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Natürlich kann ein Vegetarier sehr zivil mit einem Kannibalen über das gemeinsame Nachtmahl verhandeln; dabei sollte er aber das Küchenmesser nicht als Vorleistung abgeben.

Josef Joffe kommentiert Margot Käßmanns Haltung zum Krieg in Afghanistan. In Die Zeit 4/2010; Internet-Ausgabe.

When I was about fourteen or fifteen years old I was utterly in love with the stories about Sherlock Holmes and his faithful companion Dr Watson. Possibly that is one of the reasons I have been so captivated by House MD, a character very closely modelled on Holmes. The strange yet often quite easily deducible vocabulary allured to me. Words in Doyle were my favourite puzzles.

One of the words that for the longest time escaped all my attempts at decoding was this week's specimen. You see, I would never use a dictionary. That was my challenge. Sure enough that was before I found out what fascinating reading dictionaries make.

Fortnight eluded me for the longest time despite being an easy case. When - years later, already studying linguistics on university level - I found out the etymology it was so blatantly obvious that I was literally laughing and figuratively  crying. At the same time. Fourteen nights, contracted to fortnight.

A word for the period of time that lasts two weeks. In German we do not - as far as I can see - have a one-word translation for fortnight. It is a piece of vocabulary now widely put out of use. It bears witness to a time in history when things were allowed to last two weeks. Like a letter to arrive, or travelling from one place to another, or finding information pertaining the disappearance of a piece of precious jewellery or even an heir to it, as might have been the case in one of Holmes' mysteries.

Maybe I can put it back to use and rename this column. Stop calling it "word of the week" and name it "fortnightly vocabulary reflections". Naw, I don't think, so. Though it would take the pressure off a bit.

Endlich (?) gibt es die erste erstgebotskonforme Krippe.

gefunden bei oliverfabel.de

Over the past few weeks I was frequently and by a number of people asked whether some of this blog's categories would be continued or not. Well, I am writing this to assure my visitors that I do have quite a lot of material - most notably for "zitat der woche" and "word of the week". The problem is on the one hand putting it into publishable shape and on the other hand continuity. I do want to publish weekly and not sporadically as I have in the past months. Therefore I will collect and review until Christmas break and I hope to start with a new batch of words and quotations as the new year commences.

Very amusing - definitely worth a weekly visit is the new link in the language stuff category on the right. It is titled "rhymelight" and takes you to my friend Andreas' weekly assignment for his pupils at the CSM.

"Put the stories back into the books!"

Thanks to Pheder for the link.

Wie schon im letzten Jahr, findet auch 2009/10 wieder die Philosophie-Olympiade statt. Die erste Stufe wird im Landes- und Bundeswettbewerb Philosophischer Essay ausgetragen. Voriges Jahr erreichten alle von unserer Schule eingereichten Essays eine Auszeichnung.

Hier geht es zur Ausschreibung.

Daraus zitiere ich die Themen, zu denen die Essays verfasst werden können:

"Aufgabe: Die Interessierten bekommen von ihrer Fachlehrerin bzw. ihrem Fachlehrer die folgenden vier Themen zur Auswahl und schreiben ihren Essay zu einem dieser Themen:

Wer braucht noch ein paar Sicherheitsnadeln?

Bilder vom Chemnitz-Marathon

Ergebnisse des Chemnitz-Marathons

From when I was about eleven I was fascinated by Sherlock Holmes stories. Back in the GDR the books were not easy to come by so I spent a lot of time visiting the few used book shops in my town quite frequently in order not to miss the occasional copy. I must have just turned fifteen when I got my hands on a three volume Wordsworth Classics edition of Sherlock Holmes stories. The battered look of the volumes testifies to my having read them many a time since then.

Upon reading Stephen Fry's autobiography Moab is My Washpot, I noticed that he was fascinated with Holmes stories much as I was. My reasoning was that other readings Fry showed himself enthusiastic about could prove just as entertaining to me. The result is that for the last couple of weeks I have been practically hooked on P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories. I am glad that there is ample supply of these. At the moment I have four volumes of approximately 600 pages each. But I believe there are a few more.

Bertie Wooster is the none too bright English Gentleman who constantly sees himself – or one of his chums – "in the soup", as it were. Reginald Jeeves is Wooster's valet. Intelligent, modest and thorroughly in control of his young master, time and again he gets him out of the most embarrassing situations. The plots in themselves are marvellous. But the humour, especially of the linguistic sort, is pure gold. As in this week's word. Bertie describes the process of ingesting his breakfast using a peculiarly twisted perspective. He was not putting the food inside himself, oh no. Bertie relates from his point of view how one morning he read the newspaper while still in bed: "I received a nasty shock while getting outside my morning tea and toast."

One of my favourite authors is Stephen Fry. He became famous as a television comedian in the 1980s co-authoring and co-starring with Hugh Laurie (now known as Dr House) in A Bit of Fry and Laurie. He also appeared in such classics as Jeeves and Wooster and Rowan Atkinson's Blackadder.
In his writing he quite often fearlessly explores the limits of language. However, he never loses respect for it, never blows up the balloon until it pops.
Especially his immense range of vocabulary is fascinating to me. Apparently it is - among other things - the result of a game Fry used to play in school. As he recounts in his autobiography Moab is My Washpot, he used to study the dictionary in his leisure time and challenge a friend to use a particularly remote word in conversation with a teacher. The dialogue he relates in his book contains the words pleonasm and sesquipedalian, both of which are not high on the list for my word of the week.
When the English language is unable to provide him with the fitting vocabulary, Fry is unafraid to create his own. As in this weeks example. It is taken from the author's third novel Making History. In the opening scene the protagonist is frantically and desperately searching his whole household for coffee. Imagine his disappointment when all he finds is some of his ex-girlfriend's "naturally decaffeinated". But before despairing, the coffee addict remembers the only half empty bottle of caffeine pills from back when he took his exams. He simply takes a few of those, grinds them up, dissolves them in the decaf-brew: "The chunks of white pop and wink in the coffee mud as I pour the boiling water on. 'Safeway Colombian Coffee, Fine Ground for Filters: Unnaturally Recaffeinated.' Now that's coffee."

Today's word cannot be found in any dictionary. Yet. That is because I made it up myself. Not entirely out of the blue, naturally. There was some inspiration in a current viral video that I have embedded with this article (read more).
Kenleeing is actually a widespread phenomenon. I would not go so far as to proclaim that everybody does it. But I am quite certain, that everybody knows what I am talking about.
To kenlee is to sing a song in a foreign language. You have only heard the song and you do not know the language it is originally sung in. You have no idea at all what the lyrics are about. In fact, you have no idea at all what the lyrics are.
I know I did a lot of kenleeing when I was a child. I kenleed songs like Depeche Mode's "Master and Servant" before I knew enough English to comprehend what it was about.
Unlike the now unfortunately famous singer of "Ken Lee", I never publicly kenleed, mainly because I was painfully conscious of my deficiencies in understanding and speaking English. I simply knew that "what I am singing here cannot be right".
I feel for all the mocking the singer has to endure for her passionate performance and for taking kenleeing to the public stage she deserves to have kenlee created in her honour to give a name to an activity we are all familiar with.