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Mike Page
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2005 8:29 pm
Post subject: Schlimmbesserung |
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New Scientist says 'Schlimmbesserung' is a German word for an
improvement that makes things worse. Seems to be the only kind of
improvement I meet these days, working in a university, as I do.
Do we need an English equivalent, or should we just adopt the German?
Mike Page |
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Holger Metzger
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2005 8:48 pm
Post subject: Re: Schlimmbesserung |
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Mike Page wrote:
| Quote: | New Scientist says 'Schlimmbesserung' is a German word for an
improvement that makes things worse. Seems to be the only kind of
improvement I meet these days, working in a university, as I do.
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The German word is actually "Verschlimmbesserung".
| Quote: | Do we need an English equivalent, or should we just adopt the German?
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How about "'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' situation". Perhaps it can
be transformed in an acronym.  My German-English dictionary gives
"improvement for the worse" as a possible translation.
--
Holger |
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Jim Lawton
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2005 9:04 pm
Post subject: Re: Schlimmbesserung |
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On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 16:48:56 +0200, Holger Metzger <usenet@holgermetzger.de>
wrote:
| Quote: | Mike Page wrote:
New Scientist says 'Schlimmbesserung' is a German word for an
improvement that makes things worse. Seems to be the only kind of
improvement I meet these days, working in a university, as I do.
The German word is actually "Verschlimmbesserung".
Do we need an English equivalent, or should we just adopt the German?
How about "'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' situation". Perhaps it can
be transformed in an acronym. My German-English dictionary gives
"improvement for the worse" as a possible translation.
|
I had a friend who worked with me in the IT world (Jim Moss). That is a world
where people sometimes decide to make amendments to stuff which isn't perfect
but works after which it doesn't work for some time til all the new bugs are
hunted down and fixed. His saying was "Ya gotta learn to leave not too damn
good enough alone". Which might not be very accurate English, but got his idea
across pretty well.
--
Jim
the polymoth |
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Joachim Pense
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2005 9:33 pm
Post subject: Re: Schlimmbesserung |
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Am Sat, 08 Oct 2005 14:29:32 GMT schrieb Mike Page:
| Quote: | New Scientist says 'Schlimmbesserung' is a German word for an
improvement that makes things worse. Seems to be the only kind of
improvement I meet these days, working in a university, as I do.
Do we need an English equivalent, or should we just adopt the German?
|
Would "Malimprovement" work?
Joachim |
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John Holmes
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2005 9:56 pm
Post subject: Re: Schlimmbesserung |
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Mike Page wrote:
| Quote: | New Scientist says 'Schlimmbesserung' is a German word for an
improvement that makes things worse. Seems to be the only kind of
improvement I meet these days, working in a university, as I do.
Do we need an English equivalent, or should we just adopt the German?
|
Doesn't "reform" already have the required connotation? So
"Schlimmbesserung" would be a Schlimmbesserung.
--
Regards
John
for mail: my initials plus a u e
at tpg dot com dot au |
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Bill Bonde ('by a commodi
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 12:03 am
Post subject: Re: Schlimmbesserung |
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Mike Page wrote:
| Quote: |
New Scientist says 'Schlimmbesserung' is a German word for an
improvement that makes things worse.
Like how DVD technology fixed the VHS problem of badly crinkled portions |
or otherwise damaged parts of a tape causing distortion, dropouts and
even complete white noise by instead giving us loud disc vibration,
stuttering video, long pauses and then eventual complete stopping of the
picture and sound only to be corrected by jumping ahead twenty minutes
and that's if you are lucky? I think the video industry
schlimmbesserbunged us.
--
"Throw me that lipstick, darling, I wanna redo my stigmata."
+-Jennifer Saunders, "Absolutely Fabulous" |
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Prai Jei
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 4:26 am
Post subject: Re: Schlimmbesserung |
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Mike Page (or somebody else of the same name) wrote thusly in message
<4349d783.437626764@news.cable.ntlworld.com>:
| Quote: | New Scientist says 'Schlimmbesserung' is a German word for an
improvement that makes things worse. Seems to be the only kind of
improvement I meet these days, working in a university, as I do.
Do we need an English equivalent, or should we just adopt the German?
|
How about "change for change's sake as per EU directive"
--
There are very few spiders found on bananas that bite.
Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply |
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Chris Waigl
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 4:46 am
Post subject: Re: Schlimmbesserung |
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Mike Page wrote:
| Quote: | New Scientist says 'Schlimmbesserung' is a German word for an
improvement that makes things worse. Seems to be the only kind of
improvement I meet these days, working in a university, as I do.
|
I've seen this before on the American Dialect Society mailing list, but
the German is "Verschlimmbesserung" (IMHO). A nominalization of a blend
of two verbs _verbessern_ (make better, improve) and _verschlimmern_
(make/become worse).
