Saturday, May 07, 2022
Joke
Victor Klemperer (1881-1960), The Language of the Third Reich. LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook, tr. Martin Brady (2000; rpt. London: Continuum, 2006), p. 69:
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There was an old grammar school joke which was handed down from generation to generation; now that Greek is taught in only a handful of secondary schools it has probably died out. The joke ran as follows: how did the German word Fuchs (fox) evolve from the Greek word for fox, alopex ( ἀλώπηξ)? Through the sequence alopex, lopex, pex, pix, pax, pucks, Fuchs.
Es gab einen alten Gymnasialwitz, der sich von Generation zu Generation forterbte; jetzt, da nur noch in den wenig- sten Mittelschulen Griechisch gelehrt wird, dürfte er ausgestorben sein. Der Witz hieß: Wie ist das deutsche Wort Fuchs aus dem gleichbedeutenden griechischen alopex ( ἀλώπηξ) entstanden? In dieser Entwicklungsreihe: alopex, lopex, pex, pix, pax, pucks, Fuchs.
