While looking over my Firestats, I came across an interesting link.  I have known for years that a common misconception surrounding the song “Edelweiss” from The Sound of Music is that it is an Austrian folksong.  This is false. It was the final lyric written by Oscar Hammerstein II and had nothing to do with Austria aside from the flower that the title comes from.  The misconception seems to have arisen during the emotional reprise of the song by Captain Von Trapp during the festival near the end of the musical.  In the movie, the overwhelmingly Austrian audience is moved to tears and join in song before bursting in thunderous applause.  This could give the impression that the song is of great importance to Austrian people.

Also of note is the fact that the musical is not widely known in Austria.  Although Salzburg makes quite a haul by giving tours of the city and surrounding countryside to fans of the show,  very few of the tourists are  Austrian.

Below is a German translation of Hammerstein’s original by an unknown translator:

A show on PBS right now (started 10:00pm Tuesday 10-Feb-2009) is about the translation of the early Christian bible to native tongues. The Catholic Church and many countries made it heresy to translate the bible into the vulgar, but people after reading various “heretical” translations started creating many vulgar translations.

While I knew a lot of the stories and history around this, it gave more of an insight to the lives and deaths of those men who translated the bible. This of course opened the way for people to have a bible at home and allow people to study religion on their own.

Of course not only did this lead to the protestant reformation, but also led to other more radical ideas. Not exactly what the original reformers had in mind, but it did happen.

For more information on the PBS show, see here.

Again a very interesting show.

Kids say the darndest things, as we all know – they even made a tv show about it.  Here is a list of some of the cute mispronounciations my kids have made and their ages when they said them.

“ah-cro-poose” said by Sammie, age 3.  Translation: octopus

“Taylor lelled at me” said by Sammie, age 4.  Translation: lelled = yelled

“Beeber” said by Disney, age 2.  Translation: Christopher (her baby brother).  This has actually led to Christopher having nicknames of Beeber and Beebs.

“Kipper” said by Disney, age 2.  Translation: Christopher.  She moved out of the Beeber phase and now calls him Kipper.

“may-sa-peer” said by Sammie, age 3.  Translation: disappear

“tormado” said by Sammie, age 4.  Translation: tornado.  Look closely at how I typed the word – she replaces the “n” with an “m” sound.

“ith ith” said by Taylor, age 1.  Translation: kitty.

“diaper call off!” said by Disney, age 2.  Translation: Help!  My diaper is falling off!

“gggg” said by Christopher, age 5 months.  Translation: various.  I just wanted to put his sounds in this list too.

HELLO EVERY PEOPLE!!!! My name a Morat Notboratnichkov. Jamy a taking a break so I will a like to type a good story to every people. I will a tell you about two stories which I a tell my little people in Liswathistan. Maybe America country have similar story. You will like very much. The first is a called “The Three Wooly Sheep.” It is about three wooly sheep who a go and build their own houses. OK? The first wooly sheep he a build a house of sticks. He not a so smart because the sticks not strong. A big, bad wolf come and blow it down. “Wooly Sheep, Wooly Sheep let me in!!” The wooly sheep number two a not so bright also. She a build house of straw. Straw not very strong. And big bad wolf come and say “Wooly Sheep let me in.” But wooly sheep not let him in so he blew wooly sheep number two house down. Wooly sheep number one and wooly sheep number two both run to find wooly sheep number three. Wooly sheep number three very smart. He build house of brick. Brick is a very hard to blow down. Big bad wolf he try to blow down but run out of gas or hot air or something. He try to climb down chimney. But, at bottom of chimney inside house was fire in fireplace. He got to bottom and yelled “WOOLY SHEEP” and run all the way home and never bother the three wooly sheep no more. I sorry but Morat has time only for one story. Maybe later he tell you more story. EVERYONE WINS!!!!