This is really an interesting topic, which bothers me quite a long time until now, this very moment I write this sentence, even though I've been in Germany for three years. It seems that I can never get used to these two forms. Sometimes when I considered I should have been "siezen"-ed, people just "duzen"-ed me, whereas other times when I "duzen"-ed people, they "siezen"-ed me back. Well, it's not anything about grammar, but just kind of feeling, something closely related to respect, I guess. Or again, possibly, I'm too sensitive.
11.30.2009
10.30.2009
Europe.view: Linguistic discontents | The Economist
Oct 29th 2009
From Economist.com
From Economist.com
Slovaks, Hungarians and missing data
THE row is over but the problems remain. Amid an outcry from neighbouring Hungary, and discreet pressure from other outsiders, Slovakia’s government has backed away, for the moment, from implementing its badly drafted and intrusive-sounding new language law (see article).
Despite the backdown, hopes that membership of the European Union and NATO would bring a permanent end to central Europe’s tribal conflicts and historical grudges now look over-optimistic. It would be good if all concerned—the Slovak government, Hungarians in Slovakia and Hungary’s political parties—paused for reflection about the troubling issues that divide them. But the economic crisis, and the likely victory of the tough-talking Viktor Orban and his right-of-centre Fidesz party in Hungary’s parliamentary elections next year, are among the reasons for expecting another flare-up sooner rather than later.
A short list of Hungarian grievances would go like this. Since 1992 the new Slovak state has made its largest linguistic minority feel like outsiders. Native Slovak-speakers increasingly dominate the upper reaches of government; the handful of Magyarphones in the diplomatic service has been purged (from ten ambassadors to one, for example). The parts of southern Slovakia where Hungarians tend to live have missed out on foreign investment and have the worst public services. Bilingualism is declining: few mother-tongue Slovaks learn Hungarian; Hungarian-language schools teach Slovak remarkably badly. The rise of the Slovak National Party has made anti-Hungarian racism alarmingly acceptable in public life.
Slovak grievances read rather differently. Hungary has a conceptual problem in accepting that Slovakia is a real country. Public figures there stir up Slovakia’s Hungarians with reheated historical wrongs. The number of ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia is exaggerated: many of them are in fact Gypsies (Roma). All citizens of Slovakia are equal before the law and talk of discrimination is absurd. All efforts to pamper the Hungarians just make them complain all the more, in an annoying and disloyal way. If Hungarian-speakers really do not feel at home in Slovakia then they can leave.
To an outsider, the striking thing is the prevalence of assertion and the absence of facts. How many people in Slovakia are really “ethnic Hungarians” as opposed to, say, Hungarian-speaking Roma, or native Slovak-speakers with Hungarian surnames, or the products of mixed marriages who do not regard themselves as being fully in one camp or the other? Are those who self-identify as ethnic Hungarians better or worse paid, housed or educated than other population groups? Is this changing over time? Is bilingualism declining? How many go to Hungary for higher education? How do their fortunes compare to Slovak universities’ alumni? What are the statistics on mixed marriages, migration, and life expectancy? And how do all these compare to the comparable population groups in Hungary proper, and to Hungarians living in other places such as Transylvania in Romania or the Vojvodina province of Serbia?
Nobody seems to be collecting this data, either in official statistics or in academic surveys. Lessons could be learned from Britain’s diplomatic service, which makes a big effort to attract applicants from a wide range of class, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds and monitors how successful this has been. But Slovak officials react with shock at the idea that monitoring the composition of the civil service could help settle arguments about prejudice. “It would not be politically correct” says a senior government spokesman.
That seems a rather lazy and complacent approach. Consequently, without even the elementary information to know what is right and what to do, the two sides remain entrenched in their silos of ignorance, making myths, and sooner or later, mischief.
10.26.2009
how to transribe a tape
cited from: http://www.geocities.com/davidvalentine2002/resources/tapelog.html
i. Notes on Transcription
There are many ways to transcribe a tape of an interview, or of naturally occurring conversation. The method you choose -- and the data you want to record -- depends on the kinds of data you want to elicit. For example, if you are a linguist or linguistic anthropologist, you may want to record the length of vowels, pitch, volume, or other para linguistic data. This could be very important if you are trying to investigate, for example, claims about "women's speech" which frequently fix on such markers. If you are more interested in the content of the interview/conversation, these features will be of less importance to you, but other features may be more important, such as noting the use of particular kinds of terms.
