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What Germans Are Reading

the-american-interest.com

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Re: What Germans Are Reading

#121

Post by posterboy »

lordgrenville wrote: post #84
WA wrote: post #5

There has been at least one book about how "Germany/Germans are getting dumber", "The Big Crash is Coming" or something similar on the Spiegel Bestseller list at all times. So far, the big crash didn't come yet. These books don't talk about a market correction or a financial crisis like in 2008, but a total economic crash, because "a finite world can't have unlimited growth", because "capitalism", because "climate ch…

Tangent - ordinarily I would consider it obnoxious to point this out, but I learned something and wanted to share it. As a native speaker, "the crash didn't come" sounds wrong to me - it should be "the crash hasn't come", but it took me a while to figure out why. I think the idea is that since you are saying "yet", you need to use the present perfect ("has not come"), which can imply an indefinite time (it might happ…

The flip-side is that a closed set of movement related words uses a different auxhiliary than the rest of the verbs, in German as well as e.g. French. However is gone, did go, has gone, was gone do not fit the pattern.

Deriving the reason for the different helper verbs from first principles is endearing, in principle, but you've merely given names to it that you somehow take for granted. It makes sense to have cut wood, and it makes no sense to do come or have come, except for a potatoe plant which if it cometh will have a Keim or Keimblatt to be precise; I'm guessing here.

German rather differentiates is and have in the perfective, "sie ist ge-kommen", "sie hat ge-sehen"; We don't say has come because we are intuited to think it is wrong. That is, you might as sell say the crisis is not ye(t)come.

Re: What Germans Are Reading

#122

Post by mcguire »

bhaak wrote: post #8
maze-le wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This trope never gets old it seems... >> “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyranniz…

It also gets never old to tell that this quote is most likely not from Socrates. But you know that already, don't you? What we know from Socrates, this doesn't sound like something he would have said. Although, having done no writings of his own, we have two main sources for his life. But then again, Plato often put his own words into Socrates' mouth and this is something Plato could have said. :-)

"But then again, Plato often put his own words into Socrates' mouth and this is something Plato could have said. :-)"

Socrates is a bizarre joke invented by Plato and a few of his friends while drinking in Athens one night. Plato just went all L. Ron Hubbard on it.

Re: What Germans Are Reading

#123

Post by novok »

hef19898 wrote: post #98
em500 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do people earn only 5k after tax ? It's not clear what your point of reference is. If you're wondering why it's much lower than in the US (where the 90-percentile household is probably around 170k USD pre-tax or 9k-10k post-tax), there are many many factors that contribute to the difference. The most important ones (unordered) are IMO: - USD is probably overvalued by 15%-20% [1]. In the past 10 years, the EUR/U…

Also don't forget that, at least in Germany, after tax in casual conversation usually means net salaries after stuff like social security, health care, etc... Which might also explain some of the difference.

It's fairly similar for americans too, but most people talk about pre-tax incomes vs. post tax, health insurance & 401k deductions, money in my bank account amounts.

Re: What Germans Are Reading

#124

Post by jadbox »

ekianjo wrote: post #37

My German is rusty but: > Toleranz: Einfach Schwer (Tolerance Isn’t Easy) is an improper translation. That's "Tolerance: Simply Difficult" and that translates fine in English too since you can keep the same style while being accurate.

Is there an English translation of the book?

Re: What Germans Are Reading

#125

Post by lordgrenville »

posterboy wrote: post #121
lordgrenville wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangent - ordinarily I would consider it obnoxious to point this out, but I learned something and wanted to share it. As a native speaker, "the crash didn't come" sounds wrong to me - it should be "the crash hasn't come", but it took me a while to figure out why. I think the idea is that since you are saying "yet", you need to use the present perfect ("has not come"), which can imply an indefinite time (it might happ…

The flip-side is that a closed set of movement related words uses a different auxhiliary than the rest of the verbs, in German as well as e.g. French. However is gone, did go, has gone, was gone do not fit the pattern. Deriving the reason for the different helper verbs from first principles is endearing, in principle, but you've merely given names to it that you somehow take for granted. It makes sense to have cut wo…

Sorry, I don't completely follow this Also it's unclear to me if the bulk of your post is referring to German or English.

