This is the homework assignment I just wrote for tomorrow’s German class:
Die Frau sitzt neben dem Telefon. Sie erwartet einen Anruf. Wann Als sie das Haus verlassen hatverlies, brannte es. Gibt es jetzt noch ein Haus? Wird sie heimgehen können? Das Telefon erklingtklingelt. Sie sieht es an. Sie nimmt es ab. Das Die Antwort: zerstört. Es gibt kein Haus mehr. “Na ja,” denkt die Frau. “Jetzt ist es nicht mehr notwendig, die Kessel zu entkalken.”
The assignment was to write something using a lot of verbs with prefixes. Verbs with prefixes are kind of my German Achilles heel. (German heel?) I used eight. Woo!
It’s a stark, Hemingway-ian short short story about life and its unpredictability and phones ringing and stuff. It might even be worth your time to run it through a translator. I’ll correct my German when I get the story back from the teacher. (UPDATE 7/30: corrected.)
According to Google Translate:
The woman sitting next to the phone. They expected a call. When they leave the house has burned it. Is there a house? If they can go home? The phone sounds. She sees it. She takes it off. The answer: destroy. There is no house anymore. “Well,” thinks the woman. “Now it is not necessary for the boiler to decalcify.”
I followed it until ‘decalcify.’ That’s pretty specific for a seemingly bad translation. What was the original word?
Yep – it was decalcify. The sentiment I was going for was “Oh well, at least now I don’t have to decalcify the kettle.” I was mostly amused that we learned the word “decalcify.”
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