The Simpsons’ spirit is abound in our house right now.

Yesterday I had to drag my kids away from watching The Simpsons Season Four. At the supermarket this morning they discovered chocolate eggs with Simpson figures to collect. Now I have come across this link by chance.

Bart, stop it!!

Simpsonize yourself and dump it in your friends’ mailboxes. At least this is what Homer would do.

http://simpsonizeme.com/

Having taken another trip to Franconia just yesterday, I was confronted again by their extraordinary way of spelling a word out loud. Franconians cannot differentiate between hard and soft consonants. I used to be one of them and found it quite natural to ask whether to spell a person’s name with a “hartes b” (that in itself is pronounced: hardes) oder “weiches b”. Our Franconian ears are not trained to hear the difference and for the first twenty years of my life, I thought all Germans asked to spell like that. I actually had to leave the country to learn more about this.

The other day I had to call a local person in Schweinfurt/Franconia and had to leave my name: Shipley. Well, of course, it is foreign and needs spelling. When I came to the “p” part, I pronounced it very clearly and after the initial question of “Har(d)es oder weiches b”, I repeated it once more, almost spitting on the receiver. The caller’s third attempt came to decipher my “p” and so I offered “p wie in Paul”. He was very happy to repeat “b wie in Baul”, but I am sure he at least knew how to spell it. Actually, common nouns are usually spelled correctly even if mispronounced.

When I was in school we used to laugh about this joke, and we did not know it was about our special linguistic species. Here it goes:

Why are Franconians a bit worried when they see a car with the plaque “GB” following them?
They are worried because they think it means “Griminalbolizei”. The proper spelling is “Kriminalpolizei”, which means Criminal Investigation Department, or in short: police.

We used to think that was so funny. How would anybody be so stupid not to know how to spell that….?!? At least we thought it was about Franconians not being able to spell.

Our son Thomas could not understand why his grandparents always called him Domas. Once Thomas politely tried to make his grandmother aware of this and pronounced it correctly for her. Her Franconian ears could not filter out any difference and she answered:” Of course, I know your name is Domas.” He gave up after that.

Once after I had just moved here to Oberursel/Hesse, I was taking the elevator and returned a person’s greeting by saying: “Guten Morgen!” Unbeknownst to me it must have come out as “Guden Morgen” and he immediately asked if I was from the area of Schweinfurt.

When our daughter Margo was born, Franconians wanted to know why we had given her a boy’s name. We pronounce it Margo (the French way with a long o sound at the end) and they heard “Margo”. But the boy’s name Marco is, of course, also pronounced “Margo”. Not knowing the spelling they heard Margo, but perceived Marco.

Shopping at Kaufhof (a department store chain) in Schweinfurt is always a pleasure when the cashier asks us whether we have a “baebec” card. “Baebec” is Franconian English for “Payback”, which is some kind of bonus card. The first time I heard “baebec”, I was really taken aback and wondered what kind of commercial newcomer this was. It did not sound English at all.

Here are a few more:

*Glasse! = Klasse!! (Toll!)

*Budenschnitzel (Bude = booth) = Putenschnitzel (turkey cutlets)

*Beder = Peter

Yesterday my family in Franconia was commenting on how proper my German has become.

From the balconies of life….

This photo was taken on our annual visit to spend the second Christmas holiday with family in Franconia. I stood on the balcony of my childhood home overlooking the farm buildings (arranged in a U-shape) and the very close neighboring rooftops. Coming from a “farm” in Germany meant growing up in a house separated from the pig sty and barn only by a cobblestone courtyard. The animals we had never saw the light of day. The fields were outside the village and we had to get there by tractor, or sometimes on foot to join in the work at a later time. A very familiar smell was the manure pile across from our kitchen window facing the courtyard. In the summertime that same wall of the house was covered with a black sheet of flies.

Here I stood on that balcony and looked at the same shingles. Nothing had changed.

This photo was taken from our present balcony in Oberursel/Taunus this morning. Again, I have faced this view for the past ten years, but this morning I especially enjoyed the fog, the mist, and the bits of snow on the ground.

The 25th and 26th of December are celebrated in Germany as 1. Weihnachtsfeiertag and 2. Weihnachtsfeiertag. These days are public holidays, a tradition that dates back to Martin Luther.

Unlike many English-speaking countries, presents are not exchanged on these days, as this happens on Heiligabend.

Instead, many families come together on these days and eat together. For example, couples with children will spend the 25th with one set of grandparents, and the 26th with their others.

To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast:

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Nature is truly amazing. In this mostly grey, white, and black surrounding, the only colorful things are dead leaves.