The ä ö ü of it (or: Come here Umlaut)

a facebook conversation + a translation by Ron Kostar, Rose Hunter, Jeffrey Brautigam, Dorothee Lang

It all started with a note on facebook in German, typed by Ron Kostar, which picked up on some extra alphabet letters in German: the "Umlaute". Derived from a, o and u, the Umlaute add 3 more vocals to the german alphabet: ä, ö and ü, which also are included in german keyboards, but not in other keyboards. So the question was: how to create an "Umlaut"? And: what does Umlaut mean exactly? All this lead to finding an "Umlaut"-poem and translating it.

Enjoy the ä ö ü of it!

**



The ä ö ü of it 

Ron: Wir mussen in dem Ozean gehen aber mit nicht ein Umlaut! (ich vergesse alles!)

Ron: Der Umlaut must in dem Haus mit die Kinder hinter der Tur und die troublesome Articles und Preopositions bleiben. Lol!!

Rose: Und gleich mit dem Subjunctive usw

Ron: Eine greosse Problem und ein Problem und einander!

Jeffrey: I do not know how to make facebook do an umlaut, but I can produce one in both Word and Wordperfect

Ron: mit ein Wort (wart) more preceisely eine Brief herunter?

Dorothee @ BluePrintReview: Here come the Umlaute: Mögen die Häuser ihre Türen öffnen, und die Umlaute die Worte aufhübschen. Viele Grüße

Ron: Come here Umlaut, I would like the door of your house open and the Umlaut of the word (aufhubschen?). Many greetings ???

Ron: Very moldy to the point of decaying my German become has.

Rose: See I would have thought the plural would have been Umläuter.... But that just sounds like some around people I guess. OPTION + u and then the letter on a Mac. Here umlaut, good umlaut benimm sich gut....

Dorothee: more Umlaute: green: "grün", nice="schön" or "hübsch". and derived from that: to make nicer: aufhübschen. And this one: Many Greetings - Viele Grüße

Rose: Grüss Gott!

Ron: Dorothee, has anyone ever written a poem in German about an or The Umlaut? From our perspective it is very interesting, even intriguing. I know of nothing like it in English.

Dorothee: An Umlaut-Poem - i don't know about any. the thing is, in German, it's just the way the language is, so the Umlaute are just normal letters, like the "ß"-s, too. will look, see if i find something. cool that you know German. Grüße!

Ron: Nicht so gut, sehr schlecht, ja, sehr sehr schlecht.
I always did like many of the words, though, especially for some obscure reason the word "auswendig."

And here the conversation ended, but lead to an Umlaut-poem search:

(later)
Dorothee: I found an Umlaut-Gedicht! Here's the start of it:

Laut mit Umlaut
Brigitta Firmenich

Haha, du verunstaltetes Um, sagt der Laut angriffslustig zum Umlaut.

Du kleines anämisches Würstchen,
brüllt der Umlaut aufheulend zurück....

the complete poem is up here: Laut mit Umlaut


(much later)

Ron: I tried a translation. I know it's very, how you say, un-literal, and I took great liberties and, my German not being very good, at times translated more from sound and image than from any sense of literal meaning.

Dorothee, what does "Um" mean lterally? If Laut means loud, which I knew, what, literally does Umlaut mean? (Not with that would be mit, no?)

Dorothee: „um“ is a german prefix to add to verbs and nouns, like this:

- to build / a building
- bauen / ein Bau

- to renovate / the process of renovation:
- umbauen / ein Umbau

apart from that, “um” exists in many variations
- at 3 o’clock: um 3 Uhr
- to walk around the tree: um den Baum herumgehen

Umlaut literally has no real meaning, it just points at the fact that the „Umlaut“ (like ä ö ü) is derived from the relating Laut (sound) “a o u”

ah, languages!

Ron: Dorothee, heres' another shot at it, another version. i made up a word, behatted (hatted is actually the word), and i adopted some of your changes but also tried to do something with the sound of the poem, since you said a lot of this poem depends on sound and playing with words and sounds.

i like the two liver spots on the forehead, even though they are hardly literal, and the light and lithesome manner of Missy Laut ... but i wonder if i could do more with Laut and Umlaut? Sound and UnSound? Loud and UnLoud? Or Sound and UmSound (like a drum)? i'm also playing up, though less so, the slender young nature of Laut and the thick and maternally nature of Umlaut - is that accurate? i the original poem? the sounds of the verbs in the early part of the poem sound aggressive, which is why i used "shot" and "howled"). and .. i played off the contrast of thin slender Laut and thick Umlaut in the the penultimate stanza, though that is the stanza i'm least happy with:

----

Laut and Umlaut

Ahh!! You try to spoil everything,
shot slim slightly clad Laut to Umlaut.

Why you anemic little sausage!
behatted Mother Umlaut howled back.

Oh you have gotten so fat! hissed Laut,
and what's with those two liver spots on your forehead?

Dignified well-known people like me dress well,
Mother Umlaut shot back proudly.

