ivman's blague

Frau Long’s obituary was published this morning in the Greenville News as well as on the Mackey Mortuary site. I’m sorry that there was no picture to share with you. Since both obits read the same, I will post it below. On the Mackey site, there is the possibility to sign the guest book with your thoughts about Edith for her family to read. You can do so by clicking here.

Edith S. Long
January 10, 1930 - September 07, 2008

Edith Suendermann Long, 78, went home to her Lord Sunday, September 7, 2008.

Born January 10, 1930 in Czechoslovakia, she was the daughter of the late Eduard and Julie Kolbaba Suendermann. She became an American Citizen in 1955.

She was a retired Professor of German from Bob Jones University.

Mrs. Long was a member of Morningside Baptist Church.

She was predeceased by her husband, Carroll Bolt Long and a grandchild, Brittany Leigh Nicholas.

Surviving are two daughters, Gail Nicholas and Jane Hewitt; two sons, Paul S. Long and Carl E. Long and their spouses and eight grandchildren.

Services will be conducted Wednesday, September 10, 2008 at 4 PM at The Mackey Mortuary with Pastor Tony Miller and Dr. David Yearick officiating. Interment will follow in Graceland East Memorial Park.

The family will receive friends Tuesday from 7pm until 8:30pm at the mortuary.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to German Speaking Missions c/o Gospel Fellowship Association Missions, 1809 Wade Hampton Blvd., Greenville, SC 29609.

Obituaries and online registry at www.mackeymortuary.com

The Mackey Mortuary, 311 Century Drive, Greenville, SC

Tags: German, obits

Several German-born Americans, Dr. Guenter Salter and Mrs. Edith Long, have had a large influence in my life. They were my main German professors at BJU. Dr. Salter passed away a few years ago, and Frau Long passed away yesterday, September 7. Frau Long was like another mom to me during my undergrad studies, and since 1984 she has been my colleague and my friend. It’s been very hard to see her difficult battle with dementia for the past several years. Whenever I would visit her, I usually sensed that she knew that she knew me and that she enjoyed our visits. She tried so hard to communicate with me, but it was a mishmash of German, English, and gibberish. At the end of one of my last visits with her, she said to me clearly, “Thank you. Bye-bye.” I will post her picture and obit later this week, once it’s published. Visitation will be Tuesday evening from 7:00-8:30 at Mackey Mortuary, and the funeral will be at 4:00 Wednesday afternoon at Mackey. I will miss her, but I’m glad that she’s released from the bondage she’s endured and that she’s enjoying unclouded communion with our Lord.

Today’s instant vacation is something originally written by a German-born American who is well-known worldwide, Albert Einstein. On the right is a picture of him taken in 1921.

Einstein’s Problem

Albert Einstein wrote the following problem. I am passing it on as Einstein wrote it.

Facts:
1. There are 5 houses (along the street) in 5 different colors: blue, green, red, white, and yellow.
2. In each house lives a person of a different nationality: Brit, Dane, German, Norwegian, and Swede.
3. These 5 owners drink a certain beverage: beer, coffee, milk, tea, and water; smoke a certain brand: Blends, Blue Master, Dunhill, Pall Mall, and Prince; and keep a certain pet: bird, cat, dog, fish, and horse.
4. No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand, or drink the same beverage.

The question is: ” Who owns the fish?” (The fish is not mentioned in any of the 15 clues, so you have to figure everything else out first.)

Clues:
1. The Brit lives in the red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is on the left of the white house.
5. The green house’s owner drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the center house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps the horse lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.

NOTE: Albert Einstein said that 98% of the world couldn’t solve his puzzle. Can you do it? Pay close attention to all the clues and use your powers of logic to figure out “who owns the fish.” The picture of an older Einstein on the right seems almost like an appropriate taunt from him as people try to solve his puzzle.

You will definitely have to revisit some of the clues several times. A clue that seems to give you no information at first will prove to be useful later on, after the possibilities have been narrowed down. For example, the first clue, that the Brit lives in the red house, wasn’t useful until you learned from the ninth clue that he doesn’t live in the first house.

I drew a grid like the one below to write in the things of which I was certain until I finally arrived at the answer. I’ve done a couple of the totally obviously answers – from clues 8 and 9 – to get you started. When you figure out the answer, post it in the comments.

quotation…

“All the devil’s apples have worms in them. Don’t bite.” - Hal Webb

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Rob, who’s ready for some fall weather!

I don’t have a solution, but I admire the problem.

Tags: German, puzzles

I’ve really enjoyed having all my favorite music from the CD’s we own now on my new iPod. One of the features I haven’t taken advantage of yet is to download the artwork from the covers from iTunes.

