Guten Morgen!

Feeding the bunnies on campus

Part of my research requires me to read some papers in German, so to review the tiny bit I've learnt four years ago, I've been auditing a translation course. Since English has its roots in the German language (as well as French) it's been interesting. I especially like the compound words; my favourite is Eier (eggs) + Auflauf (riot, or running amuk) = Eierauflauf (souffle)! It's great how they can just make up new words by stringing old words together. Of course this makes for some ridiculously long words. Apparently the longest word in German is: DONAUDAMPFSCHIFFAHRTSELEKTRIZITAETENHAUPTBETRIEBS-WERKBAUUNTERBEAMTENGESELLSCHAFT, which means "the club for subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services (name of a pre-war club in Vienna). In the Japanese language, there is a vowel between each consonant, even when using foreign words...for example, McDonald's becomes Ma-ku-do-na-ru-do. I wonder how Japanese students pronounce German!!

By the way, when "-er" is attached to a place name, it is an adjective describing where something or someone is from. So the meat between those buns is called a "hamburger" because it originated in Hamburg, the sausage you eat with beer is a "wiener" because it's from Vienna (Vienna is Wien in German) and the "frankfurter" is a specialty of Frankfurt! There's your useless bit of information of the day, a topic for those Christmas parties.

Time to get ready for school. I'm taking the bus today because Es regnet Bratwürste! (A strange way of saying it's pouring...but why not bratwurst? Why cats and dogs?) Tschüss!