Massive flooding throughout central Europe has cost 10 lives and wreaked incalculable damage… and the water is still rising. My thoughts are with all those affected by this widespread disaster. I share some photos from Austria, as I know the country best of all the others currently being affected.
Marbach on Tuesday, June 4th.
Emmersdorf in the neighborhood of Melk.
Building a portable high-water barrier in Spitz. Notice the house in the background.
The same house a week later. Without the barrier, it would have been under water.
Yesterday I posted about Germany’s longest official word having been stricken from the dictionary because it’s no longer needed. Today we will descend to sophomoric levels to explore the same noun-compounding phenomenon.
Put away your Dudens and your Langenscheidts and your reference books; this is nothing but silly fun. From various unknown sources across the years:
German Lesson #7
Dog: Barkenpantensniffer Dog Catcher: Barkenpantensniffersnatcher Dog Catcher’s Truck: Barkenpantensniffersnatcherwagen Garage for Truck: Barkenpantensniffensnatcherwagenhaus Truck Repairman: Barkenpantensniffensnatcherwagenmechanikerwerker Mechanic’s Union: Barkenpantensniffensnatcherwagenmechanikerwerkerfeatherbeddengefixengruppe
Piano: Plinkenplankenplunkenbox Pianist: Plinkenplankenplunkenboxgepounder Piano Stool: Plinkenplankenplunkenboxgepounderspinnenseat Piano Recital: Plinkenplankenplunkenboxgepounderoffengeshowenspelle Fathers at the Recital: Plinkenplankenplunkenboxgepounderoffengeshowenspellensnoozengruppe Mothers at the Recital: Plinkenplankenplunkenboxgepounderoffengeshowenspellensnoozengruppenuppenwakers
Propeller: Der airfloggen fann Self starter: Der airfloggenfann flinger Control column: Das pushenpullen schtik Rudder pedals: Der tailschwingen works Pilot: Der tailschwingen pushenpullen werker Student pilot: Der dummkoff lernen fliegen Forced landing: Trieen gobackonner ground mitout kraschen First solo: Trieen gobackonner ground mitout kraschen alone Precautionary landing: Looken virst den kraschen Crosswind landing: Trieen gobackonner ground mitout kraschen sidevays Parachute jump: Trieen gobackonner ground mitout der fliegenwagon Weather radar: Das olektroniken stormengeschniffer Warhead: Das Lautenboomer Atomic warhead: Das eargeschplittene Lautenboomer Hydrogen warhead: Das eargeschplittene Lautenboomer mit grossem Holengraund und alles kaputt!
These remind me of Fraulein Bo-peepen And More Tales Mein Grossfader Told by Dave Morrah:
An extract from the book:
Fraulein Bo-Peepen Ben losen der sheepen Und puzzlen mit der gelooken. Later der sheepen Ben homen gecreepen Mit tailers behinder geshooken.
Nowhere near as scholarly an approach as John Hulme’s Mörder Guss Reims – the Gustav Leberwurst Manuscript, which I mentioned here, but in 1953, so close to the end of the second world war, it struck a popular chord with Americans, who were still getting a kick out of mocking the Germans as late as 1971 when Hogan’s Heroes went off the air.
Children eating their Christmas dinner during the Great Depression.
As I looked at this picture, I was reminded of this passage from Richard Wright’s Black Boy:
“Christmas came and I had but one orange. I was hurt and would not go out to play with the neighborhood children who were blowinghorns and shooting firecrackers. I nursed my orange all of Christmas Day; at night, just before going to bed, I ate it, first taking a bite out of the top and sucking the juice from it as I squeezed it; finally I tore the peeling into bits and munched them slowly.” -Wright, Richard, Black Boy, Harper and Row, 1965
Poverty sucks. Previously I posted this picture of a desperate woman offering her children for sale in Chicago in 1948. Three years after World War II, when the military machine had largely mitigated the effects of the depression, and people were still struggling. And people continue to struggle today, in 2013, in America the Great and Terrible – which to far too many seems like nothing so much as smoke and mirrors, while the 1% who control over half our nation’s wealth shout, “Pay no attention to that CEO behind the curtain!”
