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Just a quick announcement:

I am now on Twitter. You can follow me @EllenAura where I will post every new article and maybe other stuff, too.

Elle

“Zeitvertreib” or how we treat our time

Ah, time. Strange thing, isn’t it? We are all familiar with its relativity so let’s not rehash that.

Lately I have had a lot to do. I still have a lot to do because I haven’t done most of it yet. Instead I spend an insane amount of time watching old “Quite Interesting” episodes on Youtube. My TV watching habits are strange and obsessive. My brother is frequently telling me that it looks like work when I watch TV. Once I discover something I like, I will pull all-nighters to catch up on every single thing I can find out about it. Anyway, I didn’t mean to write about TV. I wanted to write about time and what you can do with it.

You can use it wisely, waste it and kill it. Doctor Who can bend it but that’s a different story. Well, in German you can banish it. What? Yes, you can. But contrary to what you might think now, it is actually a nice thing to do. I am talking about “Zeitvertreib”. The dictionary tells me it can be translated as amusement, avocation or pastime. And that is absolutely accurate. However, while the meaning in the end is the same, the actual words are so very different. When you take a closer look at “Zeitvertreib” it consists of the words “Zeit” – time, and “Vertreib” which is derived from the verb “vertreiben” – to banish or to drive away.

Sometimes it is used pretty literally. For example when somebody informs you that you have to wait half an hour for them and you reply something like: “Ach, ich werde mir schon irgendwie die Zeit vertreiben.” – Oh, I will find a way to pass my time somehow. But as a noun you use it to describe hobbies or lovely activities. So, when I tell my grandmother that I just started to teach myself how to play the Ukulele, she could answer: “Was für ein schöner Zeitvertreib!” – What a lovely way to pass your time. “Zeitvertreib” is a positive thing. However, the literal meaning of the word “vertreiben” definitely has a negative connotation. It is something that happens to refugees in wars. And this is the image that I find remarkable. So my grandmother literally says: What a lovely way to get time away from you. “Zeitvertreib” basically means to drive your time away from you, to displace it, to force it to go elsewhere. As if it was something you don’t want. And in a way time is something we don’t want on its own. We want time to do stuff and to do nothing but never just time itself.

So, there you have it. Germans banish time and think that that’s a good thing. In all fairness, though, it is better than killing it.

The Advent Calendar Aftermath or Mea Culpa

Hello,

So some of you might have read on facebook that I made a little bet with my old friend Henrike Dessaules in December of last year. She was mocking me about my plan to post 24 good German songs in the days leading up to Christmas. I told her, if she likes less than half of them I’d buy her a glass of wine. She hasn’t told me the result yet but last weekend I got a message from her that said: “So much already, the lousy women’s quota of less than 20 % won’t get you a cookie.”

Okay, first off Henrike, after you mentioned that, I went back and counted. And you are wrong; it is most definitely over 20 %. If you just go by bands with female members, they are represented with 25 % percent. If you are only counting front people, it is still just over 20 %. With that out of the way, I have to admit, before you mentioned it, I never even noticed. Now, I can blame the patriarchy for the fact that there are simply less female recording artists than male ones, which explains the bias in my calendar.

But what I have to admit to is my utter ignorance of this fact. It never really crossed my mind. Now, this is even more interesting, considering the fact that I am a female musician myself. In all my bands I was usually the only woman. At the most there was one other woman, usually playing an instrument like saxophone or violin. It kind of looked like this:

 

Of course I noticed that most of my bandmates through the years were guys, but I just attributed that to the fact that I tend to get along way better with men than with women and therefore choose these bands.

Anyway, now I started thinking about it. So, thank you for that, Rike. (I just noticed that that sounds sarcastic. I do mean it, though. I am always grateful when someone makes me think.) Suddenly I notice that there is a shocking shortage of women playing instruments and writing songs. It has gotten better in the last ten years. There are a number of super successful female artists. However, most of them are solo artists. I talked about this to my brother who got me into music and has played in rock bands for most of his life. Together we noticed that while there are a lot of female solo artists, it is still rare to see them in the common band setting. My brother then ventured a guess as to why that is. Apart from the obvious (very male dominated world, chauvi-jokes and so on) he said: “Maybe at 16 or 17 girls have better things to do than to hang out in fucked up rehearsal spaces and drink cheap beer”. I just thought: “Oh, I love doing that.” I loved it when I was 16 and I love it now.

Well, I don’t know what the reasons are but this is not a blog about the underrepresentation of women in music and virtually any other part of the public life. So, I will just say this: Ladies, please join me on stage! It is great up here. Playing guitar and singing is much cooler than just making out with a guy who plays guitar. I should know, I’ve done both.

