Tag Archives: Language

German Of The Day: Wegretuschiert

October 13, 2017 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

That means to airbrush out.

Lidl

And a lot of customers are cross at the big German discounter Lidl these days for doing just that: Airbrushing out crosses on their products. It’s like Lidl crossed a red line here or something. And now they’re caught in the crossfire. I guess you could say they forgot to dot their i’s and cross their t’s.

First it was a number of Greek products last month and now its Italy’s turn. And why is Lidl doing this? Apparently “to observe religious and political neutrality.”  They promised to stop doing this after last month’s airbrushing incident, however. I guess they forgot to cross their heart and hope to die.

Well I, for one, certainly want my moussaka to remain religiously and politically neutral but maybe this is taking it just a wee bit too far.

Damals erklärte Lidl, dass ein derartiger Eingriff dazu diene, die religiöse und politische Neutralität einzuhalten. Nun fehlen auf Lidl-Werbefotos in Italien erneut die Kirchenkreuze.

The Mystery Of The Dying Dialect

October 8, 2017 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Higher Education, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

It’s another one of those “not much of a mystery here at all” mysteries.

Icke

Why is “Berlinerisch,” the Berlin dialect, dying out? Do the math.

“Less and less people speak the true Berliner dialect,” was the title of a recent newspaper article that immediately alarmed me. Young people no longer find Berlinerisch cool, and the 60,000 people who move to the city every year aren’t planning on learning it either…

Meanwhile, only a quarter of all Berliners were actually born in Berlin – and that ratio is sinking. It’s bad enough that Berliners are bound to disappear; we can’t just let the language die out.

‘Icke’ should be World Cultural Heritage

German Of The Day: Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz

October 3, 2017 By in Habeas Corpus, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

That means… Beats the hell out of me. I think it means something like Internet Enforcement Law.

Mass

At any rate, it’s this really clever new law pushed through by German Justice Minister Heiko Mass (SPD) – a particularly lame duck because his party is now history after last week’s election – that forces Internet companies like Facebook to remove “obviously illegal” posts (whatever that means) within 24 hour or pay big fines. This takes care of “hate speech” forever, see? Brilliant.

Of course it will also take care of a lot of posts that will have nothing at all to do with hate speech but will be blocked anyway by these companies. Just in case, you know?

Free speech ist not quite as free as it used to be in Germany. But it’s worth it, right?

Kritiker bemängeln, dass die Rechtsdurchsetzung in private Hände gelegt wird, und sie fürchten ein “Overblocking“: Die Betreiber könnten im Zweifel lieber zu viele Inhalte entfernen, um nicht mit dem NetzDG in Konflikt zu geraten. Dadurch gerate die Meinungsfreiheit in Gefahr.

 

German Of The Day: Gesichtsverhüllung

October 1, 2017 By in Habeas Corpus, Higher Education, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

That means face shrouding or face disguising.

Gesicht

And as of today it is against the law to do so in Austria. It’s a burqa ban, so-to-speak. Too bad about all those other clown masks out there that people like to wear, though. And Halloween is coming up soon too, you know.

The restrictions are aimed at ‘ensuring the cohesion of society in an open society’, it says, and violations will be punished with a fine of up to €150.

Ähnliche Burkaverbote gibt es auch in Frankreich und Belgien. Der Europäische Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte hat in zwei Urteilen festgestellt, dass das Verbot rechtens ist.

German Of The Day: Geld Stinkt Nicht

September 28, 2017 By in Helplessness, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

That means money doesn’t stink.

Geld

Unless, maybe, you’re at the Oktoberfest and you’re a drunken tourist. A really, really, really drunken tourist. And then you have to use the toilet and can’t find any toilet paper there so you decide to use the money in your wallet instead (no, not the coins). And then you put that money back in your wallet again. And then those nice men from the Oktoberfest come to take you away so you can call your wife to have her come pick you up from their Oktoberfest detox cell.

It’s shared memories like those that are the best, don’t you think?

Too bad this guy didn’t know anything about money laundering. Prost (cheers)!

Aufgrund seines desolaten Zustandes wurde er in Gewahrsam genommen und zur Wiesn-Wache gebracht Die Beamten verständigten seine Ehefrau, die den 39-Jährigen abholte. Ich glaube nicht, dass die sehr erfreut war.

