Napoleon grew up speaking Italian, only began learning French when he was nine or ten years old, and for the rest of his life made gross spelling errors and embarrassing grammatical mistakes. Still, he was better at it than most wargamers. Gamers are notoriously horrible with spelling and grammar in their own language, much less somebody else's. I've always wondered about this, and lately come to the conclusion that most historical gamers are numbers-guys. Think about the gamers you know: how many are computer programmers or engineers or other sorts of techiedudes. These guys can probably do their income taxes in about five minutes (using the long form!), with most of the math in their heads. But ask them to write an op-ed piece for the local rag.... Oy vey. Sometimes I read through articles in 'zines like MWAN and The Courier and just wince in pain. I'm not criticizing; I'm just talking about two different halves of the brain. I'll be the first to admit that I am a Words-Guy, and that I am relatively helpless with numbers. I speak three languages pretty well and know bits of two others, but I flunked basic college Trig not once: twice. And in fact I would've flunked it a third time, if not for the compassion of the grad student teacher who gave up on me and passed me along with a 51% average. This could really be an article in itself: what is it that attracts the left-brained numbers/technology types to wargames, and is that the reason most games are so bloody complicated? I remember Jim Getz's "confession" in MWAN 91 about how he is an engineer, and he designed a game with 124 tables. (By contrast, look at a guy like Chris Engle. He, like me, is a Words-Guy. He's a psychologist who speaks French and Arabic, and he designs Matrix Games, which are all words; they have absolutely no math or charts at all.) So in this article I thought I'd provide some help from one side of the brain (mine) to another (yours), regarding how to write and pronounce all those pesky foreign words that wargamers love to use. Since most of our favorite gaming periods seem to involve the French and/or Germans killing somebody (or quite frequently, each other), and since those are the two languages I speak, I'm going to focus on that. (Ancients players are on their own with Latin and Greek - gods help you!) There is one last point, before I get into specifics. Correcting somebody's math is usually considered a valuable favor. But correcting somebody's use of words is often considered rude and snotty. I've never understood that. It's as if bad math is unacceptable, but bad language is excused. (Just think of all the people who were mad at Al Gore's imprecise health-plan numbers, but were untroubled by the innumerable ways that George W. Bush butchered the English language.) In my opinion (as a Words-Guy), poor use of language marks you as uneducated and perhaps even dumb, but at the very least as sloppy. (I'm not trying to excuse bad math... My poor math most certainly marks me as uneducated in that way, too.) Gendered Most European languages are gendered. That is, they divide nouns into different types, based on gender, and different spellings result in the words which cling to those nouns. This can be quite arbitrary; the moon, for instance, is masculine in German, but feminine in French. Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian) have the two genders masculine and feminine, while most Germanic and Slavic languages also have Neuter. Gender determines how you spell an adjective or even the article "The." Furthermore, most languages treat plurals as yet another gender. The result is that, in German, for example, there are at least a dozen different ways to say 'The," and only one is correct in any given circumstance. Using the wrong one makes you sound like an idiot or a caveman. The equivalent in English would be saying something like: "Me like them cookie." English escaped most of this madness during the 14-16th centuries, as genders fell out of use. But there are still traces of them left in our language. How many times have you seen something like: "Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe?" I'll bet you pronounced it "Ye," didn't you? Actually, in Middle English, the "Y" was the letter "h." This was the old English feminine gender, and adding that extra "e" on Olde and that "pe" on the end of Shoppe was to let you know that you were using a feminine noun. Most Americans don't know that it isn't really supposed to be pronounced "ye" at all, but rather "The Olde Coffee Shoppe." Now consider an example from a recent Napoleonics game. The author calls his game "L'Armee Francais." What he wants to say, in French, is: "The French Army." But the noun for "army" in French is feminine (oddly enough, it is in German, too.) So he should have used the feminine ending on the adjective "French." Thus, it should read: "L'armee Francaise" (pronounced: lar-MAY fron-SEZ) Those accent marks are crucial, too. The French "c," is a completely different letter from the "C," and the e, e', and 'e are all pronounced very differently. Also note that it is incorrect to capitalize the "a" in "armee." In French, when a noun begins with a vowel, the definite article is elided into the