And I leave you with a magnificent band of talented women:

“handhaben” or handle foreign words with care

First off, let me say something about Anglicisms. I don’t mind them. Language is a dynamic thing that changes naturally over time. In this globalized world it is a given that we adopt words from other languages, most likely English, since it is everywhere. Having said that, there is a word that is becoming more and more popular with Germans and it makes me cringe every time I hear it. It somehow doesn’t sound right and it bugs me that people use it when we have a lovely German word that would totally do. I am talking about “handhaben” – to handle.

It is not a sexy word, I know. It is kind of like a kitchen pot; not something you would put on display but without it you couldn’t make soup and that sucks. I like soup.

On closer inspection “handhaben” is actually kind of pretty. Let’s say, it is like the one pot in your kitchen that you got from your mom when you first moved out and it has that funky orange color that was so hip in the 70s. The word can be loosely translated as ‘to have a hand’. I get that people are confused by it. It has a somewhat unusual shape for a German verb but it isn’t anything German grammar couldn’t handle (haha).

Now, in recent years Germans have started to say phrases like this one: “Das kann man dann auch viel besser händeln” or “Ich weiß nicht, wie ich das händeln soll“. Seriously, it weirds me out. For one thing, I just realized that I have no idea how to spell the Germanized version of it. I did it phonetically in this case. It sounds ugly to my ears and there is one more reason why we should abstain from The Fancy English word in this case: It is very easy to confuse it with another essential German verb: “handeln” – to act.

In the end we have incidents like a (then) famous German girl band performing at some benefit (think Live Aid only less cool) and calling out to the audience: “Handle with care”. What they wanted to say was ‘act with care’ or rather ‘act responsibly’ and we go for the full circle here when I will now tell you how to say that in perfectly beautiful German language: “Handle mit Umsicht!”.

“Krawall” – or let’s rock and roll

I wrote this text about two weeks ago but didn’t publish it because I wasn’t quite satisfied. Today I had to finish an assignment for work and since I am a professional procrastinator I, of course, now found time to edit it. By now International Women’s Day has come and gone but I still like the text and don’t want to wait one year to publish it. 

Hello everybody. Yesterday was International Women’s Day. I like it a lot because I lived in Poland where students give flowers to women on that day and because I work with a bunch of Russians now who all congratulated me. My mother doesn’t like the day because as a former citizen of East Germany she associates the day with dictatorial politicians trying to utilize yet another symbol for their indoctrination. In any case it is as good a day as any to reflect on feminism and women’s rights. (Let me use this opportunity to highly recommend my friend’s blog discipline and anarchy. It is very smart, you’ll see.)

I personally think we have come a long way but we are so not out of the woods yet where gender equality is concerned. However, this blog is about language so let me try and segue into today’s word.

One thing that just won’t die out is the cliché of feminists being angry men-haters. Internet discourse on feminism paints you a picture of some crazy, screaming, yelling, kicking, uber-emotional bitch that would love to take a sledge hammer to your car, that is, if she could lift it. Which she can’t because, wait for it, she’s a woman!

Women’s rights are an issue where you can wait for tempers to explode and emotions running high. And maybe it should be. Yes, we all want to rationally and calmly discuss important matters but some things can also just make you mad. And this particular cliché of feminists being angry men-haters really bugs me. It usually comes to the party with its friends ‘shrill’ and ‘shrew’. That is the kind of stuff that makes me mad. Sledge-hammer-mad, you might say. And there is a lovely German word that captures how I feel in those moments: “Krawall”. Oh, I love it. Actually, to do it justice we have to add an exclamation point to it: “Krawall!” It just rolls off your tongue like two powerful and precise punches. A worthy battle cry.

Leo gives a whole list of possible translations, some of which, I have never heard of. One of the possibilities is ‘riot’. Yes, in its extreme form, “Krawall” can be so disruptive and even violent that you can call it a riot. But I would say “Krawall” is what happens before the riot. It is loud and messy and some things break. It gets attention and people use the opportunity to let their anger run wild.

The word is rather old-fashioned and like with many of those they get a bit of a cutesy connotation these days (another example would be “Backfisch” – I will explain another time). I guess that is why I don’t feel “Krawall” is necessarily connected to violence. I despise violence in any form, but “Krawall” can in some contexts even have a positive connotation in my eyes. This shift in connotation can also be seen with the expression “Ich bin auf Krawall gebürstet.” It used to mean that you are looking for a fight. These days some people use it in the sense of ‘I’m gonna tear it up tonight! Rock’n’roll!’

After all this talk about disrupting public order I want to assure you that I am a civilized woman. I would never intentionally hurt someone of damage their property, no matter how much misogynistic bullshit comes out of their mouths. But sometimes, when I am hearing or reading stuff like that, I take a deep breath and yell “Krawall!” as loud as I can and it makes me feel better.

