It will never stop being weird to me that you anglos just translate his first name to Frederick / Fred instead of going with Friedrich / Fritz, it’s as if i was calling Biden and Stalin “Jupp” because that’s the traditional short form for Joseph in the Rhineland.
Wait i’ve actually called Stalin Jupp in the past nvm
We have evidence of this as early as the 1838-9 letters to his sister Marie (Engels was in the habit of using random bits of English even in his earliest letters).
And it becomes more prominent ofc once he moves to England and lives there. Marx himself used ‘Fred’ to refer to Engels often, including in this Dec. 6 1868 letter
Afaik this is the transcription of the original letter rather than a translation (it can be found in MEWBand32). I’m not a German speaker, but my guess would be that any weirdness is a combination of:
it being 19th century German;
it might have traits of 19th century Rhineland dialect;
it uses random English;
it’s a speedily written letter so may have errors
Marx tends to use random English, French, Latin, Greek, Italian, etc words and grammar in his personal writings along with his own contractions in German, and just words he’s made up
It will never stop being weird to me that you anglos just translate his first name to Frederick / Fred instead of going with Friedrich / Fritz, it’s as if i was calling Biden and Stalin “Jupp” because that’s the traditional short form for Joseph in the Rhineland.
Wait i’ve actually called Stalin Jupp in the past nvm
Edit: RIP my inbox lol
these replies are actually really informative
Engels translated his own name as Fred actually
We have evidence of this as early as the 1838-9 letters to his sister Marie (Engels was in the habit of using random bits of English even in his earliest letters).
And it becomes more prominent ofc once he moves to England and lives there. Marx himself used ‘Fred’ to refer to Engels often, including in this Dec. 6 1868 letter
What is this letter? This reads really poorly translated
Afaik this is the transcription of the original letter rather than a translation (it can be found in MEWBand32). I’m not a German speaker, but my guess would be that any weirdness is a combination of:
it being 19th century German;
it might have traits of 19th century Rhineland dialect;
it uses random English;
it’s a speedily written letter so may have errors
Marx tends to use random English, French, Latin, Greek, Italian, etc words and grammar in his personal writings along with his own contractions in German, and just words he’s made up
It’s German, it sounds weird even on the best of days
This is anti Georgian discrimination, heeeey!
yo it’s ya boi Freddy Angles here
you mean ol’ freddy boy?
the fredman?
the fredinator?
who calls him Frederick? i’ve only ever seen Friedrich
Really? I’ve regularly seen English translations on here where he’s called that.
actually reading source material? on my hexbear??
(online I’ve also only seem Friedrich but I may have seen Frederick once or twice in print, I read books but not a lot of marx/engels lately)