Post Punk Kitchen Forum

See? I wouldn't get the "cacophonous" part, not from the inside, as it were. Thanks.

I don't think I know anyone who thinks German sounds funny (at least not in a ha-ha way). What I do hear people say is that it sounds aggressive and angry.

I know some people who like to use found Germanisms for fun. Which made me really curious...

Long words that are fun to say, I think. As opposed to Russian which is long words that are torturous to say.

Like this?? ;)




(P.S. I still think Russian is kinda sexy. But then again I speak (a variety of) German...)

A Very Peculiar Practice!!!!! It is all you need, ever. It is part filmed at the University my husband and I went to, and part at the one where my husband works, because they didn't want it to be identified with any one place. We have great fun spotting the joins. And, it's awesome.

German is funny? I have never heard of such a thing. But my dad is a professor of German literature, so I grew up with a sense of his area of expertise being very important.

Off-topic-ish, this girl I am thinking of hiring for a co-op position at work keeps calling me "Miss (my last name)." It's so weird!

I love Russian. It sounds really beautiful in opera too (German opera just doesn't do it for me). But, it is kind of torturous to learn to say the long words.

I think that maybe, just maybe, the idea that german is funny comes from comedy traditions of imitating those wacky german characters that one may find around the world outside of germany. Just from my own life I can remember some german guys playing air guitar and smoking hash in a youth hostel in DC, trying to figure out how to jump off the roof safely..... the german guy we met in Japan who was biking through the [uninhabited] volcanic mountains of niigata, camping on the side of the road and towing a cart with his houseplants behind his bike.... german tourists getting the hell burned out of their skin on the beach here and being perfectly OK with it.....my german client, an otherwise serious engineer, that rode a harley to work using a helmet with a kaiser wilhelm spike.

not that germans are any stranger than anyone else. i know wackos from all over the world. but the image of the german person with strange [un-american] interests and, ESPECIALLY, a high-pitched sing-song accent is comedy gold- mad scientists, SNL with Hanz und Franz and Sprockets, performance artists, etc.

The long compound words of German are funny and Germans, at least the young ones, seem quirky. I used to work with an old German guy and he was pretty quirky too.

I don't think German sound angry though, I think Korean sound angry.

my husband grew up not speaking japanese, and he had a set of grandparents that only spoke japanese. he and his brothers HATED to go visit them because it sounded (to the kids) like the old people were always yelling at them. i can only laugh because i know the old people were surely just trying to communicate.

in college when i learned my own 10 languages, i had a friend who was studying mongolian. now THAT is a scary, angry sounding language!!! makes klingon sound like french. i loved to hear her speak it.

How are they using the "found" Germanisms? German is my favorite language. I honestly love it and it makes something in my soul happy when I speak it. I've spoken it since I was 6 and associate it with many many happy memories. And so I don't "get" the humor.

I once read a New Yorker article about the linguistics of humor and apparently harder sounds like Js and Ks are very "funny" sounds so those are used in joke punch lines more often than other sounds, and German has a lot of them.

Plus it plays into an unfortunate stereotype about Germans in many cases.

I'm watching all the episodes of Scrubs and they use the German thing a lot. I think bc Sarah Chalke can speak it.

ETA: 10 languages! Torque you're a badass :)

@ Tofulish: Oh just throwing in the occasional "Frühstück" and "Autobahn" and finding it super entertaining.
I guess it's just a bit weird for me, because the other way round it's so different. English words are omnipresent and are still considered "young" and "hip" and whatnot.

It's really strange to me how the light of a new morning wipes away all the emotional darkness of the night for me. I just kind of wish that the hours between 9pm and 11pm didn't exist sometimes though.

This thread is impressive. I could never read it through.

People do the "cool" use of words for French here too. Like showing that you know another language but also that you're hip enough that you can use it ironically.

One of my friends answers her emails with a smattering of misspelled French words used wrong. Like inviting me for a petit dej when she means lunch. Its unintentional and supercute

Re German: it's the long compound words, I think. I don't think they're funny, necessarily, but something about that structure tickles me.

Also, there might be some pop culture conditioning? My last semester in college I had a youngish Prof from Germany who sounded just like Dr. Strangelove.

German also has the best ever word ever of all times forever: Rhabarbermarmelade! It means rhubarb jam/marmelade and is pronounced ra-baah-buh-maah-muh-laah-duh.

A rhubarb jam shop could conceivably be a Rhabarbermarmeladeladen.

In my first german lesson, students were not allowed to leave the class before they were able to pronounce streichholzschächtelchen (which means a small box of matches, if my memory's right). But Rhabarbermarmeladeladen is something too.

Is that a moomin?

I should have asked, is that a moomin with a burnt pancake on its head?

Today I had two meetings that went pretty well, summarized them for my boss, arranged three interviews, and organized a school visit for May (mostly). The rest of the day was spent in lunch, BBC news, PPK, G+, and cake wrecks.
I'm not sure in which favour is the production balance.

It's Moomin wearing a hat and grumbling about life.

I thought of cats whiskers. My whisker does the same thing, and not even a good head massage- one of those weedy ineffectual ones.

Edit: Have just noticed whole page between my post and the one I was responding to- so this most is out of context even within the doesn't go with anything thread!

The beauty of this thread is that you don't have to read through it to know what we're talking about now because we're literally just chit chatting about random things. The other part of this threads beauty is that when you're bored at work, it's fun to read through this thread.

Ooooh. Love the Rhabarbermarmeladeladen. Which is not that obvious to us Austrians, since we don't say "Laden" for shop, we say "Geschäft". But I'm aware (because of a TV ad some years ago) that you can say "Schoko-Lade" (like chocolate) and mean the drawer the chocolates are kept in ("Schublade" or just "Lade"). So there could also be a Schokoladenlade (chocolate drawer) or Schoko-Laden / Schokoladenladen (chocolate shop). Heh.
Now I'm beginning to find it funny myself. (And yes, it's definitely the structure.)

Thanks for the change in perspective. I had to actively step out of my own everyday experience of the language surrounding me in order to see it. (Yay. Love these things.)

Also, well done on the Streichholzschächtelchen, Minatomachi. :)