|
Germany's most beautiful word?
Entries for a competition to unearth the most stunning example - organised by the German language council - have been flooding in. More than 20,000 words, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, have been sent in by email and letter. German, for example, has a word to describe that niggling melody you just cannot get out of your head - "Ohrwurm", literally "earworm". "Eisenbahnknoten" is a "knot of rail-lines" or, in other words, a railway junction. The competition comes at an interesting time for German scholars, with renewed controversy about changes to spelling rules introduced a few years ago, says the BBC's Ray Furlong. These are widely detested and ignored by the leading newspapers. So will it be a simple word like "Liebe" - love, or the more involved "Geheimratsecken," which means receding hairline? Sunday is the deadline for submissions, with the jury expected to make its decision by October.
Posted by: Steve 2004-08-02 |
|
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=39536 |