If I Had A Vision I’d Go See My Doctor

September 21, 2017 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Humor Tags: , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Die Mitte (the middle) is where it’s at, folks. Well it’s certainly where I’m at. And you can’t have visions from here in the middle. I mean, I may not always know what I stand for but I always know where I’m standing..

Mitte

And that’s what Germans want, the middle. The middle of the middle, even. The middler the better. No meddling with the middle. We’re right in the middle of an election campaign, after all. Did you know that Mittelmaß (literally “the middle measure”) means mediocrity in German?

Sure, there was a little Abweichung (deviation) from the middle with that batshit crazy refugee number of mine. Quite a big deviation, actually. But I apologized. Sort of. And now I’m back home, smack dab in the middle of where you want me to be. Just call me. Mutti. Mutti in the middle.

See you on Sunday!

Perhaps the closest she came to setting out a vision was a year ago, as she presented this year’s budget in parliament. Germany, she said, has seen a lot of change since World War II, and “change isn’t a bad thing.” But she also vowed to defend the status quo in the broadest sense of the term: “Germany will remain Germany, with all that we love and hold dear about it.”

“Whoever has visions should go see a doctor.”
– Helmut Schmidt

German Of The Day: Nichtwähler

September 17, 2017 By in Habitudes, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

That means non-voters.

Non-voter

And who do German non-voters vote for? Die Partei, of course.

Twelve straight years of Angela Merkel have left politics feeling a little dry for young people in Germany. But now a satirical party is experiencing a surge in popularity after it was set up as a joke at the expense of the old system…

In the last few months the party has seen its membership swell to reach more than 25,000, just shy of the 26,000 members of the rising and much-publicised extreme-right party Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD), which is expected to enter parliament for the first time this year.

Nichtwähler wählen: Die Partei.

German Of The Day: Certainly Not Here

September 14, 2017 By in Helplessness, Higher Education, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Not in this English newspaper.

Sun

It’s kind of German, I guess. But it’s certainly not very kind to the German language.

Es ist Zeit für die Erwachsenen, Angela Merkel und Emmanuel Macron, die Verhandlungsführer durch den Hals zu ergreifen und Sie zu stoppen verschwenden Zeit mit Punkt-Scoring. Das ist zu wichtig.

A pro-Brexit editorial written in German has a problem: It’s literally gibberish.

German Of The Day: PARTEI

September 11, 2017 By in Habitudes, Helections, High Art, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Humor Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

PARTEI officially stands for “Partei für Arbeit, Rechtsstaat, Tierschutz, Elitenförderung und basisdemokratische Initiative,” or “Work, Rule of Law, Animal Protection, Elite Promotion, and grass-roots democratic Initiative.”

Partei

Finally, a political party for the rest of us. I mean, you.

“If it doesn’t matter to you who sits in the Bundestag, wouldn’t it be great to be represented by someone who could care less that he does sit there?”

What I like about a satirical party like the Party is that its meaninglessness, as compared to the meaninglessness of a number of serious political parties here, has a meaning.

As for its campaign goals, Die Partei’s election manifesto is replete with meaningless political platitudes pushed to the edge of absurdity: “Die Partei supports the implementation of all-encompassing, universal, total justice, at least twice as much justice as the SPD (Social Democratic Party). Any complaints about supposed injustices will be suppressed with the utmost force.”

„Wenn es dir egal ist, wer im Bundestag sitzt, wäre es dann nicht schön von jemandem vertreten zu werden, dem es egal ist, dass er im Bundestag sitzt?“

German Of The Day: Angst

September 8, 2017 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

That means angst. And here is the latest German angst check:

Angst

Terrorism wins again. But does it really? German Angstforscher (angst scientists – how could they be anywhere else but in Germany, right?) point out that terrorism, for example, is a socially accepted angst that everybody can openly get all angst-like about, without getting any angst about getting any extra angst on top of that. The real close up and personal kinds of individual angst, however, that’s a different matter. People don’t like to talk about that kind of angst because they have too much angst to do so. I have angst, for instance, that these angst studies are creating more angst about angst than they need to. And that frightens me.

“Man weiß, dass es sich bei der Terror-Angst um eine sozial akzeptierte Angst handelt. Die Leute berichten doch nicht gerne einem Menschen in einer Telefonumfrage über ihre ganz individuellen Ängste, die sie sonst allenfalls mit den engsten Freunden und Familienangehörigen teilen.”