There are also different approaches to the amount of data one transcribes. In some cases, you may wish to transcribe the entire interview/conversation. In others, you may only want to transcribe the pieces that are the most relevant to you. Bear in mind, however, that the process of qualitative research is one of ongoing clarification of ideas and theses – i.e. those things that may not seem important to you right now may become of great importance later on.
My suggestion to most students is to transcribe tapes using a tape log. This affords you the most flexibility and gives you access to both context, linguistic, and para-linguistic (i.e. stuff that doesn't show up in transcription, like volume or pitch, but still important) data.
Above all, you should remember that your transcriptions are only ever a guide to your tape recorded data – if you end up using data from tapes in your work, you should go back and carefully check the transcriptions with the tapes. Hence, it is vital to record where on a tape the transcriptions come from (see below).
ii. Doing a tape log
A. Data to record up front.
To start your tape log, the following are vital to note on your transcriptions (on all pages – use a header in your transcription log to carry this information across pages):
1. The number of the tape (each of your tapes should be numbered, with the date of the event, the names of the particpants etc.; I also recommend keeping a log of the tapes you have)
2. The name(s) of interviewee(s)/conversational participant(s) (and pseudonym(s) if you are using them; alternatively, if you are very concerned about the identity of your interviewee, or participants in the conversation, record only their pseudonym and refer it to a list of pseudonyms that you keep separately in a password protected file; you can also password-protect your tape logs if you are concerned about privacy.)
3. Date and location of interview/conversation
4. Type of event (e.g. interview, life history, conversation, support group meeting)
5. PRODUCT NAME AND MODEL # OF TRANSCRIPTION DEVICE. (The latter two points are vital, because there is no standard for tape counters, and when you want to go back to find the place on the tape where the transcription comes from, you will need to have the same machine – this will save you tons of time).
6. Any notes that are pertinent to the event or your transcription (see example).
B. Creating a Tape Log
The most useful method I have found is to create a table in my word processing program with three columns. I title them: LOG, THEME/CONTEXT, and QUOTES.
The first column is to record the location of the transcribed information on the tape, and can be quite small. The second is to record the theme and context of the information. I use this to summarize the general themes, my impressions, important notes, para linguistic cues, contextual information etc.
The third column contains transcribed speech, as accurately as possible (more on this below).
C. Transcription conventions
Again, the kinds of conventions you use depend on the data you want. Some linguists find it of great importance to time pauses or silences in speech. Others focus on overlap between speakers, especially if they are interested in turn taking conventions. Others record pitch and volume. Whatever you choose to transcribe, remember that transcription is a time-consuming process that requires a good deal of attention and concentration.
For the purposes of most general ethnography, unless you are a linguistic anthropologist, I would strongly suggest you at least pay attention to the following, and use the following conventions to transcribe:
1. Note the speaker, first using their name/pseudonym, and thereafter, initials. Record your own speech and interjections, no matter how silly they sound. Note yourself by your own initials or by using "ME" or some such thing. If you're not sure who the speaker is, indicate this in square brackets with a question mark.
2. Use [square brackets] to note indistinct speech, or words that you think you can hear, but are not absolutely sure about. If you can't make head nor tail of the speech, leave empty brackets, indicating by the length of space the approximate space taken up by the indistinct speech.
3. Indicate overlap between speech by spacing. It is conventional to use square brackets between lines to show overlap e.g.
DV Tell us about yourself
[
Ben: Let me tell you about myself.
The square brackets indicate the point at which the overlapping speech starts. Sometimes, especially with multiple speakers, this can be an arduous task, but it is frequently useful to do.
4. Indicate pauses and silences – SILENCE AND PAUSES ARE DATA TOO! Likewise, transcribe hesitations such as "uh," "um," "er," etc. You may very well find, in looking back on your transcriptions, that pauses, hesitations, or silences are as telling as the speech itself -- why has someone stopped speaking? What comes after the silence? What might be indicated by the silence? Why has someone hesitated before using a certain word or voicing a certain opinion? Some linguists record the exact time of pauses (to the tenth of a second!) – this is usually not that important for most ethnographic purposes, but use ellipses for short pauses, and give information on long pauses with approximate time in {curly brackets} or [square brackets].
