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es-tsett
Tagged Under : Germany, journalism, language
Today I wrote my first story in German! Ok, actually my second story in German. I wrote a little tiny story last week at Bild, but something went tragically wrong and it didn’t get published. But today’s story went into a layout and went to the presses and will be in newspapers tomorrow! Real live newspapers! Which, apparently, people in Germany still read.
The edit went a lot better than you’d think, considering German is not my best language. It’s not even in my top three. In the first go-round, the editor corrected my grammar (which wasn’t *too* bad, but I’d guessed some genders wrong and messed up some cases) and fixed the two or three expressions that made no sense. I made the corrections, and then he went through and did an edit that was a bit more rewritey while I watched over his shoulder and suggested alternate phrasings and the intern at the next desk looked up words on Leo. In the final version, I still know what all the words mean, and it still ends with something funny I thought up. (My other funny was cut for space. Sigh.)
The editor and I bonded over our mutual love of the letter ß. It was taken out of a lot of German words in the spelling reform of 1996, presumably because it’s weird and people who don’t speak German don’t know what to do when it shows up in a text. It’s called the “eszett” and it makes an “s” sound. I’d used it to write the word “daß,” because cmon, there’s a ß key right on my keyboard, and that’s how I learned to spell “daß” in 1990, and besides, I love that letter. But the spellcheck on his computer caught it and he replaced it with “ss,” and we had a little grumble about it.
The people at Die Welt still seem to think I speak German. I suspect that I actually speak a unique hybrid of German, Norwegian, and German-accented English. But they keep speaking German to me, so I keep speaking my mishmash, and everyone seems happy.
And here I was nervous about writing a fluff piece about a tomato and pepper festival. A fluff advance piece with no deadline. In English.
I don’t know how you do it, but I’m always in awe.
So what’s up with “weiß?” I love the eszett too, and refuse to stop using it!
So, it’s still in some words. The Wikipedia entry explains when it’s still used and when it isn’t – too confusing for me. But I know my story for tomorrow has at least two!!
Erin – fluff pieces about tomato and pepper festivals used to terrify me, too. It just takes practice.
[...] the story I was talking about yesterday. Yeah, it’s in German. Google Translator actually does a pretty good job with it – [...]
As new fan of Deutsche, I agree with the German reformers
in that that pesky Greek-looking “B” is a tad confusing to the
uninitiated!
Upon first blush, the “eszett”, sure looks like a “b”-sounding letter to me!!
I found out from a former missionary, who spent 2-years in
Belin that the eszett was really the “ss” sound and that it was an obstacle to overcome when she was first approaching the language.
After all, why the Greek “B” — were they, somehow paying homage to the ancient Greeks or sticking out their tongues to foreigners trying to learn the already tough language to learn. write and speak??!!