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From: Chris Croughton <chris@keristor.net>
Newsgroups: alt.languages.english
Subject: Re: "swastika" was mistranslation for "hakenkreuz" of NSDAP
Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 22:24:46 +0000
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On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 17:55:58 GMT, Miss Elaine Eos
<Misc@*your-shoes*PlayNaked.com> wrote:
> In article <423d84de$1_2@127.0.0.1>, "rexitis" <rexy@ij.net> wrote:
>
>> The word "swastika" as used in English for the symbol of the National
>> Socialist German Workers' Party was a misleading translation of
>> "hakenkreuze." The obvious translation from the original word "hakenkreuz"
>> should have been "hooked cross." http://rexcurry.net/swastikanews.html
>>
>> "Swastika" translators might have wanted [...a bunch of stuff, snip]
>
> Your post doesn't speak to the meaning of the word "swastika". A "quick
> & dirty" check brings up swastika as synonymous with hakenkreuz, and
> hakenrkeuz is actually DEFINED as "a swastika."
(a) The poster is a troll.
(b) It is not 'defined' as a swastika, it is translated into English as
a fylfot or swastika. Hakenkreutz (the singular, Hakenkreutze is
plural) is indeed defined in German as a "crooked cross" or "hooked
cross" (although 'haken' can also mean a catch or a clasp, one of the
possible origins of fylfot is that it was originally a type of clasp or
closure).
> <http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=swastika>
An English (or in fact mostly American) dictionary engine.
> n.
> 1. An ancient cosmic or religious symbol formed by a Greek cross
> with the ends of the arms bent at right angles in either a clockwise or
> a counterclockwise direction.
> 2. Such a symbol with a clockwise bend to the arms, used as the
> emblem of the Nazi party and of the German state under Adolf Hitler,
> officially adopted in 1935.
But the Germans themselves did not call it a swastika, they called it
Hakenkreutz. As the OP said, if they were 'defiling' anything it was
the cross, not the "good luck sign", but in fact it was generally
regarded as interlinked stylised 'S' shapes.
> n : the official emblem of the Nazi Party and the Third Reich; a cross
> with the arms bent at right angles in a clockwise direction [syn:
> Hakenkreuz]
It's the accepted English translation, it is not synonymous.
> <http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=hakenkreuz>
>
> n.
> A swastika
>
> cross (from Middle High German kriuze. See kreuzer).]
Finish the quotation from the web site:
An English (or rather American) dictionary. Now try in a German
dictionary (and I don't mean a German-to-English one). In German
dictionaries of the time there is no mention of 'swastika', it wasn't a
word used then. Swastika was an English (OK, borrowed from Sanskrit)
word for something which looked similar, and I'd love to know who first
called it that.
Chris C
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