5. If paralinguistic data is useful, indicate it in square or curly brackets e.g. [everyone laughs], [very rapid speech]. Notable volume increase or shouting can be indicated by using ALL CAPS.
Exclamations can be marked with exclamation points! and emphasis with italics.
6. Accent and "eye-dialect." One of the most difficult things to note is accent and dialect. This is particularly the case with non-standard English accents. There has been an evolving critique of the representation of non-standard accents in linguistics. Basically, it boils down to this: those whose speech is represented in writing as non-standard are generally those who occupy lower socioeconomic positions, or have racially marked identities.
One example might be the representation of the word "can't" spoken by a white British English speaker and a black Jamaican working class English speaker. While the white middle class British English speaker doesn't produce "can't" with the American standard English pronunciation (a flat "a"), her or his speech is much less likely to be noted as "deviant" by a (white, middle class) American transcriber than the Jamaican speaker. So, a white middle class British English speaker may be noted as saying, "I can't do it, man," while the Jamaican speaker is more likely to be recorded as "I cay-an't do it, mon." (This latter transcription technique has been called "eye-dialect," meaning that it attempts to reproduce non-standard accents through orthography). If the same standards were held to the British English speaker, her or his words would be recorded as "I cahn't do it, man." This points to the fact that certain kinds of accents are marked – and this marking is linked to judgements about racial identification and socioeconomic status.
The solution is not easy, and there is not much consensus on how to record non-standard varieties. In many cases, some non-standard forms are now widely shared and thus are not as politically loaded (e.g., the dropping of the final "g" as in "happenin'"; the use of words such as "ain't" or "gonna"). In other cases, non-standard uses, for example, in African American Vernacular English, are widespread and accepted uses and should be noted. The most obvious e.g. of this is "aks" for "ask." Likewise, you should not necessarily "correct" word order, grammar, or mispronunciations in your transcripts. But neither should you strive to represent non-standard accents with non-standard spellings.
The point is that you should look to your own assumptions when you transcribe non-standard speech. You may want to note explicitly that a person has a particular kind of accent – but in doing so, you should be aware of the politics of such a noting, highlighting the fact that some of your participants speak with standard accents/dialects. In short, you should avoid attempting to represent accents, and use standard English spellings in transcriptions. The overall question is: why is there a standard in the first place; whose interests does this serve; and why do some people get represented as non-standard (e.g. African American speakers) while others don't (e.g. British English speakers, speakers of the "Boston Brahmin" dialect)?
For a good discussion of this, see:
Preston, Dennis R.
1982 'Ritin 'Fowklower Daun 'Rong: Folklorists' failure in phonology. Journal of American Folklore 95(377):304-326.
D. Recording Theme/Context
Use this column to introduce the theme of the section, the questions you've asked, stuff going on around you, interactions that aren't evident from the transcriptions, new participants arriving or present ones leaving, your own thoughts, notes etc. This is also a useful place to sum up the general theme of the speech or conversation. Indicate a change of theme by creating a new table row, and give each one a title. I generally use ALL CAPS to indicate a general theme.
E. Logging the Location of Speech on the Tape
This is an important part of the process. Indicate the location of the beginning of the thematic section in the LOG column, and preferably, the entire range of the thematic section. Further, it is also very useful to record the tape range next to transcribed speech. Also, in a long thematic section, you may want to note in the LOG column where particular new sub-themes are introduced. Although this may seem pointless to you right now, you will find when you have to go back to your tapes that you are very grateful to yourself for having done this!
F. Idiosyncracies
There are plenty of other conventions for transcription, but these are the ones that are most likely of use to most ethnographers. You will most likely find that you develop your own style as you transcribe (e.g. I choose to embolden the text I think will be most important for me, or the issues I find most important). If there are other issues you want to note, choose a convention. Most important of all, note the conventions that you have chosen to transcribe your tapes. This is important because you will not remember what they are a year or two later! A good place to do this is at the top of the tape log, where they will be the most likely to be seen.
iii. Conclusion
Again, transcription is an arduous process, but it is also very important. In representing people's voices in text, you are taking on a complex task, but as an ethnographer, this is perhaps the strongest data you will have to make your arguments and to give voice to your study participants.
