The “German is weird” book is now available:
order here
If you haven’t had an idea of what “verschlimmbessern” means—just think about the introduction of the Video Assistant Referee in soccer that wiped out a lot of the emotions without really making the game any more fair after all.
The shepherd dog is emblematic of Germany in a way that otherwise only socks and sandals are. Without a doubt, Germans love their canine friends. So it comes as a great surprise that this love is not at all reflected in their language.
Have you ever heard the cliché of Germans being somewhat uptight? Well, that’s not true across the board. Especially, when it comes to nudity, Germans are stunningly open-minded.
German palindromes range from given names (Anna, Otto) to animals (Reittier – “mount”, Uhu – “eagle owl”) to objects (Lagerregal – “Storage rack”, Rotor – “Rotor”) and everything in between.
I still get mail once a year from the dental clinic I last visited about 10 years ago. For this doctor’s office, I am a typical Karteileiche today.
Nature is very unjust when it comes to hair loss. Some guys will still look like a Monchichi in their 60s. Others get close to baldness even before their Abitur.
I am sure we have all had our fair share of painful breakups. More often than not, the grief is so strong that it moves from the soul into the body and becomes apparent in the form of drastic weight changes.
For such a precise-sounding term, the word Heimscheißer is remarkably versatile. On the most basic level, it simply describes what it says: a person who prefers to do their number 2’s at home.
Erdbeerwoche is a undeniably awesome euphemism for that time of the month. There are even more hilarious expressions for mother nature’s gift.
The “Speckgürtel” of Frankfurt for instance is known to be home to some of Germany’s richest municipalities, the likes of Königstein or Kronberg.
Cannonball jump: the diving style that gives chubby people some bragging rights during summer season.
It is a widely known fact that the German language gives you the opportunity to stack words on top of each other to create genuine lexical monstrosities.
This blog is a love letter to the curiosities of the German language that give it its poetic and, at times, oddly humorous qualities.
The “German Is Weird” book is now available: order here!
