Pet peeve: "realisieren" in German

Gah. Just read an article in German Wikipedia which used the German word "realisieren" in the sense of "to realise, understand, come to know"; this is, for me, an anglicism and a false friend and rubs me the wrong way. (It should be something like "fassen, begreifen, sich gewahr werden, erkennen, verstehen" instead IMO.)

For me, the German "realisieren" should be restricted to the sense "realise a project (i.e. implement it, carry it out)".

This rant has been brought to you by Prescriptivists, Inc.

(Hmm... though my Duden does recognise the other sense, even if it's marked in the etymology as "from the English word 'realize'".)

Another pet peeve is the spelling of "Entgelt" as "Entgeld", though it's easy to see where that confusion arises.

ETA: Heh. And coincidentally, "Zwiebelfisch" has an article about the Americanisation of German.

Amusing quote

I've heard this before but just came across it again and thought I'd post it here:

The difference between theory and practice is this:

In theory, theory is the same as in practice. In practice, it isn't.

Stimmt eigentlich. Wie *heißt* das Teil überhaupt?

An der Kasse legt man seine Waren auf das Laufband. Und damit sie nicht mit den Waren des Vordermannes verwechselt werden, legt man ein… ja, wie heißt das Ding überhaupt? dazwischen.

Darüber habe ich mir nie Gedanken gemacht, aber mir fällt tatsächlich kein Wort für diesen Gegenstand ein, obwohl ich ihn oft benutze.

Wer ebenfalls keine Ahnung hat, hat vielleicht Lust, einen entsprechenden Artikel vom Zwiebelfisch zu lesen.

Computer moved

By the way, we finally got our computer moved into the bedroom last weekend. The phones are now in the hallway; fortunately, the DSL cable is just long enough to reach the computer.

And Stella and I bought a 15m television cable and she connected that a couple of days ago; now we have radio and television in our computer.

Random factoid: this is the first time I've had something capable of showing television since I moved out from my parents' house in 1997. I thought I wouldn't need television now, either, and didn't want to pay the monthly fee, but removing the card from the computer looked more difficult than I had thought so we decided to leave it in any pay more (I was already paying for radio but the fee for TV is higher). And since we were already paying, Stella decided to buy a cable so that we could take advantage of it.

And the scanner also worked fairly well, though it was initially confused after being plugged into a different USB port from when the computer was in the other room. But reinstalling the drivers fixed that. The printer, on the other hand, was fine with the new arrangement, and the USB cradle for my PDA as well (though that did mention it had "found new hardware", but didn't prompt me for drivers and Just Worked).

So now the other room is ready as a nursery; my old desk will be a changing table, and the bed is in the corner where Stella wants it (where my desk used to be).