RE: Czernowitzer German

Mimi..".I took myself for a walk" is a very common way of speaking in
London! And Czernowitz German was..and still is for those of us who learned
it..a variation,a dialect or whatever you want to call it. I have a very
good German plumber here in London,and when he speaks to his son in the
dialect from his native area I have no idea what it is about. If you go to
Cornwall,Somerset,Liverpool...it ain't the Queen's English they speak,and
the same applies to different parts of the German-speaking world. It is
certainly not "atrocious" !!!! Cornel

-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Taylor [mailto:mirtaylo_at_indiana.edu]
Sent: 10 September 2010 22:22
To: cornel fleming; Anny Matar; HARDY BREIER
Cc: Paul Heger; Czernowitz-L_at_cornell.edu
Subject: Czernowitzer German

In reply to Cornel and all others who wrote about the way we spoke German.
As I remember it, we spoke atrocious German. Not only did we introduce loan
words from Yiddish and Ruthenian, also Polish (like Pirogen).
We mispronounced many sounds. We said schen instead of schön and mide
instead of müde Our grammar was bad, we said "bin ich mir gegangen", which
would be OK in Yiddish but in German sounds as if someone speaking English
had said: "I took myself for a walk".

There certainly were many who could speak and write German correctly, but in
daily life, we mostly spoke our own kind of mixture, whether due to
ignorance or because we chose the words we used, so as to most accurately
convey what we wanted to say.

Some Hebrew, Yiddish or Ruthenian words conveyed meaning which could not be
conveyed in German. For instance, the words "Davka", "stam" and "meila" from
Hebrew via Yiddish do not have equivalents in German. Nor do the Ruthenian
expressions: "paskudnyi", "po wolye" and " czort neh voznye". Sometimes the
German word had a different connotation, think about "Hirt" versus
"pastachl", or "Fest" versus "Praznik", or "Politzeh versus "Fussboden".

On my last trip to Czernowitz, I was driven from Lviv to Chernivtsi, by a
driver who spoke only Ukrainian. Everything had been prearranged, so there
was no need for the two of us to talk. But four hours is a long time to be
in a car with someone and not exchange a word, so when I could think of the
right word, I tried out my Ruthenian/Ukrainian. When we had to slow down
because ducks were crossing the road, I said "Katczka", when a car came
unexpectedly out of a side road and almost hit us, I exclaimed: "Bozhe moi".
When we were stuck in traffic in Kolomea and had to drive slowly, I said:
"Po wolye, po wolye. Each time, the driver seemed to be pleased that I tried
to speak his language and did not mind my bad pronunciation.

All these words I learned in Czernowitz. Not in school and not from a
dictionary.

Mimi

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Received on 2010-09-10 20:31:05