Monday, September 7, 2009

Knall! Bang! The Black Screen of Death

I'm blogging from Stefan's laptop this evening, as mine has been kissed by the black screen of death. My noble husband has rescued the several hundred photographs I've taken since June, and is now attempting to restore the Windows Vista operating system (a.k.a. "this piece of crap").

I'm still in yesterday's confession mode, so I'll mention that I tossed my copy of Harry Potter und der Feuerkelch aside several hundred pages ago, almost as soon as Elias finished Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but I'm back on the bandwagon again, I swear. Today I purchased Harry Potter und der Orden des Phoenix at the Thalia bookstore in the Altstadt. The book's first linguistic lesson (which I should have learned from the previous book, but better late than never) is that the German word "Knall" pales next to the English word "bang." "Bang" is delightfully onomatopœic: the explosive B moves with shocking abruptness into the vowel a before the word fades into the velar nasal ng. "Bang" ranks right up there with other one-syllable classics such as "pow," "bam," and "biff." Stefan claims "Knall" is onomatopœic too: "kh'-nnahlllll," he demonstrates, sounding more like a purring cat than a gunshot. "Well, it's explosive for us anyway," he shrugs, speaking on behalf of His People.

This evening we met up with the friendly and knowledgable Frau H. for Part II of her Altstadt tour. Alas, Altstadt anecdotes and other observations must wait until my laptop emerges from the dark side.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very sad story about your laptop.
Suggestion: Get a Mac.

HP

Teofrastus Bombastus said...

Los que hemos tratado de aprender otro idioma,además del materno, tarde o temprano,nos hemos encontrado con las onomatopeyas. Me desconcertó que los gallos en inglés canten:"cock-a-doodle-doo" y no "kikirikiii" como los gallos en español.Los gallos franceses cantan:"coco-ri-co". Antes de la llegada de los comics de USA a México,las pistolas disparaban: "pum-pum-pum" y no "bang-bang". Los perros aqui ladran "guau-guau" no como en inglés:"woof- woof". Y cuando tocas la puerta en español es "toc-toc" y no "knock-knock". ¿Me puedes decir como cantan los gallos en alemán y los perros y los gatos?

Liz Paley said...

In German, roosters say Kikeriki; dogs say Wau-wau (which Stefan pronounces ouow-ouow, not vow-vow); cats say Miau (which Stefan says means "me too" in Swabisch).

In English, little drummer boys play "pa rum pum pum pum."

English dogs have a large vocabulary, including woof-woof, ruff-ruff, bark-bark, and grrrrr.

Anonymous said...

Ralph-ralph was the only bark that my dog knew by heart.