican. Arnold is also a German/Austrian who speaks the language of Hitler and his cohorts from the 1940s. THEREFORE, the humor comes when it is noted that we can now actually, finally, hear Bush's administration's demolition job on civil liberties explained in the native language of the one who, early-on, created the methods to do that---i.e., the original German. language.

Art Thieme (son of Carl Otto Thieme--1898 to 1946)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Peter from Essex
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 04:12 AM

I agree with Dave, but then we must remember that this refers to the USA where they think that not letting you carry a gun in the street is worse than gassing Jews.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 10:36 AM

Packing heat, Peter?

New York City has one of the toughest gun control laws in this nation, the so-called "Sullivan Law." As to why the law was passed back in 1911, it was to prevent those diry, nasty immigrants from having firearms:

"According to a Chicago-Kent Law Review article by Robert J. Cottroll and Raymond T. Diamond, "In New York, these fears found expression in the passage of the Sullivan Law in 1911. Of statewide dimension, the Sullivan Law was aimed at New York City, where the large foreign-born population was deemed peculiarly susceptible and perhaps inclined to vice and crime. ... It is not without significance that the first person convicted under the statute was a member of one of the suspect classes, an Italian immigrant."

Cottroll and Diamond add that, no matter what arguments are made in favor of gun controls, '[i]f safety concerns must be conceded, it should be recognized as well that local governments have sought to ban firearms from what is frequently considered one of today's untrustworthy and suspect classes, the urban poor.'"

Cottroll, by the way, is African-American.

I also refer you to this:

"That the subjects which are protestants, may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law."

Which I copied from a law passed in 1689 entitled "An Act for declaring the rights and liberties of the subject and settling the succession of the crown."

You can read the entire "English Bill of Rights" here.

Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and others cannot have arms for their defense, only "subjects which are protestants"...interesting, and just a bit discriminatory.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Metchosin
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 01:55 PM

just received the following in an email

"The European Union commissioners have announced that an agreement
has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for
European communications, rather than German, which was the other
possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).

In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will reseive this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replased by "f". This will make words like"fotograf" 20 persent shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have
always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the
horible mes of silent "e"s in the language is disgrasful and they
would go.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "0" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud, of kors, be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German lik zey vunted inze forst plas..."

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 05:48 PM

ok, now I get it..

"..'taint funny,McGee"⁽¹⁾







(1)insert long analysis of humor and the elements which contribute to its impact on the mind, including oblique references, historical perspective and shared subjective notions of common terminology...

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: izzy
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 08:13 PM

That joke has been around a while, Metchosin --saw it in a (rather appalling) rightist magazine some time ago... I expect it's a hoax, or something that was cooked up for the silly season a couple of years ago. It's unfair to constantly throw Germany's Nazi past in the face of today's generation in Germany. No country could be more sincerely anti-war now.

Cheers,

Isabel

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Metchosin
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 12:04 AM

whose Nazi past should we bring up then? Idaho's? Sorry its an old joke, I don't read right wing articles, so I may have missed it. And just what does the use of the German language have to do with Nazism?

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: izzy
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 08:00 AM

"Like zey vunted inze forst plas" (i.e. during the Second World War.) I would like to know too what the use of the German language has to do with Nazi-ism, but it's a connection that is frequently made by the Tory gutter press (and seems to be used by some people as an excuse for not learning German!) Sorry to have upset you, Metchosin, it was more the joke about Arnold Schwarzenegger I was commenting on than your joke. It's one thing to talk about the Nazi era in a hostorical context, and yet another to blame it on people who were either children, or not even born when all that was going on.

OK? Cheers,

Isabel

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Wolfgang
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 08:53 AM

I'm fond of watching how recollections, narratives and written stories change over time (in other words: I'm interested in the 'folk process'). That's why I read Metchosin's version of the European's commission Denglish story with interest.

When I posted it first in 1999 (three more versions have been posted between 1999 and now) MMario told me that the story goes back at least to 1972 (at that time most probably without the EU angle, I guess). Reader's Digest was his best guess for where he had read it first.

The other four versions posted here don't have the ending Isabel has singled out for critique. They end like this:

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru.

