Donnerstag, 24. April 2014

Russian fairy tale: The golden fish

Since I have to read Russian fairytales for my Russian classes, I thought about posting some of them on my blog. I think that if you really want to know a culture, you should also know some of their fairytales =). Plus, they are just fun to read sometimes :P

Soo...the first fairy tale is called "Золотая рыбка" - 

"The golden fish"


Once upon a time a fisherman and his wife lived in an old,  run-down shack. One day, the fisherman went to the nearby sea to catch some fish. After some time he finally did catch a fish, but it was a fish he had never seen before. The fish was golden and was able to speak like a human. The fish said:
"Spare me, old man. Through me back into the sea and some day I will be of great use to you.". The man answered: "I will never need you" - and threw the fish back into the sea. He trudged back home and told his wife what had happened. "You poor old bastard! Can't you even see luck when it's right in front of you? We don't even have a bit of dry bread left. What do you want us to eat?!" The old man went back to the sea and shouted:  "Little fish, little fish! Come here! Stay with your tale in the water but come closer with your head!". The fish came and asked: "What is it that you need, old man?" "My wife is ranting. She wants me to beg you for bread." "Return home. You will have bread"
The man returned home and saw piles of bread on the table. "Yes, bread we have", the old woman said, "but our trough split apart". So the man went to the fish again and asked him for a new trough- which was granted. No sooner had he entered the shack, than the woman urged him to go back and ask for a big new house. He went back and again shouted: ""Little fish, little fish! Come here! Stay with your tale in the water but come closer with your head!" He told the fish that his wife wanted a new house, returned home, and instead of the old shack there was a beautiful big new house.  The man entered the house and already heard the old woman shouting:
"You silly fool! You think you ask for a house- and now everything is perfect? Go back and tell the fish I no longer want to be a fisherman's wife. I want to be a tsarina, so that everyone bows down to me." The man went back to the sea, shouted: ""Little fish, little fish! Come here! Stay with your tale in the water, but come closer with your head!" and told the fish what had happened.
The fish granted the wish, and when the man came back he saw his wife sitting on a huge throne. "Hello, wife", he said, causing his wife to start ranting again. "This old fool dares to call me, the tsarina, his wife. Guards, take him to the horse stable and flog him until it hurts". After the man was flogged and beaten, he had to work as a servant. Every day he was to clean the stable ,and if any dirty space remained, he was flogged again. One day, he was sent to the tsarina.  "Old man, go to the fish. Tell him I'm tired of being only  tsarina. I want to reign over the whole ocean and over all the creatures in it." The man did as he was told, but this time the fish refused to answer. Instead, the fish swam back into the depths of the ocean. Scared what would happen to him, the old man returned to his residence. But nothing was the way it had been. The huge palace, the soldiers in front of it as well as the servants were gone. What remained was the old run-down shack and the fisherman's wife. They were poor again, and had to live like this for the rest of their lives. Many times the fisherman tried to catch a golden fish again - but the golden fish was never seen again.

Mittwoch, 23. April 2014

English, oh, English...

English can be described with a lot of adjectives. 
"Easy" sure as hell isn't one of them.
What- you don't believe me?
Well, then read this (and mind the correct pronunciation ;) )

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~clamen/misc/humour/TheChaos.html

For the ones of you who are too lazy to click on the link, here is an excerpt of the poem:

   Dearest creature in creation,
   Study English pronunciation.
   I will teach you in my verse
   Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
   I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
   Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
   Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
   So shall I!  Oh hear my prayer.
  Pray, console your loving poet,
  Make my coat look new, dear, sew it! 

   Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
   Dies and diet, lord and word,
   Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
   (Mind the latter, how it's written.)
   Now I surely will not plague you
   With such words as plaque and ague.
   But be careful how you speak:
   Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
   Cloven, oven, how and low,
   Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
 
   Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
   Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
   Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
   Exiles, similes, and reviles;
   Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
   Solar, mica, war and far;
   One, anemone, Balmoral,
   Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
   Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
   Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

The first two are quite ok, but the third one gets really tough, right?
If you feel like your world has turned upside down because a minute ago you thought you knew English...believe me, I know that feeling...I've been there :P



So today we had a barbecue at a friend's place. He lives in a dorm with lots of other students and he invited Lucas, an exchange student from Canada, to join us. After a couple of hours when it got too cold to sit outside, we went to my friend's room, and soon the topic "languages" came up. Another friend had previously stumbled upon this poem and was so fascinated by it that he kept telling us to read it. He saw his chance when we were all sitting together and opened the link. Since Lucas is a Native Speaker, we asked him to go through the poem with us. We read it step by step and he tried to explain every word we didn't know.
Once again this showed me that studying languages is something you do for a lifetime. It never stops. There will always be this one word you don't know. This one phrase you've  never heard.
Even though this is hard to accept, it's exactly what fascinates me most about languages.