Talk:Robert Gauss to Felix Klein - September 3, 1912

incorrect transcription
The few German words (e.g. "Junge sündet und Alte Betschwestern") on this page are incorrectly transcribed. I cannot simply correct them because it is possible that the forms used by Robert Gauss in 1912 are not current standard German, especially since he may be purposely using older forms in this proverb. It is clear, however, that he did not use the forms transcribed here, which are and always were ungrammatical.

Somebody already tried to fix these and other problems, but obviously didn't understand that it is incorrect to update old spelling in quotations! For example, "miszratenen" is the way "mißratenen" was written both in Germany and abroad at that time when one wanted to avoid use of the letter ß. It was considered the modern way and is used in the Grimm dictionary. My guess is that Gauss used a euphemistic version of the saying "Junge Huren — alte Betschwestern" ("young whores — old bigots") that didn't use capitalization of nouns because there were contemporary German attempts to get rid of that or because he "Anglicized" the spelling. Until we we get a scan of the original, i suggest returning close to "Junge sundet unt Alte beteschwestern" and correcting it to "junge sünder unt alte beteschwestern". --Espoo (talk) 08:34, 22 April 2012 (UTC)