The different endings tell a bit about which source and which time the rewrite comes from. Metchosin's variant may well come from the anti-EU British tabloids.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: izzy
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 09:48 AM

I think so too, Wolfgang. My betting is on the Sun...

Actually, I think the story first surfaced as a send-up of George Bernard Shaw's proposed spelling reforms. I seem to recall reading it somewhere in a book on linguistics, and I think that version had the ending that you mentioned. I suppose entertaining jokes don't ever really die.

Cheers,

Isabel

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Metchosin
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 01:25 PM

over the years at Mudcat, Isabel, I have managed to develop a thicker skin, than to be upset over being called for posting an old joke.*BG*

I've been accused of being a compatriate of Gargoyle, insensitive to handicapped people for referring to myself as a moron and a dumped on for supposedly polluting the ocean by using a septic tank system, to name a few.*BG*

My problem is that I neglect to use emoticons after my posts. I seldom read or post any comment where I am not sitting at my computer splitting my sides.*BG*

But I do find it interesting that you immediately thought of WWII from what I took to be a reference to a language debate at the EUC. I guess context is everything.....pssst....Don't mention the War......*LOL*

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: izzy
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 01:31 PM

The reason I thought of the war, Metch, was because the context in which I originally read the joke had to do with the war and not the EU... or rather, the writer of the article was trying to make out that the current EU is an extension of Hitler's plans for Europe.

BTW, what's the *BG* business stand for? Pardon me for being dense, but I haven't been online all that long.

:)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 01:51 PM

means *BIG GRIN*..as opposed to *grin* or *smile*

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 09:14 PM

It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that at least until the generation that backed Hitler is past and gone Germany is in a sense on probation. As a mark of respect even. I'm pretty certain that is how I'd feel if I was a German.

That doesn't mean I think there's any reason to believe that the British or the Americans or whatever might be quite capable of creating something as appalling as Nazism in certain circumstances. (In fact, when you remember the Slave Trade, they've already done it.)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 10:10 PM

I believe the first "take on civil liberties" in German was written by Heinrich Heine. It starts out "Freude (code for Freiheit) schoene gotterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium. Wir betreten, feuertrunken, himmlische dein Heiligtum." You may have heard it somewhere.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Snuffy
Date: 08 Sep 03 - 08:49 AM

That was Schiller, not Heine

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 08 Sep 03 - 08:58 AM

Okay. Thanks.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 Sep 03 - 09:09 AM

Sciller or Heine, either way it defeated babelfish: "Joy beautiful gotterfunken, daughter from Elysium. We entered, feuertrunken, himmlische your Heiligtum"

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 08 Sep 03 - 09:38 AM

Schiller's poem: "To Joy"
the thread
words and tune

Art, albeit it took me some time to understand your joke, I don't think it's very funny - but be reassured that I didn't feel the last bit offended.
There are a lot of countries where civil rights are not respected because they never were granted, but no one having them should let them be taken away from him as it happened to us.
The steps the Nazis used were first indoctrination, then pressure, at last: terror. So look out, Americans! But I'm sure Bush won't be so perfect as we Germans are (now the other way round).

Wilfried

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 08 Sep 03 - 11:03 AM

THAT was funny.

(even while including oblique references and historical perspective!)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: LadyJean
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 12:43 AM

My mother's family came from Cincinnatti. They have a large German population, and I know a bunch of jokes about dumb Germans.
I didn't get this one from my mother's family, but I love it.
What comes between fear and sex?
Funf.
(I can't spell in English, let alone German, they count einz zwei drei fier funf sex. One two three four five six.)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McMusic
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 03:14 AM

Hell, Art, I laughed. I'm Irish-American (or as an English friend refers to me: an Upstart-Boggie) and I take no offense at Irish jokes.
And I agree with your assessment of the Patriot Act. Many bad things have had seemingly benign beginnings. I've said from the start that John Ashcroft scares me about as much as anyone does.
By the way, Good Soul, I trust you are doing well?
McMusic (Kevin)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Art Thieme
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 09:32 AM

Yes, it is funny on a sad historical level and also as a commentary on what's happening here and now. It's black humor. Sheds light on the dark. Recognition of those times can lead to not repeating the pasts sad excesses. But the realists know that copycat crime crap happens all the time---if not by intent then by depressing coincidence when seeming threats conspire and scapegoats are set upon. It has always been a downer relity to me that if I had been there in the 1940s instead of here I'd've been herded into cattlecars and cremated by the state. By the luck of the draw, I was here.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,DeutschGal
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 10:31 AM

