[Episode NEIN] [Entire series]
(If you don’t understand the joke, I truly envy you. And no, this is the one thing I won’t explain.)
Alright, so
I know I’m really late with this, but in my defense, there was very little
German in the last episodes, so I waited a while to compile it all. Here we go!
At one
point in episode 10, when Caleb has to say a name, he says “Schmidt”. It’s one
of the most common German last names, and literally means Smith. Well, Smith
the last name, not smith the profession. The word for that is Schmied. But it’s
literally the same word, or at least was a few centuries ago before some monk
decided the best way to speak German, the pure accurate way, was the way they
did it around Hanover. Most of the country chose to ignore that until this day.
The most
common surname in Germany is Müller, btw. Literally Miller. Both the name and
the profession.
Caleb also
asked “Was?” for clarification at one point. It means what, plain and simple.
On the last
real, on-set Talks Machina episode, Liam also said there was a lot of “Sturm
und Drang” around the argument between Caleb and Jester. Sturm und Drang is a
literary movement of the 1760ies – 1780ies. German teachers love it and will
make you interpret poems in class from this period a lot. And then you have to
read Goethe or Schiller.
Goethe, by
the way, is probably the only thing that will mean anything to an international
audience. He’s the one who wrote Faust, of Faustian Deal fame. Sell your soul
to the devil fuck a 14 year old after your poisoned her mom. Yes, that is the
basic plot, there’s a reason all you’ve (probably) heard about is the part
about deals with the devil.
(The link is to yet another Jan Böhmermann video. It has no English subtitles, but if you happen to be one of the German critters reading this, or in any way capable of getting a kick out of something in German, treat yourself.)
(Also, Faust was written a liiiiittle too late to reeeaaaally count as Sturm & Drang. But it’s where the author got started.)
I’m being
flippant about this on purpose, of course you can do serious research and all
that on your own if this is too dismissive for you, but in general, Sturm &
Drang was a movement of young, educated men who didn’t like authority and
conventions and had a lot of feelings they wrote poetry and plays about. The
hipsters of their time. Also, isn’t it fun how people literally always stay the
same?
In that regard,
I couldn’t think of a better way to describe fandom discourse. Kudos, Liam,
kudos.
(Sturm
& Drang is also what the school name Durmstrang was based on. I have
thoughts about this entire shebang, but, like… A school in Russia, attended by
Bulgarians, home of wizard Hitler the first, named after a German literary
movement… Riiiight.)
Episode 11
then featured a building which I think had the word “Zauber” in its name, but
everyone insisted on calling it “sauber”. The z in German is pronounced like a
ts. Zauber means spell. As in, to cast a magic spell, which is probably what it
was supposed to mean.
There are a
lot fewer words for magic and magicians in German, by the way. My first
instinct would be to call Caleb’s class Zauberer – the same way wizard was
translated in Harry Potter. However, official D&D books in German call the
wizard a Magier, which is closer to mage, technically. Zauberer is used for sorcerer,
but those terms are pretty synonymous, usually. I’d switch it, personally, but
I too can’t really think of a more appropriate word for the sorcerer class.
Warlock has
been translated as Hexenmeister, by the way. Literally witch master, and close
to the Witcher, at least in language. I don’t take issue with that, but then
again it’s what I’ve been used to since early WoW days, so hey.
Pronouncing
the Z like an S, aka saying “sauber”, turns it into a different word entirely. Sauber
means clean, which, you know, is also appropriate, given that we’re in the
fancy part of town.
And
speaking of fancy parts, there’s also the High Richter. I posted a little PSA
last week to make y’all aware that it most likely supposed to be spelled that
way, not Rickter or Ricter or whatever else you can come up with. Richter means
judge, the profession, which seems accurate – though I’m not entirely sure on
how the Wildemount legal system works. They way they talked to the woman made
her come off as more of a state prosecutor? Or something like an Inquisitor?
The campaign guide did state that the outer parts of the Dwendalian Empire were
inspired by Spain. Albeit 14th century Spain, which is one century
shy of the actual Spanish Inquisition. The one no one expects. Yes.
And because
this is kind of going to be my job, I can confidently tell you that we don’t
have any appropriate German term for a High Richter. There’s, of course, a
court hierarchy and all that, and you can rise within that hierarchy as a judge,
but your title just becomes judge of this and that court. And the word high is
not included anywhere.
So this is
it for the time being. Depending on the amount of German coming up in, like,
one hour from now, I might write the next post after Easter (which at least my
family soooort of celebrates), or wait until after episode 13.
Until then,
everyone remember: Taliesin Jaffe lied to you. They’re the Mighty Nein. N E I
N. Please. And yes, using a bunch of German automatically means you invite our
pedantic asses over to correct your spelling. Which just about every German I
have met in this community is happy and willing to do! Please consult us if you
plan on including any German in your fanfiction or fanart. None of us will be able to
agree on whether a certain phrase is appropriate to be used during sexytimes,
but at least it’ll be grammatically correct, and isn’t that what REALLY
matters?
Overdressed & Underappreciated 