Perhaps, but I carry myself in a light and lithesome manner,
slender Laut eased back.

Yes, Missy Laut, but perhaps you need to check your mirror more often.
said Umlaut. Then you'll see that you are just part of me

original poem "Laut mit Umlaut" written in German by Brigitta Fermenich translated very liberally into English by Ron Kostar

-

i'm thinking that if the point is that Laut is contained within Umlaut maybe i can say something about that in the last stanza, something more explicit but shrewd like: "when you look in the mirror you see that we genetically overlap"

also, i think Laut may be naive, nicht wahr, in thinking that she has nothing in common with Umlaut, so maybe i need to bring that out with a "she naively replied" or something similar.

Dorothee: so interesting, the theme of translation and Umlaut. i think your revised version works well – and i like the idea of your ending line: "when you look in the mirror you see that we genetically overlap"

maybe, to spin that towards language, it could even be: "when you look in the mirror you see that we phonetically overlap"

**

PS:
This conversation was originally published in the blueprint blog, in December 2011. A bit later, it became part of the language/place series, issue #16, the "translation issue". Talking about Umlaute with a friend, i was reminded of it, revisited it, and now added it here.

symmetry & stupidity & the relation of language to the world

so i ran into symmetry photos

over in the photo blog

not sure what it is

that causes their startling effect

and lets the same landscape

look so transformed

maybe our perception of it?

also, i looked for the original image

and couldn't find it anymore

apart from symmetry: stupidity.

this is one of the most interesting articles

i came across in a while

it's about the brainbreaking difficutly

to teach computers to think,

to get a grasp of human language

and from there, leads to the complexitiy

of human life

here's a quote:

"Computers can't figure out the complex, ornate
illogical rules of the translation from language to logic.
And this reveals the larger problem:

what ist the relation of language

to the world?"

and here's the link:

the stupidity of computers

this also made me think

of the current language/place issue:

Translation

forms of being

this post belongs to the upcoming language/place blog carnival #16: "Translation (in all its forms), hosted by Steve Wing, which is now online: Translation Issue - Übersetzungsausgabe


talking Italian
some years ago, i started to learn Italian. as it turned out, the most confusing thing about Italian was its closeness to French, which i learned in school, and which kept mingling with Italian in my mind.
in the end, i gave up on the Italian lessons, but the whole theme of languages and conjugates kept moving on in conversations, and at some point, in a play with words and places, and photos from different regions, with all those different shapes of houses, and those different conjugations of the basic verb: "i am / you are / she is...". which turns to "ich bin / du bist / sie ist.." in German, and "io sono / tu sei / lei è.." in Italian, i created a moving word installation: forms of being

from Italy to China
the installation later found its way into the qarrtsiluni Translation issue, which also lead to two conversations on language. the first with the Smitha, a friend of mine who at that point spent some time in China to learn Chinese. she wrote:

"I have never come across a language that frustrates and enthralls in equal measure. The sheer mountain of learning required just to converse is mind boggling. I can study Chinese for 3 years, and still not be able to read a Chinese newspaper or talk life philosophies with the Chinese. Sometimes, when I think of that I get discouraged. But I remind myself that is part of the reason I chose it. I could have learned Telugu or Tamil in a year. Those are languages closer to Sanskrit. Even European languages are easier with the root being Sanskrit. Remind me will you why I chose to torture myself?"

(the mail belongs to an ongoing conversation across continents, which eventually lead to our book that now soon will be released: "Worlds Apart")

China isn't China
the another conversation that developed was with Nick Admussen:
"There's some oddness about the pinyin stuff -- esp. "China yo shi yi dian ban zou"...I'm guessing you know that China isn't "China" in Chinese, but "Zhongguo", but you might not know that the "yo" is a typo for "you" which is the possessive verb ("yo" isn't a pinyin syllable). I also think that the only way to read and understand it is in context, both because of the pinyin and the kind of odd phrasing -- maybe you've misprinted "zou" for "zao" (early, morning). I would probably say "中国时间现在早上十一点半" "Zhongguo shijian xianzai zaoshang shiyi dian ban."

The verb 'declensions' are all right, except for the question mark after nimen in one iteration (which might also be intentional). If the Chinese characters above came through, you could email me and I'll give you the ones for "wo shi", etc.

Anyway, this is a very cool project!"
- Nick Admussen (more)


truth is, i hadn't known that. i just tried to find the original files, but it seems, they got lost, with only the extracted flash files remaining. so i keep the note here, as addition. which also adds another layer to the project: the complexity of language, and the difficulty of working with translations when you don't have a clue about the language itself. and the fact that blogger has problems in displaying the signs just shows another level of this complexity. here's a mail screenshot copy + paste:


and one more addition, following the note that China isn't "China" in Chinese, but "Zhongguo". it's the same for Germany. which isn't "Germany" in German, or "Allemagne", as the French say, but: "Deutschland". with "Deutsch" meaning "German", and "Land" meaning "country". which in fact was the key to founding "Deutschland", which was a mosaic of regions with one uniting element: the language.