File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1995/nietzsche_Dec17.95, message 47


From: "Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt" <hag-AT-iafrica.com>
Date:          Thu, 21 Dec 1995 03:06:20 +0200
Subject:       Re: Bad Moon Rising in German


chris stolz writes:
> 
> I'm a native speaker of German, and havign read _GR_ three times
> I can say that there are basically no mistakes in his (scant)
> German in that novel.

Scant? Really?
As I said, it's not as bad as many other novels, but still... here 
some examples (apologies for being such a pedant):

* "Was ist los, meinen Sumpfmenschen?" (362) should be 'meine'
* "Raketemann" (366) should be 'Raketenmann' 
*  "Stiefeln, bitte" (377) should be 'Stiefel, bitte'
*  "Shicksal" (416) should be 'Schicksal'
* "Buchdrucherverband' (571) should be 'Buchdruckerverband'
... and there are more

*  "Zitz und Arsch" (508) sounds suspiciously like a literal 
translation of 'tits and ass' - I've never heard it used in German, 
but who knows 
*  again and again, 'Kot' (which I've never heard either) instead of
the more obvious 'Scheisse',   (but again, who knows)
* "In Germany the word for electric socket is also the word for 
Mother" (299) - wrong, 'Muffe' is slang for vagina (as is 'Dose', from 
'Steckdose' - literally sticking-socket; sticking-box) - but same as 
above - slang is difficult to 'authenticate'

* and another (geographical) mistake (658): the rock painting of the famous 
white woman (Weisse Dame) is not in the Kalahari, but in the 
Brandberg mountain range, which forms part of the the Namib 
desert (the Kalahari is on the inland - eastern -  side of Namibia/Sudwestafrika, 
the Namib - apparantly the oldest desert in the world -  lines the western 
coastal area).  
I saw the painting (in 1982), and despite being quite small, it _is_  
vastly impressive, and a bit of a mistery, for various reasons.

hg
hag-AT-iafrica.com


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