It’s interesting, you show the same video to two people and get very different responses. The videos in question are of course Jogi related, two videos I made from the Germany-Scotland game. The first person I showed them to made the inevitable Nazi joke, a German yelling and a German I like. Because some people think I can’t think about Germany or a German without thinking about Nazis in some way. That isn’t true.
It’s funny because he’s so un-Nazi like, despite looking like a Bond type villain and looking somewhat sinister at the best of times, like here for example:
The other person commented on how in the first video I showed them, in which he did introduction for a quiz, he sounded completely different to the ones of the game. They said that despite the fact that he was yelling, there was a softness to his voice, at odds with the usual harshness of German. I really like the bit at the end, the collar fixing.
I also managed to see him at the Freiburg game, when they beat Schalke 2-0 on Saturday, thanks to the Bundesliga round-up on TV:
On a related note, I’ve been reading a book called Germany and the Germans, and apparently Swabians “tend to be mocked by other Germans for their odd sounding sing song accent.”
I’m familiar with the term, I’ve read it in connection with autism, but I’m not sure of what it means.
This is what a dictionary said: “a way of speaking in which the sound of your voice rises and falls in a pattern.”
And this:
- 1 verse with marked and regular rhythm and rhyme
-
2 a voice delivery marked by a narrow range or monotonous pattern of pitch
And this is a direct quote from a discussion about it: “A sing-song voice is different from a song like voice. With a sing-song voice, the inflection rises and falls in a consistent pattern, so it is quite monotonous.”
I’ve read all of that, I watched two videos and I’m still unsure of what it exactly means.
First up today was The Imitation Game at the cinema, then Bratwurst at the German market and the day ends with Germany v Gibraltar. And happily, Max Kruse is in the starting line up and more importantly Kramer isn’t.
The film was good, not a good audience though (I’m usually uncomfortable at the cinema when there are too many other people there anyway, but this is one of the few times I wanted to leave in the middle of a film). I wonder if the decision to portray Alan Turing as somewhat autistic was purely a writing choice or whether Cumberbatch decided to play him that way as well. I don’t know much about Turing so I can’t say how close they stuck to the true story, but the film was entertaining, not at all dull considering the complex subject matter. I found the bullying scenes very hard to watch, especially the under the floor-boards one. And the story with Christopher was unbelievably sad, I can add that to the list of the few scenes in any film ever that has made me cry.
Surprises abound in the Gibraltar game, Neuer actually gets somewhat challenged, twice, the first was incredible. The other surprise is that at the end of the first half, Germany are only three-nil up. Even more surprising is the end result, only 4-0 and that was because of an own goal. And this is the team that Poland beat 7-0 and Germany could only manage 3. I hope they don’t get too bad a mauling in the German press.
To end with Jogi, today a new set of press clippings arrived from Germany. I liked some of them so much I decided not only to post some on here, but since there were quite a few that I liked, to give them a post of their own.
Löwland 