Thursday, July 26, 2007

I glaube Ihr nicht, dass Ihr nicht traurig sind. Ich glaube Sie sind sehr traurig...
- Dr Thomas Kupfer, Der Krieger und Die Kaiserin


In the mood for German after Komissar Rex, so I dug out Der Krieger und Die Kaiserin - one of my favourite German movies. Feeling somewhat proud for not requiring subtitles, although I'm not entirely sure if that's because of the German immersion or if it's because I've seen the movie so often I know what they're saying now.

Languages really are fantastic things. One of my favourite things about German is the way they have words that sum up things we take entire phrases in English to explain. I sometimes wonder whether learning more languages opens you up to more possibilities for understanding the world around you, not simply because you develop an ability to communicate with more people, but because your own mind is expanded by concepts often unexplored within your own language.

If that makes any sense at all... It is kind of late, sleep's calling and the guy who plays Bodo (Benno Fürmann) is distractingly gorgeous.

2 comments:

Lippy said...

LOL, hope you managed to get some sleep. I'd love to see an example of one of those German words that you mentioned. I know very, very little of the language, but never too old to learn, right?

Della said...

Yes, finally did manage to sleep!

And no, you're never too old to learn a language :)

Some of the examples I'm thinking of are things like Weltanschauung, Schadenfreude, Weltpolitik, Weltschmerz, Wanderlust, Realpolitik, Zeitgesit, Gestalt, stuff like that :)