
On Truth and Lying in the Extra German Sense - smacktoward
https://longreads.com/2019/06/20/on-truth-and-lying-in-the-extra-german-sense/
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alexandercrohde
I really wanted to like this article.

Unfortunately it came across as a pseudo-intellectual free-association of
language, culture, stereotypes, history, philosophy, and humor.

It needs to decide if it's Dave Barry or educational. It just came across as a
drunken loudmouth at a party with a grandiose theory supported by loosely
accurate, loosely related facts.

------
FabHK
FWIW, if you want to know whether you gained weight, go to China. People will
frequently tell you how much you have gained or lost since they last saw you.

EDIT to add: and the funny thing is, Chinese are very concerned about face and
honour, and will lie to protect it. It's just that weight is merely an aspect
of your body and health to monitor, not something sacred or potentially
shameful.

------
_RedPanda
>Germans couldn’t even begin to imagine why being brutally honest would hurt
someone in the first place! If the truth hurts you, isn’t that more your fault
than the truth’s?

What? This is simply not true at all, germans aren't emotionless robots, of
course they don't go out of their way and hurt the feelings of other people.

Kept reading after that statement and regretted it.

~~~
foozed
The author seems to have suffered a bad case of misunderstanding the "Berliner
Schnauze"...

I, unfortunately, also read the whole linked opinion piece on german humor
from the economist [0] which I almost disliked even more. I might just feel
insulted (being German) but please: calling out "Instead of a raised eyebrow,
we get full-body signals to laugh now." from the country that gave us laugh-
tracks...

[0] [https://www.1843magazine.com/ideas/the-daily/being-german-
is...](https://www.1843magazine.com/ideas/the-daily/being-german-is-no-
laughing-matter)

~~~
itronitron
maybe the 'humorless germans' are just playing it straight and trying to
increase the comedic tension in the situation.

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maxxxxx
This article would have been better if it had a little more humor. I usually
like playing with national stereotypes because if you don’t take them too
literally there is a lot of truth in them. But this article isn’t much fun.

As a German living in the US I definitely agree about the paragraph about
preferring to be honest vs being liked. I hate listening to a long list of
pleasantries before getting to the point. If you think something is wrong just
say it.

The “how are you?” habit has also tripped me up. I have had several occasions
where somebody asked me something in the hallway and I just said “ fine” and
kept walking .

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moconnor
I moved from the UK to Germany over ten years ago. I’ve lived in the South and
North, city and countryside.

None of this article really rings true. Germans are just as happy to tell
polite lies and make small talk as the British.

Maybe some things are just lost in transliteration.

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cjslep
I am learning High German (in Switzerland) and the writing style and general
approach in this article to the words' literal translations and the aggressive
cultural characterizations bothered me, for a reason I can't quite put into
words. Ich habe keine Ahnung.

~~~
neonate
Is Switzerland a good place to learn High German? I was wondering about doing
that myself.

~~~
darklajid
Switzerland teaches High German (and colloquially - as far as I as a German am
aware - refers to it as 'Written German').

If you learn High German in Switzerland you'll be able to speak German
perfectly fine. There are regional differences though - Switzerland doesn't
have the letter ß, Switzerland has some words that plain don't exist in German
(as I know it).

If any Swiss guy is reading: "Widerrechtliches parkieren wird verzeigt"
contains two words (in a sentence of four..) that I can understand perfectly
fine, but that just don't exist on my side of the border, as far as I can
tell.

~~~
taejo
Duden agrees with you, btw: both parkieren and verzeigen are marked as Swiss.

[https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/parkieren](https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/parkieren)
[https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/verzeigen](https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/verzeigen)

~~~
darklajid
Stumbled upon quite some words like that in 'Written German' aka perfectly
fine and official German (like the sign text quoted earlier).

'zuegeln' vs 'umziehen', 'grillieren' vs 'grillen', 'wir gehen in den Ausgang'
vs 'wir gehen aus' come to mind, but most of the samples aren't in directly
accessible memory anymore (and just as above, before you confirmed my
suspicions, I'm not sure if the word I'm not familiar with is actually not a
thing or just something I didn't encounter)

------
orbifold
This reads like a high school essay composed of random factoids about Germany
and its history. Eloquent but border line incoherent.

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jfries
This article may be interesting as trivia, but the nuance of many of the words
mentioned is so different from the literal translation that it doesn't make
much sense.

~~~
FabHK
I find the connotations captured reasonably well here:

> ehrlich (“sincere”), aufrichtig (“straightforward”), rechtschaffen (“right-
> doing”), redlich (“true to one’s word”), anständig (“decorous”), brav
> (“well-behaved”), ehrenwert (“worthy of honor”), and bieder (“upright”).

(which incidentally is at odds with the claim that German and English are
fundamentally different there...)

~~~
darklajid
I'd translate "rechtschaffen" as lawful ... because Lawful Good is officially
Rechtschaffen Gut of course.

(Sorry, this German is missing his Pathfinder group)

On a more serious note: I assume you could pick different translations for
most of these words and I'm not convinced that the article makes any sort of
generally applicable point.

