mixeddrawers

Since moving to Australia I am constantly stumbling over words, phrases, meanings and things that puzzle me as a German native speaker. It has been a while since I posted last and thus I am absolutely overdue to consider one of the deeper and intensely meaningful questions in live again. This time I will delve head first (though there is nothing like a good cannonball. Is this what it is really called?), anyway, time to delve head first into a question that has puzzled me for a long time. What is the difference between jam and marmalade? And why do people need pillows and cushions? And what is the actual difference?

Let’s start with the food section. My Melbournian friends explained to me in great detail – more or less – that there is an absolute necessity to have two different types of jam, one of which is obviously not jam but marmalade. I am still not sure which is which. Was jam the one with all other fruits and marmalade with only citrus fruits? I can never ever keep them apart. See, in Germany there is only jam, or rather “Marmelade”, which is the translation of marmalade. Citrus fruit, other fruit, combinations, exaggerations, doesn’t matter. It’s all in the marmalade.

And then my office mate has brought another “two word for one” thing to my attention: pillow and cushions. I know the difference this time. Pillows are the ones you sleep one, the ones on the bed and cushions are those you sit on, on the couch, so-called decorative items. I have a few questions about this though, are decorative pillows on the bed also called cushions? Because obviously a bed is no couch, unless you don’t have a couch and use your bed as one. And what happens to cushions once you have a nap on the couch and your head is resting on one of them? Does this cushion become a pillow as a result? Will it have an identity crisis afterwards? This is the problem with two words that basically describe the same thing: confusion. I have to admire a language though, that is so lavish that it can a afford “many names for one thing” thing.

Technically speaking “Fremdschaemen” and “Schadenfreude” are two concepts that don’t really seem to have a lot in common. Except for the fact that both of them deal with feeling something on behalf of what another person has done. “Fremdschaemen” literally translated means being embarrassed on behalf of someone else’s action or words. You become a witness to an incident that for whatever reason seems to inspire an embarrassed cringing, which manifests itself in body posture (slightly bend over), facial expression (however an embarrassed face looks on you), and maybe even via sound (an “oh no” with a mental image of facepalming yourself while cringing at the same time). It is your own imagination which runs havoc at the thought of what if this incident had happened to you or how this incident will look in the broader scheme of things tied to maybe a broader social, cultural, or even political context. So, it is at the same time private and public. I’m hesitating to give a concrete example, because what makes people feel embarrassed on behalf of someone else depends on how easily you are embarrassed by certain actions, words, or incidents.

“Schadenfreude”, on the other hand, literally translated means to be feeling joyful or having fun at the expense of someone else, which is also usually related to an action or an incident. You, again, become a witness to an incident, but this time it makes you laugh. The incidents here are usually clumsy slapstick stumbling moments when someone stumbles over their own feet, runs into things, or as in my case falling off the couch. Needless to say, if I can manage falling off the couch without weirdly balancing on it in the first place, just sitting and falling off like an overly ripe apple falling of a branch, I have been that someone else at whom Schadenfreude is directed quite often. I also have been feeling one or both of these emotions regarding my own Fremschaemen/Schadenfreude moments.

So both emotional reactions are directed at something that someone else has experienced but with which you empathize either by being embarrassed or by finding it funny. I would argue that both of these concepts are more closely linked than they actually seem because I think there is a massive possibility to feel both things at the same time. It is this moment when you see something that makes you similarly embarrassed and laugh and you don’t quite know which of these emotions would be more appropriate to voice. It usually results in a cringy frown to indicate embarrassment and a snorty laugh, both of which combined might then again create Schadenfreude and Fremdschaemen in someone else.

A lot of women I know have at one point during their girlhood or teenage years spend a few years horseback riding and thus a lot of time at a horseback riding stable or pony farm or whatever else one can call it. Myself included. During that time I also consumed a lot of fiction dedicated to horses and fictional lives centered around horses. The pictures that were painted in these depictions were always pleasant and girl centered. A perfectly utopian space in which problems are simple and easy to resolve. In which unruly and difficult girls are turned into lovely ones just because working with horses and other girls made them happier people and solved all their problems. There was always someone to go for a ride with. The competitive aspect of horseback riding like dressage was always attempted in good grace and everyone loved each other in one way or another. Of course the reality was slightly different, because girls at a certain age can be quite mean to each other and I experienced that during my time supposedly to be spent blissfully with horses and all the love surrounding it. In truth it was highly competitive and exclusive, considering how expensive horseback riding actually is. So apparently life is unlike a pony farm or as the German phrase goes “Das Leben ist kein Ponyhof”.

I don’t really know when I first heard this phrase, but it was definitely way past the time I spend with horses. I think it was only a few years ago, uttered jokingly by a male friend of mine, who has never spent any time with horses. And indeed as research tells me, the origin of this phrase is a German web comic created by illustrator and author Sarah Burrini and only started being published on her webpage in May, 2009.

http://sarahburrini.com/en/

Since then, the phrase has become part of the German idiom and it got me thinking about the phrase as an idiom for life as not being a utopian sanctuary in which girls can find salvation and each other and in general live a different life. But I do wonder why the pony farm? Why not something else that basically expresses the same sentiment?

No one would ever come up with a saying that says “life ain’t a dance school”. You see I left horseback riding for dancing and I actually found the sanctuary I had been missing during my interlude with horses. Contrary to public conception and mythology, dancing with other girls made me happy and life was easy. But dancing of course is always equalled with female bitching behaviour and extreme competitiveness. On top of that, all the sacrifices you have to make if you decide to turn your passion into a profession. The hours, the physical labour, the pain, the precarious circumstances, which are all part of dancing. Yet all the girls I met and all the women I ever danced with were kind towards each other. Dance school as a utopian space? Certainly not. Riddled with its own mythology it wouldn’t make a good idiom.