Chris Waigl
whose high school English teacher much used the word during the last
quarter of an hour of tests, to discourage us from going over our answers |
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Mike Page
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 4:57 am
Post subject: Re: Schlimmbesserung |
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On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 16:48:56 +0200, Holger Metzger
<usenet@holgermetzger.de> wrote:
| Quote: | Mike Page wrote:
New Scientist says 'Schlimmbesserung' is a German word for an
improvement that makes things worse. Seems to be the only kind of
improvement I meet these days, working in a university, as I do.
The German word is actually "Verschlimmbesserung".
Thanks for this amplification, also provide by Chris W. |
Mike Page |
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Mike Page
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 5:00 am
Post subject: Re: Schlimmbesserung |
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On Sun, 9 Oct 2005 01:56:01 +1000, "John Holmes" <see sig> wrote:
| Quote: | Mike Page wrote:
New Scientist says 'Schlimmbesserung' is a German word for an
improvement that makes things worse. Seems to be the only kind of
improvement I meet these days, working in a university, as I do.
Do we need an English equivalent, or should we just adopt the German?
Doesn't "reform" already have the required connotation? So
"Schlimmbesserung" would be a Schlimmbesserung.
|
I'd wondered about that. I saw a lecturer (Gordon Higginson describing
his experience of writing a report on the reform of A Levels for Mrs
T) quote a judge saying that he couldn't 'countenance reform as things
were quite bad enough already'. I'd dearly like an authenticated
source for that.
Mike Page |
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Joe Fineman
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 6:36 am
Post subject: Re: Schlimmbesserung |
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mikeorang.page@ntlworld.com (Mike Page) writes:
| Quote: | Do we need an English equivalent, or should we just adopt the
German?
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My Sprachgefühl says Nein, but perhaps that is mere Besserwisserei.
--
--- Joe Fineman joe_f@verizon.net
||: It's much more fun to imagine how I might have behaved  |
||: worse than how I might have behaved better. | |
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Robert Bannister
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 6:59 am
Post subject: Re: Schlimmbesserung |
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Mike Page wrote:
| Quote: | New Scientist says 'Schlimmbesserung' is a German word for an
improvement that makes things worse. Seems to be the only kind of
improvement I meet these days, working in a university, as I do.
Do we need an English equivalent, or should we just adopt the German?
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Our Australian government uses "reform" in exactly that sense.
--
Rob Bannister |
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Mark Brader
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 7:11 am
Post subject: Re: Schlimmbesserung |
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Mike Page:
| Quote: | New Scientist says 'Schlimmbesserung' is a German word for an
improvement that makes things worse.
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Rob Bannister:
| Quote: | Our Australian government uses "reform" in exactly that sense.
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Is this a comment on English usage (and therefore interesting) or
politics (and therefore not)?
That is, have they turned "reform" into a pejorative, the way many
American politicians have done with "liberal", or is it that they
announce reforms and things come out worse?
--
Mark Brader Hackers are far more likely ... to either
Toronto (a) be aggressively apolitical or (b) entertain
msb@vex.net peculiar or idiosyncratic political ideas and
actually try to live by them day-to-day.
-- Eric S. Raymond |
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Robert Bannister
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2005 5:11 am
Post subject: Re: Schlimmbesserung |
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Mark Brader wrote:
| Quote: | Mike Page:
New Scientist says 'Schlimmbesserung' is a German word for an
improvement that makes things worse.
Rob Bannister:
Our Australian government uses "reform" in exactly that sense.
Is this a comment on English usage (and therefore interesting) or
politics (and therefore not)?
That is, have they turned "reform" into a pejorative, the way many
American politicians have done with "liberal", or is it that they
announce reforms and things come out worse?
|
I'll come clean: it is probably political. However, since at least
Thatcher, "reform" seems to have been adopted by the conservative side
of politics to been union bashing, cutting wages and conditions and
cutting the top bracket of income tax. The other side of politics - not
sure what to call it now that "left wing" appears to have lost its
meaning - doesn't seem to use "reform". They have their own language,
but I can't think of one particular word.
--
Rob Bannister |
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siege_b
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Posts: 1
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| Posted: Mon Dec 04, 2006 6:06 am
Post subject: Nominalisation |
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In the schlimmbesserung/verschlimmbesserung debate, I've noticed the discussion seems to surround the correct German verb (which appears to be a colloquialism anyway), but "out in the field" I've seen schlimmbesserung used as a noun. I don't have enough knowledge of the German language to know whether or not that is grammatically acceptable (but I'm pretty certain it wouldn't be).
What would the nominal form of this verb be? If to verschlimmbesserung something is to improve it in such a way as to make it worse, what do you call the 'improvement' itself (apart from "really annoying"?)
siege_b
_________________
This time, strive to do it well. Next time, strive to do it better. |
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