Maria Shriver’s report might not come from the brightest bulb in the box
Bookworm on Oct 23 2009 at 8:10 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
Maria Shriver has written a report about women or something, that’s definitely liberal in its outlook, because the MSM went wild about it without even having read it first. Mona Charen isn’t so sure there’s much in the report to garner any excitement, either about the report itself or about Shriver’s acumen. And as to that, I have an anecdote, one that I heard about ten years ago. With regards to the statements about Shriver, this anecdote is pure hearsay, so there’s absolutely no way I can vouch for its truth. It also reflects badly on one of the principal characters in the story so, even assuming solely for that sake of argument that it’s true, everything should be taken with a grain of salt. With those huge caveats, here goes:
My Mom has a friend, a wacky little old lady (and all those adjectives are entirely accurate), who comes originally from Vienna. She is — and this is important to the story — singularly unaware of pop culture.
About a decade ago, before the Governator came into being, this lady and her husband were in Sun Valley, Idaho, when they stopped at a restaurant. While there, a family came in: father, mother and four children. The father was huge and the mother tiny, which caught the lady’s attention. Once she and her husband noticed this family, her husband (an American) also noticed that the large man had a think German accent. Neither the lady nor her husband recognized these people.
Because the lady isn’t shy, once she heard the accent, she wandered over to ask the large man if he was, indeed, German. Imagine her delight when he answered that he was Austrian. A short but lively conversation ensued, all in German. He was, she said, very charming. After a few minutes, when the lady noticed that the tiny wife was paying no attention to their conversation, she asked the large man, “Doesn’t your wife speak German?” To which the large man allegedly replied, “No, she’s way too dumb for that.”
The next day, while glancing at the local newspaper, my mom’s friend saw a headline reading “Arnold Schwarzenegger in town,” which was accompanied by a picture of the man with whom she’d spoken the evening before.
As I said, I have no idea if my mom’s friend was telling the truth at all, or relaying events accurately. If true, it speaks well of Schwarzenegger that he was friendly, and speaks very badly of him that he would refer to his wife in those terms. I offer it here only because it seemed apropos given Shriver’s sudden media prominence, whether as a cell phone using scofflaw, or the author of a very partisan paper.
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Or, it could have been a tongue-in-cheek quip by German speakers about people who don’t speak German in general being “dumb”, as in “not with it!”. I wouldn’t read to much into this as I’ve come across such mock parochialism among foreign language speakers before that really didn’t mean much of anything.
However, that being said, I would NEVER, NEVER, NEVER EVER speak of my wife in those terms.
Danny, you’re absolutely right, of course, although I grew up as an English-only speaker in a multilingual community and was never castigated in those terms. My mom’s friend, who is, as I said quite wacky, so her opinions are suspect, didn’t get the feeling he was joking.
I grew up as an English-only speaker in a multilingual community and was never castigated in those terms
How do you know?
But I’d bet money Arnold didn’t say “Nein, sie ist zu Dumm”, but instead said “Nein, Deutsch ist für ihn zu schwer ” — not “she’s too dumb” but “it’s too hard for her.” That goes along with the common “Deutsche Sprache ist schwere Sprache” saying.
Hey, speaking of, bringing up Nietzsche last night led me to commit translation.
I started French three times. I never did well in it. The French spelling drives me _nuts_!! If you check the derivation of the more frequently mispelled words in English, most of them derive from the French.
I didn’t find German particularly difficult. It seems very similar to English to me, and I’ve never understood the “it’s really hard” thing. They do have their own way of setting up sentence structure and modifiers (”Throw Mama from the train a kiss”), but aside from that, it seemed to me to fall into place.
At different times, I’ve studied seven languages. German is fine…as you say, it bears many similarities to English…until you get to all the exceptions to the rules. Arghh! Easiest language was Russian (as I already speak French and they share many of the same nouns for historical reasons). Most difficult – Japanese, hands down!
My wife have watched, transfixed, through the years as Rose Kennedy slowly comes to absorb the features of Maria Shriver and Caroline Kennedy. Resistance is futile.
Spanish has always been the easiest language for me, mostly because of its Latin vocabulary, its reliable orthography and (almost) relentless logic. Do NOT get me started on Spanish pronouns, though. Oy.
In my roaming around looking for the language that is closest to English, it turns out that many linguists think that neither Frisian, Dutch or Low German is our tongue’s closest relative. Instead it’s Scots (not Gaelic Scots, but Bobby Burns Scots). The language’s pedigree is very much like English’s (Saxon, Norman, Danish influences, however, in different doses), but with enough difference that some linguists assert it is way more than a dialect of English. Instead it’s a separate tongue that of all the Germanic lingos comes closest to English. The analogy for how close would probably be Swedish and Danish.
Elizabeth I, who was a polyglot, boasted Scottish (what many Scots call “Lalans”–”lowlands talk”) as one of the languages she was fluent in. All the better to understand what the hell the ambassador from the Scottish court was broguing about.
Dutch was one of the languages with which I grew up. I was floored when, in school, I could read Chaucer’s “A Canterbury Tale” in Old English with full comprehension.
My brother-in-law came over from Germany when he was 12. I doubt very much that he ever referred to my sister as dumb for her not knowing German beyond what she picked up from the years her German mother-in-law was still alive.
I once attended a solo vocal concert of Handel’s German songs, and was amazed how I could follow to some degree the vocal part and the German and English verses from the program notes.
While Spanish may be easiest for English speakers to learn, I think that German may be the easiest language for us to speak. A German speaking English sounds much better to me than a native Spanish speaker speaking English.
Charles, while I am not a linguist, I would view Scots as simply a dialect of English. Wee cowrin’ tim’rous beastie. Or something like that. While I find it a challenge to read Scots, I also find it a challenge to read Shakespeare and to understand what someone from Northern England is saying.
Danny: fascinating to find out that Dutch helped in comprehending the Old English of the Canterbury Tales.
This goes back to the oldest refrain, as seen here before. If your wife is so dumb, what does it make you that you chose her to raise four of your children?