WORDSPEAK
The most beautiful word
ANAND
LANGUAGE, like sex and food, is an intensely personal thing; since everyone uses it, everyone has an opinion about it. Therefore, when the Goethe Institute and the German Language Council announced an international contest to find the most appealing word in the German language, the question that came to mind was how many would agree with the verdict.
Clichés and stereotypes
There are clichés about languages, and stereotypes about the speakers of those languages. Sexy, mellifluous French, the language of love; Italian — vowel-rich, liquid, perfect for singing; English — quirky, wide-ranging, adaptable. Then there are one's own, very personal connections with a language. Many readers would agree that the language of one's childhood, the language that one's mother spoke, was the most beautiful.
The German language was handed an unfair fate. Germans were seen as the villains of the two world wars, and their language has often been used for the purpose of parodying them. But it is also the language of Goethe and Schiller, and an apt vehicle for articulating scientific and scholarly thought. Charlie Chaplin had made fun of Adolph Hitler in his movie "The Great Dictator" by speaking in a peculiar staccato, faux-German style. That harsh manner of speaking German became a favourite of comedians. Movies about World War II that Hollywood made in the past 60 years not only popularised the caricature all over the world, but — unjustly — gave non-German speakers the idea that the language could be spoken only that way. It is plausible to imagine that the contest was also an effort to improve the image of the German language.
"Habseligkeiten" was selected as the most appealing word in the end, based on the argument: "The word `Habseligkeiten' suggests, not a person's property or financial assets, but his or her personal belongings, and it has a friendly, sympathetic undertone that makes the proprietor of those things seem rather likeable. A typical owner of `Habseligkeiten' is the six-year-old child who spreads out the contents of his trouser pockets for the sheer pleasure of basking in the wealth and variety of his collection."
"Geborgenheit" that won the second place was submitted by a contestant from Slovakia with this explanation: "I love this word. I can think of no other word that expresses so well the sense of being sheltered, safe and comfortable in a place. In my own country there are simply no words to express those feelings. That's why it is my favourite German word."
The undisputed favourite among the submissions received from all over the world, the Council's report said, was the word "lieben", which the jury (comprised of artists, journalists and academics) put in third place: "The German word for love is the best, because it differs from the word for life — `Leben' — by only the one letter `i'". "Augenblick" came fourth because: "In a subversive way, it is a shade too long for what it actually is. It's also so much more sensual than the ordinary word `moment'".
Every German-speaker I spoke with about the most beautiful word begged to disagree. Some did not like the idea that the jury considered the feelings expressed or associated with the terms quoted, rather than the form of the words themselves. The argument for "lieben" and "Leben", it was pointed out, could easily be applied to "love" and "live" in English. Others thought that the jury should have taken into account the sound of the word and may be even its spelling. The problem, of course, is that the structure and phonetic practice of German is hostile to the sonority of its abstract expressions, with endings in -keit and -schaft to be added syncretically and cumulatively to simple basic ideas, so that the reader can find himself or herself faced with jaw-breakers like "windschutzscheibewaschanlage".
A personal thing
How intensely personal a choice can be was made clear in a comment by a Canadian I came across in the case of the so-called jaw-breaker: "When I was a teenager, I was having a conversation with my father in German about automobiles. I stumbled over the word for `windshield wiper'. ... [My father] continued, using the word `windschutzscheibewaschanlage'. It translates as "the mechanical assembly that washes the slab or pane that shields from the wind". Now, this is a mouthful for anyone, and was for some reason always a tongue twister for my mother. It never failed to elicit a smile and a laugh from her, even up to the days before her untimely death. In fact, it may not even be the proper German word for the term and by no stretch could it be considered `beautiful'...but for the memories of my mother's smile and ready laugh, this ridiculous compound noun will forever be the most beautiful German word I know."
I would like the readers to e-mail what they think to be the most beautiful word in their language. With some explanation, of course.
E-mail the author: anand@journalist.com
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