That Hilarious German Language

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I took German for all 4 years of my HS education and for 3 of those years I had the same teacher. Every once in a while he’d give us an extra credit word which we could memorize and then write on a test for 1-2 points of extra credit. The words were all really obscure and, to me, humorous.
For instance some were:

Die Jaucherinne - liquid manure trench/channel
Die Vierfleckigebohnenkaefer - four-spotted bruchus
Das Schnellspannfutter(sp?) - quick-action chuck, IIRC

And during my Senior year we would have 5 German idioms to memorize just about every week and one of them just cracked me up in class. It literally translated as “That really knocks the Eskimo off his sled” and as soon as I heard that I got this mental image of a German sport in which Germans would prowl through the snow in search of Eskimos to knock them off their sleds…

So what are your similar, German-related stories… things like really long words*, strange idioms, really obscure words, etc…

*The longest German word (not a number) that I know is Die Donaudampfschiffmeisterinshut

2

We were over in Germany when the movie Liar/Liar ( Jim Carrey) came out.

The title was about 97 letters & words long.

I asked my husband to translate what the title was. It took him a few moments and it was something like: The really dumb men who could not stop lying.

It seems Dumb and Dumber was a colossal hit over there and the powers that be put D& D in the title for extra revenue chances.

3

I gots a thingy thats like paper and its gots words on it. The words forms sometin to the effect thats I gots me a degree ins german language and literature.

Anywho

Cause like I took like a lot of the german courses and stuff, the chair let me take a graduate/undergrad course.

Called German Novelle or somesuch

Teacher was not a militant femi-nazi, but prefered to talk about women folk.

Long story longer:

There were a plethora of novelles, longer than a short-story but shorter than a novel. :rolleyes:

There was this one novelle that started on page 75 and ended on 150 or something.

I was written by a woman, about a woman and her adventures of woman-hood, way back when when men were men and women were seen and not heard kinda thing.

So this charector was pretty wishy washy. She’d daydream and wander around. Cuz she was like rich and sick so she could lay around and dream about her ideal man. :rolleyes:

Anyways she sees a guy and she is like woah hes cool and stuff. Unfortunately he drowns in a river.

Two poor men go looking for his body.

One says to the other “Has this river killed anyone this year?”

“No” says the other.

Poor guy one goes “Well then the river got its meat for the year.”

“Fine by me lets go do something peasant like” says poor guy two.

The end

YAY

Anywho there was a library in the department with all sorts of Volk-ideas like the 'river eats people so that is why one sometimes doesnt find a body when someone drowns."

The End part 2

4

I made a WWI German recruitment poster for history class, and I made it in German. The slogan is:

Die Zeit für Pflicht ist gekommen!
Kommt zum Heer-Für Kaiser, Gott und Vaterland!

The translation is something like “The time for duty is come. Join the German army for your Kaizer, for your country, for your God”

5

That reminds me, ContumeliousBob, the German fairy tales were hilarious. We read a little book (75 pages or so) of German folk tales…

The funniest one, I think was “Das gestohlene Scwein und die Tote Schwiegermutter” (The stolen pig and the dead mother-in-law). It’s just funny seeing how the Grimm fairy tales compare to the fairy tells I head when I was a wee’n…

6

I took two german courses in the last 2 years of HS…

My favorites were the excuse to say ‘fuck’ outloud, claiming we just said ‘einfach’ which means ‘subject’ in German.

And, ‘fahrt’ means travel.

7

During my third year of German in high school, we were assigned to write alphabet books, much like what one would give a small child who is learning to read. My word for the letter ‘M’ was das Muckefuck, translation: coffee substitute. I don’t remember what sentence I wrote for it, but I remember my teacher thinking that I was really immature (I was and still am to an extent).

-Karen

8

We learned the conjugation for fahren in 9th grade, when we were all still justifiably immature to get a kick out of it.

9

Einfach means easy,
Fach means subject.

10

I love the word geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung. It means “speed limit.” I also enjoy how German verbs tend to come at the end of their sentences. A speaker can go on and on, giving the listener intimate details of who did something, to whom it was done, how it was done, but giving no clue exactly what was done until the very last word.

