Hooray! At long last, it’s again time for Sonderling Sunday: That time of the week when I play with language by looking at the German translation of children’s books.
I hardly got to it when I was reading for the Cybils. And then I wanted to catch up on posting reviews. And then I went to ALA Midwinter Meeting. And had a medical scare. (Benign!) And have just been busy.
So tonight I may not be able to go as long as I’d like. But I am going to do it. And since it’s been awhile, I am going to go back to the book that started it all, Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge, The Order of Odd-fish, by James Kennedy.
Last time, we actually finished up Chapter 17, so we are on Kapitel 18, which is on page 223 and Seite 281.
It begins with a sentence that’s good to know in any language:
“Jo and Audrey became fast friends.”
= Jo und Audrey freundeten sich rasch an.
(“Jo and Audrey friended themselves rapidly.”)
Apparently “to friend” was a concept in German before Facebook!
Now you know what to call these people:
“a stuttering deliveryman” = den stotternden Lieferanten
“a hapless tourist” = den ahnungslosen Touristen
“seemingly inexhaustible collection” = scheinbar unerschöpfliche Sammlung
And now you know how to ask for this if you’re ever in Germany and need to go undercover:
“false whiskers” = falschen Backenbärten
“fat suits” = Fettpolstern
I like this one:
“furious” = recht ergrimmt
“slightly daunted” = leicht eingeschüchtert zusammen
This is for when you’re describing why you’re going undercover:
“nefarious plans” = ruchlosen Pläne
This is a good word to know:
“nonsense” = Quatsch
“barely restrained contempt” = kaum verhüllter Verachtung
“scrawling notes in the margins” = Notizen in kleine Hefte kritzelte
“constructing bewildering charts of arrows and boxes and labels”
= merkwürdige Tabellen mit Pfeilen, Kästchen und Etiketten anfertigte
Okay, that’s actually a good stopping place — the end of the first section of Chapter 18. Perhaps if I give it a short segment tonight, it will be easier to get around to next week.
And this week I’ll wish you someone with whom you may friend yourselves rapidly!
Happy to see you back in the saddle, and the medical scare was benign (yikes!). I always love this feature. So many glorious complicated expressions. I love that “friend” was a transitive verb in German before English…