Dave's log, (German and French)

[DaveAgain]

German
I'm currently reading Ein Pyrenäenbuch (audiobook) by Kurt Tucholsky , this is a collection of articles focused on the Pyrenees region. Apparently even in the 1920s Basque was becoming rare on the French side of the border. This surprised me as I had always blamed television for the loss of minority and languages and regional dialects.

TV
I've been watching a comedy police series, Hubert Ohne Staller, which I like, and after watching an English documentary about the making of Der Himmel über Berlin (UK title: Wings of Desire), I watched a little of the film but while I like the idea of us being surrounded by guardian angels, the film didn't grab me.

French
I've been watching a lot of French films since my last post.

I read an article about the partnership between Gerard Depardieu and Pierre Richard after which I watched Les compères and La Chèvre, two silly but fun comedies.

Then Le Dernier Mètro a film where Mr Depardieu had a fairly small part while Catherine Deneuve was in almost every scene, I thought this might be based on a true story, but wikipedia says not. Jean Marais' memoirs were apparently used by Mr Truffaut when writing the screenplay, presumably they tell of working conditions in Paris theatres in the 1940s.

I tried to find a French dub of Green Card, but ending up watching it in English, and then I went on a little Andie Macdowell spree watching the French language versions of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Groundhog Day. I thought the voice actor doing Ms Macdowell was very good, Ms Macdowell has such a nice voice (wikipedia tells me she grew up in S.Carolina) a voice-over replacement could have been a bit jarring, but she was a good fit.

Then I watched a Patate, another comedy. I chose this as Danielle Darrieux is in the cast, but I think the star of the film is her on-screen husband played by Pierre Dux.
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There is a very good mini-series available on UK TV at the the moment, Une affaire française (UK title: A French Case) which is based on a real-life crime case l'affaire Grègory.

A feature of this story is a series of poison pen letters and anonymous phone calls. In French people who write such letters can be referred to as a Corbeau, this apparently dates back to a successful 1943 film, but the English language subtitles always instead translated Corbeau as Crow, which suggests the translator had not read the French edition of Mrs Christie's A Moving Finger, where do they find such people!

I thought it was a compelling series, and as it had many recognisable actors in small roles it must have been a big-budget production.

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I thought I'd learnt some new slang when I came across l'instant t, but it seems I'm just way behind the times.

Étymologie de « instant t »

(XIXe siècle) D’instant et de l’initiale de temps.
L’usage dans un contexte scientifique de la notation t pour le temps se généralise au XVIIIe siècle, avant de passer petit à petit dans le langage courant.

Après un instant t, la Terre aura parcouru dans ſa trajectoire rectiligne, l’espace […] — (Achille Pierre Dionis du Séjour, Traité analytique des mouvemens apparens des corps célestes, 1789)

https://www.lalanguefrancaise.com/dicti ... nstant-t#1

EDIT
Wim Wenders' Der Himmel über Berlin/Wings of Desire has been adapted into an Opera:

Les Ailes du désir à l'opéra !
Le Bateau Feu: les ailes du desir

[MorkTheFiddle]

I have seen Wings of Desire and barely remember it. Did I like it? Dunno.

[DaveAgain]

German
I'm currently reading Erziehung vor Verdun by Arnold Zweig, I borrowed it from the Goethe eLibrary. This is the 3rd book in a 6 book series:

1. Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa
2. Junge Frau von 1914
3. Erziehung vor Verdun
4. Einsetzung eines Königs
5. Die Feuerpause
6. Die Zeit ist reif

CJareck suggested this book to me long ago, I'm only now finally getting around to reading it.

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I found a German language dub of the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice mini-series on the interwebs, so I've been watching that. I watched the whole series through twice, before watching the second time, I read a software generated German translation of the English scripts first, and looked up any unknown words.

This series has been repeated so many times on UK TV that I should know it by heart. I used to have the audio from the French language dub on my MP3 player, I replaced that with the German radio adaptation!

French
I lost my early morning reading habit over Christmas and I'm trying to re-establish it.

First thing I read a little of Christophe André's Je Medite, Jour après jour (I have the version without a CD, 9782913366824), and Blaise Pascal's Pensées.

There are lots of radio programmes/YouTube videos about Mr Pascal. He was a maths/science wunderkind, contributing to public scientific debate and developed an early mechanical adding machine, then later in life becoming more interested in Christianity/philosophy. I remember Mr Pascal's Pensées being mentioned as a bedside companion of Coco Chanel in Henry Gidel's biography.
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Two films I've watched and enjoyed are Le dernier des six and l'assassin habite au 21, both adapted from novels by SA Steeman.
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When looking for a radio play adaptation of Jean Giraudoux's La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu, I found an audio book version instead, a slightly abbreviated reading offered by Les Livreurs, a group that give performances of, and offer training in, reading aloud.

