Re: Marked and Unmarked

Henrik Theiling wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...> writes:
> > On Sun, 8 Apr 2001, John Cowan wrote:
> >
> > > Yoon Ha Lee scripsit:
> > >
> > > > Er...BTW...what's a Sprachbund?  Sort of a linguistic isocline?
>
> Ah, BTW, how do you English speakers pronounce that?  In German it's
> [SpRa:xbUnt], but I suspect it's shifted a bit in English?
>
> Maybe you say [spra:kband]? :-)
Well, I'm studying German at school, so I pronounce it [SpRa:xbUnt] - or
at least as close as my Canadian mouth get to that. [Spra:xbund] on a
bad day.

> > OTOH when I first saw the
> > German term "Ratshaus" I thought it might mean "mousehole" until my
> > boyfriend corrected me...<slinking away now>
>
> :-)
>
> Well, not too far away, stem `rat' exists: `Rattenhaus' would be
> `rat's house', but `Rathaus' is something different. :-)
That's what I thought "Rathaus" meant, too. When I was younger, I had a
computer game called "Darklands" (well, I still have it, but...) which
is an adventure game set in mideval Germany. In all the major cities
there was a "Rathaus", and until I figured out what it was I didn't want
to go in, for fear of being attacked by giant rats. :-|

Actualy, giant rats isn't *too* out of keeping with the game, but....

--
Robert

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