• Sign up or login, and you'll have full access to opportunities of forum.

German and Austrian Culture and Words ( to run away but also having fun with it before )

Go to CruxDreams.com
Great thread, some beautiful German/Austrian words here. I’m addicted to Kopfkino already, and a fan of Kabelsalat (the tangle of wires behind a tv or computer, literally cable-salad).

I was reading today about
Öffnungsdiskussionsorgien (orgies of discussions on reopening after corona lockdown)-certainly a new one on me.
www.theneweuropean.co.uk

Germany's coronavirus response: From outbreak to öffnungsdiskussionsorgien

Being a stable, conservative, even slightly boring country can be helpful in a crisis – especially if you also happen to get lucky –...
www.theneweuropean.co.uk www.theneweuropean.co.uk
 
Yes, and our Chancellor Angela Merkel should never be underestimated in her abilities to create new words or creative ways of ruling the country.

About five years ago, there were many Germans saying: "OK, she is not bad as Chancellor but everything in Germany became so predictable and a bit boring with her as the leading politician. One comedian said for example that her "art of governing" is so "soporific" that there are hardly any demonstrations any more, everyone, even the worker's unions seem to be half-way-content with her and this comedian as satirist is afraid that the German TV-news "Tagesschau" will one day around the year 2050 open with the news "We are shocked to hear that Chancellor Merkel died about one year ago in 2049 but no one in the government remarked it until yesterday when the annual new year's speech had to be prepared!"

But now in 2020 with such spontaneously impressive types of politicians like Boris Johnson or Donald Trump on the stage of the world, Angela Merkel looks like the natural opposite of them - and the Germans suddenly like their boring life and German politicians more than ever before.
As I cannot stop to repeat: We are living in strange times ...

By the way, using the word "Öffnungsdiskussionsorgien", Angela Merkel wanted to express her displeasure of some politicians and journalists who demanded a plan for reopening the country and even some "Ministerpräsidenten" of the federal states wanted a faster plan without talking to her before. So, using this newly created word means she must have been really very, very, very angry!
 
Last edited:
Silent_Water said:
But now in 2020 with such spontaneously impressive types of politicians like Boris Johnson or Donald Trump on the stage of the world, Angela Merkel looks like the natural opposite of them
Click to expand...

Let's not forget her legendary quote: "Das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland." ("The internet is uncharted territory for all of us.")

She said that in 2013 :D
 
Silent_Water said:
Later, I will try to explain the everlasting hobby of Germans to invent longer words, which did not exist before they were needed, by combining words in a way no normal person would ever have thought of combining.
Click to expand...

According to the "Duden", the official German dictionary, the longest German word is "Aufmerksamkeitsdefizithyperaktivitätsstörung" (ADHD) with 44 letters, followed by "Kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung" (the insurance you have to buy for your car before driving it on public roads) with 36 letters.

The funny thing about the German language is that it theoretically allows you to combine any amount of nouns to create a new one. The result of this are some hilariously long made up words, like (breathes in): "Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenanstecknadel" (61 letters in this one). It roughly translates to: "the pin on the hat of a captain from a steamboat company operating on the Donau"

Learning German is hard for people with hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia (the fear of long words). ;)
 
Yeah, but your last example is a creation for fun, isn't it?

The longest German word I have ever seen in reality was the inscription on a tombstone in Austria and even I thought first, this must be a joke but it was really there and the woman who was buried there must have been really proud to be a "Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänswitwe"!
(= the widow of a captain of the "Danube steamboat company";
hey, I think I have just beaten your record example with the 44 letters by quoting historical reality!)
:cheer:
By the way, I am not sure if "Dampfschifffahrt" was really written with 3 "f" or with 2 "f" about 130 years ago ... aahya, these are typical German problems for which the world is probably showing some envy for us ...
:cool1:
 
Last edited:
Silent_Water said:
The last picture shows possibly a Chinese or Vietnamese rice farmer's tinfoil hat or a big German salad bowl transformed into a wave protection by a German "Weichei" ... ;)
Click to expand...

I prefer to think of the fellow as a good, red-blooded American wingnut. :rolleyes:
 
One long (but made-up for a joke) German linguistic concatenation I’m fond of is:

Hottentottenpotentatenpatentantenattentat.

I think it means “an attempt to assassinate the godmother of a Hottentot potentate”. But it really needs to be said aloud, to get the full flavour. I’m sure the word can be heard every day in any street corner in Germany or Austria, where doubtless the godmothers of Hottentot potentates live in a constant state of anxiety :p
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Now, you forget that Germans and Austrians liked to refer to themselves as "Land der Dichter und Denker" (= country of poets and thinkers) and such high-level-thinkers of themselves certainly do not quote every day a joke. We are simply too intellectual and too serious for that. Didn't you remark that in this thread?
;)
But you are right with your translation. It is correct as you wrote.
 
