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A comment on Kafka: The Rescue Will Begin in Its Own Time. Parent comment

Re:Kafka: The Rescue Will Begin in Its Own Time by pvg on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @01:38AM (#23610263)
German was his real original language, as much as standardized German is anyone's real original language.

Edit: Also, if you want to check out something short, engaging, relevant and easier on the German, give Ödön von Horvát's Jugend ohne Gott a whirl.

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Re:Kafka: The Rescue Will Begin in Its Own Time by 082349872349872 on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @05:42AM (#23611730)
Toll! Jugend ohne Gott even got a "+" review here: https://sammlungen.ulb.uni-muenster.de/hd/periodical/pagevie...

reviewer's coding scheme explained on: https://sammlungen.ulb.uni-muenster.de/hd/periodical/pagevie...

An organisation has really "made it" when they get a special font dingbat. Not even Prince Rogers Nelson managed that...

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Re:Kafka: The Rescue Will Begin in Its Own Time by remarkEon on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @03:49AM (#23610999)
I was under the impression his original language was closer to Yiddish, but if I'm wrong in that regard I'll recant.
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Re:Kafka: The Rescue Will Begin in Its Own Time by 082349872349872 on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @05:00AM (#23611475)
Like hindi and urdu, the biggest difference between yiddish and other german dialects is the script[1]. I have "Velo" and "Poulet", so my loan words are not as exotic as the hebrew/aramaic ("tukhes") and eastern european ("ну") influences on yiddish, but all the dialects[2] have loan words ("Homeoffice") and most have their own unique terms ("Rundumeli").

https://yi.wikipedia.org/wiki/הויפט_זייט is interesting if you can read hebrew script.

https://als.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Houptsyte_(Schwyzer... will give you some idea why I recommended starting with the NZZ, which almost writes in standardised german.

[1] it was yiddish that got me into russian, because it's easier to find more than just Andrews Sisters on YouTube in cyrillic: eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWeqbs9OFX0

also recommended, for any germanophone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH1fERC_504 (or anglophones who don't mind subtitles)

[2] in tourist hiking areas, a popular past-time is to guess where people are from by how they greet on the trail.

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Re:Kafka: The Rescue Will Begin in Its Own Time by ceilingcorner on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @05:50AM (#23611801)
The difference between High German and Yiddish is much larger than between Urdu and Hindi.
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Re:Kafka: The Rescue Will Begin in Its Own Time by pvg on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @05:09AM (#23611526)
He grew up in a multilingual environment, 'his original language' is not a very specific thing. He was educated in German, his family was of a social standing in which German was essential. They also spoke a variant of Yiddish - itself a (give or take) German dialect.
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Re:Kafka: The Rescue Will Begin in Its Own Time by CaptainZapp on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @08:19AM (#23612875)
He was also totally fluent in Czech.

I'm glad, though, that he wrote in German. It's always nice to read authors in their original language.

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