"Herr Wirt, was seh' ich da?"

• YAY SNOW!
• My bittersweet farewell to the Berghoff last night consisted of: A dark Berghoff beer; Jagerschnitzel [sic] (surprisingly, you can't even taste the Jägermeister) with mashed, Spätzle, creamed spinach; and Apfelstrudel with ice cream for dessert. (The strudel came cold, so I pointed this out to my waiter; it came back hot in under two minutes. Fuckin' a, I'm going to miss a comfy, reasonable restaurant with that level of service.) Throughout the whole meal, I felt farklemt fun hertsn--and would've even if Nuphy hadn't pointed out it's where we had our first date.
• Caught a glimpse of the new guy at work last night. Paradoxically, he's both thicker and a bit less attractive than he seemed at first.
• If you have a chance to hear Ruhrpott soprano Anne Schwanewilms, go for it. None of us at Der Rosenkavalier could believe this was the first time she'd sung the Marschalin; her creamy voice was definitely the highlight--and this in an opera with Susan Graham! I complained a lot about the mugging and "wacky bidness", particularly from Baron Ochs' retinue, but this was outweighed by good characterisations and subtle acting from the female leads. Nonetheless, I remain adamant that whoever decided to put hussars in mint-green livery on a set of simulated black, white, and pink marble should have his queer card revoked.

German Word-of-the-Day for Owlet: Day 7

kochen /'kɔxən/ "to cook"

I wouldn't go so far as to call this a false friend, but it's worth keeping in mind the imperfect overlap between English cook and German kochen. The latter covers activities we'd normally use a different verb for, like boiling. You can't "cook water" in English, but German-speakers bringen Wasser zum Kochen all the time. Since this is the first and most important step in making tea, Tee kochen stands for the whole business, e.g. (1) Ich koche mir eine Kanne Tee. Also, when someone kocht vor Wut, it doesn't mean they're cooking madly, it just means they're mad--"seething with rage", as we'd say in English.

Kochen is a "regular weak verb", which means the conjugation is as simple as it gets for German: Wir kochen Eier, (2) Gestern kochten wir Eier, Wir haben öfters Eier gekocht. Someone who kocht is a Koch or a Köchin, depending, and too many of them verderben den Brei. (How many Köche is too viele? A fair question, and one which the redoubtable authority Wolfgang Hildesheimer seeks to answer in his short story Der Brei auf unserem Herd.) Where they do this is called die Küche (believe it or not, a true cognate of English kitchen; the upwardly-mobile Germanic tribes all ripped off Latin cucina to name a dedicated room their barbarian ancestors never had).

Exercises:
(a) Provide English translations of the numbered sentences.
(b) Given that Ei is neutre, how would you say "boiled egg"?
(c) "Depending"? Depending on what?
(d) Assemble the pieces provided to form the German proverb which corresponds to "Too many cooks spoil the soup".
(*) Bonus question: What's the gender of Brei?

(no subject)

上中文課有一個生學生，沒留久。原來他沒教正體字所以連一個字看不懂。

好了，我們發現別的人練習中文跟我們。在越南飯店誰預想碰見說國語的人？因為墨珠想使用美國運通卡，所以我們去天江飯店。﹝原來不接受，可是那是別的時間的故事。﹞從臨近桌子我偷聽到服務員跟顧客說中國話，聽不決定他們說甚麼方言。一認識廣洲話，我就聽服務員說英文說“我也會國語”。

這個少年下次對我們來的時候，我試一試跟他說國語。