Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 April 24

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

April 24

Sunday függler ?

Hello! Hemingway in For Whom the Bell Tolls (beginning of chapter 32) writes about an incompetent German general fighting on the Spanish republican side : "Whoever gave that Sunday függler command of a brigade should be shot" . As I belong to those 95 % french people whose knowledge of german doesn't go farther than Ich liebe dich, I ask you: "What does függler mean ?". I understand it has to do with fitting things together : so I figure a függler might be playing kriegspiel with little wood cubes on a map, and be what we call a stratège en chambre...But I understand fügen conveys also a notion of slotting things in, so it may have a sexual connotation, which is stressed (and worsened) by the word Sunday : we have here the deeply rooted notion that Sunday activities are more perverse and less accurate than weekdays occupations : see the insults "chasseur du dimanche" (Sunday hunter) , "conducteur du dimanche" (Sunday driver) etc... And I hope the word is not badly spelled, as is infortunately the case 1 time out of 3 in Hemingway books when french or spanish sentences are used... Thanks a lot beforehand for your answers Arapaima (talk) 07:31, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I can't find a word Függler, or indeed anything close to it, in any of my German dictionaries. Fügen does mean join or fit together, but Függler is not any kind of regular derivative of fügen (which I have never heard have any sexual connotations anyway). German does also have words with Sonntags- implying amateurishness (e.g. Sonntagsfahrer "Sunday driver"). I think Hemingway either made this word up or misspelled it beyond recognition. Angr (talk) 07:47, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

The Urban Dictionary has some seriously sexually related suggestions. I wonder if the umlaut was added to 'diguise' the word. Richard Avery (talk) 07:56, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

The German translation by Baudisch just renders "Sunday függler" with "Sonntagsvögler" which strongly suggests that "függler" is not recognizable German even to professional translators. The Turkish translation by Esençay repeats the word as is, but includes immediately beside it in parentheses--"soytari" which refers to a clown or jester. I don't think this translates "függler" though, because it wouldn't really make sense -- I guess the translator just tried to give a sense for what he guessed "Sunday függler" meant. Here's a shot in the dark: Maybe Hemingway was trying to whimsically re-Germanize fugleman (the use of which would actually make sense in this case) and came up "függler". --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 13:42, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Translated verbatim, a Sonntagsvögler (pronounced almost identical to Sonntagsfüggler) would be someone who has sexual intercourse on a Sunday. Whilst I have never heard the term, I would intuitively imagine a person who is obsessed with rules and order, a pedantic person who follows the manual as if it were holy writ, a man incapable of modifying strict prescribed procedures to fit the actual demand of a situation. To some extent this would be a caricature of one aspect of the stereotypical German. As I can not remember much of the novel after 50 years, I have no idea if this interpretation fits the persona of the general. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 18:23, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

That you yourself would admit 95% of French people are limited in their knowledge of German to ich liebe dich ("I love you" for the benefit of non-German speakers) confirms more than a couple stereotypes of French people, I think. Pas d'offense. :) 24.92.85.35 (talk) 23:07, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

After reading you, I can imagine Hemingway in 1937 observing that curious mix of East Europeans soldiers and spies revelling in a Madrid palace, and noting names, faces and (more or less accurately) words...In "For whom the bell tolls", függler is pronounced by a Hungarian general, maybe with an accent, and looks very much to me (apart to its similarity with fucker) like a military slang world... True that barracks language mirrors cultural notions (and mainly the one that good usefull intercourses are to take place during Saturday nights, not on Sundays, and especially not on Sunday mornings, what with the hang-over and spent body...)  : I remember, about 55 years ago, going to school along a barrack high wall, behind which a sergent was drilling his men, and hearing him bellow :Yes gentlemen, you are going to do it all again, thanks to your friend here who cannot keep the pace ! Look a him, begat by a Sunday squirt, half semen and half piss !.. I was ten by then, but my friends clearly explained me the meaning of it...Glad my question arose your interest, thanks again, t. y. No offense, IP, it's not a stereotype, but a too sadly true cultural fact : German and French people continue, even now, à se regarder en chiens de faïence ("to stare at each other like 2 painted earthenware dogs on a shelf") as goes the saying . But whose's the fault ? & BTW did you ever try to make an addition or ask a question on WP de ? Go ahead, you'll see... Arapaima (talk) 09:42, 25 April 2012 (UTC)