One final -- and vital -- thing to remember: for all the work you're going to put into transcribing your tapes, transcriptions are still only ever representations. Even if you accurately record every single pause, every intonation, pitch, and volume change, every overlap and interjection, what you have produced is still a representation – it is not the "truth." You can never completely and accurately record the gestalt of the event. But it is an important step in attempting to represent, as accurately as possible, the speech (and by extension, the self-representations) of the people with whom you have been privileged to work as an ethnographer.
i. Notes on Transcription
There are many ways to transcribe a tape of an interview, or of naturally occurring conversation. The method you choose -- and the data you want to record -- depends on the kinds of data you want to elicit. For example, if you are a linguist or linguistic anthropologist, you may want to record the length of vowels, pitch, volume, or other para linguistic data. This could be very important if you are trying to investigate, for example, claims about "women's speech" which frequently fix on such markers. If you are more interested in the content of the interview/conversation, these features will be of less importance to you, but other features may be more important, such as noting the use of particular kinds of terms.
There are also different approaches to the amount of data one transcribes. In some cases, you may wish to transcribe the entire interview/conversation. In others, you may only want to transcribe the pieces that are the most relevant to you. Bear in mind, however, that the process of qualitative research is one of ongoing clarification of ideas and theses – i.e. those things that may not seem important to you right now may become of great importance later on.
My suggestion to most students is to transcribe tapes using a tape log. This affords you the most flexibility and gives you access to both context, linguistic, and para-linguistic (i.e. stuff that doesn't show up in transcription, like volume or pitch, but still important) data.
Above all, you should remember that your transcriptions are only ever a guide to your tape recorded data – if you end up using data from tapes in your work, you should go back and carefully check the transcriptions with the tapes. Hence, it is vital to record where on a tape the transcriptions come from (see below).
ii. Doing a tape log
A. Data to record up front.
To start your tape log, the following are vital to note on your transcriptions (on all pages – use a header in your transcription log to carry this information across pages):
1. The number of the tape (each of your tapes should be numbered, with the date of the event, the names of the particpants etc.; I also recommend keeping a log of the tapes you have)
2. The name(s) of interviewee(s)/conversational participant(s) (and pseudonym(s) if you are using them; alternatively, if you are very concerned about the identity of your interviewee, or participants in the conversation, record only their pseudonym and refer it to a list of pseudonyms that you keep separately in a password protected file; you can also password-protect your tape logs if you are concerned about privacy.)
3. Date and location of interview/conversation
4. Type of event (e.g. interview, life history, conversation, support group meeting)
5. PRODUCT NAME AND MODEL # OF TRANSCRIPTION DEVICE. (The latter two points are vital, because there is no standard for tape counters, and when you want to go back to find the place on the tape where the transcription comes from, you will need to have the same machine – this will save you tons of time).
6. Any notes that are pertinent to the event or your transcription (see example).
B. Creating a Tape Log
The most useful method I have found is to create a table in my word processing program with three columns. I title them: LOG, THEME/CONTEXT, and QUOTES.
The first column is to record the location of the transcribed information on the tape, and can be quite small. The second is to record the theme and context of the information. I use this to summarize the general themes, my impressions, important notes, para linguistic cues, contextual information etc.
The third column contains transcribed speech, as accurately as possible (more on this below).
C. Transcription conventions
Again, the kinds of conventions you use depend on the data you want. Some linguists find it of great importance to time pauses or silences in speech. Others focus on overlap between speakers, especially if they are interested in turn taking conventions. Others record pitch and volume. Whatever you choose to transcribe, remember that transcription is a time-consuming process that requires a good deal of attention and concentration.
For the purposes of most general ethnography, unless you are a linguistic anthropologist, I would strongly suggest you at least pay attention to the following, and use the following conventions to transcribe:
1. Note the speaker, first using their name/pseudonym, and thereafter, initials. Record your own speech and interjections, no matter how silly they sound. Note yourself by your own initials or by using "ME" or some such thing. If you're not sure who the speaker is, indicate this in square brackets with a question mark.
