“Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right.” -- Igor Stravinsky
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Friday, July 31, 2009
My Gift to the People of Switzerland
I realized, while in Switzerland, that there is no German word for "brunch." So I gift to the wonderful people of Switzerland my coinage, früstagessen.
There will be statues of me at Swiss brunch places 100 years from now.
German-speaking countries readily adopt Anglicisms, and "brunch" is no exception, defining it as "a combination of breakfast and lunch." However, the German language has its own word for "brunch": Gabelfrühstück (literally, "fork breakfast")
"German-speaking countries readily adopt Anglicisms" is only very recently true. Like the Academie-ruled French, they went to any length to avoid Anglicisms, preferring to translate morpheme by morpheme into some kind of Germanic, e.g., Fernsehapparat = Tele (far) vision.
A Second Breakfast Pays Dividends By JILL KNIGHT WEINBERGER
...But, happily, I cannot entirely divorce my devotion to gabelfrühstück from the cultural experience it represents. I feel more rooted to a place, less like a stranger, when I partake of it as seriously as the Germans, the Swiss or the Austrians. .....
Speechless.
ReplyDeleteA quick look on Wikipedia tells us:
ReplyDeleteGerman-speaking countries readily adopt Anglicisms, and "brunch" is no exception, defining it as "a combination of breakfast and lunch." However, the German language has its own word for "brunch": Gabelfrühstück (literally, "fork breakfast")
"German-speaking countries readily adopt Anglicisms" is only very recently true. Like the Academie-ruled French, they went to any length to avoid Anglicisms, preferring to translate morpheme by morpheme into some kind of Germanic, e.g., Fernsehapparat = Tele (far) vision.
ReplyDelete'Gabelfrühstück (literally, "fork breakfast")'
ReplyDeleteWell, that seems to be news to the Swiss! (They were familiar with 'brunch,' however.)
A travel writer in the New York Times writes:
ReplyDeleteA Second Breakfast Pays Dividends
By JILL KNIGHT WEINBERGER
...But, happily, I cannot entirely divorce my devotion to gabelfrühstück from the cultural experience it represents. I feel more rooted to a place, less like a stranger, when I partake of it as seriously as the Germans, the Swiss or the Austrians. .....