„Geborgenheit“ or what we really need

Dear reader, I would like to apologize for my long absence. I have started a new job this year and I still need to get the hang of this whole work-life-balance-thingy that everyone keeps talking about. However, I have chosen this specific day for my return because today is Soma’s birthday. So, honored reader, Happy Soma’s Birthday to you!

Today’s word is a bit of a weird one: “Geborgenheit”. Now, imagine you don’t know what it means (maybe you really don’t) and you just look at its letters and listen to its sound. It is not a pretty one. I don’t think that it is ugly; it is just a word that doesn’t strike me as particularly beautiful. There is no melody or poetry to the mere word, but the meaning, oh, the meaning. Leo tells me that the English translation is ‘security’ or ‘feeling of security’. Puh-lease! There is so much more to it.

But I am a good digital native and know better that to trust just one user-generated source. Wikipedia actually has an article on the word and informs me that some panel chose it as the second most beautiful word in the German language and it is considered impossible to translate. The article also lists a whole lot of things that are part of its meaning, for example: security, protection, warmth, closeness, peace, trust, acceptance, and love. Reading this list you could get the feeling it means so much that it ends up meaning nothing. Not true. I know exactly what it means, so does every other German speaker, but I would bet that almost all of us have a hard time coming up with a general definition.

It is much more likely that the person you ask for a translation would come up with examples. One might tell you “Geborgenheit” is when he comes home to his parent’s place for Christmas and sits at the old kitchen table like he always has and his mum is still buying the special pudding for him even after all these years. Another one might tell you a story about that one special friend she can easily cry with without feeling ashamed. If you ask me, I think of a cave. Wow, that sounds weird. But it is the image that springs to my mind. A warm, dark and cozy cave. How about that for Freudian insight into my psyche.

The bottom line is this, “Geborgenheit” as the sum of security, warmth, protection, trust, and love is an essential human experience and the lack of it can and will do great harm to a personality, according to psychologists. We humans are crafty, though. When we really need something we will go out of our way to get it. I have seen how people who didn’t get “Geborgenheit” at home went out looking for it and found it with friends, lovers, in books or music. And sometimes you can find it in words. That’s what Soma did.

“Streber” or what Germans think of pursuing happiness

„Neues Jahr, Neues Glück“ – new year, new luck. We are four days into the new year and after all the frolicking and shenanigans of the holidays it is now time to get serious again.

The word of today’s post is “Streber”, an insult of the highest order in the closed universe that is high school. Strangely, it is one that has been mistranslated for years. When I was in high school I was led to believe that the English equivalent was the word ‘nerd’. Now, after watching an unhealthy amount of American TV shows and Hollywood movies, I know better. Nerds are shy, awkward and terribly uncool teenagers who sometimes happen to be really smart. However, you can be a nerd without being a math whiz. There are all kinds of nerds, my favorite being the marching band nerd. I can tell you from personal experience that they have a habit of turning into really hot indie musicians once they grow up.

The German “Streber” is a different breed altogether. The one thing he has in common with the American nerd is being uncool but that is where the similarities stop. And it is not even a true similarity because the alleged uncoolness of the nerd is defined by the volatile coolness standards of the average high school population.

The “Streber” has per definition extremely good grades and rubs them in everyone else’s face. Another very popular “Streber”-move is the dramatic announcement: “Oh my God, I am certain I failed the last test” only to then walk out with an A. They are not merely good in school; they define themselves over their academic success. This irritation is often accompanied by ruthless opportunism and the tendency to be really uptight. (Reese Witherspoon demonstrates perfectly what I mean with her performance as Tracy Flick in the 1999 movie “Election“.) Much like with the word “Spießer“ the details of the definition differ depending on the person you ask, but everyone will agree that it is a negative word.

The word “Streber” is derived from the verb “streben” – to strive or to pursue. And right here we come to a significant cultural difference. The American Civil Religion revolves around a document that includes the famous words “the pursuit of happiness”. It is part of the American cultural DNA to strive for success and the people who get it are not expected to be shy about it. Pride, confidence, visible satisfaction with your own achievements – these are all part of the acceptable social behavior. Try to be like that in Germany. Go ahead, I dare you. If you do well at anything you are supposed to be humble about it. Never mention it yourself and if somebody else congratulates you on your achievement shake your head, hunch over and say something like: “Oh no, I wasn’t that good, really. I guess, I got lucky.”

So, if you are a seventeen-year-old who gets an A in a term paper after studying really hard for it and then come out of the class room doing a victory sign, you are breaking the social code and must be punished, for example by earning the label “Streber”. And since everyone already hates you for being good at something as lame as school, you might as well be as irritating as you can be.