Dass ist nicht sehr witzig.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 10:36 AM

In a different way, it's pretty depressing to think that very many of us, if we'd been born in the wrong time and place, could well have found ourselves doing the herding. If we could fool oursleves that somehow it could only be Germans who could ever do anything like that, it would be a lot mnore comfortable.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: TIA
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 10:39 AM

Ssssssehrrrrr interessant, aber nicht lustig.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 11:01 AM

Let us remember that English was originally German. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 12:58 PM

Nobody "was originally" anything other than what they are. "The English" are descended from Germans, French, Irish, Scots, Welsh, Indians, Jamaicans...

And as is true for everyone else, our first human ancestors lived in Africa.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 01:52 PM

I meant the English language.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Noreen
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 02:11 PM

Likewise Kim, your statement is a long way from the truth.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 04:01 PM

Is English not a derivative of the old Saxon languages? Indeed, when I was in school, those smart people told me that English is a Germanic language as opposed to a Romance language like French or Spanish.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 04:10 PM

A derivative of Saxon and so forth; but also of many other languages, including especially French, but also numerous others, such as Latin, Irish, Dutch, Hindi...

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 04:15 PM

German is likewise a Germanic language. They're not derivatives but evolved (and continue to do so) from common language branches.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 04:18 PM

Hindi? That's a new one on me.

Merriam-Webster

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: MudGuard
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 04:29 PM

Kim C, look up "bungalow" for example...

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 04:34 PM

Bungalow, cot, dungarees, thug, curry, loot, shampoo... And here's a link to a site with a few more Hindi words in daily use in English. (And the number is currently growing.)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 04:53 PM

Bungalow, cot, dungarees, thug, curry, loot, shampoo

You'll rarely hear these words in North America. Having grown up in England I use tons of absorbed words to the amusement of folks around me. Some stick-- 'gobsmacked' is becoming common here in Canada, but others just cause raised eyebrows. English loves to absorb and expand, but some words stay longer than others and in the US in particular words come in from (for instance) Mexico and then cross the pond to become common in England.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 05:02 PM

You'll rarely hear these words in North America.

Possibly true - but we were talking about English...

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 05:09 PM

I think just about all languages are influenced by other languages as time goes by. I don't deny that - although I think that influence doesn't necessarily denote derivation. I'm saying that historically speaking, the earliest spoken English was a Saxon/Germanic language. Then the Normans came along and threw some French in there. As more and more people came into contact with other languages, even MORE words got thrown into the mix. And it's still going.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 05:30 PM

I think if you stuck a page of Spanish or Italian in front of me I could probably get the gist of it - but German, no, I wouldn't have a clue.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: MudGuard
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 05:35 PM

But, Kevin, German is MUCH easier than Spanish!

You can believe me! I can read German easily, but Spanish is quite hard ;-) ;-) ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 05:39 PM

Really? Try these on for size:

Die Musik ist zu laut.

Bringen Sie mir mein Bier.

Mein Vater ist nicht hier.

Ich trinke eine tasse Kaffe.

Habst du Salz und Pfeffer? Milch und Zucker? Rotwein? Weisswein?

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: MudGuard
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 05:41 PM

Kim, last one is wrong, it is "Hast" not "Habst" ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 05:50 PM

(thanks! I'm still learning.)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: MudGuard
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 05:55 PM

Kim, so am I, my English is far from perfect...

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 06:41 PM

On the other hand, as quoted in this thread:

"Freude schoene gotterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium. Wir betreten, feuertrunken, himmlische dein Heiligtum."

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Metchosin
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 09:07 PM

ah but.... If you can say, "It's a braw bricht moonlicht nicht" ye a'richt ye ken.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Wolfgang
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 03:55 AM

As in so many Mudcat discussion all of you are right most of the time. You just use words differently.

As BigPinkLady has said, English, like German (or even Icelandic), is classified as a Germanic language, that is both have a common precursor. The inclusion of new words from completely different languages does not change this classification for it is based on different criteria.

A romanic language could integrate the very same word from, for instance, Hindi, but treat it differently according to its basic rules.

