Summer with Tucholsky – Swub, Nicha? Swub!

One should secretly stenographed what people talk about. No naturalism is enough. Certainly: In some plays, the gentlemen strive to imitate the real life – but always with the necessary epic shortening, as the fontane called, who missed them at Raabe, always slightly stylized, for the purposes of the piece or the book. This is nothing.

No, one should literally stenenographing – one hundred and at the time of syllables per minute – which people swobble. I think the following would result:

The everyday language is a jungle – overgrown from the cuffs and filler words. We don’t even want to talk about the end of “?” (Say: “Nicha?”). Not even that: “Please the matches!” A bare is impossible, a Chimborasso in rudeness. Of course it means: “Oh please, be so good, just the matches if you want to be so friendly? Thank you very much. Please very much. Thank you very much! « – that’s what it means.

But also when people tell something – it is cheerful. Language stumbles over hill and stones, the grammatical binding songs sore, o Tempora! O modes!

The highest law is: the interlocutor is hard of hearing and a little stupid – so it is good to say everything six times. “Then he says he can’t give me the bill! He can’t give me the bill! He just says. Well hear – if I tell him when I say very quietly, Mr. Wittkopp, please go the bill, then he can’t just say that I can’t give you the bill! But he said that. Finns? Just say … «In Infinitum.

This also includes stroking the tender, which some people put punch lines. “And then he looks at her very sadly and says: Know what – I am an old man: Give me a glass of beer and a good cigar.” Break. “Give me a glass of beer and a good cigar. Hähä. «This is like scale water when it comes back through the nose …

Second law: Everyday language has its own grammar. The Berliner, for example, knows a narrative futurum. »I come the street Langjejangn – I will do the Kuhkopp after all: un vajiss not, det meechen the ring too Jehm! Well, there who ick out my left jum.

Third law: A good everyday dialogue never wraps, never like at the theater: with speech and counter -speech. This is an invention of literature. A dialogue of everyday life only knows speakers – no listening. So the two speeches run past each other, sometimes touch with the elbows, that’s true – but in the whole whole, everyone talks. This includes the wonderful transition: “No.” For example:

“I do not know (very important introductory speech) – I don’t know: if I don’t smoke my cigar after table, then I can’t work all day.” (Logical nonchalance: it is the afternoon.) The other: “No.” (Completely idiotic. He does not mean: No. He means that it is different, and at all …) “No. So if I smoke for tables, then … «follows a precise description of life that no one is interested in.

Fourth law: What needs to be said must be said, even if nobody listens, even if it comes to the crucial second too late, even if it doesn’t fit anymore. What is so confused in a “suggested chatting group” – nobody has yet stenographed. But should one. As in the air, just crunch for the lovely angelic punch lines and also good, like no chain link of the general entertainment scatter, but look at all of the pliers with wide-open pliers that is not there: loud hats without a head, shoelaces without boots, solo twins … this is quite strange.

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Unwritten language of everyday life! Write them once! Just as it is spoken: without shortening, without glossing over, without make -up and powder, not made up! One should say.

And that is best to talk to a gramophone, open it up and let them run forward. They turned to a beautiful play with horrors and flew down, you know one, one, Fritz, take the legs down where you speak, of course, pure as in life, I actually have the mountainers, I don’t think so, so I feel too …

One should say.