Another esoteric title. OK, on with the motley.
1. My audience
Yesterday a strange thing happened. Ever since they started sending me statistics about what is happening on this blog (how many page views per day/week/month, which posts are being read, in which countries the readers live usw), there had never previously been a day when the list of countries was not led by the USA. Yesterday was for the first time Germany.
Not quite sure what to make of that. Young Germans are always being told that they need to learn English if they are going to get on in this world (do I find that sad? Why not Mandarin Chinese or Spanish, or ... OK, maybe it isn't! But the more languages that you have at your command the better) so maybe this blog helps.
I welcome all my readership (so willkommen!), even if you hate my opinions (and I will accept polite criticism). Notably also in the past week since I started unleashing my barbs at the EXP (known in their own country as the UKIP, see previous items as to why that title is inappropriate) my readership from the UK has noticeably increased - whether that means jaundiced EXP supporters or sane people who want to see this ridiculous phenomenon stopped in its tracks and want the input of some logical criticism which will help, I do not know. One hint - satire and ridicule help!
2. Languages
So maybe I should start writing the blog in German. I do speak German, and French, and can read Dutch fluently. The problem with Dutch is that you have to sound like you are gargling and eating celery sticks at one and the same time to get the pronunciation correct. Any non-native who manages to get the Dutch "g" and "sch" sounding correct deserves the grade of Grade A+ linguist. Do not think that you can get away without them either. The Dutch word for "canal" is "gracht" - try going to Amsterdam and not taking notice of the canals? And the airport where you land is frustratingly, from a pronunciation point of view, called "Schiphol".
Back in the 1980s I remember trying to talk to a Dutch girlfriend in Dutch. After two sentences she could not stop laughing - which was quite humiliating (for a linguist at least!).
As my audience is international, I will be sticking to English, though more German might start appearing. What type of English though?
I had a 'phone call from a language agency in Berlin on Friday. They wanted a translation doing, and it had to be into UK, not US English. Never too sure what comprises US English at times, leave out the odd "u" in words ending "our", change the "s" to a "z" in words ending "ise", remember that a "pavement" is a "sidewalk" and then?
UK English, no problem. I offered (humorously) to translate it into Yorkshire dialect if she wanted! Not exactly what she wanted (pity, it might have been a challenge ....).
Meanwhile my blog is slowly but surely developing an audience and I am looking at ways to enhance that. While I was sitting in an Internet cafe 'tother day I discovered that they had a facility that could translate it immediately into German for me (I cannot do this at home, incidentally).
Never, ever, trust automatic translators! Not sure whether I was reduced to hysterical laughter or tears or both at once! All the work that goes into finding "le mot juste" and then they do this to my masterpieces! I must try it with Shakespeare some time. "Hamlet" on an automatic translator .... I wonder how "forsooth", "zounds", "prithee" usw come out in German!
3. Future political directions
The leading German opposition party, the SDP, seems to have developed a situation over the years where it doesn't have a single leader but three at once - none of whom agree with the others! Not many years ago it was Gerhard Schröder / Oskar Lafontaine / Rudolf Scharping. Now it is Frank-Walter Steinmeier / Sigmar Gabriel / Peer Steinbrück. How quite they expect to win elections when they cannot agree with each other, but anyway.
Anyway they occasionally come up with some interesting ideas. A report from yahoo.de on Sigmar Gabriel yesterday had the following opening paragraphs:
German -
Eine Befreiung der Politik vom Diktat der Finanzmärkte hat SPD-Chef Sigmar Gabriel gefordert.
"Wir haben zu oft akzeptiert, wenn uns gesagt wurde, wie wir leben müssen", wandte sich Gabriel beim SPD-Zukunftskongress in Berlin gegen eine von "selbsternannten Eliten" behauptete "angebliche Alternativlosigkeit" politischen Handelns. Stattdessen wolle die SPD "den Alltag der normalen Menschen wieder zum Mittelpunkt der Politik machen".
English (translation done rapidly, as I am not being paid to do it, I rushed it off and have not refined it) -
SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel has called for liberation from the policy dictates of the financial markets.
"We have simply accepted it too many times when we were told how we must live", Gabriel stated at the SPD Congress for the Future in Berlin in opposition to the alleged "purported inevitability" of political action by the "self-appointed elites". Instead, the SPD wanted to "make the everyday life of ordinary people once more the focal point of politics".
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From my perspective that sounds the right way to go. And before 1980 it was the route that politics tended to follow. Rather than the markets dictating, they should be made to follow. There are simply too many unelected people running all our lives (and even worse speculating for profit on this). Getting there may be difficult, but it seems to me a laudable objective.
My problem with the SDP over the years has not been policy or objective - it is competence. Talking the talk is one thing, walking the walk is another! The Schröder years for example were not the most amazing years that Germany ever knew (remember the levels of unemployment? Far too high!).
And for American conservatives reading this with their over-simplified view of Capitalism vs Socialism (which of 57 varieties of Capitalism, and which of 200 varieties of Socialism?), a victory for the SDP in elections will not mean the end of the private sector in Germany, so your shares in Siemens, VW and Commerzbank usw are safe (at least as safe as the gamblers in the world's financial centres will let them be, anyway!).
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