The CD covers got me thinking about an e-mail I received recently that had some of the most ghastly LP album covers. Below are two dozen of what I think have to be among the worst album covers ever made! (Actually there are many that are even worse, but I would not include them on my blog.) Of course, by virtue of the fact that these are album jackets for LP records, that already dates them - you’ll definitely note some looks of by-gone eras. Some of these people obviously didn’t ask close friends or family if they should go with the picture they’d chosen.

I’m posting most of the album covers without comment. Some of the album jackets are immediately hilarious, but for others, you will have to look at carefully to see why they are just plain wrong! Some that I have included are not necessarily for the faint-hearted, though, so be forewarned! Scroll on at your own risk!

In the one below (I’ll translate the German), this album by Heino is called “Dear Mother… a bouquet that never withers.” Then in the little blue circle, it says, “A gift for the whole year”

quotation…

“You are stuck on stupid. I’m not going to answer that question.” - Lt. General Russel Honore, U.S. Army

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Rob

Write all complaints legibly in this space –> [ ]

Tags: album covers, art, German, insults, music, nostalgia

Several times lately I’ve been in situations where people were having fun with “pseudo-German.” As a French teacher and a former German teacher, I actually enjoy humor about the languages I love. One article I’m sending today pokes fun at English, and the other lampoons German - both are tongue-in-cheek.

The European Commission has announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU, rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had room for improvement and has therefore accepted a five-year for phasing in of “Euro-English”.

In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”. Sertainly, this will make sivil servants jump for joy. The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of the “k”, Which should klear up some konfusion and also keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f”, making words like “fotograf” 20% shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent “e” is disgrasful, and it should go away.

By the fourth yer, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v”.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou” and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and everivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali com tru! Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German lik zey vunted us to in ze forst plas!

***
Germany to Phase Out German
by William Grim

For the sake of those who don’t know German (and you don’t really need to to catch most of the humor), You’ll find a little “glossary” at the beginning of the article to unlock a couple of the otherwise hidden elements of humor. The author himself glossed some of the terms in the article. I also did one minor tweak to the wording to make it more appropriate to my clientel.

GLOSSARY– (the translations within the story itself were made by the author, William Grim, and not by ivman, and are not all completely accurate)

Lappenhund = lap dog
Pferdeloskarriage = horseless carriage
Fragenschlager = question slinger

Berlin - Citing the success of the new Euro currency, the members of the German Bundestag have voted unanimously to phase out German and to adopt English as the new official language.

“Let’s face it,” said German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. “German is one ugly language. I mean, the German word for butterfly is Schmetterling, for goodness sake. That sorta says it all.”

Leading German businessmen, like Deutscheseisenbahngesellschaftdirigent (German Railroad Company director) Guenther Lappenhund, say the language changeover will save the Germany economy billions. “We spend all this money on dual-language signage and for dubbing movies,” said Herr Lappenhund from his Hamburg office. “What a waste. Who wants to watch ‘Hey, Dude, Where’s My Car?’ (’Achtung, Duede, Wo Ist Meine Pferdeloskarriage?’) in German anyway?”

German mental health experts don’t think that the loss of their native tongue will be any more traumatic than the change from the Deutschmark to the Euro, which most Germans took in stride. “It’s not like Germans have much to be proud of,” said Dr. Renate Steinheimer, chairperson of the Psychology Department of Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. “You don’t see swarms of young Germans painting themselves red, black and gold and running through Dachau chanting ‘Ger-man-y!’ over and over. You think Germany, you still think of ol’ Schiklgruber and Sargeant Schultz of Hogan’s Heroes. There hasn’t been much positive news out of Germany since the Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Year’s War in 1648.”

Although details of the changeover are still being finalized, the general plan appears to be a complete conversion to English by January 1, 2007 with a 20% reduction in German usage each year for the next five years. German words beginning with letters A to D are slated to be retired by January 1, 2003. A national party is scheduled for December 31, 2006 when at 11:59pm the entire country of Germany will yell out “zwischen” (”between”) legally for the last time.

“It’ll be kinda sad,” said Bruenhilde Fragenschlager, a 10th grade student at the Hockenheimer Hochschule fuer Linguistik und Grammatik (Hockenheimer High School for Linguistics and Grammar), “But I understand the reasons for the change. Still, it’s nice that “Gesundheit” and “Kindergarten” are going to be grandfathered in, but I guess that’s because they’re really English words now. Boy, the next time we start a war, I sure hope we wait to invade Russia until after we’ve defeated England.”
___
by William Grim
© Copyright 2002

quotation…

“The gray areas of life are the dwelling place of the defiled conscience.” - Dr. Randy Jaeggli

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Rob Loach in Greenville SC

Change is constant, and the most dangerous place to be is inside your own comfort zone.

Tags: English, German, government, language