They say the recession is over. For the wealthy and those whom our tax dollars bailed out, with no accountability or even gratitude, for the CEO’s and executives and board members who benefited with huge salaries and bonuses, perhaps it is. But not for the average working american. It’s two years on from that article, and economic terror is still snapping at the heels of far too many in our country. Economic giants like Wal-Mart crow about the “opportunities” and “dignity” they provide people:
“Unfortunately there are some people who base their opinions on misconceptions rather than the facts, and that is why we recently launched a campaign to show people the unlimited opportunities that exist at Walmart,” Buchanan said, noting that 75 percent of Walmart managers started as hourly employees. “Every month more than 60 percent of Americans shop at Walmart and we are proud to help them save money on what they want and need to build better lives for themselves and their families. We provide a range of jobs — from people starting out stocking shelves to Ph.D.’s in engineering and finance. We provide education assistance and skill training and, most of all, a chance to move up in the ranks.”
But as the source article indicates, a single Wal-Mart’s low wages can cost taxpayers around $900,000 per year in food stamps and other government programs because wages are so low, no benefits are paid, and hours are kept to unliveable minimums. Nobody said it better than Jib-Jab:
One would think that a skilled laborer with advanced degrees could at least get a job with Wal-Mart; one might think that they would appreciate wisdom, experience and reliability. Unfortunately, that’s the exact opposite of what is happening. The sad truth is that Wal-mart’s turnover rate is obscenely high; 60% would not be considered abnormal in some stores. Managers expect impossible performance, treat employees like refuse and pay as little as the law allows. Report after report from former Wal-Mart employees refer to constant threats of firing and reminders that they needed Wal-Mart to survive; they will fight unemployment claims to the teeth and make sure their employees are aware of this. As a result, HR is actively looking for people who can’t find anything better and who won’t complain, regardless of how poorly they are treated.
How can a business possibly survive on such a model? How can managers who buy into this mindset live with themselves or sleep at night? I truly have no answers to these questions, but the fact that the situation persists is deeply troubling.
To be fair, I know people who have been with their Wal-Mart stores for a long, long time, have risen through the ranks by dint of sheer perseverance and who are grateful for their employment. I know some people who work at the corporate level in IT, and who say they’ve had it a lot worse elsewhere. But the overwhelming preponderance of tales seem to support what is generally supposed about the big box working environment.
If you’d like a good (albeit depressing) read about what life is like for far too many of us in this country, read Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich[1]; she describes what it’s like to try to live on minimum-wage jobs in our country.
Her tales of shelters, budget motels, cheap food, endless job interviews, and working in demeaning drudgery, only to find that it was seldom enough to live on, will open your eyes to the harsh realities of our economy. Her conclusion:
The “working poor,” as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else. As Gail, one of my restaurant coworkers put it, “you give and you give.”
Someday, of course – and I will make no predictions as to exactly when – they are bound to tire of getting so little in return and to demand to be paid what they’re worth. There’ll be a lot of anger when that day comes, and strikes and disruption. But the sky will not fall, and we will all be better off for it in the end.
Again in the interest of fairness, here’s another opinion from Charles Platt in 2009; no idea if he’s a shill or not, but add it to the mix. [2]
As a country, we must do better. We owe it to ourselves, and we owe it to our children. We need to start teaching kids how to think out of the box, how to value humanity, how to run an ethical business, and how to build a world that works for everyone. Richard Wright ended the original version of his autobiography with these words: “With ever watchful eyes and bearing scars, visible and invisible, I headed North, full of a hazy notion that life could be lived with dignity, that the personalities of others should not be violated, that men should be able to confront other mean without fear or shame, and that if men were lucky in their living on earth they might win some redeeming meaning for their having struggled and suffered here beneath the stars.” (Wright, Richard, Black Boy, Harper and Row, 1965)
We must do this. Otherwise, as John Howard Griffin said in his moving conclusion to Black Like Me, “we will all pay for not having cried for justice long ago.”
The Old Wolf has spoken.
[1] You can find it at Amazon or read a pdf of the book here.
[2] What’s it like for Wal-Mart executives at the stratospheric corporate level? Not all peaches and cream, as Julie Roehm discovered; her odyssey makes for an interesting read as well.
