Re: bildung

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "chesschance" <chesschance@...> wrote:

>
> Thanks for the replies, directly and indirectly, to my question that
> is, in hindsight, marked by conjecture (of the everyday sort), and
> laziness (not having consulted with at least wikipedia). I also
> appreciate the humour (of the subtle type) in your posts.
>
> I joined to ask simple questions, in the hope of acquiring a better
> grip on words and phrases encountered in academic books and articles.
> Could you help me with the word, bildung, in the sentence, "Education
> was Bildung -- character building, not just subject matter"? I did a
> quick search on the internet, but I did not find anything that seems
> relevant. I gather that bildung has something to do with building (the
> two words do look alike), but does it also carry the meaning related
> to character building by itself? Of course, character building here
> could have referred to what has already mentioned or what is to come
> in the text where I encountered the sentence. I understand the text
> and I don't think there are such references.
>

The equation Bildung = building is obvious to an English speaker, but
is slightly misleading. 'Bild' is German for "picture; image",
and 'bilden' means 'to form; to shape', it does not mean "to build".
So 'Bildung' means something like forming/shaping a material which is
already there, rather than building something from scratch. But of
course, in the phrase 'character building' the English sense is not far
from that of German 'Bildung'.


Torsten