2. Use [square brackets] to note indistinct speech, or words that you think you can hear, but are not absolutely sure about. If you can't make head nor tail of the speech, leave empty brackets, indicating by the length of space the approximate space taken up by the indistinct speech.
3. Indicate overlap between speech by spacing. It is conventional to use square brackets between lines to show overlap e.g.
DV Tell us about yourself
[
Ben: Let me tell you about myself.
The square brackets indicate the point at which the overlapping speech starts. Sometimes, especially with multiple speakers, this can be an arduous task, but it is frequently useful to do.
4. Indicate pauses and silences – SILENCE AND PAUSES ARE DATA TOO! Likewise, transcribe hesitations such as "uh," "um," "er," etc. You may very well find, in looking back on your transcriptions, that pauses, hesitations, or silences are as telling as the speech itself -- why has someone stopped speaking? What comes after the silence? What might be indicated by the silence? Why has someone hesitated before using a certain word or voicing a certain opinion? Some linguists record the exact time of pauses (to the tenth of a second!) – this is usually not that important for most ethnographic purposes, but use ellipses for short pauses, and give information on long pauses with approximate time in {curly brackets} or [square brackets].
5. If paralinguistic data is useful, indicate it in square or curly brackets e.g. [everyone laughs], [very rapid speech]. Notable volume increase or shouting can be indicated by using ALL CAPS.
Exclamations can be marked with exclamation points! and emphasis with italics.
6. Accent and "eye-dialect." One of the most difficult things to note is accent and dialect. This is particularly the case with non-standard English accents. There has been an evolving critique of the representation of non-standard accents in linguistics. Basically, it boils down to this: those whose speech is represented in writing as non-standard are generally those who occupy lower socioeconomic positions, or have racially marked identities.
One example might be the representation of the word "can't" spoken by a white British English speaker and a black Jamaican working class English speaker. While the white middle class British English speaker doesn't produce "can't" with the American standard English pronunciation (a flat "a"), her or his speech is much less likely to be noted as "deviant" by a (white, middle class) American transcriber than the Jamaican speaker. So, a white middle class British English speaker may be noted as saying, "I can't do it, man," while the Jamaican speaker is more likely to be recorded as "I cay-an't do it, mon." (This latter transcription technique has been called "eye-dialect," meaning that it attempts to reproduce non-standard accents through orthography). If the same standards were held to the British English speaker, her or his words would be recorded as "I cahn't do it, man." This points to the fact that certain kinds of accents are marked – and this marking is linked to judgements about racial identification and socioeconomic status.
The solution is not easy, and there is not much consensus on how to record non-standard varieties. In many cases, some non-standard forms are now widely shared and thus are not as politically loaded (e.g., the dropping of the final "g" as in "happenin'"; the use of words such as "ain't" or "gonna"). In other cases, non-standard uses, for example, in African American Vernacular English, are widespread and accepted uses and should be noted. The most obvious e.g. of this is "aks" for "ask." Likewise, you should not necessarily "correct" word order, grammar, or mispronunciations in your transcripts. But neither should you strive to represent non-standard accents with non-standard spellings.
The point is that you should look to your own assumptions when you transcribe non-standard speech. You may want to note explicitly that a person has a particular kind of accent – but in doing so, you should be aware of the politics of such a noting, highlighting the fact that some of your participants speak with standard accents/dialects. In short, you should avoid attempting to represent accents, and use standard English spellings in transcriptions. The overall question is: why is there a standard in the first place; whose interests does this serve; and why do some people get represented as non-standard (e.g. African American speakers) while others don't (e.g. British English speakers, speakers of the "Boston Brahmin" dialect)?
For a good discussion of this, see:
Preston, Dennis R.
1982 'Ritin 'Fowklower Daun 'Rong: Folklorists' failure in phonology. Journal of American Folklore 95(377):304-326.
D. Recording Theme/Context
Use this column to introduce the theme of the section, the questions you've asked, stuff going on around you, interactions that aren't evident from the transcriptions, new participants arriving or present ones leaving, your own thoughts, notes etc. This is also a useful place to sum up the general theme of the speech or conversation. Indicate a change of theme by creating a new table row, and give each one a title. I generally use ALL CAPS to indicate a general theme.
