Can you hear the hordes of Germans academics chanting fight, fight, figth in the background? Apparently the argument stems from the German Wikipedia newsletter Kurier which contained a this text:
Im besten Fall werden Blogs von zweitklassigen Wissenschaftlern betrieben, im Normalfall vom Prekariat.
For those of us language-challenged non-German speakers, there is google translation which gives:
At best, blogs are run by second-rate scientists, usually from precariat.
Damn as a blogger I don’t even understand when I am being insulted. I needed to look up precariat and with the help of German Wikipedia and Google translate I get:
Precariat is a term used in sociology and defines “unprotected end of the work and the unemployed” as a new social grouping. The term itself is a neologism that is fragile from the adjective (difficult, dangerous to dubious) analogy to derive the proletariat. Etymologically, the word “precariat comes” from the Latin precarium = one bittweises to revoke granted tenure status
So as a blogger I am either a second class scientist or a prole?
All I can do from over here is to support my fellow German second-classers or proles and chant fight, fight, fight… or as google translate would have me say:
kämpfen, kämpfen, kämpfen…