Not a native German speaker, just a B-language. It’s not ach-tung, but acht-ung if I understand it right, which is kind of self-reinforcing. So an angle might be “Attention-ing!” (Self-reinforcing)
It’s one of many attention-getting words - like warschau (“look out”) - but it’s probably the highest-tiered one, maybe. STOP-ATTENTION-IMPORTANT is as close as I can get in terms of effect. In English it probably overlaps in usage with careful-attention-warning-danger. The most approximate phrase verbally is probably a insistent “Pay attention”.
The German ending “-ung” is not identical to the english verb ending “-ing”. There is no present continuous tense in German and the equivalent of the English gerund is formed by using the infinitive of the verb as a noun. The ending “-ung” can (in specific cases) be used to form nouns that describe results or concepts connected with the action described by a verb. In contrast to forming a gerund, it is not always possible to form a noun with -ung for a given verb or action. The “-tion” ending in attention has a similar function. So it is rather “atten(d)-tion”.
Not to contradict, but Sgt Schultz (John Banner, in the clip I linked above) appears to pronounce it “Ach-tung”, though he was born in Stanislau, Austria-Hungary and not Germany, and he emigrated to the US when he was 28. Maybe the 27 years in the US (including the US army and acting career before Hogan’s Heroes) slid the “t” back to the “ach”?
Thank you for your posts. I wasn’t thinking phonetically, but in terms of word composition, but I should have made that clearer. Further, I was talking to my german friend who pointed out essentially the same thing as Remember_me – so I waive the point entirely. I was thinking of “zahlung” and “bewegung”, but forgot that the main rule isn’t verb+ung, just a few exceptions.