E. Logging the Location of Speech on the Tape
This is an important part of the process. Indicate the location of the beginning of the thematic section in the LOG column, and preferably, the entire range of the thematic section. Further, it is also very useful to record the tape range next to transcribed speech. Also, in a long thematic section, you may want to note in the LOG column where particular new sub-themes are introduced. Although this may seem pointless to you right now, you will find when you have to go back to your tapes that you are very grateful to yourself for having done this!
F. Idiosyncracies
There are plenty of other conventions for transcription, but these are the ones that are most likely of use to most ethnographers. You will most likely find that you develop your own style as you transcribe (e.g. I choose to embolden the text I think will be most important for me, or the issues I find most important). If there are other issues you want to note, choose a convention. Most important of all, note the conventions that you have chosen to transcribe your tapes. This is important because you will not remember what they are a year or two later! A good place to do this is at the top of the tape log, where they will be the most likely to be seen.
iii. Conclusion
Again, transcription is an arduous process, but it is also very important. In representing people's voices in text, you are taking on a complex task, but as an ethnographer, this is perhaps the strongest data you will have to make your arguments and to give voice to your study participants.
One final -- and vital -- thing to remember: for all the work you're going to put into transcribing your tapes, transcriptions are still only ever representations. Even if you accurately record every single pause, every intonation, pitch, and volume change, every overlap and interjection, what you have produced is still a representation – it is not the "truth." You can never completely and accurately record the gestalt of the event. But it is an important step in attempting to represent, as accurately as possible, the speech (and by extension, the self-representations) of the people with whom you have been privileged to work as an ethnographer.
6.25.2009
Sth. about the codes
Today, when doing a questionnaire for the little kid, Vincent asked me how to say "Zhuangyan" in English. I was suddenly stopped, feeling blank-absence. There's no such word in my English dictionary, I mean, in my mind. It seemed that I have never read some description about any architecture with such a word. Actually, this was heard a lot all over China, of course in the language of Chinese. Then, I couldn't help asking myself, is this word special in communism? If so, then is such kind of case "code-switching"? Say, Vincent has just switched the "political systemic" codes into another language?
6.23.2009
Von „kaffeklatsching“ bis „wischi-waschi“ – wenn deutsche Wörter auf Weltreise gehen
In Kanada treffen sich Frauen zum „kaffeklatsching", die Australier tanzen zur „Oom Pah pah" Music und die Japaner gehen ihrer „arbeito" nach. Das Projekt Ausgewanderte Wörter zeigt deutsche Wörter in aller Welt.
Wir surfen mit sicherer Firewall durchs Internet, sagen „sorry“ statt „Entschuldigung“ und sind erstaunt, wenn unsere Kinder anstatt „megacool“ einfach nur „super“ sagen. Immer mehr Anglizismen erobern die deutsche Alltagssprache. Doch was vielen wie selbstverständlich erscheint, beklagen Linguisten und engagierte Sprachhüter: Gefährdet der starke Einfluss des Englischen die deutsche Sprache? Genug des Jammerns, befand die Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache e.V. (GfdS) und startete 2004 eine Gegenbewegung. Das Projekt Ausgewanderte Wörter war geboren.
„Wir wollten herausfinden, welche deutschen Wörter im Ausland alltäglich benutzt werden,“ so Professor Dr. Rudolf Hoberg von der GfdS. Wörter wie „Kindergarten", „Gemütlichkeit", „Sauerkraut" und „Bratwurst" waren längst als deutsche Importe bekannt. Die zentralen Fragen waren: Gibt es da noch mehr? Wie weit sind deutsche Wörter tatsächlich gereist? Haben sie dort die gleiche Bedeutung oder eine gänzlich andere? „Die Resonanz auf die erste Ausschreibung des Projekts war gewaltig“, sagt Hoberg. So gewaltig, dass in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Deutschen Sprachrat die Suche nach den ausgewanderten Wörtern international bekannt gemacht wurde: Über 6000 Wörter deutschen Ursprungs, die in alle Welt ausgewandert sind und dort eine neue sprachliche Heimat gefunden haben, wurden eingesandt. Das Sammelsurium der vielen lustigen, erstaunlichen und verblüffenden Erzählungen, Anekdoten und Berichte ist nun nachzulesen in der begleitenden, gleichnamigen Publikation Ausgewanderte Wörter, erschienen im November 2006 beim Hueber Verlag.
