# German to English translation, bitte **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 8, 2007, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-to-english-translation-bitte/391389 "2007-02-08T19:05:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2007, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-to-english-translation-bitte/391389/1 "2007-02-08T19:05:57Z")
“Deß einen Todt, deß andern Brod.” I’m guessing it’s similar to “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.” ---
**Author:** ![kellner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c2a13f/32.png) [@kellner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kellner)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2007, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-to-english-translation-bitte/391389/2 "2007-02-08T19:15:35Z")
Yes, exactly: “One’s death, the other’s bread” It is a non-standard spelling. Is it from an older source? ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2007, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-to-english-translation-bitte/391389/3 "2007-02-08T20:16:21Z")
[QUOTE=kellner] It is a non-standard spelling. Is it from an older source? [/QUOTE] Undoubtedly. Sadly, it looked fine to me but not being able to push it through Babelfish made me question myself. I’m so obsolete. ☹ Never could read German well, but what I could read isn’t even spelled the same way anymore. Young’uns like my daughter aren’t even taught to read Fraktur. ---
**Author:** ![kellner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c2a13f/32.png) [@kellner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kellner)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2007, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-to-english-translation-bitte/391389/4 "2007-02-08T20:40:58Z")
[QUOTE=dropzone] I’m so obsolete. ☹ Never could read German well, but what I could read isn’t even spelled the same way anymore. Young’uns like my daughter aren’t even taught to read Fraktur. [/QUOTE] Unless you are _very_ obsolete, that’s not what I meant. 🙂 The recent reform changed mostly things that people never got right to begin with and germanized a few loan words. The spelling looks as if it could be centuries old. Phonetically it’s just the same as the modern version (“Des einen Tod, des anderen Brot”) In earlier times things like d/t/dt/th at the end of words that are all pronounced the same varied widely. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2007, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-to-english-translation-bitte/391389/5 "2007-02-08T21:37:06Z")
[QUOTE=kellner] Unless you are _very_ obsolete, that’s not what I meant. 🙂 … The spelling looks as if it could be centuries old. [/quote] My teacher thought it benefitted us to translate Göthe and Schiller, okay? 😉 I don’t know who the hell that “Goethe” guy is that people talk about. > [@](#): > > In earlier times things like d/t/dt/th at the end of words that are all pronounced the same varied widely. 😕 You pronounce them the same? Granted, the differences are subtle (in the “for all intents and purposes nonexistant” sense) but I was taught that they were different. But my teacher in 1968 was a curmudgeon in his 60s who disapproved of modern things like valved trumpets. I think he felt the world ended with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. ---
**Author:** ![kellner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c2a13f/32.png) [@kellner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kellner)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2007, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-to-english-translation-bitte/391389/6 "2007-02-08T22:38:05Z")
[QUOTE=dropzone] 😕 You pronounce them the same? Granted, the differences are subtle (in the “for all intents and purposes nonexistant” sense) but I was taught that they were different. [/QUOTE] At the beginning or in the middle of words those are different. At the end of a German word you can’t have voiced “obstruents”, i.e. the sounds represented by _b, g, d, v, z_ (and the most common _r_, but there it gets a bit complicated.) If those occur at the end of a word, they are transformed into their unvoiced counterparts. For example, the _d_ in “Tod” is pronounced as a typical _d_ in all forms where it isn’t at the end: Tode - deaths, des Todes - of death… At the end, as in plain “Tod”, it is pronounced like a _t_. Many people aren’t aware of this hard and fast rule. They want to be extra diligent and maintain a distinction between words ending in the letters _t_ and _d_ when enunciating carefully. In natural speech it is very reliably not there. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2007, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-to-english-translation-bitte/391389/7 "2007-02-09T22:11:41Z")
[QUOTE=kellner] In natural speech it is very reliably not there. [/QUOTE] Ah, but what about Hoch Deutsch is “natural?” 😉