Die Zeit came to interview me at CUNY and here’s the video — subtitled. In it, I mention discovering the early German blog Der Schockwellenreiter and he noticed that in turn with a classic of Denglisch: “Jeff »BuzzMachine« Jarvis hat den Schockwellenreiter genamedropped.” The past perfect of verb namedroppen. Ich namedroppe. Du namedropst. Wir namedroppen.
1 response to “Blather auf Deutsch”
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Jeff,
Actually, this sentence doesn’t look like the past perfect. It’s actually in the simple past tense (or ‘aspect’, as tenses are more fashionably known these days.) ‘Genamedropped’ functions here, I think, as a past participle in a simpe past tense sentence.
German is tricky in this way. ‘Er hat genamedropped’ looks like an English perfect aspect (Present perfect: ‘He has name dropped’; Past perfect: ‘He had name dropped’.)
So, I understand the sentence to simply mean
‘Jeff Jarvis name dropped Schockwellenreiter’ [which is simple past tense],
rather than
‘Jeff Jarvis HAD namedropped Schockwellenreiter’. [Which would be the past perfect.]
Phew. I’m glad I’m sticking to Chinese these days.
Ken Carroll
ChinesePod
