The protagonist in my novel is an outcast in his German town: despised, unwelcome, rejected by his neighbors. I need a pejorative German term for him. Not like “loser,” but something that captures his being ostracized by his people. FWIW, he moved to that community as a child. Prior to that, he was abandoned by his father. Yes, a hard life.
I do not speak German. Is “die Ausgestoßenen” a reasonable choice?
Thank you.
For one, „die Ausgestoßenen“ is plural, and also not something you’d use as a pejorative. I’m wracking my brain trying to come up with a word that you would actually say to a person and that also conveys what you are trying to. Where exactly is this village? Words like that can be highly regional.
I also have difficulties coming up with a word that conveys what the OP is after. There’s “Außenseiter” (outsider), but that word is rather neutral and not very harsh. But in a situation where a stranger lives in an intolerant community, he might be called “komischer Kauz” or “schräger Vogel” by the local people. Also both not very harsh, but expressing the otherness of the outsider.
Does Paria not work?
I struggle to find a single word for that, but I have heard der Zugereiste (or doah Zug’reista in Bavaria) pronounced with a lot of spite. Der Zugezogene would qualify too. Der Fremde may sound too much like Camus.
Combinations of noun + adjective could be:
Das fremde Ekel
If he is not blond and blue eyed enough (what they call Bio-Deutsch nowadays, sigh…) he might be called quite directly der Kanake, der dreckige Zigeuner (dirty gipsy) or Kümmeltürke (cumin-eating turk. No, I don’t know what the problem with cumin is, but it is an insult).
It’s a pity I don’t have children to ask, in my recollection children are great for coming up with the names that really hurt, but I will keep thinking. Perhaps this develops into a brain storming exercise.
As for Paria, I think it sounds too highbrow for a rural insult: If you want to point out how backwards and intolerant they are, and that was my mental image of the situation, then using the word Paria is perhaps not ideal. But it would be very apt in a setting like a private school, an Internat.
I’ve always wondered about that insult, because I’ve never eaten Turkish food that contained cumin. The Austrians however put cumin into nearly everything, at least you virtually cannot get any bread in Austria without it, so shouldn’t it be “Kümmelösi”?
Perhaps it comes from Kameltreiber (camel driver, also an insult in its own right, so to speak, used against arabic looking people) or something similar, via some Lautverschiebungen (phonetic shifts)? Kamel → Kümmel?
Just improvising here.
I don’t think so, but rather can imagine that the insult is as old as the rivalry and wars between the Holy Roman Empire and the Osman Empire. In those days, the people were even dumber than today when making up insults and probably simply thought "Cumin comes from the East. Turks come from the East. Ergo, “Kümmeltürke”.
I sure have. It’s common in Eastern cooking.
In terms of ethnic slurs. is “Churka” ever used in German? It’s the Russian equivalent of “Wog.”
No, I’ve never heard the word “Churka”, but I’m a Wessie. Maybe it’s better known in East Germany where most people learned Russian instead of English in school.
IIRC, the literal meaning of “Churka” is “stump.” In English, you might say someone is “dumb as a stump,” but the sense of it in Russian is far harsher.
I could see it being used as a loan word, like “droogs” and “groodies” in Burgess’s Nadsat.
Be back soon…
You may be confusing caraway seed with cumin. Austrians use caraway a lot; I’ve not noticed them using cumin. Cumin is more a Middle Eastern to South Asian spice (as well as Mexican on this side of the pond.)
I have never met an Amish person in Germany, but there are some Methodists that, I have heard, can be similar in some respects. I’ll keep thinking. I know a blog I should read again about such a person.
In this case I’m out, because as far as I know the Amish in the US speak an obsolete German dialect that differs much from modern High German, and they’ll probably have their own dialect word for a shunned person. I don’t know if there are Amish communities in Germany (I’ve never heard about any and doubt it), and if there are, what dialect those communities speak.
This occurred to me as well. I think caraway is called kummel in Russian too. (Cumin is both kumin and zira.)
I just found an online source that may help with this, as the scenario involves an Amish family in Ohio.
Yes, that seems to be the case, the spice I often encounter in Austrian cuisine is caraway, which according to wiki is called “Echter Kümmel” in German. Cumin in German is called “Kreuzkümmel”, which I have heard of, but I don’t know if I have ever tasted it.
A quick look at an Amish dictionary yields schlingle, a “rogue.” It doesn’t seem to be capitalized like nouns in Modern German.
Maybe it would be worthwhile to check a Yiddish dictionary too?
A “Schlingel” in High German is a trickster, a naughty boy so to say. I don’t know, but it sounds like a Yiddish leanword, which we have many of in German.