|
|
Re: Need German equivalent of "crank"
Posted:
Nov 28, 2006 3:59 AM
|
|
[Followup-To: alt.usage.german]
On Mon, 27 Nov 2006, sttscitrans@tesco.net wrote:
> Helmut Richter wrote:
> > Even the more or less literal translation "bei dem ist eine Schraube
> > locker" would work. But all these, including the direct "der spinnt", just
> > imply some malfunction of the brain. A "Spinner", however, has a working
> > brain producing lots of ideas - weird ones -, which would not work without
> > a fair amount of intelligence, albeit non-standard.
>
> "Er ist ein Spinner" , "Der spinnt" - as far as usage is concerned
> I don't see the difference between them. These are the
> common, general ways of saying someone is mad or crazy.
> The idea of producing a lot of weird ideas is more closely
> associated with a "fantasist" or "confabulist". I think a crank is
> usually a
> monomaniac.
>
> Wahrig, Spinner: Jemand , der spinnt, der dummes Zeug redet oder
> nicht ernst zu nehmenede Dinge redet.
When I wrote that I see a somewhat different emphasis between the verb and
the noun, I judged from my feel for language, not from dictionaries. To
check that, I looked up the translations in a dictionary (Langenscheidt,
2001) and found:
spinnen (this meaning): be mad (or: nuts, crazy, off one's nut), talk
rubbish (rot)
Spinner (this meaning): crackpot, screwball
To me, the choice of English equivalents seems to imply the same slight
shift in emphasis I tried to explain. But again, my mastery of such fine
distinctions in English is scant.
--
Helmut Richter
|
|