This iconic photo taken in 1932 showed a group of construction workers nonchalantly enjoying lunch on a girder [1] high above New York. A bit of backstory on the photo can be found at The Reel Photo.
What is not often seen is what happened after that particular photo was taken, which is just what you might expect.
Nothing better than a good nap after lunch.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
[1] On that note:
An Irish labourer turns up at a building site and asks for employment. “Thick paddy,” thinks the foreman.
“Right ven, Paddy, fink we can hire you? Wot’s the difference between a joist and a girder ven, Paddy?”
“Sure and that’s easy,” replied the Irishman. “Joist wrote Ulysses, and Girder wrote Faust.”
If you’ve ever read Mark Twain’s A Tramp Abroad, you have probably encountered Appendix D: The Awful German Language. Therein, Twain waxes eloquent about the vagaries of the Teutonic tongue and mentions the habit of the German language to smash nouns together into long, unreadable strings. He mentions “Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen” (legislator meetings) and “Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen” (cease-fire negotiations.) He does not mention “Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenswitwe” (the widow of a captain of the Danube Steamship Voyage Company), and I have seen longer versions having to do with the cleaning lady of the captain’s cabin, but this one is somewhat sniffed at by German purists.
“Hardwood floor sander rental”
Now it appears that the longest official word in the German dictionary has been stricken, because it’s no longer needed.
the Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, or “law delegating beef label monitoring,” was introduced by Germany in 1999 as part of measures against mad cow disease. But the DPA news agency reported today the law was removed from the books last week because European Union regulations have changed. Just to show you how these monsters are cobbled together:
Rind (cow)
Fleisch (flesh) [Rindfleisch -> “beef”]
Etikettierung (labeling)
Überwachung (monitoring)
Aufgabe (task)
Übertragung (delegation)
Gesetz (law)
The additional letters between the nouns are there to make things flow smoothly, in the same way as we take “girls” and “baseball” and “team” and come up with “girls’ baseball team.” And that’s really all they are doing – they just happen to cram everything together into one word.
German has other peculiarities, among which are the maddening tendency to throw all their verbs to the end of a very long clause or sentence. I’m currently reading The Lord of the Rings (Der Herr der Ringe) in German; I can’t wait to get to Volume 3 to find out what happens, because that’s where all the verbs are. [1]
But with the “Längsthauptwortsabschaffung” (longest noun elimination, and I just made that up) having been performed, what’s left as the longest official word? That honor falls to Kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung (automobile liability insurance)
For what it’s worth, “The Awful German Language” was not Twain’s only foray into German philology. In A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, he came up with Constantinopolitanischerdudelsackpfeifenmachersgesellschafft (İstanbul bagpipe maker company, and remember it’s İstanbul, not Constantinople), which my Teutonically-enabled friends will be quick to point out is improperly formed, but it makes a heck of a magic word. But this segues into the fact that when it comes to smashing words together, the Germans are rank amateurs when compared to Turkish.
Avrupalılaştırılamayabilenlerdenmısınız? is a complete sentence, a question which means “Are you one of those who is not easily able to be Europeanized?”
Here’s how it’s formed:
Avrupa: Europe
Avrupa-lı: European
Avrupa-lı-laş-mak: become European
Avrupa-lı-laş-tır‑mak: to make European (mak is an infinitive ending)
Avrupa-lı-laş-tır‑ı‑l‑mak: (reflexive) to be made European (‑l‑ is a linking consonant)
Avrupa-lı-laş-tir‑ıl‑abil‑mek: to be capable of being Europeanized (‑mek is again the infinitive ending, changed as a result of vowel harmony)
Avrupa-lı-laş-tır‑ıl‑ama‑mak: not to be capable of being Europeanized
Avrupa-lı-laş-tır‑ıl‑ama‑y‑abil‑mek: this time the ‑abil is probability: that there is a probability that one may not be capable of being Europeanized
Avrupa-lı-laş-tır‑ıl‑ama‑y‑abil‑en: the one that may not be capable of being Europeanized
Avrupa-lı-laş-tır‑ıl‑ama‑y‑abil‑en‑ler: the ones…..(‑ler, ‑lar is the plural suffix)
Avrupa-lı-laş-tır‑ıl‑ama‑y‑abil‑en‑ler‑den: of or from the ones who may not be capable of being Europeanized
mı? ‑ question tag (legally, this should be written separately, but it is a very common mistake not to).
