Tonight's German vocabulary

[annathepiper]

Huh. Some of the new words I'm seeing in tonight's German reading actually are vaguely familiar; one of the sessions I remember having in my last refresher course had to do with rooms of a house, and I'm seeing some of these words now in this paragraph, which is all about the rooms of Bag End.

ausschließlich - Exclusively. And boy is that hard to pronounce.

bis - As far as.

blickten - I'm guessing past tense of 'blicken', to look. The context is those below-mentioned 'tief, gesetzte, runde Fenster', which, or so the text goes on to describe, 'die hinaus auf den Garten blickten'. 'Which looked out on the garden'?

demselben - Another word I'm guessing at based on context: 'this same'? The fragment is 'alles lag an demselben langen Korridor'. It's talking about all the various rooms coming off the same corridor, and I think it translates to 'all lay on this same long corridor'. The English says 'all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage'.

ganz - Whole, entire.

Garderobe - Wardrobe.

gemächlich - Leisurely.

gesetzte - 'Set'? The context is 'tief gesetzte, runde Fenster'. 'Deep-set, round windows'?

hinab - I'm guessing since my dictionary doesn't have it, but 'down/down to'?

hinaus - Out/outside.

hineinkommt - 'came in'? I'm guessing here that 'kommt' is the past tense of 'kommen' and 'hinein' is 'in' as per yesterday's translation.

Kleiderschränke - Wardrobes.

lag(en) - Past tense of 'liegen', to lie. Used in a couple of different places in tonight's reading.

neigten - I'm guessing past tense of 'neigen', to slope down to?

öffneten sich - Past tense of 'open', it looks like.

Schlafräume - Bedrooms? Sleeping rooms? I didn't know 'Raum' for 'room' before; the word I knew was 'Zimmer'. Cool.

Speisekammern - Larders.

standen - Past tense of 'stehen', which I really should have recognized, but didn't till I looked it up!

steigen - To climb.

Treppen - Stairs/steps.

übrigens - I'm not quite sure of this. The root, 'übrig', is defined by my dictionary as 'remaining' or 'other'; if I feed 'uebrigens' to the translator on dictionary.com, I get 'by the way'. The context is 'Die besten Zimmer lagen übrigens auf der linken Seite'. 'The best rooms lay (something) on the left side'?

Unterbringung - I'm not sure about this one and am guessing that it means 'purpose', based on the English text which says "he had entire rooms devoted to clothes". The German says "ganze Räme standen ausschließlich für die Unterbringung seiner Garderobe zur Verfügung", which if I'm parsing it correctly says 'many rooms stood exclusively for the purpose of the order of his wardrobe'.

Verfügung - Order.

Wiesen - Meadows.

zahlreiche - Numerous. Used in the text with an -n on the end, because of the noun it goes with.

zunächst - First.

Comments

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

uebrigens, is sort of "however" or, yes, "by the way," one of those interjectiony sorts of phrases.

zunaechst is more like "first/next after the current one"

I'd probably translate "demselben" as "the self-same"

hin- goes with her- (hier)... it's sort of a hither and thither kind of pairing, hineinkommt has a flavor of "came in (from) there," hinaus "out there" hinab "down there"...

Ver fuegung is probably more "ordering" -- 'entire rooms existed for the sole purpose of ordering his wardrobe' (though I would probably translate it to, 'putting his wardrobe in order')

On the whole, your guesses are quite good.

zahlreiche-- an example of what I just love in German compound words -- it's like "rich in count" which is a poetic way of being numerous, isn't it?

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

I realize from that comment that I'm really bad at explaining what German words mean when they don't have an exact one-word English equivalent. Because I have a feeling for what they mean and what the connotations are, but I tend to sort of wave my hands around a lot and say "well, it's like X, but it also has an element of Y and and..."

On the other hand, I did pass my "here's part of a scholarly article in German, sit in this room for a few hours with a dictionary and write an acceptable English translation of it" test in grad school, so I must not be utterly hopeless... ;-)

[apel.livejournal.com]

That's actually a sign of having grokked that a lot of the time there aren't one-to-one translations of words from one language to the other. That may be obvious to you but I keep seeing people in denglish who don't seem to get that one. If it's not an exact translation, it just won't do for them. :-)

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

Yeah. And it's why there are some words (angst and gemuetlich come to mind) where only the German will really DO. Which is a problem when I'm talking to my husband, who never studied German at all, and I come out with a word I can't explain.

