young lady
In the crime series “Munich Murder” broadcast by ZDF, inspectors Flierl, Neuhauser and Schaller recently solved the murder of a club owner with their usual casual obstinacy. The series is rich in wordplay and whimsicality, and it’s also happy to break the rules of the zeitgeist when the need arises. For example, when Ludwig Schaller (played by Alexander Held) greets the Munich ladies charmingly with a kiss on the hand and, above all, when he always addresses his colleague (played by Bernadette Heerwagen) as Miss Flierl. Fräulein Flierl – that sounds extremely sonorous when the actor Held whispers it, but in real life many progressives would probably bestow the blessings of the so-called cancel culture on him immediately. Discrimination, devaluation, language racism – the current German language order mercilessly condemns the use of words like Miss.
The form of address Fräulein was banned from the cosmos of official German as early as 1971. Other languages also have comparable diminutives whose lovely sound is undeniable: Signorina, Señorita, Mademoiselle – translated, of course, they all mean little woman or little lady. This devaluation was glossed over by sentimental outbursts such as the Fräulein Miracle in the 1950s or by the Miss from Office, which was indispensable for a long time. And then there was the school girl, a respectable and authoritative institution. If the “Schuifreilein” ordered something, then that counted. The author Hans Niedermayer impressively describes in his memoir “Child in another world” how the schoolgirl simply ignored him, although he could have answered some of the questions.
raners
A reader reported that he was served a beetroot salad in a hospital in Upper Bavaria, but the nurse did not know the word Raner. Yellow and beetroot are also falling victim to the language change, and you can only find carrots and beetroot in the supermarket. Even local market women mark their Rannen or Raner (dark a), as the beets were called, as beetroot. “Ranen and red turnips” already appear in Andreas Zaupser’s dictionary from 1789. These are the original names of this vegetable, which no longer meet today’s worldly standards. Disadvantage: One tends to misspell. However, if there are such, beets are red-colored garden beds. The yellow turnip, called Goiberuam in the dialect, ekes out its existence today as carrots, carrots and carrots.