English
I've finally finished the poetry book (ISBN: 0198121369) I started way back in January 2022! I can now go back and re-read the ones I liked enough to fold down the corner of the page.

One of the last poems I liked enough to bookmark was How to Kill by Keith Douglas, it has some super lines:

He smiles, and moves about in ways his mother knows, habits of his.

Death, like a familiar, hears and look, has made a man of dust of a man of flesh.

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I watched an interesting Lent themed video recently, The Biblical Roots of Ash Wednesday.

[badger]

Wim Wenders' Der Himmel über Berlin/Wings of Desire has been adapted into an Opera:

Les Ailes du désir à l'opéra !
Le Bateau Feu: les ailes du desir

there was a Hollywood remake too - City of Angels - with Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan, which departs from the original somewhat, but is okay as far I recall.

[DaveAgain]

German
I'm currently reading Selbs Betrug, by Bernhard Schlink. The chapters are very short, 3-5 pages, so I'm writing down all unknown words and then looking them up at the end of each chapter. I did a lot of that with French as I get lots of my French books as PDFs from bnf.fr.

I think writing words down helps one remember them, but I'm not sure where I got that idea from.

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I've not been watching much TV, but I did watch one YouTube video using the Language Reactor plugin for the Chrome web browser, after it was mentioned by GaryB.

One useful feature of it is an "automatic pause" option, which pauses the video at each break of the subtitles, to give you a moment to digest them.

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I've listened to a number of episodes of ARD's Professor van Dusen radio series. Professor Doktor Doktor Doktor van Dusen, der Denkmaschine is a Genius who solves crimes when not busy with his other endeavours. The character was created by an American writer Jaques Futrelle, who unfortunately spent some of his Van Dusen royalties on a ticket for the Titanic's maiden voyage. The van Dusen stories were later adapted for German radio by Michael Koser, and as the character was popular, new stories were written too.

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I'm still using the free version of Clozemaster.com which is limited to 30 sentences a day.

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I'm also watching Fall of Eagles an English language series that covers events in Austria, Prussia, and Russia from ~1860>1918.

French
I'm still starting the day with Christof André's Je medite, jour après jour, and Blaise Pascal's Pensées.

The third season of Astrid et Raphaëlle (UK title: Astrid, murder in Paris) is currently being broadcast on Friday evenings in the UK, so I've started watching that.

I also watched a film les 400 coups, which was mentioned in a Jodie Foster interview, and Un soir de révellion a light comedy-musical, which I chose just because Arletty is in the cast.

EDIT
Selbs Betrug is the second book in a trilogy:

1. Selbs Justiz
2. Selbs Betrug
3. Selbs Mord

[DaveAgain]

who, so the story goes, mispronounced "Berliner" (person from Berlin) as "Berliner" (the doughnut), although this seems to be something of an urban myth.

I thought that he should say "Ich bin der Berliner" instead of "Ich bin ein Berliner" but I don't know. I would be extremely grateful for an explanation of this since it is a famous speech.

it's famous enough that it has its own wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_bin_ein_Berliner#%22I_am_a_doughnut%22_urban_legend

sorry for the thread hijack Dave!

I'm currrently reading Charles Wheeler's biography (ISBN: 9781786581754). Mr Wheeler was the BBC correspondant in West Berlin at the time, and according to the book the doughnut-Berliner idea was first advanced by the Reuters correspondant Jack Altman, and then repeated by Alistair Cooke in his radio broadcast. (Ch.4, p.136).

[MorkTheFiddle]

My understanding was that if he wanted to say I am a Berliner, then he should have phrased it "Ich bin Berliner." A judgment for German speakers, no doubt.

[DaveAgain]

Vladimir Nabokov
After Mr Nabokov's autobiography, Speak, Memory (French | German), was mentioned in the recent Exophony thread I borrowed a copy from my local library.

Mr Nabokov was born in 1899 into a family of wealthy landowners. His foreign language education began with English and Swiss-French governesses. When writing about his extended family in chapter 3 Mr Nabokov often quotes his relatives using french expressions, and in chapter 5 mentions how the mealtime conversations in his family home would switch between French and Russian. English, after the departure of his governess seems to have been limited to extensive reading on his part. In a later chapter he mentions being disciplined at his St Petersburg school for showing off by peppering his essays with French and English.

Butterfly collecting (Lepidopterology) was one of Mr Nabokov's lifelong passions. He mentions in chapter 6 discovering old books and preriodicals in the attics of one of his families' houses, and these igniting his interest. Several of these books were in German, and it seems that many of the suppliers he used to pursue this hobby were based in Germany/Prussia, but he never seems to have taken an interest in the language. This is all the more surprising when we learn in chapter 9 that his father had studied in Germany (Halle), and as a statesman, he was elected to the Tsarist parliament, and briefly a minister in Kerensky's government, would have seen the practical value of German language skills as Austria and Prussia were the key regional powers to Russia's west.