noun with an apostrophe, and the "L" essentially becomes the first letter of the word, and thus the only one capitalized. Here's another example from a Napoleonics supplement for a popular rules set. The author calls this module "LeGrognards." The expression he is seeking is a slang expression in French. The verb "grogner" (pro: gron-YAY) literally means "to grunt, growl, snort." Napoleon nick-named his Old Guard "the grunts," essentially. But this author uses the masculine singular article "le" when he is describing several "grunts." He should have used the plural article: Les Grognards" (pro: lay gron-YARR) The endings of French words are a little universe unto themselves. I sometimes think that the academie francaise sits around thinking up ways to make the language more difficult for foreigners. Consider some of these words/names, familiar to wargamers, and how they are pronounced: Marshal Mortier (mor-tee-YAY) Chevaliers d'Honneur (shev al YAY don URRR) (notice how I seem to be contradIcting myself by capitalIzIng the H here, and not the d? It's because the "d" denotes the possessive "of, " not an article. (KnIghts of Honor)) Maison du Roi (may ZOHN doo WAH) (There is no way, on paper, that I could explain the pronunclatlon of the French word for King: le Rol Pretend fike you're about to make a cat purrIng nolse, but then at the last second make an exaggerated "Wwwwah!" l'ordre mixte (lorr DRUH meek-STUH) (In Paris and northern France, they'd probably pronounce 'mixte " as one syllable, but most French nowadays throw extra vowel noises on the ends of their supposedly one-syllable words. Did they do that back in 1805.. I don't know.) By now you will have noticed that in French, emphasis is usually placed on the second syllable of a two syllable word. Also, letters - especially consonants - don't behave much like they do in English. French frustrates me acutely. My wife, who is fluent, considers it a beautiful, lyrical language. I've always thought it more resembled a drunk guy in a bar hitting on a woman: all blurry vowel noises. There are often huge piles of consonants at the ends of words, yet none of them are ever pronounced. German, by contrast, makes full use of every single letter. That's the thing to remember about German: every letter counts. So that fine hand-made automobile from Stuttgart is not a "Porsh." It is a Porsche (pro: por-SHUH.) Look at the way the Germans pronounce the word Brigade, which, as you might have guessed, means "Brigade:" Bree GAH duh And who was that guy with the weird name who hung around with Blucher and later got a battlecruiser named after him? Here's how to pronounce the name Augustus Wilhelm Graf Neithard von Gneisenau: OW goose tuss VILL helm groff NITE hard fonn geh NYE zen OW ("Graf," by the way, is just the German word for ("Count.") German was the first foreign language I learned, and remains dear to my heart. Wargamers throw German around all the time, because World War Two remains a perennial favorite period, and the Germans have the coolest army of that period. For some reason, we say "Panzer" division, rather than "tank" division, even though the word Panzer simply means "tank." (It also means "armor.") We say "Luftwaffe," rather than Air Force, and so on. (Just as, when gaming Napoleonics, we toss French around as often as we can.) The results can be disastrous. Consider this famous light cavalry unit from the Prussian army, often written by gamers as: "Lieb Hussars." The idea is that these Hussars (in German Hussaren, in French Hussards) are an elite bodyguard regiment for the king. The old German word for "body" is der Leib Whenever you see ei in German, pronounce it like the long English 'i' in "Bible." If you switch the letters around and write ie, then you pronounce it like the English long "e" in "street." Always! German is extremely consistent. And the word "Lieb" is a slang version of Wie Liebe, which means "love." So what these gamers are calling their elite cavalry is: "The Love-Guard Regiment." Cute, huh? Be careful with those ie's and ei's in German. The verb "to shoot" is schiessen. Switch the letters around and you get 'scheissen,' and I think most of us know what that means. A German schiessgewehr (rifle) becomes the rather more interesting scheissqewehr, which I don't think any of us would like to carry around! The Leib/ Lieb mistake is also repeated by WW2 gamers, who insist on calling the 1st SS Panzer division the "Adolf Hitler Love-Banner." Groovy. German military terminology got all screwed up by Frederick the Great, who hated the German language and only used it when he was in a bad mood, or when speaking to common soldiers. Like most intellectuals of his time, he spoke, read, and wrote French. When he designated new regiments, new systems and concepts, and even new military decorations, he did so in French. Thus Hermann G6ring wore the Pour la M&ite (pro: poor la MAY reet) at his throat. Germany's highest military honor for two centuries had a French name. Thus also we find units like the Prussian Garde du Corps, which is clearly old Fritz's doing, since the German language never uses a 'C' as a stand-alone consonant. When the Nazis came along, they tried to re-Germanize everything, but the