I bet every time someone masters a language different from their native tongue and starts living in a place where the second language is the mother tongue, people realize that certain words might be missing from that language. Words that describe a whole state of being, or a whole experience. It is the feeling that sometimes you just want one word that adequately describes what you are feeling or going through instead of paraphrasing and ending up with a whole paragraph. This post is dedicated to exactly one such word.

It is what Germans call “Ohrwurm”, which literally translated means “ear worm”. An ear worm is that particular state you are in when you’ve got a song stuck in your head that refuses to leave you alone and will be following you for a whole day. Sometimes there is a succession of ear worms in a day and no matter how hard you try, you can’t get rid of them. It is basically like a tiny worm (song) that wiggles its way into your brain, via your ear canal, instead of just gliding straight through to the other side and out of the other ear. That one worm that manages to get stuck in the labyrinth that is your brain and cannot find its way out. Because its dark up there and because it doesn’t have a map. Or a smart phone with GPS. Thus, it roams your brain until it accidentally comes across the exit and is finally free. Mind you, certain songs get lost more easily than others and I am happy to share my Top 3 with you:

1. George Michael “Careless Whisper”: It is all about the saxophone!

1. Queen “Don’t Stop Me Know”: This one inspires immediate dancing!

1. Beyoncé “Single Ladies”: There is no such thing as a list without Beyoncé!

So, what are your ear worms?

There is no limit to the wonders of languages and their uses in different contexts. I know I didn’t want to use this blog for any academic writing, but the in-adequacy of the English translation of Freud’s “Das Unheimliche” (The Uncanny) struck me when I was doing this wonderful class called “Abjection, Horror and Taboo” last year.

You see, the German word “unheimlich” incorporates into its very linguistic structure and lexical meaning the whole Freudian concept. Let’s ignore the prefix “un-” for a moment and look at what I would like to call the torso of the word “heimlich”, which in turn can be divided into “heim” and the suffix “-lich”. The result provides the basis for the two meanings that this word has in German usage. “Heim” can be translated into “home”. Adding the suffix “-lich” turns the noun into the adjective “heimlich”, which means that something feels like home, or homely. “Heimlich” has another meaning, however, which is quite contrary to the notion of feeling at home ergo at ease, because the second meaning relates to doing something in secret or hidden from view. If you add the prefix “un-” then, the meanings are basically reversed, as “un-” usually signifies that something is undone. So, the home and the feeling of homeliness is undone, turning the secure space into an insecure one. Also, the secret is undone, or rather brought out into the open, thus probably making someone feel a certain amount of unease. If you combine the idea of homeliness with secret deeds, both of which become undone, the home becomes an insecure and uncomfortable space, because the secret is undone/revealed.

It is most likely no coincidence that Freud started his discussion of “Das Unheimliche” with its lexical usage and meaning. I am always incredibly intrigued though that he uses the Brothers Grimm, who did a lot of work in German and Indo-German linguistics and published a German dictionary, but also re-wrote fairy tales, which are very much concerned with creating a sense of unease and violence. A coincidence? Anyway, I am really not sure if “uncanny” really captures the complexities of the German word/concept. If I detach the prefix “un-” and the suffix “-ny”, I am left with “can”. My dictionary tells me the meanings of the noun are: a metal container (formal); prison (informal); and toilet (informal)…. If I ever feel something uncanny again, I might want to think about that.

One of the experiences of relocating from Berlin to Melbourne to do a PhD is to see how different languages work in different contexts. Somehow it made me appreciate the peculiarities of my native tongue German a little bit more. It also made me realize how peculiar a language it is. Some of the other PhD students in my department work with post-Marxist theories or Psychoanalysis, which means German words pop up in their English texts over and over again, either because the word in question has become part of the jargon of the discipline, or the author didn’t find an adequate translation, but goes on to explain his translation/meaning of the word in the text. This means, that I get the occasional question of how I would translate a certain word, which makes me realize the concepts and ideas that can be part of the linguistic structure and meaning of the word in question. In non-Uni circumstances I sometimes struggle to find the right word and one of the first instances of “funny words” happened very early after arriving in Australia.

You see, the first house I lived in was an old worker’s cottage. For those, who are unfamiliar with the layout, these cottages are long and slim and the bathroom is usually towards the end. Ours was right at the end and I think it used to be a garden shed turned into bathroom. It had this outdoorsy feel of a camping bathroom. It was also painted in an unpleasant shade of yellow that made me look like I was sick. It took a while to realize it was the combination of yellow and light. Anyway, outdoorsy kind of bathroom means all kinds of things lurking in corners or on shower curtains for that matter. (The shower looked like the Beatle’s Yellow Submarine, by the way…) One morning I found a slug on the shower curtain and I went to tell my housemate. I didn’t know though that a slug was called a slug and told her that I found a naked snail on the shower curtain. Let me elaborate. In German there is basically just one word for snail and slug. To differentiate between the two, you add the adjective “nackt” (naked) to the German word for snail (“Schnecke”), turning it into “Nacktschnecke” (naked snail). The reason for this being that a snail carries something on its back, in German it would be called its “Haus” (house). Thus, a snail without a “Haus” on its back is basically naked. To complicate matters even further, I actually didn’t say naked snail, but used a more colloquial form of naked, meaning I actually told her I had found a “nudie snail” in the bathroom. I mean, slugs can’t help but do nudie runs all the time.