Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 3221 to 3225 (16 - 20 May 2016)
Random832:
--- Quote from: Case on 20 May 2016, 15:09 ---Question: Is it true that you write "Kindergarten" - just like the German spelling - but pronounce it "Kindergarden"? And what's the plural? Kindergartens? (German plural would be "Kindergärten")
--- End quote ---
The plural is rare because the word as a countable noun is rare. In principle, the word, as used in English, has two meanings:
Uncountable: The year of school immediately before first grade, of children aged 5-6 years old.
Countable: A school that only has kindergarten classes, and no preschool or elementary grade levels.
Such schools are themselves uncommon.
--- Quote from: Storel on 21 May 2016, 07:34 ---I didn't know that it used to be written as an 'e' on top of the vowel, though; very interesting! I wonder how on earth the 'e' got transmuted into two dots.
--- End quote ---
Well, in Sütterlin handwriting style the "e" (in full or as an umlaut) becomes two vertical lines. See Wikipedia. I suspect the use of two round dots in Antiqua typefaces simply followed naturally from a unification (who wants to keep two different versions around in the movable type era) with the diaeresis/trema, a distinct diacritic originally from Greek indicating a separation of two adjacent vowels.
--- Quote from: chaospersonified on 21 May 2016, 09:09 ---You say these things like they make sense. I do not know what that means, that some vowel sounds are front and some are back.
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It has to do with where your tongue is in your mouth. Make the sounds that you do know how to make, and pay attention to how your tongue is positioned.
Gyrre:
--- Quote from: Eastrim on 20 May 2016, 01:45 ---Except that, as some people noted, her reaction wasn't actually unusual at all. The situation is what's unusual - she doesn't have to be autistic or had past trauma for her reaction to be a perfectly reasonable reaction to this trauma. People's responses in high stress situations run the gamut, and hers is fairly well known.
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I think the main reason for the autism speculation is that she knows she's going to become nonverbal due to the stress and because she knows she doesn't handle emotions all that well.
That latter bit is the only thing I can think of to cause the trauma speculation.
Case:
--- Quote from: AtomicBlueFA1 on 20 May 2016, 16:32 ---Considering how much attention people have been paying to the clock lately, I'm quite surprised nobody has questioned Jeph's classification of it as a cuckoo clock. There really is no indication that it is a cuckoo clock aside from Jeph saying so, but as an amateur clock enthusiast, I really would like to say that I believe that he is incorrect. A cuckoo clock that anybody might recognize as such would have many carvings and ornamentations around the case that would still be visible from the back, which is the only view of it we have been given thus far. A cuckoo clock would also have a minimum of four chains hanging from the bottom (technically two chains with both ends hanging down, with a cast iron weight attached to one end of each). It seems to me that what she has is simply a small spring driven mantle clock, which of course may still be of German origin.
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Now that you mention it ... You're right! Black Forest cuckoo-clocks are usually big, heavy affairs you hang on walls. My Grandma had one that fits your description, with heavy weights at the end of the chains in the shape of fir-cones. Something like this
As to how "typically German" they are these days:
Those are the type of clocks that many younger Germans (only) remember from their grandparents' places, or clocks which are often sold to the US and China - the "originals" are really pricey - and, again, for us me, this is "What Granny had on the Walls". Really old-school. Clashes a bit with the interior decoration younger Germans tend to prefer ...
... when you've had lots of dark greens and diarrhoea-browns in your childhood, you tend to prefer the kind of colours that make a black-forest cuckoo-clock stick out like a ... huge, noisy contraption coloured like a bathroom-accident :-\
(There's a few articles (albeit in German) that tie the economic "crisis" of Black Forest cuckoo-clock manufacturers to the Dollar exchange rate ... On top of changing fashions, one could surmise that people tend to eschew 'last-opportunity purchases' of unwieldy 500€ mechanisms with chains and weights one could use for martial-arts training when the manufacturer is only an hour's drive away - It seems it's mostly US citizens on a Europe-tour that make such spur-of-the-moment purchases)
If you do a Google-Image-Search for "Kuckucksuhr", the only casing that vaguely resembles Brunhilde's clock is:
in a Cuckoo-clock DIY-quide. This is something you'd be more likely to find in an actual German-burrow, rather than the thingy in the first pic.
