You guys have no sense of humor.”
Tag Archives: Language
“Everything that could go wrong went wrong, or is going wrong”
Other than that though, alles ist in Ordnung (everything’s OK).
Germany’s lost decade: How the Fortune 500 Europe giant is flirting with long-term irrelevance – There is an elephant in the room of the 2024 edition of the Fortune 500 Europe. It’s not a crisis-riddled company or scandal-hit CEO. Rather, it’s the whole German economy.
For most of the 21st century, economists and neighboring countries have looked to Germany with admiration and envy as it managed to weather economic storms with relative ease, capitalizing on trade with growing economies and expanding the power of its industrial giants in the process.
However, a shifting world order has pulled the carpet out from underneath Germany. The industrial quirks that once helped it outgrow its European peers are fast becoming a burden, and crisis after crisis has exposed a lack of planning at the top of government.
More debt is the answer!
Right? It’s always the answer. Just look at US-Amerika.
We should be commending the Germans for not going down that deadly road, not smirking at them.
Schadenfreude reigns as Berlin pays the price of its tough line on debt – “It’s karma, no?” said one European official.
Germany has long been the European Union’s penny pincher par excellence — a paragon of fiscal rectitude in contrast to its spendthrift neighbors. But now its insistence on balancing the books is coming back to bite it.
I would have gone with “Talahon”
But I’m not a young German.
The race was extremely close: “Aura” is the German youth word of the year 2024, with a wafer-thin lead over “Talahon” and a new interpretation of “scissors.”
Talahon: An adherent of an urban subculture of males aged between about 13 and 25, typically but not necessarily of Middle Eastern origin, characterized, among other things, by a passion for German hip hop and wearing counterfeit designer labels.
Worry about the cost of living?
Why should Germans worry about that?
Vater Staat (Father State) has everything under control. Wie immer (as usual).
Germans fear rising cost of living – Inflation, migration, expensive housing — these are the things that most people in Germany are worried about, according to the latest study “Germans’ Fears 2024.”
German of the day: “nicht zufriedenstellend”
That means not satisfactory or unsatisfactory.
Year number two. Germany is on a roll.
Germany expects economy to shrink after cutting 2024 forecast – Government predicts rebound in 2025 after 0.2% decline this year.
Germany is facing its first two-year recession since the early 2000s, as the government downgraded its growth forecast for 2024, predicting a contraction of 0.2 per cent.
“The situation is not satisfactory,” Robert Habeck, economy minister, said on Wednesday.
“The crux of the biscuit…
is the apostrophe.”
They’re not used in German to show possession. Until now. Sort of.
Germans decry influence of English as ‘idiot’s apostrophe’ gets official approval – Linguistic body has relaxed rules on use of apostrophe to show possession, not traditionally correct in German.
Once upon a time
Somebody say to me
(This is a dog talkin’ now)
What is your Conceptual Continuity?
Well, I told him right then (Fido said)
It should be easy to see
The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe…
German of the day: Discounter
Dicounter are grocery stores that cover the basic everyday needs of customers, offering the lowest prices.
For most items.
German supermarket finds €7M of cocaine in crates of bananas – Police did not identify the discount supermarket chain. However, they said the cocaine was found at stores in several cities across the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Time to say goodbye?
“Lieber ein Ende mit Schrecken als ein Schrecken ohne Ende.”
“Better to have an end with fright than fright without end.”
Migrants say Germany’s ‘welcome culture’ has soured as far-right parties rise – On Sunday, voters in the eastern German state of Brandenburg will vote for a new regional parliament. The anti-migrant far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, could win the most votes. On 1 September the AfD won a major German election for the first time, coming first in the eastern state of Thuringia. In Brandenburg polls show the AfD leading with 28%.
To undermine support for the AfD, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s left wing-led government on Monday introduced checks for migrants on all of Germany’s borders. He also wants to increase deportations of people whose application for asylum is unsuccessful. Opposition conservatives meanwhile want the borders closed to asylum seekers altogether.
German of the day: “mach den Biden”
That means to do the Biden. To a politician.
To toss him out, in other words.
Germany’s Scholz risks Biden’s fate – If the chancellor’s SPD party loses a crucial regional election to the far right on Sunday, it could lead to his ouster from the top spot.
As German Chancellor Olaf Scholz attends the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sunday, his political future will likely be decided at home in a regional election 6,000 kilometers away.
One more defeat at the hands of the far right this weekend will almost certainly spell the end, and Scholz could very well share the fate of U.S. President Joe Biden — thrust aside by his panicking party to make way for a candidate who can avoid a massacre in a national election next year.
Observing Hermann 