result was a weird mishmash of old and new. So Rommel's army got called the Afrika Korps, which should have been pronounced like the English word "corpse," but old habits die hard. Those old French silent consonants struck again, and even with that German K on the beginning, they still said it the French way, as Frederick had done. Unlike the French, who don't use capital letters very often, Germans stick them on every single noun. Indeed, because German grammar is so screwy, the capital letters are sometimes the only way to figure out which words in a sentence are in fact nouns. Confusingly enough, however, Germans don't use capitals for adjectives, the way we do in English. For example, in English you would write: "The German army." But in German, the word 'German' here is only an adjective, and 'army' is a noun, so you would write: "die deutsche Armee. " (pro: dee DOY-chuh ar-MAY) You may have noticed that the Germans have an affinity for extremely long words. These are always compound nouns. In English we would break up something like, "inter-continental ballistic missile." The Germans just slam them all together into one monstrous word, so you get things like: das Erprobungsjagdgeschwader (This would be a test squadron for new interceptor planes: erproben = to test, jagen = to hunt, das Geschwader = the squadron.) Are you ready to try pronouncing it? Get some saliva worked up in your throat... here we go: dass Er PRO bungs yagd geh schva der (God, what a beautiful language!) Seriously, it isn't that hard, is it? With the exception of the 'j' being pronounced like a 'y' and the 'w' like a 'v,' this is much more predictable than French. You can tell that English is essentially a Germanic language. There is one very noticeable thing about German spelling, though, that distinguishes it from English. Like most European languages, German uses accent marks, in this case umlauts, those lovable two dots over certain O's, A's, and Us. (Don't be fooled by Spinal Tap - you can't put an umlaut over a consonant!) There is no way on paper for me to explain how the umlaut changes the pronunciation of a word, but it most certainly does. With the "0," for instance, the word Mord, which means "murder," is pronounced pretty much like it would be if it were an English word. But add the umlaut and make Meirder (a murderer), and the vowel sound becomes something like: Muerrr der The reason I'm telling you this is that for years, typewriters and computers weren't able to make umlauts on the page, and so people had to come up with an alternate spelling. If they can't write an umlaut, they simply add an "e" after any vowel that would normally have an umlaut. (Some of my German friends use e-mail programs that can't do umlauts, so they do this in their e-mails to me.) Let's take a wargame example: those plates of extra armor that the Germans clapped onto their Panzer III and Panzer IV models in 1943, which were called "aprons." In German, these are Schurzen (pro: SHUERT zen) , but you will also see them written as Schuerzen. Either spelling, actually, is correct. (Incidentally, because this word looks a bit like the English word "skirt," most gamers think that the Germans called these plates "side-skirts." Nope: they called them "aprons.") By now you've gotten the idea that I could go on for 100 pages about this kind of stuff. (I'm a Words-Guy, remember.) Instead of assaulting Hal with some tome of wargame grammar, I'll close and make an offer instead. If you're not sure about the spelling or pronunciation of wargame-related terms in German, French, or Arabic, feel free to drop me a line at: smustafa@dycon.com. If you disliked this article and want to send me hate-mail, then please use this address: halwman@hotmail.com. Just kidding. You can send it all to me. (Editor's Note.- Samuel, I believe your honest attempt to "educate" us will be in vain, however, I'll print your article as I am sure you felt much better after having penned it. If I may suggest, Wally Simon (of the PW REVIEW) may be a valuable ally In your quest to rid the wargames world of substandard grammar and spelling, at least In English. Wally always penciled in commas in my 'run-on' sentences when I submitted articles to him In addition, I believe, he was bothered by my fondness for long paragraphs. I have found that the older I get, the more I obtain pleasure from writing. When I wrote my dissertation in 1977, I wrote in the required style. When I write for wargames publications, I write to have a good time. Another benefit of growing older 15 that I can use all of my favorite punctuations; for example, long ago, I became enamoured with the semi-colon (;), there Is something so appeallng about a well-done semi-colon, that I am tempted; to insert it; as frequently; as I can. I do; however; resist this urge; for the most part. A comma (,), on the other hand, doesn't excite me. As to "run-on" sentences and length paragraphs, I used to love Charles Grant's books as he created the longest sentences and paragraphs I've ever seen, and It has always been my goal to surpass Charles in this area. Back to MWAN #110 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2001 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com