Hunter's Latin

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Hunters' Latin is a metaphor in German for exaggerated stories by hunters about hunting experiences , such as the number or, above all, the size of the animals killed. This also includes inventing new animal species such as the Wolpertinger . The old term found its way into common colloquial language as a linguistic image for confabulation . The terms seaman's yarn from seafaring and angler's Latin from the field of fishing are used analogously .

Jägerlatein , Emil Rau (Official Catalog of the Munich Annual Exhibition 1900 in the Glaspalast )

On the other hand, the hunter's language as a name for the jargon of the hunters must be distinguished from the hunter's Latin.

history

Probably the oldest evidence of hunter's Latin comes from the time of the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III. (ruled 1479–1425 BC), who boasted that he had killed 120 elephants on the way back to one of his campaigns to the Middle East. The balance of a court hunt by the Assyrian King Tiglath-Pileser I (r. 1115 / 4–1077 / 6 BC) is even more fantastic, in which 120 elephants and 800 lions are also said to have been killed.

Otto von Bismarck allegedly said: "There are never as many lies as before the election, during the war and after the hunt."

Hunting and fishing Latin form the basis of many jokes or were made into laterals .

Other similar language images from hunting are terms such as "lucky hunters", "treasure hunters" or "Schürzenjäger". An example of this usage is found in Clemens Brentano's poem Der Jäger an der Shepherd, composed in 1803 , in which a hunter becomes a "treasure hunter":

“But I have to go to Thule

Looking at the bottom of the sea

A cup, my lover

Only drinks himself from it healthy.

Where the treasures are buried

I already know, patience, patience,

I will have all treasures

To pay all the debt. (...) "

literature

• Rüdiger F. Wieland: Jägerlatein , English publisher, Wiesbaden, 1980, ISBN 3881400613
• Norman Thelwell : Thelwells Jägerlatein , Heyne, 1988, ISBN 3453007603
• Michael Hlatky: Hunter's Latin !? The best stories , Stocker, 2005, ISBN 3702009078
• Wolfgang Seefeld: Angler's Latin: Whispering is happening everywhere. On the trail of a widely used foreign language , Books on Demand GmbH, 2007, ISBN 3833496916
• Ilse Haseder , Gerhard Stinglwagner : Knaurs Großes Jagdlexikon , Augsburg 2000, ISBN 3-8289-1579-5

Web links

Wiktionary: Hunter's Latin  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Haseder, page 449.
2. ^ Edzard Dietz Otto: History of Mesopotamia. From the Sumerians to Alexander the Great. 2nd, improved edition, CH Beck, Munich 2009, p. 170.
3. ↑ Clemens Brentano: The hunter to the shepherd