I don't want to schlepp!
Wer in Polen eine Schifffahrt machen will, geht auf die „Rejs“. Ein Bulgare packt für den Urlaub als erstes seinen „Kufar“. Die Engländer hingegen bevorzugen kleines Handgepäck, denn "they don't want to schlepp too much around.“ Seit 1913 mit deutscher Hilfe die türkische Eisenbahn ihren Anfang fand, rufen türkische Zugbegleiter „fertik“, wenn der Zug losfahren soll. In Kamerun heißt dank deutsch-kamerunischer Zusammenarbeit der Bahnhof bis heute „banop“.
„Die Wörter der deutschen Sprache sind im Ausland viel bekannter als wir dachten“, sagt Professor Hoberg. Auch wenn sich die Reiseziele deutscher Wörter quer über den Globus erstrecken: Die meisten Einsendungen stammen aus dem osteuropäischen und englischen Raum. „In beiden Räumen gibt es lange deutsche Traditionen, folglich sprechen dort viele Menschen unsere Sprache“, erläutern Dr. Karin Eichhoff-Cyrius und Dr. Lutz Karnisch von der GfdS.
„Die Wörter der deutschen Sprache sind im Ausland viel bekannter als wir dachten“, sagt Professor Hoberg. Auch wenn sich die Reiseziele deutscher Wörter quer über den Globus erstrecken: Die meisten Einsendungen stammen aus dem osteuropäischen und englischen Raum. „In beiden Räumen gibt es lange deutsche Traditionen, folglich sprechen dort viele Menschen unsere Sprache“, erläutern Dr. Karin Eichhoff-Cyrius und Dr. Lutz Karnisch von der GfdS.
Erdbeer-Schmier aufs Brot
Wenn in Québec etwas nicht mehr funktioniert oder keinen Spaß mehr macht, ist es „kaputt“. In Tansania ist man bei einer Narkose tatsächlich „nusu kaput“, was soviel wie halb kaputt, bedeutet. Sehr amüsant auch, wie in Afrikaans deutsche Wörter versinnbildlicht werden. Ein ungeduldiger Deutscher ist ein „Aberjetze“. Ein U-Boot hat im Afrikaans den schönen Namen „kanitzeen Boot". Dinge, deren Name uns nicht einfällt, nennen wir Dingsbums, in der polnischen Sprache wird dafür das Wort „wihaister“ benutzt. Ein Mensch, der immer seine Meinung äußert und dabei die Ideen anderer als albern hinstellt, ist in Finnland ein „besservisseri“. Wer in Brasilien Marmelade kaufen möchte, sollte nach „Schmier“ fragen. Genauso überraschte 2004 die Formulierung eines amerikanischen Präsidentschaftskandidaten: In seiner Rede bezeichnete er seinen Herausforderer als zu „wischi-waschi“.
Von Katzenjammer und Brüderschaft
Manche deutsche Wörter scheinen einfach zu überzeugen. So bezeichnet ein „Katzenjammer“ im Englischen eine verzweifelte, depressive Stimmung. Wer in den USA nicht das religiöse „bless you“ nutzen will, sagt einfach „Gesundheit“ zum Nieser des Nachbarn. In Russland lädt man mit dem Wort „Brüderschaft“ (das ü wird als u gesprochen) zu einem aus Freundschaft getrunkenen Glas Wein oder Gläschen Wodka ein.
Doch manche Wörter verlieren beim Weltenbummeln auch ihre ursprüngliche Bedeutung. So ist kaum zu erklären, warum die britische Jugend ausgerechnet das deutsche Wort „uber“ (von über) als Steigerungsform von „super“ oder „mega“ benutzt. Auch das am häufigsten eingesandte Wort der Ausschreibung, das französische „Vasistas“ (Dachfenster, Oberlicht), lässt (noch) viele Fragen offen. „Das Projekt bietet keine linguistische Untersuchung. Manche Wörter, die uns zugesandt worden sind, können auch nur eine Eintagsfliege sein“, erklärt Professor Dr. Hoberg.
