Reasons to attempt Germanlearning
“I liked the sticklebrick nature of it, building long supple words by putting short ones together. Things could be brought into being that had no name in English - Weltanschauung, Schadenfreude, sippenhaft, Sonderweg, Scheissfreundlichkeit, Vergangenheitsbewultigung.
(…)
I think about the feeling I’ve developed for the German Democratic Republic. This feeling needs a sticklebrick word: I can only describe it as horror-romance. The romance comes from the dream of a better world the German Communists wanted to build out of the ashes of their Nazi past: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. The horror comes from what they did in its name. ..”
Anna Funder, Stasiland. 2002:4.
[…] 11am. Two and a half hours till I meet my grandparents at Lucia’s. I need a sticklebrick word to describe the delight-exhaustion I feel at being in my home town. […]
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