Wo die wilden Kerle wohnen

I'm sure most of you, if not all, have heard the sad news that Maurice Sendak has died. I've been meaning to write this post for years. I guess today is the day.

Back, way back, when I taught German to high school students, I would occasionally read them children’s books that I hoped they were familiar with. Die Kleine Raupe Nimmersatt and Wo die wilden Kerle wohnen. And also some others that were new to them, like Gustav will ein großes Eis and Vom kleinen Maulwurf, der wissenwollte, wer ihm auf den Kopf gemacht hat -- both also excellent, if somewhat weird.

Die kleine Raupe Nimmersatt was pretty fantastic for the vocabulary covered. Days of the week, common food items ("Ein Stück Schokoladenkuchen, eine Eiswaffel, eine saure Gurke, eine Scheibe Käse, ein Stück Wurst, einen Lolli, ein Stück Früchtebrot, ein Würstchen, ein Törtchen und ein Stück Melone."), some nice adjectives. But Wo die wilden Kerle wohnen is that rare bird, a book that is arguably even better when translated.

Die wilden Kerle brüllten ihr fürchterliches Brüllen und fletschten ihre fürchterlichen Zahne und rollten ihre fürchterlichen Augen und zeigten ihre fürchterlichen Krallen.

That’s some fine literature right there. Makes the original seem a little wimpy: 

The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.

See?

RIP, Mr. Sendak.

Fun with German!

A Spanish teacher I used to work with used to say that a lot of German words sounded like swear words. His example was “Schneeflocken.” (snowflakes) I maintain that German is a beautiful language but, yes, if you say Schneeflocken with a bad American accent, it’s clunky.

A word I’ve been thinking about lately is “Mehrwegflaschen” (more-way-bottles, or multiple use bottles). One of the many things I like about making my own yogurt is the absence of endless plastic cups to recycle. Plastic is very difficult to reuse, and just because you throw it in the recycling bin doesn’t mean you’ve done something to keep that container out of landfill. I think the numbers have improved, but a lot of plastic still isn’t reused.

Perhaps you noticed from my two examples that German has a limitless capacity to make compound words. Someday I’ll dig through the basement and find the actual newspaper that I have that has this word in the headline:

Katzenohrpostleitzahlumstellungsproblematik

I used to write that up on the board when I was teaching. Kids were amazed I could spell it so easily. The truth is that it’s just a series of very easily spelled words.

Katzen-ohr-postleitzahl-umstellungs-problematik
Cat – ear – zip code – reorganization – problem

The article explained how the reunification of Germany in 1991 caused problems with the reassignment of zip codes for people who had tattooed their old zip code onto their cats’ ears. Much like the chips they implant in pets now.

And that’s why I like German.