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| November 2009 Newsletter |
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I WANT TO BE INFORMED OF THE NEXT NEWSLETTER AS SOON AS IT IS ONLINE |
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Our activities for November
FIRST GERMAN FILM FESTIVAL
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Communicating in German |
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At The German-Maltese Circle is pleased to announce a NEW course of 10 lessons entitled "Communicating in German" led by Frau Birgitta Gatt. Lessons of 90 minutes each will be held once a week on Wednesdays - starting on Wednesday, 4th November at 6.00p.m. Only persons with at least a B1 (Zertifikat Deutsch) level in German need to apply. Booking is open from the Circle's office. Course fee is Euros 50. Membership for 2010 has to be paid upon booking. 
Each lesson will be divided into five parts, namely: Topics will include: daily situations, aspects of recent German history especially the fall of the Berlin wall and aspects of non-violent language communication (gewaltfreie sprachliche Kommunikation). Selected texts, DVDs, CDs, songs and possibly film clips will be used during the lessons. tention all Members!! - Exciting Events for May at Messina Palace |
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Wahlparty im German-Maltese Circle |
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Etwa 180 Besucher in angeregter und erwartungsvoller Stimmung wurden Zeuge bei der Bekanntgabe des Endresultats, d.h. einer neuen Koalition, die aus CDU und FDP bestehen wird. Somit übernimmt Frau Angela Merkel für eine weitere Legislaturperiode das Amt der Bundeskanzlerin. Die Stimmung unter den Besuchern war fröhlich und aufgeschlossen, und viele Teilnehmer hatten zum ersten Mal die Möglichkeit, auch die Gattin des Botschafters, Frau Annette Braun, persönlich kennenzulernen. |
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Die Gesprächsrunde - Keeping in touch with the German Language by Joseph Busuttil |
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If you do not use it, you lose it. These sage words apply to any technique, talent, or skill, including keeping a foreign language alive and kicking and preventing it from rusting. The Gesprächsrunde is an excellent and appropriate platform, which can launch one to achieve these aims. Over the past few years, those attending have been regaled with a veritable feast, a vast array both of speakers as well as subjects. Among the themes covered, one finds intrinsic German backgrounds such as towns, traditions, the economy, the educational system, and sports. The life and works of artists, writers and performers like Michael Prechtl, Uwe Timm, Bastian Sick, Martin Mosebach, and Marlene Dietrich, were explained in detail. With so much emphasis today on precaution being better than cure, a series of talks tackled issues like the benefits of classical music in lowering high blood pressure, and the advantages of a midday catnap in preventing heart attacks. Another hot current title was the protection of wildlife and the environment. Matters Maltese have not been discarded either, and local topics to surface regularly have included the popular fish Lampuka (die Goldmakrele) and the wildlife in our islands. The background of Playmobil – a success story of German and Maltese industrial cooperation – was another topic of great interest. The above titles are not an exhaustive documentation of what has been going on in the Gesprächsrunde, but highlights of some of the talks that I have attended. There are many more. The speakers, who lecture gratis, come from all walks of life, and arrive well prepared with extensive knowledge of the stated topic, as well as generous handouts, illustrations and regalia. And sometimes more. The latest talk I attended – an ode to Grappa – was even enhanced at the end by complimentary drinks of this Elixier der Fröhlichkeit. The Gesprächsrunde is fun, and there is no pressure to perform. Learning comes from interactive and practical conversation. These talks are ideal for those with a previous knowledge of the German language, and who want to keep abreast of the subject, both as regards fluency and accuracy, as well as to widen their well of knowledge. Unfortunately, one notices a dwindling number of persons making up the audience for these talks. People often complain that locally there is not much going on, that Malta suffers from a lack of mental stimulation. Yet there is so much of it at our fingertips. The Gesprächsrunde is a case in point. It would be such a great pity were it to die a natural death owing to lack of interest by the Circle’s members. |
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A short history of the German Language |
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German is one of the world's major languages. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by about 80 million non-native speakers. Standard German is widely taught in schools, universities and Goethe Institutes worldwide. It is overall the third most learned language worldwide. It is the language with the largest number of native speakers in the European Union, and, just behind English and ahead of French, the second-most spoken language in Europe.
The
mere existence of a document in a common language was but the first
step towards the development of a standard language. The next step
was the advent of descriptions of the language in dictionaries and
grammars. In the time of baroque, poetry was not so much regarded as
an art but more so as a kind of craftsmanship adhering to fixed
rules. Some of such rules were written down by Martin Opitz
(1597–1639) and others. In 1648, Justus Georg Schottel (1612–1676)
published his “Ausführliche Arbeit von der Teutschen Haubt
Sprache” (Elaborate work about the German main language), Johann
Christoph Gottsched (1700–1766) followed later with a grammar and
Johann Christoph Adelung (1732–1806) with a dictionary. In the time
of the Enlightenment, the motive of writing grammars was no longer
the interest in defining rules for poets and writers, but rather the
conviction that every observable phenomenon, including language, is
subject to scientific laws like those we find in physics. Both
attitudes, baroque craftsmanship and Enlightenment science, led to
an understanding of grammar as prescriptive rather than descriptive.
In the 19th century, interest in the German language shifted towards
its purification by eliminating unnecessary foreign words, an
endeavour during which many useful words of today's German language
were coined, whereas the attempt to replace well-established
loanwords by inventing awkward “German” circumlocutions for them
rightly failed. Another important step towards the standardisation of the language was the creation of a generally binding orthography by the kingdom of Bavaria in 1879; the kingdom of Prussia followed one year later when Konrad Duden (1829–1911) created his famous dictionary “according to the new Prussian and Bavarian rules” which has been continued and adapted to language changes until today. This dictionary was regarded as the de-facto standard (and sometimes even the de-jure standard) of German orthography. Since 1880, the orthography has been subjected to two reforms in the first and the last years of the 20th century. To sum up, today's standard German is “the language of the Southerners in the pronunciation of the Northerners” – in principle a reasonably fair compromise. (Contents based on research by Helmut Richter) |
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But
how did this begin. Until the 12th Century, there was
little necessity for a common German language since laws and
administrative and judicial documents were written in Latin. But in
the 13th and 14th century, German became more and more used in the
administration. By the time of Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian (reigned
1314–1347), most imperial documents were written in German, in
particular when they pertained to affairs in Southern Germany, and
documents he issued as Duke of Bavaria were nearly exclusively
written in German. His successor, Karl IV, had his chancery at
Prague, which had a still greater influence on the common judicial
language. At that time, this common language was not the language of
the ordinary people but the jargon of imperial administrators and
lawyers. This changed significantly with Johannes Gutenberg's
invention of printing with movable type and with Martin Luther's
(1483–1546) translation of the Bible. For the first time, there was
a German text of common interest to spread rapidly all over Germany,
thus communicating not only the contents but also a specific variety
of the German language. Luther put quite some effort in carefully
selecting an idiom that would as far as possible be perceived as
natural in the different regions of Germany. To this end, he took
the chancery language of Prague and Meißen as his standard, but
changed its style drastically so that it was no longer the stilted
language of lawyers, but resembled more the colloquial language of
the man in the street. 