Re: What Germans Are Reading

#126

Post by LeanderK »

luckylion wrote: post #58
LeanderK wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure what your comment is suggesting? Literally the third sentence is: > Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series looking at the books, authors, and ideas capturing the zeitgeist in various countries this summer. Isn't capturing the zeitgeist exactly trying to understand what's occupying the thoughts of a country? Also I think you're greatly exaggerating the speed of "fashion". These are all issues we ha…

> since the refugee crisis it's one of the main themes of political discourse. That's very recent, so it may be fashion, who knows whether tolerance & diversity will still be a major topic in 2025. From my personal experience, education is a big topic, but mostly top-down. It's in politics, it's in the media, it's in literature, but it's not like average parents discuss the education system a lot. They're involved wi…

I am 24 years old. Maybe we have a vastly different notion of recent, but merkels decision was 2015, which is nearly 4 years ago.

Maybe it's really a matter of definition or "recent" and "fashion", but I am not sure whether tolerance & diversity will still be a major topic in 2025. I hope not, 2025 is in 6 years and would like to see that we have moved on and got to a mutual agreement in our society.

2025 would be 10 years after the migrant crisis! I don't think we absolutly need to drag every topic out for whole generations to be not counted as "fashion" or "temporary".

> From my personal experience, education is a big topic, but mostly top-down. It's in politics, it's in the media, it's in literature, but it's not like average parents discuss the education system a lot. They're involved with details, but I've never witnessed a discussion at dinner or a party about the education system (while it'll quickly go to politics, economics etc, and most of my friends have children of school age).

I don't know if you're german? This is not what I experienced, like i said, i experienced two changes of the school system during my education, which lead to a lot of discussion. Also, while i am now out of school and in university for some time, the school system is still a topic of discussion in my extended family due to parents having to choose in which school their kids they should go. We have some private schools in germany that follows a different philosophy (and I really mean philosophy, there's a whole educational theory behind them), the "Montessori education". A part of my family is very convinced that the montessori philosophy is superior to the more rigid and less free philosophy in the public school system. This is not my point of view (I went to a public school), which I am willing to defend. This leads to real discussions over dinner or in the evening.

Re: What Germans Are Reading

#128

Post by magpi3 »

Kaiyou wrote: post #127
magpi3 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Have you ever hard a joke that is racist or sexist but still made you laugh in spite of yourself?

How does this relate to removing books from a bestseller (or whatever) list?

The point is removing something you don't like is different from removing something that is anti-semitic. My example is a joke that makes you laugh but is inappropriate. It is possible to enjoy something and at the same time realize that it is offensive.

Re: What Germans Are Reading

#129

Post by chronial »

miracle2k wrote: post #114
chronial wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that makes the statement "the Spiegel list removes books it doesn't like" correct in a meaningful sense of the word. But I think I argued my point as well as I can. If I couldn't convince you yet that the original statement should not be considered "correct" and should not be defended when somebody mentions the actual facts, I don't think any more of my words will.

You are looking at that sentence too literally/technically. As a reader, I never considered it to mean "they remove novels when they don't like the story". Instead, from the tone, context (an internet discussion) and knowledge of how the list is likely to work, it seemed likely to me that the link would refer to one or more books being removed for political reasons. The words OP used are not precise, but they aren't…

> The words OP used are not precise, but they aren't wrong either - they communicate how he feels about the incident in question.

I think that is actually a great summary, thx.

I guess my long conversation here is just an expression of my underlying impression that political discourse should in general focus more on facts than on feelings.

People seem to be more focused on how they feel about an issue than its actual contents. But this is getting of topic.

Re: What Germans Are Reading

#130

Post by Havoc »

stankypickle wrote: post #118
Havoc wrote: post #110

More curious about the topic. Is there some particular reason to be interested in what Germans are reading? As opposed to say Swedes?

Germany's infrastructure has been stressed in recent years by immigration and other factors. The two books that the article places a spotlight on are: 1) "The Dumbing Down of Germany" and 2) "Tolerance Isn’t Easy" (as roughly translated within the article). These books represent the german people's response to that. The first book, "The Dumbing Down of Germany", suggests a frustration with the decline of their educat…

Well I speak German and nationality wise am too. But I grew up in a decidedly English speaking context.

Hence my interest in hn's focus on Germans. It's not so much what's happening in germany more than why would western english media analyse german reading trends.

That is not a question of what's happening in germany...but rather one of english speaking media somehow deemed this interesting. Why?

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