What I do want to say is that the little exposure I had to the US culture
("How are you doiiiing? Are you alriiiight? That's SOOOOO nice!") is
impossible to digest and feels .. fake.

I also have to admit that - living in Asia for the last 2 years - my tone and
direct (or is it blunt?) communication leads to misunderstandings sometimes.

------
elx
here isn’t even a single long word in German for “hurt feelings,” they just
translate the English directly (verletzte Gefühle)

> Beleidigt

~~~
dukoid
"Beleidigt" is quite negative, implying a sense of hurt feelings where none is
expected. I don't think this is an adequate general translation for "hurt
feelings". Just "verletzt" might work, depending on context.

~~~
foozed
i agree, "verletzt" fits quite well. Especially if, like in english, you pair
it with "Gefühle".

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raxxorrax
> Lügengespenst

he, it should be Lügengespinst - from "gespinst", which means web. Not
"Gespenst", which means ghost. Although funnily it would also fit.

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zgramana
I think the essay would have been better served getting to what appears to be
the point much more directly:

\- The VW scandal was so shocking because executives and engineers exploited a
societal taboo against lying

\- Was sustained for so long by exploiting another taboo against placing
personal advantage over honesty

\- Signs of fraud were dismissed because people assumed successful executives
would never violate these taboos, leading them to accept misleading
explanations and discounting the possibility of a cover-up.

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paaa31415
thought for you: Can i as a German contradict this article without setting an
example for it?

~~~
foozed
Haha. I always feel the same way about these types of statements on "the
german nature". Such a catch-22.

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Lausbert
"Yet there is but one contemporary direct translation from the German for to
lie."

> 1\. Lügen > 2\. Schwindeln

You would find many more translations for "to lie" in a broader sense.

~~~
paaa31415
common online tool for german synonyms: 461 synonyms in 24 groups for "lügen"
"to lie"

~~~
Lausbert
That's what I said:

You would find many more translations for "to lie" in a broader sense.

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as2019
The article is kinda racist.

We do jaywalk all the time and not everyone as direct as described in the
article. "Love of order" has long been lost. Half of Europe is more orderly
than Germany.

I laughed especially hard at this: "It is more important to a German to be
honest than liked, honest than professionally successful, honest than rich."

You're living 50 years in the past. Modern Germany has adapted to the American
life style and the article is a collection of stereotypes.

~~~
gurkendoktor
I find it frustrating that any kind of stereotype is now considered "racist",
as if there were no cultures anymore, only a uniform global distribution of
individuals. At the same time, how is it better to claim that all Germans have
become less focused on honesty in the last 50 years?

I agree that the stereotype is not wholly accurate. German youngsters spend a
lot of time maintaining their thoroughly fake Instagram/YouTube personas.
Nobody with a love of order would tolerate our terrible trains. But the
culture shock I got from visiting Australia and California somewhat resembles
the stereotypes in the article.

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darklajid
It reminds me of Mark Twain - The Awful German Language.

It combines anecdotes of an English speaker about Germans and German and makes
for an amusing read for everyone. But .. please don't use any of these works
as any sort of hard truth or reference.

------
xkcd1963
"Grab 80 million people and claim they have some psyche in common, people love
reading this stuff"

~~~
sonnyblarney
Of course they do, it's obvious the moment you step across the border. It
doesn't mean the author is correct, or that there isn't variance.

I find the issue with candour is mostly with casual conversation or casual
issues. The 'big lies' I think happen just the same.

~~~
xkcd1963
What do you mean by ‘big lies’?

~~~
sonnyblarney
Corruption, corporate messaging lies, political lies etc..

Corruption in UK is about the same as Germany.

UK is super deferential and not candid, i.e. 'it's not polite to point out
ugly things', but this might be perceived as duplicitous in 'candid'
countries.

An English person might say 'that's interesting' instead of saying 'it's
shit', to be polite.

But in terms of how it breaks into level of civility, it's just the same
really. 'Transparency International' ranks them the same in terms of
corruption.

So I think it's more a matter of immediate, interpersonal communication than
anything.

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felixhammerl
this kind of stuff belongs into #iam14andthisisdeep

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novalis78
TL;DR in a country where everyone is obsessed with adhering to truth and order
lies do have long(er) legs.

~~~
lsinger
In the US, for example, it works a bit differently: everyone lies, and
everyone knows it, but nobody wants to offend or confront anyone, so the
results are mostly the same. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

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LaurensLang
This is a succession of prejeduces, historic and contemporary events.

And some things are wrong. I don't know. Maybe you should travel there without
trying to search for situations in which your prejeduces become real. I don't
know. Im German and Im really tired of all these articles

I mean: relotius, VW, Hitler and Goethe. If I would write an article about
American culture in this way you would call me xenophobic. You are the
opposite of polite. You are racist.

~~~
thomasz
Spiel mal nicht die beleidigte Leberwurst. Spend a little time abroad, and you
will notice the same things. Furthermore, the poor woman lives in Berlin, a
city where being a rude asshole is being romanticized as an endearing local
tradition.

