Stubblehoppers

[Helmut]

Servus,
I have often seen German infantrymen referred to as Stubblehoppers but have never seen the term writtenin German. I can't imagine what the German word,or words, would be. Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards,

Helmut

[Tom Houlihan]

Stoppelhopser {m} Stubble hopper, another term for the infantry man

From Kriegsprache

[Helmut]

Thanks, Tom

[Tom Houlihan]

De rien!

[Zicko]

Stoppelhopser {m} Stubble hopper, another term for the infantry man

From Kriegsprache

Hi Tom,
you continue to use "Kriegsprache" instead of "Kriegssprache". How come? "Kriegsprache" sounds weird to a native speaker and is/was simply never used.
I hate seeing my mother tongue being mishandled, even if I must admit that there are lots of slings and arrows in that outrageous language.
regards,
Zicko

[John W. Howard]

Hello Zicko:
You are quite right to point out to Tom the correct spelling of Kriegssprache, but the tone of your message leaves something to be desired. Tom, as do all of our members work quite hard to try to be accurate when posting, but we often do make mistakes and no one is harder on ourselves than ourselves. A gentle reminder to Tom about the correct spelling would have been sufficent; accusing Tom of "Misusing your language" is ridiculous.

[Tom Houlihan]

Zicko, the title for my book is indeed a word that was never used. It is not real. I made it up.

Before I took it public, however, I went to some German friends. I told them what goal I was trying to accomplish and they helped me. It was native Germans who approved my final title choice. Several Germans have seen the book, or at least become aware of it. That includes at least 3 or possibly 4 WWII veterans that I'm aware of. You are the only one who has had anything negative to say about it. Given the background of the people I am referring to, I feel rather confident that my made-up word accomplishes what I meant it to do.

For what it's worth, if I choose to express myself in a foreign language, I make every effort to do it properly. I don't want to be responsible for mangling anyone else's language.

[Zicko]

Hello Zicko:
You are quite right to point out to Tom the correct spelling of Kriegssprache, but the tone of your message leaves something to be desired. Tom, as do all of our members work quite hard to try to be accurate when posting, but we often do make mistakes and no one is harder on ourselves than ourselves. A gentle reminder to Tom about the correct spelling would have been sufficent; accusing Tom of "Misusing your language" is ridiculous.

Hello John,
thanks for your criticism of the tone of my post. "Manglng" was the word I was looking for and Tom seems to have undertood that I didn't mean any offense. Being a native speaker of the German language I have to remind myself of what G. B. Shaw said about the English language: Easy to learn but hellishly difficult to master".

[Zicko]

Zicko, the title for my book is indeed a word that was never used. It is not real. I made it up.

Before I took it public, however, I went to some German friends. I told them what goal I was trying to accomplish and they helped me. It was native Germans who approved my final title choice. Several Germans have seen the book, or at least become aware of it. That includes at least 3 or possibly 4 WWII veterans that I'm aware of. You are the only one who has had anything negative to say about it. Given the background of the people I am referring to, I feel rather confident that my made-up word accomplishes what I meant it to do.

For what it's worth, if I choose to express myself in a foreign language, I make every effort to do it properly. I don't want to be responsible for mangling anyone else's language.

Hi Tom,
as Tom Howard pointed out to me, the tone of my post regarding Kriegsprache was not what you like to read on this forum.
With your explanation of your choice of spelling I'm quite satisfied. Please accept my apologies for underestimating this sort of sophistication which I simply hadn't expected in the title of a dictionary.
Zicko

[John P. Moore]

I believe that what we have seen here is a good example of how native speakers of any language have varying degrees of spelling and grammar mastery. I made plenty of spelling mistakes in my manuscripts, but was fortunate to have a couple of university professors, who were also German WW II veterans, reviewing my work. (I don't know how many times I misspelled Sturmmann with only one m or reversed the order of "ie" or "ei", completely changing the meaning of the word in some cases) It appears that Tom H. received some bad advice. If someone pointed out a spelling error in the title of one of my publications, I would want to make the correction right away, something that ought to be easy to do in a print-on-demand arrangement.

[Howard]

Just as a by-the-by, I seem to remember that this epithet was often used by our old friend Leo Kessler aka Charles Whiting in his novels.

Tom's book is on my Amazon 'to order' list.

[Tom Houlihan]

I would want to make the correction right away, something that ought to be easy to do in a print-on-demand arrangement.

Well, thanks to real-life, and being an anal-retentive pedant, it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. I've finished changing the graphics and the title. I figured that since I was making changes, I'd make some stylistic changes I wanted. Most of you wouldn't notice extra or missing spaces, but I did. There were also a few keystrokes that shouldn't have been there. So, I tried to catch all of them.

Then, even though I promised myself I wouldn't do it, I put in some new material I had collected. Now, I know several of you have already picked up copies. Before you get upset, I will e-mail a copy of the Addendum (as of today) that I just added, if you send me a message. It's not a perfect solution, but it's the best I can do right now.

For those of you who want a copy, but haven't ordered it yet, give me a few more hours. After I get the kids down tonight, I'll upload the new version. Then I'm not going to update it until I get a few of these other projects knocked out.