On 2010-08-15
Gábor Szabó, the
World Perl Chief Evangelist, quoted
David Heinemeier Hansson aka DHH,
Mr. Ruby on Rails, in
this tweet:
DHH: http://bigthink.com/davidheinemeierhansson "German is the ugliest language", "Java is German, Ruby is French"
So what's their individual background for German bashing?
DHH is quite well-known for his pointed statements. DHH is Danish, he is a Danish native speaker, and just for simplicity let's assume he addresses U.S. audience. I am not so sure about the Danish population, but regarding the U.S. population, I think it's just simple common sense, that foreign languages are ugly, and German in particular. There is a U.S. elite though, that likes the French cuisine, so the French language gains a little over all these other per se ugly foreign languages. From the linguistic scientific point of view German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, and Flamish are only minor derivatives of a common prehistoric language. And as I consider DHH a super-smart guy, I assume, he is fully aware of that. So considering one of them an ugly language, is considering all of them ugly languages. Fair enough.
My friend Gábor though is a descendant of a European so-called
minority, that suffered horribly from German suppression and persecution esp. around
WW II.
If you want to have a short glance at the
Tanach, which is what the christian world calls the Old Testament, esp. at
Shemot aka
Exodus, chapter 34, verse 7:
… but punishing children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation for their father's wickedness.
Actually German bashing is quite popular in Israel, but that's silly to mention.
So I think German bashing is also "
fair enough"
WRT my dear friend Gábor.
I think it always helps to reveil the individual background of the more or less subtle bashers, otherwise the innocent reader could well assume blind hatred, which it certainly isn't regarding these two guys. They both also certainly speak German fairly well. But you knew that already, I'm sure.
And here is another aspect: Most geeks don't know more than one or two programming languages and hate the others, and so it is of course with natural languages: You know your native language, and you hate all foreign languages, because fit's a
PITA to learn them. So that might be a good reason for both of them as well.
To avoid any such rubbish, my own son#2 (almost 4 years old right now) happily and eagerly learns not only his mother's language, i.e. his native language (in Yiddish: "
mame lashon"), which is Brazilian Portuguese of the gaucho flavour, pretty close to Portuguese from Portugal in some respect, but also English, Hebrew, and last not least German, because he spends most day time of the working week in a day care center in the middle of Berlin, the capitol of Germany. Bilingual kids gain a lot for their lives, on top of that multilingual kids are a mere blessing for their environments.
So much for today. I hoped you enjoyed these lines. Pls come back here occasionally! And pls don't you forget to press the Flattr button on top of this article a couple of times!
Update / after Gábor and DHH commented here:
Why do I personally like German as a language?
I am not even sure, why and whether I like it. It's just that I remember Berthold Brecht, Schiller, Goethe, Ingeborg Bachmann, Karl Marx, Martin Buber, Max Weber,
Hans Lenk (one of my most important profs in Karlsruhe), Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Rabbi
Nathan Peter Levinson, and nowadays
Kathrin Passig in German. It was my 1st language to experience serious literature in.
You can always get divorced from your love, you cannot get divorced from your native language, as much as you might want it.
Update / 2010-08-15 19:00:
I saw Gábor's
new tweet:
I deleted that quote from DHH as some people think I am applauding it @erez @Jochen_Hayek (quoting #fail)
I am not sure, why Gábor mentions me. I certainly didn't criticize him. I just thought, it's worth discussing it. I guess, he sometimes underestimates statements made by the
World Perl Chief Evangelist.
Update / 2010-08-16 04:00:
I just remembered, that sometimes, if I am getting a little louder with my boys, I always attempt to avoid doing so in German. I rather shout at them in Polish (the older one's native language is Polish though), Portuguese, or Hebrew. Everything is then better then German. If I try to hear myself in this situation, it always rings a bell like "
KZ shouting".
