h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The Emperor Wilhelm song, Dmitri?

Outsiders associate those helmets with Norwegians, Bel. We assume that anyone who wears one says, 'bork, bork, bork.'

Yep. Singing about Kaiser Wilhelm now.

Icy, the song goes, 'We want our old Kaiser Wilhelm back, the one with the long beard...'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWJOkzLBPak

Interesting, thanks Bel. I never knew the correct name was Pickelhaube. I've always known a 'Pickel' as a pimple, and a 'Haube' as a bonnet Don't you just love compound nouns?

Don't get me started!

Being a borderline kraut (and proud of it - as well as thankful for the fact that I can write it here now without old Auntie Beeb interfering) I am allowed to make as much fun of both the Krauts and the Danes as I bloody well choose.

Just like my Jewish friends can tell whatever Jewish joke they like (which I for obvious reasons can't...)


Q: What do you call a person who s from all his neighbours?

A: A kleptoman

Q: And what do you call a person who burns people's houses down?

A: A pyroman

Q: And what do you call a person who does both?

A: A German...



PS: Yes, I know it's really kleptomaniac and pyromaniac, but not in Germany and Denmark and you get the joke anyway

That was a new one to me, Pierce.

The best Jewish joke I heard was told to me by an Arab.

Sadly, I cannot repeat it here, and in any case it requires actions.

It works in Afrikaans too (piromaan, kleptomaan, Germaan).

Sorry ed with Icy North there!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00lvdcm

There was recently a BBC radio series about a virtual museum where people could add exhibits. Harry Enfield asked to have a room for stupid Germans... because he didn't know any. He went on to list the clever and talented Germans that he knew. I was a bit nervous of what he was going to say when he announced the room to begin with, but then thought it may be going a bit far to say there are none.

Lots of them around, I'm afraid. He'd fill the room in no time.

Germany's borders have changed a lot over the years (and even the earliest are rather young) and it is futile to discuss what parts of Europe are "genuinely German".

Let's look at the German speaking people instead. About 100 million have German as their native tongue I reckon.

If you see it this way it is no surprise that a lot of very clever people emerged from this group of humans: Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Sophie Scholl, Anne-Sophie Mutter to name but a few.

And likewise it is no surprise that this group also fostered quite a few not so clever individuals.

Seeing things this way makes us Germans seem almost human, don't you think?

Stereotype: Germans have no humour

Rubbish! Just because it's so different from yours that you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't funny. Even in the most remote areas of for instance The Black Forest you will find laughing Germans

(the stereotype is valid for the French also, by the way )

Stereotype: Germans can't talk unless something is going wrong
and the British are never happy unless something is going wrong

I guess that's why both nations always talk about the weather

About 'Germans': There's a diaspora, you know.

If 'German' is taken to mean 'people who have German as their first language, and a culture that originated in Central Europe', then I've known Germans who were born in Siberia, Transylvania, and Pennsylvania.

I think there are some in Texas, too.

Question, though: isn't the linguistic boundary of what constitutes "German" just as fluid (and as recent a development) as the political boundary on maps?

Now, that's true for you. How low is Low German? It's often a political question.

On the other hand, it could just be fun:

http://hiwwewiedriwwe.wordpress.com/

What's interesting is that I often come across a different dialect and realise I can understand it much easier than the Hochdeutsch I studied for years.

There was no German state until 1871. The Bundesrepublik was formed in 1949. This merged with the area formerly knowns as The German Democratic Republik in 1999.

Borders are a ridiculous invention, but there they are so we have to learn to live with them just like religions and hiphop. That's okay, at my age you have to choose your defeats carefully

As for language borders well, most of us here speak indo-german, if I'm not very much mistaken (which I might be, I'm not a filologist after all)

Of course there is a diaspora. I guess most European languages have diasporasses scattered around the globe

"Die Neger in Ostafrika
sie rufen all zu gleich:
Wir wollen Deutsche Neger sein
- wir wollen heim ins Reich!"

Just to give you an example