Fest steht aber allemal: So viel Spaß wie die ausgewanderten Wörter macht Sprache selten. Im Zuge der Globalisierung, und durch Bücher, Fernsehen und Internet wandert die deutsche Sprache unaufhaltsam und wird ganz sicher immer weitere neue (Stil-)Blüten treiben. Genau wie alle anderen Sprachen auch, denn: Sprachen kennen keine Grenzen, sie packen ihre Koffer und ziehen einfach los. Wir wünschen gute Reise!
Bettina Levecke
ist freie Journalistin.
Copyright: Goethe-Institut, Online-Redaktion
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Dezember 2006
3.15.2009
三刀两剪剪喜字三刀两剪剪喜字
1、如果我们单剪一个喜字，首先，准备一张红纸如图：
图片如下：
2、然后对折如图
图片如下：
再折，按箭头提示的方向折!
图片如下：
3、折完后我们横着看是个大写的W就折对了如图：
图片如下：
4、初学者得把喜字的结构描出来，这是关键所在，我们把剪的笔画粗细，剪去的怎么样直接影响喜字的美与丑。以后熟练了就不用了，直接剪就行。如图所示
图片如下：
5、把上一部分重叠起来剪 如图：折
图片如下：
然后就开始剪
图片如下：
剪后打开如图
图片如下：
再把下面的部分重叠起来剪
折如图
图片如下：
剪如图
图片如下：
展开折的部分如图
图片如下：
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全部打开
图片如下：
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如果不是三刀两剪剪喜字，完全可以把后而的折后再剪 去掉!
screen.width-500)this.style.width=screen.width-500;" border="0">全部打开
图片如下：
screen.width-500)this.style.width=screen.width-500;" width="240" border="0" height="230" hspace="0">如果不是三刀两剪剪喜字，完全可以把后而的折后再剪 去掉!
雪花和五角形及正五瓣梅花的剪法
（一）、 折
①把圆对折。②再平分三分然后折。
图片１如下：
（1）
图片２如下：
（2）
图片３如下：
（3） 
（4）
在图（４）上可以剪出六瓣的雪花。
拓宽思路和想象，如：
在上图④的基础上整体对折如图（5），再从边上沿箭头向里剪，这一剪可以大可小全凭你的喜好，就把雪花的瓣分出来了。图（7）是图（6）的展开图。分瓣是由图（8）剪形完成的。有时简单的剪几下，可以出现漂亮的图形。每个剪纸者都兴奋不已。
注意：图（8）造形是剪的关键所在，怎样剪呢？可剪成圆如秋月，或剪形尖如麦芒、方如砖块、剪缺如锯齿、剪线如胡须、剪口要整齐。不能剪过头或剪坏别处。
6）
7）
8）：
引伸：如，五角形的剪法，正五瓣梅花的剪法
1、五角形
（1） 
在（2）图上随意剪，会出现意想不到的漂亮的图形。
2、梅花
screen.width-500)this.style.width=screen.width-500;" border="0">
screen.width-500)this.style.width=screen.width-500;" border="0">
screen.width-500)this.style.width=screen.width-500;" border="0">圆（十等分）的剪法
如下图①准备一张正方形的纸。
如图②对折：
如图③在折的部分再对折： 
将纸连续共折成为十等份
（3）按照下图的圆弧线剪下，注意：下剪和收剪时剪刀要与折边垂直！
（4） 
（5） 展开后就是下图的圆了。 
二折剪纸
折法一：
1、将正方形约对角折一次； 2、再对角折一次； 3、画上图形，注意折线两边处理好连接部位。
折法二：
将一张色纸上下左右各对折一次，剪出每图样叫二折剪纸。在纸上画半个图样，剪好展开后有两个相同的完整图样。如作品青蛙、鹅等。
三折剪纸
三折折法：
将一张方形色纸上下对折，在底边取中心点0，以0为固定点，把折纸均匀分成3份折叠在一起（见步骤图），然后在折好的纸上画半个图样，剪好后展开就有三个完整的图样。如下作品：
折法一：
折法二：
将一张方形色纸上下对折，在底边取中心点0，以0为固定点，按60度角分成3份折叠一起（见步骤图），然后在折好的纸上画半个图样，剪好后展开就有三个完整的图样。如作品：花、鱼、人等。
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