Deutschegeekerung (Or something like that)

[annathepiper]

WOW, the second paragraph of Der kleine Hobbit is a LOT longer than the first one. I couldn't do the whole paragraph tonight, it was taking too long. So I did about half of it, and almost made it to the bottom of the page. Which I think was quite enough, thanks. :)

Here are some notes for vocabulary I looked up, and questions of translation I came across, for the interest of those who are into German on my Friends list.

Art Tunnel - Hrmm. This confuses me. Tunnel is clear, but not what 'Art Tunnel' would be.

ausgelegt - I THINK this is 'laid with', more or less. The sentence is 'Der Boden war mit Fliesen und Teppichen ausgelegt', which I am reading as 'The floor was laid with tile and carpet.'

Der Boden - Floor.

Fliesen - Tiles.

feinster - Dictionary.com's translator renders this as 'more finely', but I'm not quite comfy with that. The bit of prose is 'es gab Stühle da von feinster Politur', which I'm getting is talking in general about finely polished chairs. I know 'es gab' is the past tense of 'es gibt', which is 'there is'. So is this more or less 'there were chairs of fine polish'?

führte - Past tense of 'fahren', which is an interesting verb choice to use for describing a door leading to an inner hallway.

gelb - Yellow. Technically I knew this already, but what intrigues me is that the text uses it in 'ein glänzend gelber Messingknopf'. I'm not quite sure why there's an -er on gelb, and not on the adjective in front of it.

getäfelten - Panelled.

glänzend - Shining, bright

Haken - Hooks. Hee. This is also, of course, the name of the Evil High One in Elfquest.

hinein - In; inside.

Hüte - Hats.

Innere - Center, middle of, heart of.

kreisrund - This means 'circular' according to the translator up on dictionary.com; my German dictionary doesn't agree with it, though. It lists 'kreisförmig' as the word for 'circular'.

Mäntel - Coats.

Massen - Masses.

Messingknopf - Brass knob. Hrmm. One word. Interesting!

Politur - Polish.

röhrenförming - Tubular

saß - Past tense of 'to sit'

schlechthin - Okay, I get that the root of this is 'schlecht', which is 'bad', but I don't get what the -hin on the end is for. I also don't get what the translator's using it for. The original English context is 'The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it'. In German, the same fragment is 'den alle Leute viele Meilen weit rund im Lande schlechthin >>den Berg<< nannten'. I don't get what function 'schlechthin' is fulfilling in here. Some

streichen - To paint. Used in the text in the form 'gestrichen', describing Bilbo's door, which is painted green. (SING WITH ME! "Bilbo's door is painted green.." Ahem. Er. Sorry, GBS moment there.)

Stühle - Chairs. I think I knew this one already too.

Teppichen - Carpets.

tief - Deep.

Wänden - Walls. I think I knew this one already.

wand - Past tense of 'winden', to wind.

weit - Wide. Hrmm. Used in conjuction with 'rund'. Specifically, 'viele Meilen weit rund im Lande. I KNOW this can't translate to 'many miles wide round in the land'. ;P

Comments

[apel.livejournal.com]

You'd knew I wouldn't be able to resist answering this, didn't you? ;-)

Art Tunnel I'm willing to bet that the word before this phrase is eine which makes the phrase "a kind of tunnel".

feinster superlative of fine, i.e. "finest"

führte past tense of führt, "lead" as in "the tunnel leads to the kitchen"

I'm not quite sure why there's an -er on gelb, and not on the adjective in front of it. This is a literary device to make it sound more poetic. You're quite right that in contemporary German the -er would be on the first adjective.

schlechthin You might think the root of this word is schlecht but I think it's more likely to be schlicht, which means "simple". schlechthin is often translated as "plainly" but in this context I would translate it with "just". Does that make sense? Oftentimes German words can be picked apart syllable by syllable but this is one of the cases where trying to do that mostly confuses people.

weit "far" as in "a long, long way to go" :-)

Have you been here (http://dict.leo.org/)?

[bardling.livejournal.com]

schlechthin - definitely translates to either "just" or "simply"/"only" in this case, with a side flavour of "absolutely". As in this mountain is so definitely the most mountainous thing in the area that it is simply called "the mountain"...

[annathepiper]

Innnnnteresting. I would not have thought to look for 'schlicht' at all. Thanks for clearing that up!

[annathepiper]

Hee hee. I was just waiting for you to chime in, yeah; I figured that if I started Germangeeking on my LJ you'd have something to say about it. :)

Regarding Art Tunnel, you're quite right; there was an "eine" (give or take an e on the end, I don't remember without looking directly at the book, and I'm at work right now) in front of the words in question.

Superlative! I was trying to remember what grammatical term I wanted there. That's it. I almost remembered it last night, but I was tired.

