Tag / Germany

by Kilby

Einige Erdnüsse…

Here are a few Peanuts strips to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the “Tag der Deutschen Einheit“. Even before Schulz invented the incessant running gag about Snoopy being a WWI flying ace, he used German surprisingly often (much more than any other foreign language, Spanish included). The strip shown above was published in 1953; the title mentioned in the second panel is a piece by Bach, called “Sheep May Safely Graze“. The other four strips below are all from a story arc that appeared in March 1979.

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Although the word “Fräulein” is technically correct “textbook” German for “miss”, it has now become severely outdated, and is no longer used in normal German conversation, except occasionally for sarcastic emphasis. The standard German form of address for a woman (spoken or written) is now “Frau“, regardless of marital status; girls (and teenagers) are referred to as “Mädchen“.

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Snoopy should not have addressed Lucy as “Deutscher“, because that is the masculine declination. The correct form would have been: “Sind Sie Deutsche?” Nevertheless, Lucy responding with “…all your arms” seems a little excessive: Snoopy has only two of them, so that “both” would have been sufficient.

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The pronouns in the second frame are “I, You, He, She“, each listed in each of the four German grammatical cases: Nominative, Genitive (possessive), Dative, and Accusative. This is the standard order used in all German grammar textbooks, in which the cases are usually numbered, and thus referred to as the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th “Fall” (“case”). Yes, Germans are notorious for excessive orderliness.

The 15 prepositions in the third frame can be translated into English as: from/out, except/outside(†), at/by, with, after, since, from, to, at/on, on(top), after/behind, in, next to, over, under. German prepositions are normally followed by the term declined in a particular “case”, but some prepositions can take either of two cases, depending on the situation, or possibly even a choice of three different cases (but only in very rare circumstances).

P.S. (†) The second word in the third panel is an error, it should have read “außer” (optionally capitalized as “AUSSER“). Schulz was famous for doing all of his own lettering, and in any case this strip predates the availability of handwritten computer fonts, so the most likely explanation for the missing letter is simply a slip of the pen, or possibly a transmission error from wherever he obtained the text.

P.P.S. I think it would have been funnier if Snoopy’s exclamation in the final panel had been “Ich ergebe mich!!“, but I admit that nobody reading an American newspaper would have understood the joke.

by Kilby

Germification

CIDU frequently presents holiday-based material, but virtually all of the holidays we have ever celebrated so far have been American, even if a few of them (such as New Year’s Eve and Halloween) are also celebrated outside of North America. The following collection is presented in recognition of German Unification Day, which just happened to land on October 3rd (in 1990), and has been celebrated on that day ever since.

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Coverly put a “T” in front of the first “CH”, but neglected to do the same for the second, which would have made the pronunciation clearer, but it might have annoyed the syndicate’s censors.

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During my first stay in Germany (over 35 years ago), once I had begun to understand and speak a little of the language, I was frequently astonished (and/or embarrassed) by the linguistic abilities of German toddlers, which were often better than my own.

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Here’s a classic riddle for students beginning to learn the language:
Q – “What does a German parakeet say?“
A – (in a deep voice): “Billig! Billig!” (meaning “cheap”, of course)

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As unlikely as it may seem, Hogan’s Heroes wasn’t just translated into German, they actually did it twice, because the first version didn’t get good enough ratings. The scriptwriters for the newer version invented details and even (unseen) characters not found in the original shows, and the dialog (of the “Germans”) was changed from standard (“Hochdeutsch“) pronunciation to more comical (Bavarian and Saxon) dialects.

The American characters speak normal German in the translation, except for “Newkirk” (Richard Dawson’s character), who was changed from British to being a stutterer, which was both unnecessary and is absolutely unwatchable (at least for anyone who is familiar with the original show). I don’t remember whether LeBeau was synchronized into German with a French accent.

P.S. Keith Knight has drawn at least a dozen strips based on interactions with his (German) wife; there are simply too many of them to include them all here. Perhaps later, in a separate “linguistic” post.