Talking Fraktur

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Talking Fraktur is a saying .

Anyone who “speaks Fraktur” with someone speaks to them in clear, unambiguous terms, without further ado or euphemisms , and gives them their opinion directly and bluntly.

The phrase is probably due to the fact that in Fraktur German (non-Latin) texts were written, then the significance that "clearly, unmistakably the opinion say" probably "speak Latin" in distinction to revealed. But the form of the writing ( Fraktur = broken and angular; Latin alphabet = round) may have played a role, with the angular typeface being equated with the coarse tone .

Historical example of a German-language text set in Fraktur; the foreign language words are printed in Antiqua.

A slightly different explanation is as follows: The Fraktur typeface was common in Germany until around the middle of the 20th century for German-language, generally understandable texts, but Latin words and idioms were also used in Fraktur in Antiqua ("Latin script") (mixed sentence). One often did not dare to name offensive and immoral things in German, but instead turned to Latin, and in the case of particularly offensive facts also to Greek, in order to confront the common people (and children and adolescents) with the offensive facts " save ". These passages in the text, which were only understandable to the scholar, were of course not in Fraktur either.

Text example:

“On a summer evening at dusk ... was entered by a hall guard who was committing fornication with a tramp on a dirt road by masturbating him and then immisit mentulam ejus in os suum . ... The public prosecutor's office refrained from filing the lawsuit because no public scandal had arisen and immissio membri in anum had not taken place. "

In current usage, a reversal of usage is emerging. “Speaking Fraktur” becomes the epitome of an ornate, tortuous, incomprehensible way of expression.

" Writing Fraktur denotes" - so Otto Ladendorf after Gombert in the magazine for German word research 7, p. 139f. - “a threatening word popular in the full-bodied language of our social democrats”, which heralds a ruthless act of violence. He traces the spread of this phrase back to the Mainz lawyer and deputy Franz Heinrich Zitz (see border messenger of September 24, 1903 and July 14, 1904), who is said to have shouted in a brilliant speech on September 17, 1848 on the Pfingstweide near Frankfurt: " You have to write Fraktur, you will no longer be heard! ”Gombert remarks that the Frankfurt mob had already demonstrated their understanding of this type of writing on the following day with the murder of Prince Lichnowsky and General von Auerswald , and also shows examples from Jean Paul ( 1796) and Menzels Literaturblatt zum Morgenblatt 1830, p. 19, "that the Fraktur letters have served as an effective metaphor for the rough and violent for some time, even if of course without this particular political coloring." Otto Ladendorf, Historical Keyword Book

Synonyms

straight talking

swell

  • Kluge: Etymological dictionary of the German language

Remarks

  1. Dr. R. v. Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia sexualis with special consideration of the contrary sexual sensation, 10th edition, Stuttgart 1898.
  2. Strasbourg and Berlin 1906, Karl J. Trübner, p. 89. Emphasis in the original (italicized here blocked there, letters have been removed).