Führte as past tense of führt? Those both look like past tense to me. :)

What I was confused about with gelber was why the -er wasn't on both of the adjectives... I had thought that adjective endings got changed depending on the case of the noun they modify, and from what few examples I remember from my last refresher course, multiple adjectives all were modified. E.g., "eine kleine braune Katze". Is this not the case?

Your data regarding schlechthin does indeed make sense, thanks for that clarification! That makes the sentence make a lot more sense to me.

[shaylith.livejournal.com]

Ok, I don't know how to make the Umlaut above the vowels on LJ. Anyone know? :) So pretend there's two dots about the u in this word: fuhren. Fuhrte is past tense of fuhrt, which comes from fuhren (all with Umlaut!). It means to lead. This is different from fahren. Fuhren is where we get the word Fuhrer, which means leader, but is a bad no-no today, because that's what Hitler was called.

[annathepiper]

I posted this on the other German geek thread from a few days ago on my LJ, but here it is again:

&auml; -> ä
&ouml; -> ö
&uuml; -> ü
&szlig; -> ß

And OH! OKAY! Comprehension dawns! I was thinking of the wrong verb entirely, and just got confused because the past tense forms look the same. Got it now! :) Thanks hon.

[shaylith.livejournal.com]

ä ö ü ß

Ooh! Thanks!

[annathepiper]

You're quite welcome!

[bardling.livejournal.com]

Yup entirely different verbs:
führen - ich führe, du führst, er/sie/es führt...
past tense: ich führte, du führtest, er/sie/es führte

fahren - ich fahren, du fährst, er/sie/es fährt
past tense: ich fuhr, du fuhrst, er/sie/es fuhr...

[annathepiper]

Ah, okay--so not quite the exact same past tense on closer inspection, just close enough to trip up a novice reader. ;) Thanks for helping clear this up!

[apel.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's it. führt is third person singular present tense and I blame sleep deprivation. :-)

I keep shifting between English and German keyboard layouts to produce ä, ö, ü and ß. That's probably a bit confusing for people who don't know where the letters are on a German keyboard but if you're interested and use Windows, check out your keyboard locale settings under the control panel.

[annathepiper]

Ahh yes, the German keyboard layout. :) I've had to deal with this on a regular basis at work, both on my current testing job (which involves testing on German and Japanese platforms as well as on English) and at my prior localization-related jobs.

Yeah, turning on the German keyboard layout is fairly easy, though it also confuses the hell out of me since it flips the z and y keys!

[annathepiper]

And oh yes: thank you for the URL! I hadn't seen that before. I shall be sure to save it in my browser Favorites.

[bardling.livejournal.com]

As Apel answered above - "Art Tunnel" - would have to be "eine Art...", as in "a kind of..."

auslegen - lo lay out, so yes, you're correct

feinster - fein, feiner, feinster/am feinsten - superlative of fein, i.e. finest

Apel covered "fuehrte"

"glaenzed gelber Knopf" - slightly poetic, but not wrong. He's using "glaenzend gelb" as a sort of compound adjective. Alternatively: "glaenzender, gelber Knopf" - the first says it's "a shining yellow", the second says it's shining and yellow. A fine touch...

kreisrund - is a word using redundancy. "rund" is round, as in circular, "der Kreis" - the circle. "kreisrund" - "rund wie ein Kreis", "round a as a circle".

schlehthin - see my comment above to Abel's entry

for both plural forms die Teppiche & die Stuehle it's the declination that adds the -n - in any case you translated those correctly.

"viele Meilen weit" - for many miles, I think, lacking the complete sentence here. As in
"...viele Meilen weit rund im Lande" - probably something happened or was known "for many miles around the land".

[annathepiper]

Ahhh... yes, I get the difference with the adjectives on Knopf; it's a style choice, then. And also, gotcha, regarding kreisrund. :) In the original English, the door is described as a 'perfectly round door, like a porthole', so this seems like a good word choice!

OH. I didn't catch the -n ending point with the plural nouns. Issues of case are a big part of what hasn't stuck in my head from study before; thanks!

[starsongky.livejournal.com]

kreisrund - This means 'circular' according to the translator up on dictionary.com; my German dictionary doesn't agree with it, though. It lists 'kreisförmig' as the word for 'circular'.

I haven't taken German since high school, but I'm pretty sure förmig is "shaped" - as in circle-shaped. (You mentioned röhrenförming - Tubular later.) Kreisrund may refer more to a circular movement (similar to "clockwise") than to something shaped like a circle. Hard for me to tell without seeing it used in context. And it has been nearly 20 years...

[annathepiper]

See commentary from apel and bardling elsewhere on the thread pertaining to kreisrund; they've explained it. :)

I'd have posted the entire paragraph, except I don't want to go posting the whole work paragraph by paragraph! Copyright and all that. I'll try to post just enough to get the context of what's being said.

Thanks for chiming in though!

[bardling.livejournal.com]

You are entirely right about -förmig, it does indeed mean -shaped.

From noun "Die Form" - the shape
verb "formen" - to shape