In the play I’m now doing (“The Gazebo” by Alec Coppel, if anyone’s interested — a black comedy written in the Fifties), my character speaks a foreign language. It looks like German — except for the obvious problem that the nouns aren’t properly capitalized — and I can’t quite translate it myself. I can speak it just fine; the pronunciation isn’t the problem.
The character I play is known, from comments in the script, to have a penchant for throwing Hungarian words into his Scrabble play. Elliott also wraps a dead body in the shower curtains and buries him in the yard. When Nell asks him where the curtains went, he replies that he gave them away to a man soliciting for Hungarian relief. I don’t know if the play mentions Hungarian simply because it’s an odd and funny thing to say, or if perhaps the language is Hungarian and that’s why I can’t translate it, or if it’s really German and the playwright (or his editor) goofed up.
The lines, with capitalization and spelling precise:
It’s obvious he’s asking her to dance to the minuet that’s playing, because that’s just what they do next. What does it translate to, exactly?
Later, when the jig is up and Elliott’s about to be caught by Harlow, the Assistant District Attorney:
I understand he’s telling her, in general: don’t say a word, don’t worry, I know what I’m doing, come here and be still. That is obvious from context, and from some of the words I do know. How does it properly translate? If it is German, it looks like a huge run-on sentence to me.
The play has a number of typographical errors, and evidence of previous edits stick out like the spars of a shipwreck, so I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the language is misspelled or badly translated.
Probably: Und jetzt bitte ich Ihre Liebden um das nächsste Menuett?
And now I ask [archaic version of ‘you’ as addressed to a noble person of princely rank] for the next minuet
Probably: Euer Durchlaucht, es ist mir eine Ehr’ [i.e.: Ehre]
[Form of address for a prince or elector], it is an honour to me (or: you honour me)
This dialogue has the tone of an exchange at a 18th century court; this is probably by way of being droll. Even persons of the appropriate ranks of nobility would not have talked like that in the 20th century.
Probably: Bitte sage kein Wort, habe keine Angst**.** Ich weiß genau was ich tue. Komm her.
Please say no word [i.e. be quiet, but without overtones of censure], have no fear. I know exactly what I am doing.
Probably: Ich versteh nicht.
I do not understand.
There is a preposition missing here.
Either: Komm mit mir und sei still. Come with me and be quiet.
Or: Komm zu mir und sei still. Come to me and be quiet
Or “mir” could be a misspelling of “mit”:
Komm mit und sei still. Come with me and be quiet
In contrast with the first dialogue, the second one is neither archaic nor stilted.
Actually, it’s not an umlaut, which technically refers to a certain kind of vowel change that occurs in Germanic languages when a word is modified (through inflection, conjugation, etc.), and also the diacritic (¨) used to mark it. Both English and German have umlauts (the former unmarked), but Hungarian isn’t a Germanic language, and its letters o and ö are completely distinct, so its double-dot diacritic would be better referred to as a diaeresis. With respect to the relationship between ö and ő, IIRC sometimes they are distinct and sometimes ő is simply a modification (lengthening) of ö.
The ö and ü in Hungarian are the same as the ö and ü vowels in German (representing rounded back vowels.) The ő and ű are simply lengthenings of these vowels. I can hold conversations in both languages, but I am not native, so if you can show me a source which disagrees with my statement, I would be happy to be corrected. I called the symbol an “umlaut” because it performs the same function (a specific changing of sound) as the German umlaut. Perhaps the distinction is so fine that umlaut can only be used with Germanic languages. I am aware of the word diaeresis (as the New Yorker is so fond of using them), but thought that umlaut was the more precise word in this case.
