Friday 11 January 2013

[sic erat scriptum]

Although deceptively straightforward, I find that I am having a tough time with reflexive verb forms in German. Little pronouns like mich and dich and generically rendered as sich modify directionality quite a bit—zum Beispiel: I could have kicked him as opposed to I could have kicked myself.

This much is clear but this turning in sometimes is expressed in unexpected ways. Lohnen by itself signifies incentivizing, remunerating, paying a wage but sich lohnen is for something to be worth (one’s) while or whereas handeln is to act or trade, sich handeln um is to involve and implicate. I am sure the kernel of the logic of parts of speech is in there somewhere but it is not always easy to extract—for me. How does one come to that? Whenever I try to interpret something with a lot of curves and detours, it comes across in such a butchered way, without extensive help, that each sich becomes a sic—Latin for “thus” and usually rendered in brackets to highlight that something’s that’s been faithfully copied with all the glory of errors and poor grammar. The Latin can pop up as a little acerbic and derisive sometimes, like an angry little self-righteous editing mark, but being muddled is often instructive and one can be wrong in creative and interesting ways, too.