Odds and ends: German

This post covers some small details of German.

Rare suffix for males

It’s quite common for languages to form the word for a female person or female animal by adding a suffix to the word for the corresponding male. Well-known suffixes of this kind include English -ess and German -in. (adding the German suffix -in makes the preceding vowel undergo the change known as Umlaut, see below.)

Apparently much less common is an inverse process where the male noun contains a suffix but the related female noun bears no suffix. In these cases, it seems the female word is used as the generic word for the entire species or genus; the male word is marked, being used only when there is a particular need to emphasize the animal’s sex.

German offers at least 3 examples of this inverse process:

  • Ente (‘duck’); Enterich (‘drake’).
  • Gans (‘goose’); Gänserich (‘gander’).
  • Maus (mouse); Mäuserich (‘male mouse’)

In English too, duck and goose are the everyday words for the birds in question, and drake and gander are used only when it is important to highlight the fact that the bird is male. As far as I know, there is no English word for male mouse in everyday use.

I hadn’t known Mäuserich researching this post, so perhaps the need for it doesn’t arise often.

In preparing this post, I discovered that there is a regional alternative to Enterich, namely Erpel, borrowed from Middle Dutch and used mainly in northern Germany. https://www.dwds.de/wb/Erpel and https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Erpel

Other regional German words for ‘gander’ are Ganter (northern Germany), Ganser (southern Germany and Austria), and Ganauser (Austrian dialect). https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Gaenserich

Using <e> to replace umlaut

German spelling uses 3 letters having a double dot on top: <ä, ö, ü>, for vowels pronounced /ɛ, œ, y/. That double dot is known as Umlaut. This spelling device is used in words where those sounds developed historically from the sounds /a, o, u/ through a process that is also called Umlaut.

An example is the pair Gans (‘duck’), Gänserich (‘drake’), where the suffix -erich converts the /a/ in Gans into its umlauted version /ɛ/. Now, it would be perfectly feasible to use the spelling Genserich, but modern German uses the spelling Gänserich to show clearly thehistorical, phonologicalandmorphological connection with Gans.

German keyboards have keys dedicated to the common umlauted letters <ä, ö, ü>. Windows also provides keyboard shortkeys for them: ALT+132 for <ä>, ALT+148 for <ö>, ALT+129 for <ü>. For more:

Elternteil

Eltern (‘parents’) is a plural word with no singular (a plurale tantum). To refer to only one parent (without specifying which one), it is possible to use the prosaically impersonal sounding Eltern-teil (‘parents-part’).

Confusable words

Hölle / Höhle

Hölle is ‘hell’. Höhle is a ‘cave‘, ‘cavern’; ‘hole’, ‘hollow’, ‘socket’

Wort / Wörter

The German Wort has 2 plurals:

  • Wörter means individual words. For example, a dictionary (Wörterbuch) contains a collection of individual words.
  • Worte means connected text

Das gleiche / dasselbe

Das gleiche and dasselbe both mean the same, but:

  • das gleiche (written as 2 words) means that things are identical, but they all exist separately.
    Sie tragen das gleiche Kleid (they are wearing the same dress; each person has a dress and the dresses are identical)
  • dasselbe (written as 1 word) means that only one instance of the things exists.
    Sie tragen dasselbe Kleid (they are all within the same dress; there is only one dress)

Scheinbar / Anscheinend

Scheinbar means a thing appears to be something, but is actually something different.

Anscheinend means something evidently is something.

Some other words

Preis

Preis means both ‘price’ and ‘prize’.

Laufbahn

Laufbahn literally means ‘running track’, but it also means career.

Lupe

My wife and I were doing the cryptic crossword in The Times recently and were struggling with a clue for which we already had the letters L_U_E, and appearing to mean ‘magnifying glass’. I remembered that Lupe is the German for magnifying glass, and so wondered whether there might be an English word loupe with that meaning.

It tourns out that such a word does exist (and this was indeed the answer). It refers to a small, hand-held magnifier, as used by, for jewellers, with high magnification and a much smaller field of view than an ordinary hand-held magnifying glass.

Wiktionary gives the etymology as from Middle French, from Old French loupe (‘sapphire lens, imperfect gem, mass of hot metal’), from Frankish *luppa (‘something pendulous’), from Proto-Germanic *lubbǭ (‘that which hangs or dangles’), *lub- (‘to peel, hang’), from Proto-Indo-European *lep- (‘to peel, skin’). Duden says German Lupe comes from French loupe, of unexplained origin. https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Lupe

I knew the German word Lupe only from idioms like unter der Lupe (‘under the magnifying glass’, ie ‘under close examination’) and unter die Lupe nehmen (‘bring under the magnifying glass, ie investigate closely’). I had always presumed that the underlying reference was to a detective’s stereotypical magnifying glass, though the description in Duden seems to refer more specifically to something like a jeweller’s loupe.   

In the idioms I mention, die Lupe is:
– in the accusative case in the phrase unter die Lupe nehmen (referring to motion to a position under the glass)
– in the dative case in the stand-alone phrase unter der Lupe (referring to a stationary position under the glass).

