Keep Up The Good Work

Your Berlin Stories article focussed strongly on the pig (Schwein) in German life and culture.

The popular linguistic use of Schwein is much more far-reaching than one might suspect. Here are but a few common examples:

• armes Schwein - poor sod/fellow
• dummes Schwein - ignorant chap
• Sparschwein - piggy bank
• Schweinerei - piggishness or amoral or dysfunctional state of affairs
• Schwein ... haben - to have a pig (meaning to be lucky or fortunate)
• Marzipan-Schweinchen - the endearing marzipan confection in the shape of a pig ... with about a million calories it seems

Even little young people who are unusually messy are admonished as Du kleines Ferkel. Only slightly more tangential is to live in splendour i.e. the life of Riley, which in German is live wie die Made im Speck.

Ah now if it hadn't been for 1066 and the francophonization (isn't that word so grotesquely American?) of the English language, our friends and colleagues in Britain might also be cooking a swine roast like the German's Schweinebraten instead of a pork roast. Thus mutton heads in England correspond to German Schafskoepfe.

Keep up the good work.

Alan J. Nanders, Ontario, Canada
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