[LUTE] Musical Crimes: Forgery, Deceit, and Socio-Hermeneutics

[Stewart McCoy]

Dear Mathias,

I am reliably informed that a stock term of abuse in Bavaria for the
North Germans is "Saupreußen". It is not unreasonable to suppose that
their abuse levelled at Prussians extends to people from Czechoslovakia
with the word "Sautscheck". We have learned that there are two spellings
of the name, one ending -eck, and the other -ek. Either spelling would
give the pronunciation of the word "Czech" as pronounced by a Czech
person. This seems a plausible etymology to me, however distasteful it
may be.

I am sorry you think my friend's suggested etymology is "pure
non-sense". What he actually wrote in his email to me was: "... the
second part of the pseudonym might be a transliteration of Czech ... The
German for Czech is Tscheche, which is not very far off the English
sound, or indeed the spelling Tscheck." That seems reasonable enough to
me.

If you have an alternative etymology for the word "Sautscheck", I would
be interested to know what it is.

Best wishes,

Stewart.





-----Original Message-----
From: "Mathias Rösel" [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: 08 June 2008 23:21
To: Stewart McCoy
Cc: Lute Net
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Musical Crimes: Forgery, Deceit, and
Socio-Hermeneutics

> He suggests that the "-tscheck" part of "Sautscheck" might be
> derived from the German word for Czech. He was looking at the word
from
> a purely etymological point of view.

Please excuse my rude wording, but that is pure non-sense (in the very
sense of the word) because there are no bridges from -tscheck to
Tscheche (Czech) in German, neither phonetically nor etymologically,
since -ck- is a mute while the 2nd -ch- in Tscheche is a fricative
(there is no corresponding sound in English, I'd describe it as
something between -ch- in loch and -y- in yes). The two phonemes sound
entirely different.

Besides, the modifying use of the prefix sau- is fairly confined to the
estates of Bavaria, btw not always pejorative (saugut, saugeil). Most
other parts of German speaking countries use Arsch- or Scheisz- instead
(arschkalt, Scheiszwetter, both pretty rude).
-- 
Mathias



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