Thank you very much! I am really proud to read this.
;)
But because we were just in almost childish jokes. There is one dialogue which can be used to make every German depressive who is thinking of his language as the most sophisticated one in the world:
- Could you imagine a serious German question sounding like a child talk?
- No, certainly not!
- Even not in a German dialect?
- No, certainly not!
- Something with "hamsamsam" or "hattatta"?
- Do you want to insult me?
- HamsamSamstach dat Fussballspiel gesehen? Hatdatda gereechnet?

(Dialect from the German Ruhrgebiet in Northrhine-Westfalia. Correctly written would be:
Haben Sie am Samstag das Fußballspiel gesehen? Hat es da geregnet? Translation: Did you see the soccer game on Saturday? Did it rain?)
 
Silent_Water said:
Thank you very much! I am really proud to read this.
;)
But because we were just in almost childish jokes. There is one dialogue which can be used to make every German depressive who is thinking of his language as the most sophisticated in the world:
- Could you imagine a serious German question sounding like a child talk?
- No, certainly not!
- Even not in a German dialect?
- No, certainly not!
- Something with "hamsamsam" or "hattatta"?
- Do you want to insult me?
- HamsamSamstach dat Fussballspiel gesehen? Hatdatda gereechnet?

(Dialect from the German Ruhrgebiet in Northrhine-Westfalia. Correctly written would be:
Haben Sie am Samstag das Fußballspiel gesehen? Hat es da geregnet? Translation: Did you see the soccer game on Saturday? Did it rain?)
Click to expand...
I’ve certainly heard “hamsa” meaning “haben Sie” .. but “hamsamsamtach” for “haben Sie am Samstag”, well, perhaps I would catch the meaning, if I heard it. And if I was slightly drunk, I always find German easier when I’m drunk.:copas:
 
I found some more examples in my archive which show how incredibly tough German men can be - at least in their imagination in opposite to the male German "Weichei":


"der Stahlseil-Bungeespringer" - a tough guy doing bungee with a steel cord

"der ohne-Publikum-Stagediver" - a tough German artist doing stage-diving without any audience

"der Polizisten-Duzer" - a tough guy addressing a German policeman with "Hey, DU Polizist!"

"der Russenmafiabetrüger" - an extremely tough German criminal doing a fraud against the Russian mafia, not thinking about any consequences


and the toughest of all in my humble opinion:

"der nasenblutend-dem-Hai-entgegen-Schwimmer" - a German who is swimming into the direction of an attacking shark whilst having a nosebleed
 
dommmu said:
...
Learning German is hard for people with hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia (the fear of long words). ;)
Click to expand...

By the way and being a terrible German pedant, I just remarked there is a letter missing in this word: a "p", because it is "hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia" !!!

I simply could not have slept this night in peace without this necessary correction. :eaea:

Good night! (Because I have to get up early in the morning to be one of the first customers in my local ALDI-shop.)
 
Silent_Water said:
Good night! (Because I have to get up early in the morning to be one of the first customers in my local ALDI-shop.)
Click to expand...

Aldi, another great mystery Germany brought to the world!

 
Silent_Water said:
By the way, I am not sure if "Dampfschifffahrt" was really written with 3 "f" or with 2 "f" about 130 years ago
Click to expand...
Universal rules for orthography aren't even that old I think. German writers would use th vs t, or c vs k as they wished. But pretty universally 'unaesthetic' effects like the triple f where avoided, triple consonants where I think only introduced with the Rechtschreibreform of the 1990s to be 'consistent'.

montycrusto said:
I’ve certainly heard “hamsa” meaning “haben Sie” .. but “hamsamsamtach” for “haben Sie am Samstag”, well, perhaps I would catch the meaning, if I heard it. And if I was slightly drunk, I always find German easier when I’m drunk.
Click to expand...
I think you're ready for the next level then. German spoonerisms (thanks to Eulalia for informing me that spoonerism is the English word for that phenomenon) ...

... for a start, Spiegelei (an egg fried sunny side up) by way of phonetic spoonerism becomes Igelspei (hedgehog's vomit)
 
dommmu said:
Aldi, another great mystery Germany brought to the world!
Click to expand...
Aldi used to way more radical than they are today.

Back in the '80s and early 90's they had a) no barcode scanners at the checkout and b) an extremely limited offer of only the most universal goods.

Their approach was that the people at checkout would simply memorize the current price of every product in the store.

This worked because they only had a number of products in the low hundreds, and prices seldom changed. As a result they were ridiculously effective. (Pay was actually also not bad especially compared to other companies).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom