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October 5

Der Stand und das Ständchen

According to Duden online Stand means this (the first two meanings are the ones which are relevant to my question) while Ständchen means this. For the second word the second meaning seems to be about equivalent to English Serenade, which explains why all those transcriptions of Schubert's Ständchen D. 957/iv are all known as Schubert's Serenade, though not, apparently, the original lied itself. But, first of all, I'm curious about the first meaning of the second word: Verkleinerungsform zu Stand. How would a diminutive of Stand, say in the first two meanings above, be used in that case? Can a German speaker give an example since Duden doesn't bother? As to the second meaning, that of serenade, does it simply refer to the fact that, in general at least, people do stand while giving a serenade or is there something more? Basemetal 08:23, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As for the serenade meaning, according to Kluge's etymological dictionary your guess is basically correct: it's named after the fact that singers would "stand together" somewhere to deliver it (apparently first used in student circles in the 17th century). As for the literal meaning as a diminutive form of "Stand", I can't think of many uses that would be particularly plausible pragmatically – it's just the case that in German you can freely form diminutives out of pretty much any noun at all. But you might think of kids playing "market" and setting up a small bench as a "market stand" to sell things from; you might then well refer to that as their "Ständchen". Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:36, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For examples on the usage of the different meanings of "Ständchen" see https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/St%C3%A4ndchen 217.7.150.237 (talk) 07:02, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

But that's not what the OP has asked about. They have only asked about the usage of diminutive of Stand, whereas your link does not give any example of a diminutive. HOTmag (talk) 08:08, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It does: "Jeden Samstag verkauft sie an einem Ständchen auf dem Wochenmarkt ihre selbstgemachten Marmeladen." -> here Ständchen is the diminuitive of Stand as in "Jeden Samstag verkauft sie an einem Stand auf dem Wochenmarkt ihre selbstgemachten Marmeladen." 195.145.95.2 (talk) 06:11, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Brothers Grimm give an example. Personally, I’ve heard people use the word Glühweinständle at a Christmas market (-lein, -le, -el being the usual Upper German diminutive form).

Googling for Marktständchen also gives at least some results. Rgds ✦ _hugarheimur 09:00, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Future Perfect's, Torana's and Wiktionary's examples are diminutives of a concrete meaning of Stand (as I assume the Glühweinständle is a stall where Glühwein is sold or offered?) specifically a market stall. In the case of serenade, on the other hand, Stand either refers to the action of standing or to a group of people standing together (my, possibly mistaken, understanding of the Kluge's definition quoted by Future Perfect). Thinking about it a bit more, could a diminutive of Stand (in its meaning of the action of standing) refer to a "little" standing in the sense of standing for a short amount of time? Or, on the other hand, can (or could) Stand (dialectally, resp. in the past) refer to a group of people standing together (Duden doesn't give that meaning for current standard German) in which case the diminutive could refer to a "small" group of people? Finally there remains the possibility of a purely "emotional" use of the diminutive (whatever the linguistic technical term is). I've noticed that some languages or dialects enjoy using diminutives for no apparent reason. For example it is my impression that "Vlaams" is more fond of diminutives than "Hollands", etc. Similarly some varieties of South Amerian Spanish are so fond of them (compared to Peninsular) that they even form them from adverbs (!) e.g. ahorita for ahora, which has gotta be an extreme example. Are there German dialects that are simply more fond of diminutives than others and could Ständchen have come from one of those? Basemetal 11:52, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, but German Wikipedia's article on the diminutive mentions East Franconian, Alemannic dialects, the Low Prussian dialect, and also East Frisian Platt as varieties fond of using the diminutive. I can certainly confirm this for the Alemannic dialects. I know no other language that diminutizes a stroke, but people in my neighborhood say "Är hät es Schlägli gha" (He had a strokelet). You can't do it with every word, of course. Germans living in Switzerland sometimes give themselves away by referring to "Fränkli" for "Franke"; when something is as serious as the Swiss franc, it must not be trivialized :-). ---Sluzzelin talk 13:04, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I see. My dear German friends, here's your chance to catch any Swiss roaming on the other side of the border: what's the diminutive of Euro?

Basemetal 14:07, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Swabian diminutive is Eurole (example: 100000 Eurole), the standard Eurochen (example), for children Eurolein (example) sometimes Euronchen (example).--Pp.paul.4 (talk) 12:41, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Alas alas alas. All these examples seem to be coming to us from (gasp) Germany! It seems Germans treat the Euro much more casually than the Swiss treat their Franc. Would anyone (except a Swiss: Märkli?) have dared, in days of old, diminut(iv)ize the mighty Mark? Sic transit... Basemetal 13:43, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Even though Swiss people love to tell this anecdote about Germans saying Fränkli, in reality it would be perfectly fine to say that under some circumstances in Swiss German. For example, let's say a friend paid the restaurant bill for me because I didn't have any money with me, and now I owe him 49 Franks. The next time we meet, I hand him a 50 Franks bill and while he is fumbling for a 1 Frank coin, I might say "isch scho guet wägem däm eine Fränkli" ("don't bother about that one little Frank"). If you google "Fränkli", you actually find lots of Swiss people using it, for example to comment on a raise of the retirement pension, which some people thought was miserly. So I personally think this is just something someone in Switzerland made a joke about once and now everyone repeats it without actually reflecting on it. --Terfili (talk) 05:33, 8 October 2016 (UTC) [reply]

I would like to apologize for having led this thread astray, and would like to thank Terfili for her objection. It's not that I've never reflected on this, in fact, the first time I noticed it consciously was when a German professor in Switzerland wanted to hire me for a job, asking whether I'd like to earn a few "Fränkli", and it made me smile, because it really does sound off in most contexts, and does make one think that the other person is misapplying Swiss German's admittedly extreme fondness of adding the suffix "-li" to just about any noun (and even verb etc). I'm not, however, denying that Terfili has a point: There are imaginable instances when it sounds ok (or native-spoken), and, far worse, but no less fitting for this particular culture, when it comes to the more colloquial word for "Franke": Stutz (sort of comparable to quid or buck), the people of Zwinglian Zurich said "Stützlisex" ("Stützli" = diminutive of "Stutz") when referring to peep shows, way back when. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:36, 10 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The stray comments are sometimes where you learn the most interesting things from on the reference desk :) It is of course very likely that Germans often use "Fränkli" in situations where it sounds odd. I just wanted to point out that it does exist in Swiss German and is used in some circumstances. I once had a roommate in Switzerland whose welcoming greeting to a new German roommate went something like "We Swiss use -li for many things, but we take our currency very seriously and never say Fränkli!", which in this absolute sense isn't true, especially since said German roommate hadn't even used the word. --Terfili (talk) 09:57, 11 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Deutsches Wörterbuch (already referred to in hugarheimur's link) answers your original question. The authors of the entry Ständchen deal with the etymological riddle in detail. Although the German explanation (original meaning was "to stand together for a while", i.e. "little standing") is sufficient, let me note that the German word has its counterparts in Italian stationcella and in Latin statiuncula (musica). If the meaning originated (as stated by Future Perfect) in the 17th century in student circles, the Latin word could have been the root. If the word came from Italy, the Italian word might have been the root. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 12:27, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]