A Modest Request to Pipe the Fuck Down

There comes a point when you have to say something about it – whatever it may be. I’ve been fretting over one it in particular for the past several months: trying to determine how best to request that people kindly, to quote the words of one Jenna Marbles: Pipe the fuck down – and stop correcting my German.

It’s all about modesty, you see. I believe one can only be modest up unto a certain point.

I’m not naive when it comes to my level of German, I just try not to get punched in the face by talking about it. It’s advanced for the amount of time I’ve spent learning. Great.

However, despite repeatedly coming to Germany over the span of four years and having listened time and time again to the yo German is ridiculous loop as it – without fail – plays out in every conversation with every new acquaintance I’ve ever made – this is not an exaggeration, and really, it’s beginning to get quite old – and knowing full well the extent of my own knowledge of the German language, it still feels like I’m stamping my forehead with ARROGANT when I say, please cut it with the crap.

Which I really shouldn’t, because in Germany speaking bluntly doesn’t require a justification or an apology from the speaker for having had to make such a blunt statement.

So screw it. Stop correcting me. Why? Because it feels to me – and here I’m talking specifically about my presence on Youtube – like I’m always being graded. Now, there’s one thing about grading the quality of a video and its content, another about grading based on number of syllables incorrectly articulated: this where only 2 mistakes means yo German’s still ridiculous, but 2 whole mistakes means yo German’s getting worse man.

So to put it bluntly: I will not under the guise of false modesty, allow myself to be subjected to ill-proposed “suggestions for improvement” which would, were I to heed such nonsense, render me a German-speaking gynoid circa the era of Bismarck.

Even Doctor Faust had 24 years to get his shit together. I’ve only been learning German for 4.5 years. I have time to improve, but for now I’m pretty content with my level and have enough resources and experience to correct myself. So pipe the fuck down.

Please.

This blog is a summary of the video „Eine bescheidene Bitte“ (German), which I posted to my YT-channel on May 22, 2013: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggyby7DQW7M.

Jeder stirbt für sich allein

»Die meisten Menschen haben heute Angst, eigentlich alle, weil Sie alle irgendwo irgendetwas Verbotenes tun und immer fürchten, jemand weiß davon.«1

»Jeder stirbt für sich allein« ist ein Roman »über die illegale Tätigkeit eines Berliner Arbeiter-Ehepaares während der Jahre 1940 bis 1942.«2 Das Buch schrieb Rudolf Ditzen alias Hans Fallada 1946, kurz vor seinem Tode, angesichts einer ihm von Johannes R. Becher gegebenen Gestapo-Akte, die Informationen zu dem Schicksal des Berliner Ehepaares Otto und Elise Hampel enthielt.

• Die Hampels wurden aufgrund Widerstand gegen die NS-Partei gefangen und 1943 hingerichtet.
• Laut einer von ihnen in der Hauptstadt verteilten Anti-Nazi-Postkarte: »Der Hitlerismus vernichtet die Grundsätze aller Menschen Rechte!«3
  

Dieses Exemplar eines Buches zum deutschen Widerstand steht direkt neben meine Kopie von Jan Karskis »Mein Bericht an die Welt« (1944),4 was ich kurz nach einem Besuch in Oświęcim i Brzezinka beschaffte.5

Um eingesehen zu werden braucht es Zeit, – mir schwirren schon hunderte von Gedanken im Kopf herum, -tiefe Gedanken, daran ich nachhänge und versuche, völlig verwirrt, in mehreren Schriften abzufassen.

Dies soll die Hinführung sein. Mich interessiert es im Voraus, ob einige von euch entweder »Jeder stirbt für sich allein« oder andere Werke von Hans Fallada schon gelesen habt, und, wenn ja, was für einen Eindrick dies auf euch machte.

Bezeichnungen:

1 Aus der ungekürtzten Neuausgabe von Hans Falladas »Jeder stirbt für sich allein,« 3. Kapitel: Ein Mann namens Barkhausen, pp. 28. ISBN 978-3-7466-2811-0.

2 Ibid., 5. Anmerkung des Autors, geschrieben in Berlin am 26. Oktober 1946.

3 Bild der erwählten Postkarte:

http://www.was-konnten-sie-tun.de/uploads/

tx_iobio/hampel_postkarte_5758_11_01.pdf

via http://www.was-konnten-sie-tun.de.

4 »Story of a Secret State« beschreibt Instanzen des polnischen Widerstandes. Ich habe mir die 2010 von Ursel Schäfer und Franka Reinhart ins Deutsch übersetzte Ausgabe des Textes. ISBN 978-3-518-46367-3.

5 Respektive Auschwitz I und Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

Quelle des Bildes: http://www.ndr.de/kultur/

literatur/buchtipps/nbjederstirbt101.html.

Studies and Future Careers

I just realized I haven’t once talked about my studies.

Well, apart from an occasional post here and there on Facebook… but hey, who’s keeping track?

My courses of study are quite boring, or so I’ve been told: this, however, from people who haven’t seen how hard archaic prose and complex syntax get me off.

I study German and Interdisciplinary English/Writing: the German focusing mainly on literature and literary history, the English on the same + literary criticism, and the Writing on the art of rhetoric and authorship; all this, my own dabblings in linguistics and history, and the 18 liberal arts core courses required by my university.

It’s the upper-level philosophies, theologies and ethics that I’m taking during my current year abroad in Germany, in addition to, obviously, German. Unlike some students who study abroad simply to improve their language skills, everything that I do during my year abroad will count towards either my major or my graduation requirements.

I’m a junior, currently in my 6th semester, and should, if all of my requirements are completed without a hitch, be graduating at the end of the 2013/14 spring semester: at which point in time two roads diverge in the yellow wood and I either directly continue my education or work an internship. Whether in Germany or America, simultaneously or not are the minute details that will work themselves out in the coming months.

The goal is a bilingual editing-translating-writing three-way, which is fancy, misleading people-pleasing jargon for a whole lotta freelance.