The similarity of words or the percentages of words taken from other languages surely determines the ease with which we can read in a language we don't know (though I tend to believe that my ability to read in Italian and Spanish without ever having learned them comes from my knowledge of French, and not from a similarity to German). But it is irrelevant with regard to the classification of languages.

I don't know of an example and maybe there isn't one, but two languages could share 90% of their vocabulary and still be classified differently.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 10:19 AM

When I first started learning German I was very much surprised at its similarity to English. Like many native English speakers I had been deluded into thinking that it's a very difficult language, and I do not think that's true. Of course any new language is a challenge to learn, especially as an adult. But just about everything I had ever heard about German turned out not to be true. It's actually quite a lovely language, and I have had great fun learning it.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 10:21 AM

A toppeewallah admonishing his punkawallah while taking his tiffin doesn't make English a Hindi language.

Wilfried

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 10:51 AM

I think I shall retire to my bungalow and put on my dungarees, Memsahib.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: OldPossum
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 01:35 PM

Wolfgang: Danish and Norwegian are classified as two different languages, and they share more than 90% of their vocabulary. I have heard that only about 600 words are different in the two languages, the rest are fundamentally the same, not counting variations in spelling and pronounciation, of course.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 04:23 PM

Strange things can happen when frontiers divide a language. Serbo-Croat was one language, now it's treated as two. Urdu and Hindi are I believe essentially the same language, but the first in written in Arabic Script, and the second in Indian script, so though speakers can understand each other, when they are communicating in writing they are likely to resort to using English...

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: MudGuard
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 04:40 PM

Serbo-Croat was forced into one language by Tito - before that there were two languages. And now, as Yougoslavia is no more (and Tito is no more as well) the original two languages are used again.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 05:04 PM

Surely the process treating Serbo-Croats as two dialects of one language would have started well before Tito, even before the setting up of Yugoslavia in 1919?

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: MudGuard
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 05:11 PM

As far as I know from several [Ex-]Yugoslavian/Serbian/Croatian colleagues Tito created the Serbocroatian language and forbid the use of Serbian and Croatian (with quite hard punishments...)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 06:21 PM

Serbo-Croatian Profile - this site seems to sum up the situation fairly well. And the same site has stuff about all kinds of other languages in an accessible way.

There's a saying that a language is a dialect that has an army. Linguistic boundaries very rarely coincide naturally with political boundaries.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: MudGuard
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 02:04 AM

All I get from that "Serbo-Croatian Profile" Website is a "Server not found"...

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Amergin
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 02:14 AM

Art...that was hilarious....I love it...


isn't it funny how some people will piss and moan about anything? sigh...

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 02:48 AM

McGrath - Urdu and Hindi are different languages.
Urdu (from turk. ordu = army, regiment), with Turkic base, is the lingua franca of the big field camps of the Mughul conquest of Northern India, incorporating a lot of words from Hindi, Persian, and other languages of the area.
In Pakistan the share of Hindi words is bigger than in Afghanistan, where Persian has a bigger share.
(Information about 40 years old, when I started my studies.)

Wilfried

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 06:55 AM

Yes Mudguard,it appears that site isn't accessible today. The Mudcat evidently isn't the only site with these problemes. It's "The UCLA Language Material Project", which has some very handy stuff on it.

As for Urdu and Hindi, I'm going by what I've been told and have read. Here is a site which goes into the similarities and differences:

"At the level of the colloquial language that is spoken spontaneously or is heard in Bollywood movies, Hindi and Urdu are virtually the identical language. Thus,

gãv meñ voh lajavab hai.
[There is no one like him in the village.]

They are, however, written in two different scripts, Urdu in the Perso-Arabic script and Hindi in the Devanagari script of Sanskrit..."

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Art Thieme
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 09:45 AM

Amergin,

You are correct. I've always felt that just because something might not be P.C. exactly it can still be brilliant, guffaw provoking, completely hilarious, and even funny !

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Casual Observer
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 09:56 AM

Not particularly offensive, but not particularly funny either. It's a pretty old joke by now. People were saying it about Pat Buchanan several years ago.

I suppose one could substitute "Russian" or "Chinese" for "German." Or maybe even "Italian" if one wanted to cast a fascist slant.