a friend of the devil is a friend of mine

[truepenny]

Despite the best efforts of winter, I did not have an accident today while driving first to the doctor's office to get the Mirena checked (all fine, hang in there, being the upshot) and to get my new glasses prescription. Also, because winter made me late, I got rather more done on The Goblin Emperor than I had expected. (This is why I carry a notebook with me. It saves me from doctor's-office magazines--or Nothing At All To Read which, as you know, Bob, is a fate worse than death.)

Every once in a while, I have a completely useless geek eureka! (As for example, this from several years ago: the perfect way to explain to an English-speaking audience the nature of JFK's [ETA to add: APOCRPYPHAL] Ich bin ein Berliner mistake is to have them imagine that he was speaking (in English) in Denmark and said, "I am a Danish.") Today's is that you can demonstrate the difference between "lie" and "lay" by pointing out that Bon Jovi's "Lay Your Hands on Me" is grammatically correct. All the way through.

Completely useless. Completely geeky. And there you have it.

Comments

"lay your hands on me"

[stotangirl.livejournal.com]

Um ... I may actually be able to use that in my class next semester. If you don't mind. :)

Re: "lay your hands on me"

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Not at all! I'd be delighted.

Re: "lay your hands on me"

[stotangirl.livejournal.com]

Because nothing sears proper grammar into a freshman's brain better than a professor singing 80s hair metal ...

Re: "lay your hands on me"

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Trauma is a valid pedagogical technique. :)

[aedifica]

I must learn this song! (I have a vague idea how it goes, but not enough.)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Lyrics (http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/bon+jovi/lay+your+hands+on+me_20022226.html). (Sure there's a double negative or two, but by god they use the verb "to lay" correctly.)

[aedifica]

Oh, thanks! (That was unexpected and pleasurable, to have the lyrics found for me!)

[artemishi.livejournal.com]

I bow to your grammatical goddessness. :)
Also, sympathize with the Mirena trials and tribulations. Mine disappeared for about 24 hours, causing a bit of a freakout. Of course, as soon as the doc got a light in there today it was "everything is normal!". Hrmph. I hope things progress to Much Better for you, asap.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

I was riffing on the Jelly Doughnut thing in the novel I recently finished, since I wanted to have a character speaking very poor German. I wrote the scene, snickered to myself and went on, only going back to research after the fact.

Lacking any actual Jelly Doughnuts that I can ask, and speaking only as much German as I can pry out of the common ancestry of English, I have to rely on stuff I can find online. It looks like that whole business gained popular traction in a spy novel. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_bin_ein_Berliner#Jelly_doughnut_urban_legend) But, it appears that the Kennedy faux-pas was, apart from his Boston accent, completely grammatically correct. Digging around in this some more (http://www.slipups.com/items/51.html) suggests that's a reliable Wikipedia entry.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Thanks!

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

If you come across anything more about that, I'm definitely interested. Poking around lots of different sources, I can't find anything I'm hugely confident in. I see lots of Germans saying both 'it was perfectly grammatical!' and 'that ein was weird!' I wonder if there's a generational grammar shift going on there?

Also, I adore the idea of using Bon Jovi to demonstrate the proper use of lay vs lie!

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

It's not that 'ein Berliner' can't refer to a person; it's that you'd generally only use the definite article in a construction with an action verb, not with a bare copula. It's the same with nouns expressing nationality, religion, occupation-- you'd say Der Lehrer ist gekommen, "The teacher has arrived," with the article, but Er ist Lehrer, "He is a teacher," without it.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

I may well be picking your brain later when I do revisions, since I want a really good English approximation of bad German.

All this time, and I never knew what Tom Lehrer's last name meant. How appropriate!

[esteliel.livejournal.com]

Funny little aside: Berliner means jelly doughnut only in parts of Germany. If you'd ask for a Berliner in a bakery in Berlin they'd refuse to serve you, as a jelly doughnut is a Pfannkuchen there. Pfannkuchen is the quite literal translation of pancake, though, and in all other parts of Germany it does mean pancake and not jelly doughnut. And to make it even more confusing, where I am from (Hannover) a jelly doughnut is a Krapfen. *g*

Also, there is nothing wrong grammatically with saying "Ich bin ein Berliner". He could indeed have said "Ich bin Berliner", and it would have lost the double meaning, but "Ich bin ein Berliner" is correct too, only that in parts of Germany it can be read in two different ways.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes. This is intentional. "Lie" and "lay" are only used incorrectly in Mildmay's sections. "Lie" and "lay" (and "sit" and "set," for that matter) are frequently confused in American English (I don't know if it's the same in British English), including in the dialect that Mildmay's voice is based on. Like "don't" instead of "doesn't," it's a feature, not a bug.

[siamkatze.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, shows how well I pay attention. Thanks for clarifying that.

[nathreee.livejournal.com]

As opposed to this song () by Alanis Morisette, where lay was used wrongly. Or at least, I think so. If not, please correct me. Then I have to look over my grammar again.

[theninth.livejournal.com]

When my mom was a teacher, she'd explain prepositional phrases using "Under the Boardwalk".

The JFK story is an urban myth.

[(Anonymous)]

Although your analogy is amusing, President Kennedy was speaking perfect idiomatic German. The story has been widely debunked. See JFK: 'I Am a Jelly Donut' ('Ich bin ein Berliner') (http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/jfk_berliner.htm) --Jules Siegel (still baffled by OpenID)

[andartha.livejournal.com]

*g*

Apparently Clinton tried to duplicate Kennedy's success and integrated a german phrase into his speech to the public when he was visiting Berlin. He said "Nichts ist unmöglich" (=Nothing is impossible = means Everything is possible). What he didn't know that this phrase was the main marketing phrase for a big japanese company that is selling its cars in Germany...and so the public answered Clinton "TOYOTA!!!!"