Hallo-Wien



Me as Pirate/Cultural Ambassador

 With a name that's so ripe for that Halloween pun, it's amazing that the holiday has apparently only become popular in Wien in recent years - a fairly innocuous result of globalization, dentists aside. 

Thanks to the little-known, but very Catholic All Souls' and All Saints' Days, I enjoyed a second long weekend in a row and decided to visit the capital city and seek other be-costumed Americans who share my passion for gorging on Snickers, Haribo Gummis, and other Halloween hallmarks.

I reneged on my plans to dress up as Schoolhouse Rock's "Just a Bill" (too obscure for Austrians) and decided to dress as a pirate because I happened to own some appropriate clothing, although I sadly lacked a proper hook.  Despite living in a landlocked country, Austrians seem to appreciate that Johnny Depp-tinged pirate subculture that has been flourishing in the US for the past few years.  Just the same, I was surprised, but satisfied, when two youngsters shouted, "Ahoy, pirat!" at me in the underground.

To keep the weekend spooky, I also visited the Zentralfriedhof - Austria's largest cemetery.  Here I visited the graves of two of music's true legends: Beethoven and Falco.  Falco's grave was far and away the more popular and more stunning of the two.



Grave of Austrian Pop Legend Falco - of Rock Me Amadeus fame

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As my word of the day, I offer Intimfeindschaft.  An Austrian friend of mine suggested that it was one of German's heavy hitters, and I certainly agree.  It translates literally to "intimate enmity or hostility," and I think it's roughly equivalent to the popular Americanism "frenemies."

On Mistranlsations

Although I usually teach just the 14-18 year old crowd, yesterday I had the opportunity to visit a 1st Form (10-11 year olds) classroom, where the students are in their first year of English.  My teacher and I presented them with the taxing activity of describing cartoon pirates, in writing, with the useful English expressions "he's got a..." and "he hasn't got a..." 

Many of the youngsters shied away from my towering American height, but many more tried to impress me with fancy English sentences about their cartoon pirates.  One particularly ambitious lad proudly presented me his complicated, multiword sentence, "In his face is all big."  I felt that something had been lost in translation, so I asked what he was trying to say in German, to which he responded, "In seinem Gesicht ist alles groß," which means the same thing, fairly literally.  Then I thought maybe the problem was not the English language, but rather with this peculiar's idea of describing faces.  I was surprised to find out later that this is an appropriate way say in German that somebody has a large nose and ears.

And this is sadly why most things cannot be translated literally, why languages are difficult to learn, and why Google Translate cannot do your homework (yet).  And today's German word is der Übersetzsungfehler, or "mistranslation."  The fact that two of my German words of the day were types of mistakes (der Tippfehler)  be a reflection of how flawlessly I've been conducting my affairs....