It’s been a long and sometimes painful journey through a jungle of misconception and prejudice. Both seem to die as hard as any of the bad habits the world so happily cultivates. Eventually it looks as though Frankfurt – Hessen’s largest city (but not it’s capital, that’s Wiesbaden, you didn’t know that, did you?) has managed to shed its unjustified reputation of being nothing but a money-minded financial hub. See for yourselves how winsome it can be.
When looking for the easy way out, people come up with the most ludicrous of excuses to warrant their hornswoggle doing: house on fire, dog dead, car stolen, wrong place/time/mood, worst bad-hair day ever, princess all of a sudden. Once the procrastination pole has inevitably run out of length, the dreaded task just has to be tackled, no matter what. Translations, for instance, can develop into a painfully tedious exercise. Isn’t it perfectly legitimate then to employ one of those servile robots available online in order to alleviate detested assignments? It is – if you can live with the results. We have put some of these practical computerised interpreters to the test, feeding them with stretches of German articles published during the early stages of goodmeetings.com’s young history. The English-speaking majority of our readership will have to think in meanders to unravel and realign the contorted texts back to meaning. Even though some of the pidgin might remain a secret forever: as long as no-one has been harmed, reading complete nonsense once in a while can be a great pastime.
A port(e)manteau word is an imaginative linguistic creation anyone can come up with. It fuses two different existing sounds and meanings and compounds them into a new snug expression. A wide array of portmanteaux has quietly infiltrated into our common vocabulary rut without our noticing it. Many of these words are no longer recognisable as random concoctions. Some even made it into respectable dictionaries, whereas others are so painfully adventurous that – for straight minds – their meaning becomes utterly unfathomable. A circumstance that forces the ones who coined them into a kind of zugzwang, should they want to see their congenial brain waves preserved for the next generations. But we need not worry: The universal power of social media will reliably enhance their endeavours to the fullest, don’t you think?
When caught doodling at school back in the old days, one was in for a hefty reprimand by the teacher, who would then maliciously peach on you at home, throwing your poor parents into a state of quiet devastation. Caught more frequently, your next stop was likely to be at the dreaded in-house psychologist’s office, where an expert human lack-of-concentration detector would painfully be deep-probing into the diminishing source of your ability to keep your young mind focussed. Serves you right when you allow your thoughts to go all spaghetti!
