Meine lieben Studenten!
My dear Students!
und wenigstens zwei liebe Studentinnen!
and at least two dear female Students!
(German is soooooo sexist! Actually, Germans don't find it sexist, as far as I know, to use gender specific language -- they find it naturally descriptve.)
Vielen Dank/much gratitude to all who gave me information and advice about how to make real Umlauts on my PC.
But both Rev. Fr. Eric Stefanski and my local, unordained expert tell me that IT WON"T WORK over e-mail! If those two witnesses, who have never agreed about anything before, are agreed here, it must be true! We do still accept "The Testimony of Two Men" (I am a Taylor Caldwell fan).
I wrote myself an e-mail ("I'm gonna sit right down and right myself a letter" -- I'm also a Mills Brothers fan) with Umlauts -- they were on the item sent -- but not on the item received!
So I am going to be as imperious as I've been accused of being -- like any good "Herr Professor Pastor Doktor" -- and state categorially that we'll stay with the "ae," "oe," and "ue" instead of trying to use Umlauts for these lessons. It's a legitimate option in German orthography, and there's no reason why it should cause any confusion!
If you want confusion, just wait until, in much later study, you come across some compound/complex sentences with about five clauses each! Or try to read some scientific German or legalese! I've worked with both in my unpleasant burden of translating secular materials to put bread on the table. How can the language in which Paul Gerhardt wrote those beautiful hymns be abused in such an ugly manner? Once, when I was preaching in German in Cleveland, Ohio, there was a young lady present, accompanying her grandmother. She apparently did not understand the language as well as her elderly relative. Looking directly at various people in the congregation as I preached, it just happened that I was looking right at her when I used a double infinitive following a modal auxiliary. Wow! Before or since, I've never seen "Huh?!" written more clearly on any human face! DON'T WORRY; BE HAPPY! It will not happen to you -- Luther and Walther and Pieper wrote very clearly in German -- not like Hegel or Heidegger or anyone of their ilk.
Again, I appreciate all the help which several people have given. I will use it in the future in word processing. But it won't work for these lessons!
Christo befohlen!
John M. "Es-Steht-Geschrieben" Drickamer
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