Intercultural Issue: The german concept of "Fremdschämen" Hi everyone, This notebook entry is not really supposed to be a language exercise but more of an open question concerning a german cultural concept. But even though i'm more interested in what you have to say about the topic itself, i'll nevertheless be grateful for language related corrections as well. So, in this entry i'd like to talk about a contemporary german concept which we call "Fremdschämen" (which roughly translates to: feeling embarrassment for a stranger's behaviour). It describes the state of feeling ashamed and embarrased for some reason while watching someone who is embarrassing himself (often without being aware of it). So even though you actually have no reason to be ashamed because it's after all not you who is doing something embarrasing, you still have that feeling and it's sometimes so intense you have to turn your eyes off the scene which is cause to the embarrassement. It is not quite like the concept of "Schadenfreude" which you might heard of. "Schadenfreude" means to feel secretly delighted with someone else's failure because the other person's failure makes you feel less inferior. "Fremdschämen" kind of means that you emphatically put yourself in the other person's position and imagine what it would mean to be exposed to that kind of embarrassement. Consequently there is a feeling of pity for the person and you feel the embarrassement almost as if it was your own. I guess this kind of feeling always existed in german culture, but it's only recently (sometime within the last ten years) that we developed a term for it. Before that people would just say something like "Das kann man ja nicht mit anschauen." ("I can't take watching this"). I suppose that the developement and definition of the term is somehow connected to german tv culture, which increasingly adopted talkshows and reality shows over the last ten to twenty years. Obviously these kind of shows give a lot of opportunity to feel ashamed for other people. What i was wondering about is if you experience similar feelings while watching someone else's embarrassement. Does this feeling have a name in your culture and if so what do you call it? What is your general impression of this kind of cultural concept? What do you think does it reveal about a culture? Thanks to everyone who took the time to read this and especially to those who'll take the effort of writing an answer ;)

sarla se na rahaa gayaa Hi there, This is a sentence from a short story by Pemcand. In the precending sentence all people start to leave Sarla. Then there's the sentence: Sarla se na rahaa gayaa. Can someone tell me what this means? I'm a little bit confused by the "se".@ Dawn_Dusk: Thank you for your correction. Of course it is supposed to be "Premchand" and not Pemcand. @sabya: Thank you a lot for your references to Kellog and Mohanan! I already found Kellog's book in our library (still looking or Mohanan's) Thanks everyone for your kind help!

what form is "karii re" i know that "re" is something like "he!" but what form of karna is karii? Is it a sort of vokativ? Is it a female form?

different kinds of atish bazi hi everyone, i am currently translating some poems in which there is a lot talk of fireworks on the occasion of shab e barat. the problem now is, that many names for fireworks mean something else at the same time and it's hard for me to tell when there's talk of a kind of firework (atish bazi) and when there isn't. for example there's phuljari (wordly meaning flowersprinkler), and in the case of phuljari i happen to know what kind of firework it is. but there are some more words which in my opinion could be kinds of atish bazi but i am not sure of it and i don't know how to imagine them. so i'll give you a list of these words and it would be so great if you could tell me if these kind of atish bazi are known to you and what they look like. so here we go: mahtab (actually meaning moonlight) suraj ma'shal (something like sun-torch?) sitare (stars?) gulrez (actually meaning scattering or rain of roses) these are the main four words i'm not sure about. btw. do you guys celebrate shab e barat? if so, what is the meaning of the night for you? my best regards

what does "ke ange" mean? can anyone tell me what "ke ange" means? i know that anga means something like "limb, body" right? but what does "ke ange" mean?

what does "sar se" mean here suhagan rat shabrat a sajan ghar ae bhi sar se I'm greatful for any answer!!! Best Regardshmm, first thanks to vipul289 and tutor-online for your answers! Yes, i know it's basically "from the head" but that doesn't make much sense here, right? It's an old poetic text written in dakhni urdu. and there's no mistake about the reading. It's definetly "sar the" which is dakhni urdu for "sar se". It's just appearing all over the poem, always at the end of a line and i just can't make good sense of it. could it perhaps mean something like "willingly" or "as ordered" or something like that? Oh my, this poem is really giving me headaches. ;)

sadaqe nabi Hi, can anyone help me with these two lines? sadaqe nabī amrit surā qutb šah ko so sāqī kausar pyāle pilāyā How exactly does sadaqe translate here? Thanks to anyone who might be able to help!

what does this mean: ﺭﻣﻌﺎﺬ it's in none of the standard or scientific dictionaries. neither will the online dicitonaries (which are mostly basically based on the standard dictionaries) give any answer. it might be, that it's a farsi or an arab word. it appears in a poem in which muhammad quli qutb shah describes his mazhab.

kohre men kaid rang This year we're translating (or more trying to translate) Govind Mishras novel. Below i will write down four sentences we had problems with. I'll be grateful for any ideas how to translate the properly. 1. ab jahan tak ho sakega vah admi ki basti se dur-dur calna cahegi, taki khud ko shuddh rakh sake, use apne se hi durgandhna ane lage... -> most problems we had with the part "use apne se hi durgandh na ane lage" 2. ...kahega ki uske dharmtirth hain, jabki dekho to dharm tummen kahan, narmada (the river) men hai. ---> most problems we had starting from "jabki" on. 3. narmada se tumhen apne men utarna hai. (it's utaarna actually -> long vowel) ---> that we coulnd't figure out at all. 4. par tum to usi ko nasht karne par tule hue ho. --> we argued a lot about the translation of this sentence. I'm very curious about your ideas! Thanks!!! Simiit's durgandh na, not durgandhnaplease, someone's got to have an idea for at least one of the sentences!??