"RammSHTEEN!!!"

The other night on the platform with Rammstein playing on my headphones, I began an on-the-fly translation of "Du Hast" into Alemmanic. ("Du! Du hasch! Du hasch mi!") However, I soon realised that the intended wordplay wouldn't come through.

See, there are two sources for /s/ in modern Standard German. One is Proto-Germanic *s. The other is Proto-Germanic /t/ by way of the so-called "Zweite Lautverschiebung" or High German Consonant Shift, which explains why, for instance, German essen corresponds to English eat. The two sounds weren't always the same, however. They were spelled differently in Old and Middle High German and Germanicists theorise that this reflected a difference in pronunciation. The zz from *t was probably made with the tip of the tongue against the teeth, a so-called apico-dental, whereas s represented a sound made with the blade of the tongue and/or with the tongue further back.

(It's interesting to note the parallels to the development of Western Romance languages, where /ts/ from the palatalisation of Vulgar Latin t and k was de-affricated in the early modern period to an apico-dental s. This fell together with inherited s in some varieties [e.g. French, Catalan, Portuguese, seseante Spanish] and remained distinct in other [primarily Castilian] varieties. Thus Castilian cazar [ka'θar] "hunt" from VL *captiare [cf. Latin captare "capture"] vs. casar [ka'sar] "marry" from VL casa "house".)

Part of the evidence for the variant pronunciations is the different behaviours of these s's when they come into contact with other consonants, like /r/. So, for instance, PGmc. *arsaz yields English arse (American English ass with sporadic loss of /r/ before /s/; cf. curse > cuss, burst > bust, etc.), but Standard German Arsch. This suggests that Old High German s was made further back in the mouth (closer to where [ʃ] is pronounced) than OHG zz.

In this respect, Alemmanic dialects go even further than Standard German, changing this s to sch (i.e. [ʃ]) before any consonant. So StG. Samstag "Saturday" corresponds to Alem. (Badisch) Samschdig. However, the change didn't happen with the dental sounds. So Alemmanic varieties distinguish isch (from MHG ist) "is" from isst (from MHG izzet) "[s/he] eats". In StG., the reflexes of both MHG words fall together as [ɪst] (although they are still distinguished in spelling). Now, since hassen originally had *t (cf. English hate), it ends up with [s] in Alemmanic vs. [ʃ] in hasch(t) (StG. hast) "[you] have". So Rammstein's punning on the two meanings of "Du has(s)t mich" doesn't translate into Alemmanic.

There may be another solution, however. Some colloquial varieties of German do have a verb haschen "to smoke hash", derived from the recent loanword Haschisch. If Badisch is one of them, then there still exists some possibility for wordplay in the translated lyrics. (The rest is left as an exercise for the student.)

German Lessons for Owlet: Special Advent Edition II

Another Sunday, another verse:

Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!
Hirten erst kundgemacht
Durch der Engel Halleluja.
Tönt es laut von Ferne und Nah:
Christ, der Retter ist da!
Christ, der Retter ist da!

You may have noticed that the syntax on this is a little screwy. I mean, screwier even than regular German! There are some things going on here that you can really only get away with in the poetic register.

Take the line starting with Hirten. Now, while it isn't unusual to put an object at the front like that, it is odd to have a prepositional phrase stranded after the participle--at least in writing. In speech, it's more common for so-called "afterthoughts" to pop up at the end. What's really freaky, however, is dropping out the conjugated verb, something I've only otherwise seen in early modern prose. In normal writing, you would use a form of werden since this is a passive. So, untangling it all, we get:

Hirten wird es erst durch den Engel Halleluja kundgemacht.

(I'm really at a loss to explain the use of der after durch in the original lyrics, since AFAIK durch always take the accusative case and therefore could never be followed by der, which is sometimes nominative, sometimes, genitive, and sometimes dative, but never accusative. Anyone?)

By comparison, the next sentence is easy: You simply have an inversion of the dummy subject (es) and the conjugated verb (tönt). This is SOP for interrogative sentences, so what makes it unusual is its occurrence in a declarative one. But the metre precludes starting on weakly-stressed es rather than a fully stressed component, i.e. the verb.