When I was a young kid, my dad had a small selection of German comic books that he would read to me. One of them featured a set of small blue creatures with big feet and curly hats that were called "Die Schlumpfe." This comic had a particular linguistic oddity: variants on the word "Schlumpfe" were used throughout the dialogue in various parts of speech - adjective, adverb, verb, etc. - and my dad was unable to come up with any translation for it.
In 1981, however, the Saturday morning cartoon line-up introduced us to these characters as the Smurfs and it was a revelation to realize that "Smurf" (and hence "Schlumpfe") really was used as an all-purpose word that was indeed readily understandable in context (and with tone of voice as an additional guide) but that did not even appear to have a consistent valence - it could mean 'great' or 'awful' or anything else.
And since this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Smurfs, you will have all kinds of opportunities to get your smurf on. So smurf to it, kiddies, or you can bet your sweet white smurf you'll be smurfy.
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3 comments:
Speaking of patriarchal societies...
I smurf out every time I wear my blue pants. :)
The Smurfs were my favorite Shrinky-Dinks. (Remember those? They were transparencies with cartoons on them, that you colored with markers, cut out, and then baked in the oven, which transformed them into a kind of pseudo stained glass.)
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