[Andrew Maxwell]

Hi all,

just a few quick questions about renaissance messers-

1. Which is correct, grosse messer (large knife) or grosses messer (great knife)? Or are the two used interchangeably?

2. Is the larger version a kriegmesser or a kriegsmesser?

3. Is a long knife correctly langes messer, lange messer, langem messer?

My German is essentially non-existant so my apologies if any of those are badly (or humourously) wrong.

[Percival Koehl]

[Andreas Auer]

Percival is right: in most circumstances here (without teaching you German grammatics) it would be

großes Messer
langes Messer

where the first word is an adjective witch is written with a small beginning letter. And the second is a noun, witch has to be written with a large beginning letter

Kriegsmesser

this is a composite noun witch also is written with a large beginning letter.

any more questions?

andreas

[Max W.]

I very much agree to the posts above.

But it's important to point out, that the german manuscripts are written in Mittelhochdeutsch.
That's the medieval predecessor of todays regulated german language.

And back then, as Percival already mentioned, there were no such rules how a certain word is written.
Those few people that could write, wrote down the words how they translated them into letters.
And every writer had it's own interpretation, how the sound of a word is to be translated, depending of region and origin of the writer.

So if you ask for a precise correct form, we have to use nowadays german. And it very much depends on the surrounding sentence, what form you need.
I'm neither willing to get deep into german grammatics, since i know everyone learning german is ripping his hair out over that stuff, but a few examples for all that variety won't be bad:

For example:

Ein (one) grosses/langes Messer. (thats how a description plate in a museum would read)
Mit dem (with the) grossen/langen Messer.
Mehrere (many) grosse/lange Messer. (attention, no "s" for plural at the end of Messer)

So if you want to create an odd german/english mixed sentence:

-Today i sparred with my grossem Messer.
-Dont bring a grosses Messer to school!
-Several grosse Messer had been examinated.

But, i for myself would recommend translating the Messer to a literally large knife, everything else sounds a bit clumsy. Maybe the same clumsyness as my english here. Honestly, i don' t think it's really important to write it correct especially in a mixed sentence, just for the occassional german maybe reading it. And due to the grammar as shown above, it would be a damn difficult job too, not worth the trouble.

On the other hand, dedicated terms for techniques like the Zornhau, should in all respect, kept like they are.
Who would come to the idea of using english translations for some serious asian martial arts?
The same respect should be granted for this almost forgotten art. Wrath strike...wrathful strike... just...no. Not the real deal. Escpecially when striving for authenticy.

Hum, maybe i should work some... colleagues are already suspicious!

[Andrew Maxwell]

Thanks, that makes rather more sense now.

We did consider using the term knife instead of Messer, but it is too vague in English- I suppose Messer is just as vague in German but it is specific in English, because it's only used to refer to one type of weapon, not knives in general (if that makes sense). We basically only use it in one context anyway, so don't really need to learn the various permutations

We do, of course, use the terms like Zwerchhau, Krumphau etc in longsword practice, though our pronunciation is probably appalling

Oh, and I didn't realise about the capitalisation, in English only proper nouns are capitalised.

cheers

[Dirk R. Festerling]