“Ich denke, daß ich in die Stadt gehen möchten. Auch denke ich, daß ich in meinem Auto gehen werde.”

translates literally into

“I think that I to the city to go would like. Also think I that I in my car go will.”

I think – it’s been 9 years since my last Deutschklasse.

I just think that it’s odd. I mean, it works for them, so who am I to question, really?

11

German is a funny language…but the cool thing is, once your learn a few simple rules, it is impossible to spell anything wrong, or mispronounce a word. Everything is written and spoken exactly the way it is written. And as far as those huge words…again, once you learn the language you realize that those long words are actually just many short words put together to create a whole new word.

The only really hard part of learning the language it getting the masculine, feminine and neuter…for instance, a man and a boy are both masculine (der Mann, der Junge), but a woman is feminine (die Frau), while a girl is neuter (das Maedchen)…I once asked why and was told, “until a girl has had sex, she is not feminine…”. That answer might have been BS, but I thought it was both funny and sexist at the same time.

But I love how blunt the German language can be. The word for birth control pill?
Antibabypille. Doesn’t get any more blunt than that.

12

I’ve never understood that myself… I guess the writers of the German language didn’t mean for a maid to be inherently female… but that “she hasn’t had sex” thing does smell a bit fishy…

And I, too, liked the predictability of German. The rules were the rules and there weren’t really exceptions to them…except with irregular irregular verbs. I say irregular twice because even some irregular verbs have rules dictating their conjugations. For instance, sein is an irregular irregular verb in that there is no rhyme nor reason to it’s different forms (not one that I immediately recall…it’s been a year since I graduated) but a verb like lesen is irregular in a regular way in that it’s du and er/sie/es forms are the same… there are other ‘irregular’ verbs that follow the same rules…

Einfach also means “simple”, btw…

13

Forgot to mention - I liked the bluntness as well. Das Stinktier immediately comes to mind, lol…

14

[QUOTE=Call me Frank]
… but that “she hasn’t had sex” thing does smell a bit fishy…
QUOTE]

Speaking of being blunt…“smelling fishy” is probably not the best expression to use in this example…

15

I see your point…

16

Hmm…gotta stop wearing boxers when I type.

17

:eek: Ich werd’ nicht danach fragen…

18

Aha- yes I’ve seen a machine selling “Anti-Baby Condom”.

As for the “Madchen” (can’ do unlaut, sorry), well, IIRC, ALL words ending in the diminutive “-chen” will be neuter". Might be wrong of coure - it was a along time ago.

One word that scared me was, first week in university, for goodness’ sake, …“Erkenntistheorie” - no, I agree it is not particularly long, but the notion that they would expect us to know words like “epistemlogy” was a bit alarming.

When working in Bavaria one summer, the form I had to sign at the local police station to register/anmelden as a foreign temporary resident, …well…memory MIGHT be playing tricks, but I am still sure it wanted to know, apart form the sensible stuff like name etc, where I and my family were living on the nth of September 1938”. I red that one about 5 times just in case my eyes were playing tricks on me. “Eek no, Ich bin nur in 1961 geboren!” or words to that effect - as I say, it has been a very long time since I had excuse to speak German.

I might be a tiny bit off topic, but indulge me with my amusing book title. Well, then, when a young celyn I studied Philosophy. - one day, I was in the library looking for a particular work by Immanual Kant. Of course there were lots and .lots of very thick tomes, and there was one collection entitled “Die Populare Werke von Immanuel Kant”/”The popular Works …”. It was a very SMALL book. Surprise, surprise! :slight_smile:

Once in first year university, I and a friend took to countint the amount of woe, misery and death in our set texts…the totatl was already pretty big, and we gave it up when we got to add in the whole of the First World War. :slight_smile:

19

Celyn’s right about the -chen being neuter thing…can’t believe I forgot that…

20

I too am a big fan of Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung. Another favorite of mine is Sicherheitsmaßnahmen, or ‘safety precautions.’

My friend used to go around all the time saying “Ich brauche Aquariumkeis” and “Ich habe viel Schnee gemacht.” He started saying that in German I and just continued as his slogans through all of high school. Not sure why he needed aquarium gravel, or why he was making lots of snow, but it was just stupid fun.

Jman