Anschluss

Common meanings of Anschluss include the apparently disparate:

  • ‘connection’, for example a train connection or a flight connection
  • ‘annexation’, for example the Third Reich’s annexation of Austria in 1938.

Ausgenommen

Ausgenommen is a past participle, meaning literally taken ‘out’. It has become a preposition meaning ‘except’, and is one of the few German prepositions requiring the accusative case. I’ve listed the most important of those adjectives at https://languagemiscellany.com/2021/05/mnemonics-in-language-learning/

Übertragen

The word meaning ‘figurative’ (as opposed to ‘literal) is the adjective übertragen, originally the past participle of the inseparable verb übertragen, which means ‘transfer’. So, delightfully, the meaning of übertragen (the word for ‘figurative’) is itself figurative!

There is also a separable verb übertragen which has a literal (non-figurative) meaning of carry over, carry across.

Übertragen, in both the literal and figurative senses, is, I suspect a calque (part-by-part translation) of Latin transferre, made up of the prefix trans- (‘across) and the verb ferre (‘carry, bear’).  Both Latin ferre and English bear (‘carry’) derive from the same Proto-Indo-European root, reconstructed as *bʰer.

The past participle of ferre is latus and so translate is also related etymologically to übertragen.

The opposite of übertragen (‘literal’) is eigentlich (‘what exists in reality’). Eigen means ‘own’ or ‘characteristic’ and Eigenschaft is the noun characteristic’.

Denglish corner

People sometimes use the word Denglish to refer pseudo-English words or phrases used by German speakers but not used by people who learnt English as a 1st language. One such word is handy, which German speakers often use instead of ‘mobile phone’ or ‘cell phone’. (German speakers pronounce Denglish handy with an un-English root vowel as /hɛndi/ How German speakers pronounce English   – Language Miscellany)

Another example is beamer, used by some German speakers as the word for a data projector, used for example in projecting Powerpoint slides onto a monitor. I have never heard this from native English speakers, who typically say projector.

Respectively

A further common Denglish word is respectively, a word that many Denglish speakers use far more often than native English speakers do. Admittedly, the obvious German translation for respectively is beziehungsweise.

But German writers (and even speakers) use beziehungsweise a lot more than English writers use respectively. That greater frequency carries over into their English writing, where they tend to use respectively wherever they would use beziehungsweise in German.

In most cases where German writers would use beziehungsweise, it is best to delete it in English entirely, or replace it with wording that sounds less pedantic and less bureaucratic, such as or or perhaps as appropriate.

Even German writers reel from the burden of writing beziehungsweise all the time, so they often replace it with the abbreviation bzw. Unfortunately, this habit tricks them into writing the abbreviation resp. (for respectively), an abbreviation I have only seen in Denglish and never in real English.

Sogennant

Sogennant literally means ‘so-called’, but doesn’t necessarily have the same connotations. To my ear, sogennant often reports a name neutrally, without implying that the name is unsuitable.

On the other hand, so-called typically has a negative connotation, suggesting that the name is not, in fact, appropriate. More neutral ways to report a name in English are simply to use quotation marks, or to use called (with some indication of who is doing the calling) or even perhaps named.

Doppik / Kameralistik

Doppik is double-entry book keeping. It is a short version of doppische Buchführung (‘double book-keeping’).

Doppik contrasts with Kameralistik, a traditional form of book-keeping used for many centuries by governments and government bodies. Kameralistik focuses on cash paid and received, whereas Doppik also records transactions that do not result in cash flows immediately.

Here is a link to a piece by 2 German MPS advocating that German government bodies should introduce accrual accounting, to replace Kameralistik with Doppik. https://www.derneuekaemmerer.de/news/wir-brauchen-in-deutschland-dringend-die-doppik-25809/ https://languagemiscellany.com/2021/05/mnemonics-in-language-learning/
There’s quite a bit on double entry in the German Wikipedia article on Buchführung. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchführung

When the focus is on recording transactions other than just cash, it might be best to translate Doppik as accrual accounting.

Soll und haben

Double-entry bookkeeping involves debits and credits. The German terms for these are Soll (debit) and Haben (credit), which are loan translations of medieval Latin debet (‘he owes’) and credet (he believes).

The German Wikipedia page quotes an explanation by Balduin von Penndorf, German translator of Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita by Luca Paclioi (the 15th century founder of double entry bookkeeping). Penndorf explains:

  • The original Italian labels were deve dare (‘must give, German soll geben) and deve avere (‘must have, German soll haben).
  • Later, Italian deve fell away from both labels (leaving dare and  avere).
  • In German, geben fell away from one label and soll fell away from the other label, leaving soll and haben.  https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soll_und_Haben_(Buchführung)

Soll und Haben is the title of a once-well-known novel by Gustav Freitag (1816-1895), which I have never got round to reading.

Odds and ends in various languages

For other odds and ends in various languages, please see Odds and ends Archives – Language Miscellany

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *