Here are two recent words and sentences that made me laugh, for different reasons:
- der Honig -- honey. Das war kein Honiglecken.
That was no picnic. But literally it means, that was no licking of honey. - die Muttersprache -- mother/native tongue. Duetsch is nicht meine Muttersprache.
I am not a native speaker of German. This made me laugh because anyone who heard me speak German would probably think I sound like a hillbilly without me pointing it out! By the way, hillbilly or hick in German is der Hinterwaeldler, or in my case, die Hinterwaeldlerin. It literally means backwoodsman/woman.
10 comments:
I'd love to have a calendar like that in English.
"right up my alley" would be "Das ist ganz mein Fall"
If you translate that back again it would be something like "It's quite my fall" which is funnier than using the word "case" instead.
This is fun!
I love a french expression: lecher les vitrines (for window shopping) which in German literally is "die Fensterscheiben lecken" (licking the windows)
I need such an Calendar for my desk too!
Sigrun
Odd. I've always said "lecher les fenetres."
Maybe that's not too wrong. But it could also mean that you look inside other people's windows instead of shop windows. *lol* So you could have outed yourself as a voyeur.:D
sorry, no offence! Just thinking how tricky foreign languages can be.
BTW, what does it mean if someone says: You're a blast ?
Thanks for the translation Julia! I love the french expression in German. Redewendungen are such fun!
You're a blast means that you are a lot of fun. Sie sind viel Spass, but I better ways to say it. I hadn't thought about translating this one. I suppose it would make you take a step back. Why would I want to explode? :)
There might be English-German versions of the calendar. It's published by Living Language.
Unfortunately I only found the calendar version you have :(
You can probably only find English to German because publishers assume that non-English speakers aren't monolingual! It's embarrassing! "Lecher les vitrines" makes me want to learn French!
I have to warn you. French grammar is horror! I had six years of french lessons in school and I can only say things like "Quelle heure est il?" (What time is it?).
Spanish is much easier. I'm thinking about learning it. But there's so much other stuff I have to learn right now.:(
I hope that you have to learn fun or interesting things!
Last year I gave up my old job and started a new education. It's hard but I wanted it and it's what I always wanted. So it's fun, too. I have another two years to go.
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