After the October Revolution of 1917 the Nabokov's went to the Crimea, then England. As Berlin was at that time the largest center of Russian emigres the family moved there, Mr Nabokov senior being involved in the russian language newspaper Rul. Our younger Vladimir, and his brother Sergey remained in England as students at Cambridge University.

Making a living in Berlin, young Mr Nabokov was able to survive in a Russian speaking society. He wrote poetry, crosswords and chess puzzles for Russian language publications. Contributed to a "Russian grammar for foreigners", and between 1926 and 1939 published 10 russian language novels, as these were not allowed to be distributed in the USSR royalies were limited, but translations into German, and French did bring occasional windfalls to the young author.

In 1936 Mr Nabokov had a short story published in French, Mademoiselle O, but while France became host to a large population of Russian emigres Mr Nabokov's attempt to re-locate to France failed as he was unable to secure the necessary work permit and residence visa.

Happily Mr Nabokov and his wife and young son were able to secure visas to the USA in 1940 and until the commercial success of his third English language novel Lolita in 1955, Mr Nabokov made his living in academia either Lepidopterology or literature. After the financial success of Lolita the family relocated to Switzerland both to escape the attention of the press, and to move closer to his sister Elena.

German media links:

Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita, Schach und Schmetterlinge [radio]
Klassiker der Weltliteratur: Vladimir Nabokov [video]
Die Geschichte der Russischen Revolutionen [video]
Russischer Bürgerkrieg [video]

French media links:

La Compagnie des auteurs - Nabokov [radio]
lettres à Véra [radio]
Nuit Vladimir Nabokov [radio]
Nabokov 1899 1977 Un siècle d'écrivains [video]
De l’exode à l’exil en France, parcours d’émigration [radio]

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The title "Speak, memory" seemed to me to be a quote or allusion to another work. The author's forward explained the title, and made clear no allusion was intended, but it prompted my memory to recall the opening of another autobiographical book, West with the Night by Beryl Markham:

How is it possible to bring order out of memory? I should like to begin at the beginning, patiently, like a weaver at his loom. I should like to say, "This is the place to start; there can be no other."

But there are a hundred places to start for there are a hundred names - Mwanza, Serengetti, Nungwe, Molo, Nakuru. There are easily a hundred names, and I can begin best by choosing one of them - not because it is first nor of any importance in a wildly adventurous sense, but because here it happens to be, turned uppermost in my logbook. After all, I am no weaver. Weavers create. This is remembrance - revisitation; and names are keys that open corridors no longer fresh in the mind, but nonetheless familiar in the heart.

So the name shall be Nungwe - as good as any other - entered like this in the log, lending reality, if not order to memory:

DATE - 16/6/35
TYPE AIRCRAFT - Avro Avian
MARKINGS - VP-KAN
JOURNEY - Nairobi to Nungwe
TIME - 3 hrs, 40 mins.

After that comes, PILOT: self; and REMARKS - of which there were none. But there might have been.

[daegga]

My understanding was that if he wanted to say I am a Berliner, then he should have phrased it "Ich bin Berliner." A judgment for German speakers, no doubt.

article or not depends on where you come from. I think in the north it's usually without article (inferring from https://www.atlas-alltagssprache.de/runde-7/f07a-c/), but then Berlin regiolect is special, so hard to say ...
Both variants sound perfectly fine to me, though I would use the article.
But I don't get the mispronunciation story, they are pronounced the same https://de.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Berliner

[DaveAgain]

article or not depends on where you come from. I think in the north it's usually without article (inferring from https://www.atlas-alltagssprache.de/runde-7/f07a-c/), but then Berlin regiolect is special, so hard to say ...
Both variants sound perfectly fine to me, though I would use the article.

The suggestion in the Wheeler biography is that the controversy was invented by Mr Altman, looking for a story:

"I was in there," he [Charles Wheeler] said, "I saw the crowd's reaction. No one thought he'd said anything wrong."

"Ah," said Jack [Altman]. "Well, I was with some old Berliners on the other side of the Wall, and they immediately laughed and said to me, "Kennedy just said he was a doughnut!"

"There were old Berliners in the crowd where I was too." said Charles [Wheeler] dismissively. "In fact, it was you, Jack [Altman], who came up with the story in the first place!"

Jack [Altman], it seems had filed a piece for Reuters thirty minutes after Kennedy's speech, mentioning what his East German friends had told him.

Willy Brandt's memoirs throw some light on the episode. He was hosting the visit as mayor of Berlin. "The crowd roared its approval when he declared that he was a Berliner - he had rehearsed the German sentence during a breather in my office," he wrote.