(I think that "Kuckucksuhr" is more like smth. of a meme for younger Germans - a part of folk-lore - rather than a specific, patented type of clockwork. The shape of the casing - the "Bahnwärter-Häusschen" (Train-station-attendant-kiosk) - is mandatory, as is the damn bird, but the rest ... This is, of course, totally subjective speculation, extrapolated from one datapoint/person ... Based on some German ads I get from the Google-search, it seems you can sell smth. you call a 'Kuckucksuhr' to a German if it has a particular casing & the bloody bird, and if it's cheaper than 19.99€ and made in North Korea - but, of course, we'd know it's not the 'real deal', but a cuckoo-clock 'in spirit only'. Same as Japanese know that not everything that is called a 'Katana' is a priceless inheritance handed down from father to son ever since it was forged in the 16th century, see?)
And now that you've mentioned it: Jeph never said it was a cuckoo-clock - He asked "Is this a cuckoo-clock?".
------------------------- She's not autistic - she's just German! -----------------------------------
Sooooooh:
* Jeph took a name that screams "I am German!" to the germano-a-typical, because it says so in popular US culture.
Actually, Brunhilde was most 'popular' as a girls name in 1925 (place 63. Yes, we have statistics for that. It's Germany ...). Right now, there's no data on it's popularity, because the sample-size is too small.
I've never, ever met somebody named Brunhilde, or Brünhild etc. (*)
* Then he took a clunky contraption and asked "Is this a cuckoo-clock?" ...
And everybody, myself included, goes: "Trival, my dear Watson - She's German, of course: Hypnotising cuckoo clocks and passing on messages to please leave them alone bcs. pooping is WHAT GERMANS DO!":psyduck:
(Really, we do stuff like that - like, all the fucking time. Ok, everytime you aren't looking ... Fine, alright, you got me - we don't. Like NOT AT ALL ...)
(*) Even the more common "Hildegard" is rather rare - those are the types of old-school names that translate into smth. like "Fabled Chest-Armour, Rips-intestines-from-their-enemies-guts" in old-high-German. Not really that popular these days ...
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@Storel, @zmeiat_joro:
EDIT: Removed bollocks ...
The rowdiest Umloutz in the German language - the so-called Umlewdz - are ... *drumroll* ... "Tüpfelhyänenöhrchen" (Ears-of-a-spotted-hyena) and "Übergrössenträger" ((Male)-Plus-size-wearer)
Morituri:
OTOH, I am American, and there was a Brünhilde in my first-grade class. Whom we called "Brill" until fifth grade when she started insisting on people using her full name. There was also a Thed, (rhymes with "need") who I thought had the more unusual name.
Oh, and FWIW, the full rule that gets applied to "Kindergarten" is
"T when it occurs between two voiced vowels, is usually pronounced with a D sound, unless the word is emphasized in the sentence or the syllable is emphasized in the word. This is almost universally true in large urban centers in America. In rural areas, it usually depends on whether the original settlers in that area were mostly German immigrants, and on how long it's been since the area was settled.
BenRG:
Poll Results
So, now what?
1. Clinton begs his mum to let Eyebrow Girl Brun sleep over for the night; it turns into a longer-term thing - 25 (23.1%)
2. We cut back to Marten and Claire; Clinton's call for help interrupts a... moment - 20 (18.5%)
3. Clinton begs his mum to let Eyebrow Girl Brun sleep over for the night - 13 (12%)
4. New arc! May's probation hearing is coming up and she needs to persuade her friends to speak on her behalf - 12 (11.1%)
5. Bubbles has things to think about and notices a fire in the city... a BIG fire - 11 (10.2%)
6. Clinton begs Claire, Marten and Faye to let Eyebrow Girl Brun sleep over for the night - 10 (9.3%)
=7. New arc! Just what has Hannelore been doing with her time when she isn't at CoD? - 6 (5.6%)
=7. Other - 6 (5.6%
9. New arc! Steve returns and he needs Marten's help for something! - 3 (2.8%)
10. We meet another of Jeph's new characters when she comes into CoD the next morning - 2 (1.9%)
Well, it turns out we were all wrong! :lol: I guess it's our own fault for not imagining that a local hotel could be so generous to offer someone benighted and without a home due to mischance a bed for a night! Shameful, cynical forumites that we are! Of course, it probably helps that Northampton's sheriff's department is footing the bill, I'm sure!
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