A Message for Angela Merkel

Could one of our German people please pass this onto the Chancellor?  Danke!

Dear Ms Merkel,

I'd like to thank your country for adding the word 'poltergeist' to the international lexicon.  However, there is a slight problem, which I hope that you'll resolve in your next Parliament.

It's supposed to be 'i before e except after c'.  A 'g' isn't a 'c', therefore it should be 'poltergiest'.  This official typo is causing me to keep making mistakes in my latest Wizzley articles.

Please can you introduce a Bill or something to change the spelling forthwith. You can let Simon know when it's done, so he can give us the heads up. Then I can correct it in my Wizzles.

Thank you very much in advance.

yours

Jo Harrington.

Why would you apply English spelling rules to a German word? Am I missing something?

chefkeem: 10/12/2013 - 02:06 PM

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Why would you apply English spelling rules to a German word? Am I missing something?

Because my Mum taught me that rule when I was a kid.  You really wouldn't want to mess with her. 

O.O

So that's an English language rule?  I thought you lot gave us the language in the first place!  Or is this one of those moments when Britain took something that worked perfectly well, then over-complicated it with unnecessary regulations?

I'm assuming that you're not going to pass on my message to the Chancellor then. *sigh*

brl: 10/12/2013 - 02:10 PM

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Jo, here's a quick tip for spelling German words:

I've found, and German speakers please correct me if I'm wrong, that when there are two vowels together in a German word, you only pronounce the second vowel and it's always long (except for äu and eu which is "oy").  If you know how it's supposed to sound and that there are two vowels, you'll always get it right with this tip.

Like in geist or spiel (schpeel)... second vowel, long.  

(source: one term of Beginning German that I barely passed in university)

Ah!  Thanks!  So the Germans just like adding extra vowels, where none are needed?   Bear in mind that my ancestry is Welsh.  Most people complain to us that we have no vowels!  (We do. Just not the same ones as in English.  'w' and 'y' are both vowels.)

*Practices pronouncing ChefKeem as Chef Kem.* >.>

I always use the sound rule to work out which way around German words are spelled when I have a problem.

Poltergeist: pol-ter-g-aye-st. So -ei-.

Now take the formal form of you, Sie - 'zeeee'.

But Thank God is Gott sei Dank. Gott z-aye Dank.

Most of the time it works.

Paula is correct.

Just found this page for you British:

http://www.europa-pages.co.uk/lessons/german-pronunciation.html

English is a pain in the butt... i before e? 

HA

beige, cleidoic, codeine, conscience, deify, deity, deign,
dreidel, eider, eight, either, feign, feint, feisty,
foreign, forfeit, freight, gleization, gneiss, greige,
greisen, heifer, heigh-ho, height, heinous, heir, heist,
leitmotiv, neigh, neighbor, neither, peignoir, prescient,
rein, science, seiche, seidel, seine, seismic, seize, sheik,
society, sovereign, surfeit, teiid, veil, vein, weight,
weir, weird

I would bet most of those words were not English in origin but were borrowed words from other languages.

I used to have an icon which stated, as per Discordian Quotes 

English: a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages & rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary.

As any avid viewer of QI will know the i before e rule has many more examples of when the rule doesn't apply than when it does.

Well, looking at all of this, it seems that my mother LIED to me!  I shall take it up with her forthwith!