Oh, I'm sorry about your day, Hat.

(I love that about Lundyshev! And that's fascinating -- Liebste?? Can this have been a Baltic German thing? Foreign language primers are such wonderful mines of cultural information.)

What if "Frau" sounded too cold and official (then and there), like "spouse"?

LH, 1/2hr after this post I was reading Evelyn Waugh's Compassion. I have much more sympathy with his view, even if it's far from my own, than with your abstract horror.

Btw, I'm so grateful to TinkertyTonk for recommendation; it's perfect timing for me, in many senses.

dale: Glad you enjoyed the tidbits!
Alexei: Yes, I wondered that too, but Liebste seems a little too unofficial.
Tatyana: Sorry my dislike of war doesn't suit your refined tastes.

Hope you recover victoriously! Sorry to hear about your troubles!

Lundysh = '[London woolen] cloth' , Fr. 'drap', R. '[londonskoje] sukno'. No boat involved, as it seems.

Your resident German speaker.

"Liebste" would be better translated as "beloved". "Sweetheart" is "Schätzchen" (my little treasure, precious).

It is affectionate to call your better half your "Liebste". "Geliebte" would be the correct term for mistress (or in Austrian "Gspusi"). In standard German, you would say: "Er kommt mit seiner Gattin." This is closer to the Russian женa which does not include an expression of love by her "mush".

LH, a)is he considered refined? yey than. b)abstract horror is "throwing all into one heap", свалить всё в одну кучу (don't know the equivalent in English) - only partially-thought-through position, in my eyes; especially right after your previous post about Mother Maria...I think she would approve of this:

...Everything you did was good in itself."
"A fat lot of good it did the Kanyis".
"No. But don't you think it's just possible that they did you good? No suffering need ever be wasted. It is as much part of Charity to receive cheerfully as to give

But you know me. c) how long since you read Compassion? would you like Evelyn Waugh as a b'day present? or would you prefer a powerful A/C?

In resume: glad TW people were actually helpful (not an usual occurence). Eat lots of salty olives and drink quantities of water - restores chemical balance and speeds up World Peace.

A dictionary of 1861 says: Liebste, sc. II 1. vozl'ubl'ennyj, -naja || l'ubovnik, -nica; || (Ihr Herr [Lieb]ster) vash suprug.
The Fr. and En. parts render the last fragment as, respectively, "Monsieur votre mari" and "your husband".

Miram: Excellent, that solves it! And thanks for your correction of my translation; I don't know what I was thinking. I'm telling you, this hasn't been the best 24 hours. And now I'm spending time with you people instead of working, and I have a deadline in a few hours, dammit!

LH, I'm so sorry to hear about the bad juju in your corner of the world. Best of luck with the deadlines and the stress, and for heaven's sake, put the New Yorker down. I got about halfway through the first piece when I realized that no, actually, I didn't need to be any more depressed than I already was.

jaywalker, that's very interesting, because I thought "beloved" last night. I went to my enormous dictionary and it gave "sweetheart" for Liebste, and for "beloved", "Geliebte". So if I mix in your circles I could be introducing my beloved as my mistress...

We probably have the same enormous dictionary.

Stephen, better than the other way around. If you were French, this could end up in liaisons dangereuses.

It is also quite remarkable that both words ("Liebste" and "Geliebte") are only used when not addressing the person concerned. In English you can call your girlfriend sweetie, in German "meine Liebste" sounds either Shakespearean or ironic. "Meine Liebe, mein Schatz" or another thousand lover's words are commonly used. "Ja, meine Liebste" would be a husband's answer to his nagging wife demoting he by the superlative's use.

Addressing your putative mistress as "Geliebte" highlights her unofficial status, so is not advised (although this is a blind man's advice about colour).

"O Geliebte!" as a form of adress may be archaic but not exactly Shakespearean. Wordsworthian, rather.

Once, when I was hanging out with my Persian instructor and her German husband, he asked about the best translation of azize-am, and it was only then that the difference between meine Liebe and mein Liebes dawned on me. The former is like the British form of address "love",it can be used with anyone.The latter, however, indeed is reserved for someone with whom you are intimately engaged.

Which, of course, also reminds me of my Chinese teacher's woes when he lived in China. He always properly introduced his wife as ai-ren and because she looks much younger than she does, everyone assumed that he implied she was his mistress.

All that being said, Frau as a general description for lady/wife seems to date from the nineteenth century, when it replaced "Weib." There is a famous medieval poem by Walter von der Vogelweide in which he boasts that the peasant girl whom he fancies is better than any "frouwe" (which used to be applied only to noble-born women).

By the way, dear hat, I will not post any more comments here -- not as if it makes a difference, after only three of them. Blame me for posting irrelevant matters, but knowing about the effect of depleted uranium, I cannot stomach more comments about soldiers in Iraq and their suffering. If policy types found it so easy to crush Allende, shouldn't they have finished off Saddam in the 80s instead of selling him chemical weapons?

Languages are sweet, politika je kurva, learning should transcend all these paltry matters, but I would sacrifice every letter I have read or written if only all Iraqi children who have died in the last decade were still alive.

What the hell? Is everyone on crack? Can't I say war is depressing without people thinking I'm taking sides and attacking me for a position I don't even hold? If you think "politika je kurva," then stand by your beliefs and don't run away because of some imagined political slant. Good grief.