mısınız? ‑ are you (formal or plural)
To be fair, this is a rather contrived sentence, but it’s legal and grammatical and shows how Turkish agglutination works. Pope John XXIII is reported to have said, at one point during his ten years in İstanbul as Papal Nuncio, “I am fond of the Turks… It is my special intention, as an exercise in mortification, to learn the Turkish language.” Mortification is right.
I spent about 10 years associating with Turks, the Turkish language, and Turkey, and I would like to go on record as saying that John had the right idea. They’re lovely people, with a beautiful country and a hellish but intriguing language. I keep chipping away at Turkish, and perhaps in one or two more lifetimes I’ll be able to say more than “Günaydın, nasılsınız?”. As Robert Sheckley’s character said in “Shall we have a little talk?“, “Stop agglutinating, dammit!”
Given the events taking place in Turkey at this very moment, I pause to wish the good people of this land every good thing, and the right to freedom and self-determination.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
[1] Just kidding. All the verbs are in the appendices.
Cointe Observatory, built by the University of Liège in 1881-82. In the course of renovation with the intention that it should house the Service Régional des Fouilles Archéologiques. (Wikipedia)
Thought patterns and philosophies have changed over time – many of us are familiar with sexist advertisements that ran in magazines in newspapers in decades and centuries past:
Yikes. And this isn’t even the worst of them.
I was recently pointed to a collection of ads that were not only stupid but downright dangerous:
Some of these simply contravene common sense, like the “vitamin doughnuts” ad above, but some of them are downright toxic, for example the DDT advertisement. You can see a full exposition on each of these over at Collector’s Weekly.
And of course, don’t forget the “Guinness is Good For You” campaign:
Have we changed all that much, though? I rant regularly about quack remedies and sleazy advertisements that seem so prevalent on the web (if you don’t want to see these, consider using AdBlocker Plus for Firefox or Chrome – you’ll see almost no ads.)
As I said at the post I referenced above, regarding the “Açaí Berry / Colon Cleanse” scam,
Colon cleansing is unnecessary and potentially harmful. Your colon is an amazing apparatus. With the exception of abnormal medical conditions such as fecal impaction due to longstanding constipation, or intestinal torsion, your colon cleanses itself efficiently and regularly. If you do a colon cleanse, you’re likely to lose a few pounds as the result of clearing out two days worth of food in your system, but as soon as you start eating again, it will come right back. Colon cleansing on a regular basis can disrupt the natural intestinal flora, and impair the colon’s natural ability to regenerate its lining. A diet rich in soluble and insoluble fibers is all your body needs to keep your colon happy, and doing what it does best – absorbing nutrients and expelling wastes.
As for the berry itself,
Antioxidants are good. Virtually thousands of randomized, double-blind, placebo-based studies published in JAMA, Lancet and other mainstream medical journals show that free-radical scavengers help improve overall health. Fruits are full of antioxidants. The açaí berry is a fruit. Just like strawberries, kiwis, oranges, grapefruits, pomegranates, mangosteens, ningxia wolfberries, and you name it. When consumed as part of a balanced diet, they’re all good for you. But there is nothing “miraculous” about this or any other fruit.
The sad bottom line is that most advertising is borderline unethical by nature. It’s either
Misleading
Outright deceptive
Practicing “bait and switch” tactics, or
Designed to create a burning, passionate desire for something that you don’t really need.
It’s a conundrum, because advertising is what drives commerce, and commerce is what drives society. If nobody bought anything, practically nobody would have a job and our economy would collapse.
I don’t have all the answers, but if the human race is ever going to crawl out of the mud, ethical business is a must. We need to teach our upcoming generations that the end does not justify the means.
![vintage-sexist-ads (13)[3][2]](https://playingintheworldgame.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/vintage-sexist-ads-1332.jpg)
Playing in the World Game 