If exact translations worked, babelfish would be perfect every time... ;-)

[apel.livejournal.com]

Gemütlich is a very gemütlich word. :-) My favourite German word at the moment is vermasseln (http://dict.leo.org/?search=vermasseln&searchLoc=0&relink=on&spellToler=standard&sectHdr=on&tableBorder=1&cmpType=relaxed&lang=en). Oh and I was very happy to be able to use verharren (http://dict.leo.org/?search=verharren&searchLoc=0&relink=on&spellToler=standard&sectHdr=on&tableBorder=1&cmpType=relaxed&lang=en) in my latest Open University assignment.

[bardling.livejournal.com]

mmm, yes, I like vermasseln too. It has just such a... fitting sound for what it stands for. ;)

[annathepiper]

Oh, those ARE good words. Though it seems that gemütlich and gemächlich are synonyms?

[apel.livejournal.com]

Not really. True, they can both mean "unhurried" but their core meanings are gemütlich=cosy and gemächlich=leisurely. So you can say Ein gemütliches Wohnzimmer but not Ein gemächliches Wohnzimmer. See what I mean?

[annathepiper]

Ahh! Yes, I do indeed. Thanks for that clarification. :)

Interesting difference in pronunciation, too. Each of these words is a mouthful, which seems appropos for German, but that one little syllable in the middle makes all the difference!

[bardling.livejournal.com]

yup, it has to do with connotations and denotations of words. Often there is a word with the same primary meaning, but it will not do as a direct translation, because it has entirely different secondary meanings...

Is why, after my exchange student year in the US, I could for the life of me not translate. To begin with, I could happily give you something like an extensive thesaurus entry for any word in its language. Lateron I got as far as being able to give that thesaurus entry in the other language.
Translation is difficult. More difficult than understanding. :)

[annathepiper]

I told Emma this elsewhere on the thread, but wanted to tell you, too--I totally get this. :) Some things just won't translate crisply and cleanly!

I keep thinking of a particular ditty by Great Big Sea that I know and love: "Trois Navires de Ble". It loses a LOT if you try to translate it exactly into English, because there's apparently a lot of double entendres that happen in the French lyrics. ;)

[annathepiper]

Oh, I totally get what you're saying! :) I'm down with the whole idea that some things just don't map well across languages. The nuances and possibilities of what's being conveyed are one of the reasons I'm trying to do this whole exercise of reading actual prose in German... I mean, I could slog my way word by word through the book and hammer out a vague, clunky idea of what's being said, but that doesn't get me the poetry and music of it. :)

I've been told by a native German speaker with whom I briefly exchanged some emails that I could translate my way into fairly coherent German. I was writing out emails in English to her, and then translating them... but it just took me so long because I had to look everything up! I've got the basic grammar, but not much active vocabulary, and more advanced points of grammar will be part of what I hope to pick up by slogging through Der kleine Hobbit.

[annathepiper]

I've got a pretty decent German dictionary, so in most of these cases I'm not having to guess--I'm just looking stuff up. But in the cases where I am having to guess, it's helping to have the English copy of The Hobbit on hand as well, though I'm very specifically trying to avoid consulting it unless I get hopelessly confused. ;) I'm reading the German bits first, and trying to read them out loud as well--and trying to visualize what the sentences are describing too.

See below on the thread regarding the poetic word choices this translator is using--I'm starting to get the idea that it's a deliberate choice, and it's helping capture the flavor of the original work. :)

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

Well, I said guesses because you said "I'm guessing..." several times, and when you did, you were generally right on track.

