The Big ACL Opening

Andrew Parker andrewparker at bigfoot.com
Sat Oct 18 00:09:42 UTC 2008


On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 6:53 PM, Lennart Poettering
<mzerqung at 0pointer.de> wrote:
> On Fri, 17.10.08 12:46, Jon Ciesla (limb at jcomserv.net) wrote:
>
>> An interesting irony here is that while Nietzsche's Ubermensch is best
>> translated as Overman, for English, it's commonly mistranslated as
>> Superman, and so Superpackager "sounds" more like what Lennart was getting
>> at than does Uberpackager.  To me, anyway.
>
> Uh, no. The problem I see is specifically with the german language
> prefix "Über-" used (as prefix to a word of any other language) as
> some kind of superlative when used in reference to Nietzsche's
> "Übermensch" -- because that term at least Germany has been
> appropriated by the Nazis.
>
> I fully understand that not everyone is aware of this connection,
> especially outside of Germany. But uh, in Germany it is very obvious.
>
> Also note that the "über" in the first stanza of the "Deutschlandlied"
> played a role in the decision to make only the third stanza the German
> anthem. (i.e. "Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles.")
>

I don't understand why this is an issue.  Uber has no negative
connotations in English, does it? Do we have to have all our words
vetted against every language before we can use them?

Please refrain from using the word "cut" because it is Vietnamese for "shit".

As a Brit living in the USA, I don't try to stop Americans from using
the word "fanny" just because it is offensive to me, although I have
learnt not to ask for a rubber so that I can rub something out :)




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