Suffers badly from an incoherent definition of both Volk and untergegangen, and definitely belongs to a reactionary tradition of Romantic nationalism Suffers badly from an incoherent definition of both Volk and untergegangen, and definitely belongs to a reactionary tradition of Romantic nationalism that was already beginning to look anachronistic, at least in academic settings, half a century before this was first published. Conceptual problems aside, in terms of the contents of the entries things are basically fine, or at least up to the standard of the smaller museum gift shop genre (which is exactly where I picked it up)—you can tell exactly where Haarmann's personal expertise ends and things can get very sloppy around the edges (Kanaan is not in fact Kenacan in Hebrew—presumably his source had Kᵉnaʿan—and blithely calling the Eteokreter the Nachkommen of the Minoer with no further comment is a bit cavalier), but everyone realises books like this are collections of factoids, not facts. The gratuitous pseudo-academic abbreviations do grate, though....more
Fun little book, but it's fond of making outrageous claims (starting with the first entry Ackerbau, in which it is casually asserted that the PIE wordFun little book, but it's fond of making outrageous claims (starting with the first entry Ackerbau, in which it is casually asserted that the PIE word for Acker, whence Latin ager, Greek agrós [sic], Gothic akrs, is reflected in Irish áirne 'sloe', Welsh eirinen 'plum', and we are invited to compare that to Gothic akran 'fruit', English acorn, German Buchecker, and continuing at a pace of about one per half-dozen entries) and not including nearly enough information to judge whether those claims are plausible, much less correct, without looking it up yourself (and sometimes they are! not in that first case though). Consequently, best read as one of those toilet-side trivia books that used to be popular, with a commensurate amount of skepticism, or just as an appetite-whetter for a more substantial work, of which there are plenty listed in the bibliography.
(Forgive me for not writing this review in German, I have a headache.)...more
German is one of those languages I don't think anyone would disagree with me I don't speak, but which I nonetheless understand well enough that I feelGerman is one of those languages I don't think anyone would disagree with me I don't speak, but which I nonetheless understand well enough that I feel unable to justify reading it in translation. Still (or perhaps: therefore), I didn't have particularly high hopes of being able to finish this book when I bought it, but it turned out surprisingly fine. German spelling is a bit less systematic and regular than Dutch spelling, but if you know how to pronounce it, it's essentially just two ways of looking at the same language, except that some of their vocabulary is comically archaic or plainly made up, and they didn't pussy out on grammatical case to the extent we did. Their attitude towards punctuation (particularly, but not exclusively, to « and », which they use the wrong way around) may be morally reprehensible, but at least it's consistent.
I guess this is supposed to be a book review, and not a review of my willingness to give myself headaches reading foreign languages, but everyone already knows what kind of a story Die Verwandlung/The Metamorphosis is, right? Man wakes up a giant bug (Nabokov, whose Kommentar, ironically translated from English, constitutes the second half of this book, believes him to be a generic beetle, just over three feet long, but Kafka intentionally specifies neither species—using the word Ungeziefer—nor size), hilarity ensues. If you speak Dutch (or German, obviously), read it in German. If not, maybe read it in English, though it loses in translation. But probably read it anyway, it's culturally significant and short and in the public domain.
(If you decide to buy it in book form, though, be aware that Germans don't know which way around the text on book spines goes, so unless you have enough German books to fill at least a shelf, it will mar your collection.)...more
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