As in, he dropped something, he made a mistake, etc. How would he express it?
According to the Google Translator, it is “Hoppla”, and a fairly similar word in several other central European languages. Using a different translator, Hoppla translates back into English as Oops, and in one instance, “Oops-a-daisy”.
‘Hoppla’ works, but ‘ups’ is also a fairly common German interjection meaning essentially the same thing (in fact, I’d view ‘hoppla’ as maybe slightly outdated).
So, zis is un hypothetical question?
I knew older German-Americans who would say “scheiße” at such times.
Well, I was going to write a piece about the Germans damaging their World Cup trophy (and the German word for “Oops” was going to figure in either the title or the lead sentence), but then I decided that 400 words about this mishap was about 250 words too many, so I decided against it.