[annathepiper]

Heh! Gotcha. And thanks for clarifying that! :)

[apel.livejournal.com]

neigen (http://dict.leo.org/?search=neigen&searchLoc=0&relink=on&spellToler=standard&sectHdr=on&tableBorder=1&cmpType=relaxed&lang=en) means "incline to" and lots of things that are closely related like "bending toward"

übrigens is one of those adverbs, the proper usage of which shows that you've reached a pretty high level of mastery of the language. It often means "by the way" but in this case "incidentally" is probably a better translation.

die Unterbringung means "accomodation" but not only accomodation as in a place for a person to stay but also shelter for things. This is one of the words where picking it apart is helpful. It literally means "bringing something in under (shelter)". Can you see that when you look at the word?

die Verfügung is a tricky, abstract word. A lot of the time it means "disposal" as in the phrase "at your disposal" -- Ich stelle mich ihnen zur Verfügung means that I'm at your disposal.

zunächst (http://dict.leo.org/?search=zun%E4chst&searchLoc=0&relink=on&spellToler=standard&sectHdr=on&tableBorder=1&cmpType=relaxed&lang=en) can mean first but it's more often used to mean "initially" or "for the time being"

[annathepiper]

This is one of the words where picking it apart is helpful. It literally means "bringing something in under (shelter)". Can you see that when you look at the word?

Yeah! I recognized the pieces, but I wasn't sure if there was some sort of nuance of translation I wasn't quite getting there.

zunächst can mean first but it's more often used to mean "initially" or "for the time being".

In this case 'first' would be appropriate, I think--the relevant English bit uses 'first'. Can't include the quote since I'm posting from work and don't have the book with me, but as I remember it's from a bit of sentence where the doors of the hallway, first on one side and then on the other, are being described.

[bardling.livejournal.com]

blickten is past tense of blicken yes, you got that one right

demselben - yes, you got that as well. I agree with the above poster on "self-same" being a good translation

gesetzt - you got that one right, too. :)
Past perfect (?need to check up on my grammatical terms) tense of "setzen", to set/to place/to settle" as in e.g. (sich setzen) "ich habe mich (hin)gesetzt" I have sat down. Is related to "sitzen", to sit. "setzen being the... I think "transitive" is the grammatical term, as opposed to the intransitive "sitzen" (the first being kind of passive/indirect, the second active/direct, if you see what I mean. Those grammar lessons were a long time ago, in any language...)

hin- as a pre-syllable is to, towards, thither (and indeed, her- is from, here, hither).
hinab - down, downwards
hinaus - out, out there, sometimes "beyond", as in "darueber hinaus", beyond that.

hineinkommt - to come in. Well picked apart, correct on kommt.

(er/sie) neigten - plural past tense of neigen, indeed. to bend towards, to incline, also to tend to (tendency) when applied to something non-physical

öffneten sich - past tense passive of open, "they opened themselves" as in e.g. "the doors opened"

Schlafräume - indeed bedrooms, literally sleeping rooms, slightly archaic/old-fashioned, in conversation one would indeed say "Schlafzimmer"

steigen - to climb when it's a case of stepping/walking, as in stairs or hills/mountains (assuming we're not talking mountaineering;). Otherwise to climb is "klettern", e.g. for climbing trees or mountain climbing as in mountaineering.

übrigens - indeed "by the way" or "incidentally"

Unterbringung - accomodation, housing
from unterbringen - to place, to house, to accomodate, to lodge, to shelter
so in this case: "...whole rooms were available exclusively to house his wardrobe."

Verfügung is an interesting one - by itself: decree, instruction
zur Verfügung stehen - to be available, to be at (someone/-thing's) disposal
from verfügbar - available, disposable/at s.o's disposal
Verfügbarkeit - availability
verfügen - to order, to decree

zahlreich - indeed numerous, from "Die Zahl", the number, and "reich", rich/plenty - so more literally "number-rich", "rich in numbers" of...

zunächst - adverb, first (of all), above all, to begin with, initially, next, close to
is related to "nah" - close, near

[annathepiper]

One of the things I remember fairly clearly from that last refresher course I took was the teacher (who although not a native German speaker, had spent several of her formative years in Germany and had an excellent grounding in the language) emphasizing that in most cases, you can get a German word's meaning by picking it apart. So this is me trying to practice that skill! Glad to know it's working. :)

Thanks for the clarifications--and for explaining the difference between steigen and klettern! I don't think I knew either word before.

I'm beginning to get the idea that this translator is deliberately choosing archaic words to try to capture the flavor of the original story. The Hobbit definitely has this old, quaintly charming feel to it, and it's good to start getting that the translator is trying to hold to that. :)