Funny English words found in German

Yesterday I saw a billboard that made me laugh. It was advertising an item of clothing called a "shorty". Apparently its some kind of shorts-pajama.

Occurred to me there a quite a few english words that have been taken up in Germany with their meanings mutated. Another one is "body" - a kind of sweatshirt top. ("just off to Karstadt to buy a body"). Then there`s "handy" and "mobbing"...

Any other examples people can think of?

händy has derived from the swabians !!

Ja, hän die koi schnur ??

( Haven't they got a lead ?? )

There are a few mentioned in this topic:

Repetitive German Phrases

Although we don't call them "a shorty" we do call them Shorty Pyjamas, so they've probably picked it up from that.

Funnily enough, to this day I still have a habit of calling my mobile "my handy", and get some strange looks for that. My son thinks he's hilarious when I ever ask "where"s my handy" and his answer is always the same "on the end of your army". It's just not bloody funny anymore

I'm sure a similar thread exists in the archives somewhere just cant find it with this new fangled web site

My comment in the old thread was about "crash" fabric, as the germans have had it instilled upon them (by southerners that anything with a 'u' in it should be pronounced as an 'a' so crushed fabric becomes crashed fabric.

A collegue couldn't understand what a shuttle bus was, though it was some sort of torture device from the Second World War, untill I explained it was exactly the same as a Shattle bus. (bus being the same in German so the pronounce it as bus not bas)

Its actually used to refer to a type of wetsuit in England/the US .


It made me laugh.

Here's a beauty from an internal memo that I received recently

Zurzeit laufen einige sehr wichtige „Prove of Concept’s“ bei Kunden

Why do they do it? Even the German is wrong - it should be zur Zeit.

To be fair I wouldn't have been surprised to read this (i.e. "prove of concept's") in an internal memo over here written by English native speakers...

Maybe a bus zat shakes ze truz out of ze Germans? Ohh mein Gott, zee Tommies, sie haben ein Schüttelbus!

If this is a topic that tickles your fancy (I love it personally), you should check out Bastian Sick's Zwiebelfisch column and his book Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod.

Where on Earth does this come from? When I first got here Germans would get really annoyed when I didn't understand what they were talking about. 'But it's an English word' they would say. For the longest time I thought they were saying 'mopping', but I still couldn't figure out why I would mop one of my coworkers, no matter how dirty he is.

It also seems to be mentioned so much that I get the feeling that a typcial German office must be like a grade school playground. Groups of middle managers going around stealing the uncool guy's lunch money and the like.

Bingo!

I`m a Musician - and it always Bugs the hell out of me when I have a Gig somewhere and its advertised as "Life Musik" instead of Live Musik.

"body" = sort of a vest
"body bag" = some type of backpack

"Body Shop" = Do they actually sell bodies?

Yes there are similarities. For one thing they all smoke.

Wellness.

I hate to break it to you but the Body Shop is a UK "invention" and has been around since the 1970s.

"Beamer" drives me nuts. My colleagues were all shocked that I had no idea what they were referring to.

"But it's one of your words? No dearest, it's not"

Matter of fact, "zurzeit" is one of the grossest results of the Rechtschreibreform. It sets my teeth on edge every time I see it along with its buddy "mithilfe", as in Zurzeit ist das Wetter nur mithilfe von viel Bier zu ertragen. (At the moment, the weather is only tolerable with the aid of copious amounts of beer.)
My all-time favorite English word in German is actually used in Austria: pen-AL-ty for penalty shot.

Beamer's a good one.

And "Feeling". As in "das besondere Feeling".

That's right, Kay, but I have always wanted to enter one and ask the good-looking lady behind the counter to sell me a body.
Haven't found the cheek to do so yet...

I believe Anita Roddick opened the first one next door to an undertakers. Always one with an eye to publicity was Ms. R.

Of course, the story might be an urban foot.

I love the "Beamer" one. We (all except Germans) know it is something to be driven made by BMW.

It is NOT a digital projector.

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I also cringe at the German attempts to write "Spare Ribs".
I have seen so many sparerips, Spear ribs, spear rips and the best of all was last week in the Ostbahnhof, one of the recently refurbished food counters is offering Spaerribs (or was it spaerrips?)

"gemanaged" for EN "managed", "managed" for EN "manages"!

"Momentan managed XYZ zwei Projekte..." - pronounced "meneged", of course!

Music to the ears!

Drives me nuts when they say "die Infos". "Info" is already plural, oda?

In English it's a collective noun and automatically plural but it's singular in German. Die Information is collective.

I saw something similar to "Life Musik" a couple days ago but I can't remember what it was.

woof.

I like when the girls at the office talk about their neben jobs saying they 'gejobt'! WTF?

Denglisch?

Sign of the apocalypse!

Drives me absolutely nuts.

Only in Germany can you buy a "Fruity" and a "Corny" at any ol' supermarket.
My favorite mistranslation into German, btw, is "Untergrundeisenbahn" - saw that one at work here in Munich. The problem is that the source text referred to The Underground Railroad (does the name Harriet Tubman ring any bells?)
Scary and sad indeed.

Oh yes, and Marketing-Denglisch is particularly disturbing.

Well, I guess I should get back to my translation projects . . .

not_Mormon

There used to be a sandwich bar in Munich called "Saint Witch". Its logo was a witch with a halo. Enlightened people.

That's horrendous. I checked here at work first, as I didn't want to make a fool of myself on the board, and all my German colleagues thought that it should be two words.

Talking of checking, what really makes me cringe is kids who use the new German verb 'checken' as in 'Hast du's gecheckt?' or 'Checkst du's nicht?'

What about Gerglisch?

A few more that always irritate me:

"Oldtimer" for vintage car
"Last not least" - it's "Last but not least", for Christ's sake
"Happy-end"

I've even seen a brand of toilet paper called "Happy-End" - is it supposed to make your rear end happy, or what?

Of course, there's everyones favourite salty liquorice: Spunk.

Ich habe ein Program gedownloadet.

super dickemanns and dickmilch, both genius...and that most hated of words for me...photoshooting!

oh, and GEpimpt...

Might be useful to add though that in English "information" is always singular in construction.

a wankwinkel may sound like a masturbating shellfish, but I believe it is actually an obtuse angle (may be wrong)

Ok, I don't know if this really falls into this category, but shortly after I arrived here a few years ago I saw a dixiklo (porta-potty) from a company called ASS. Kein Scheiß (pun intended)! What's even funnier ist the website : www.ass-container.de Man, you think these people would do some research beforehand ...

My coworkers like to spell badge "Batsch".

Oh, and we have a program called, well, a "performance bonus" program in the US. But since they have so many kinds of bonus in Germany, it's called "variable pay" here.

That is, "Vahr-EYE-a-ble Pay".

Big sign above a florist when I first arrived in Munich said 'BLUMEN KUNST!' made me have a double take

When we first moved to Berlin, there was a fancy bath-accessories shop near our apartment called "BAD ART". My non-German speaking boyfriend (at the time, he's much better now) thought this very strange.

On another topic, can someone tell me what is up with rare steaks being "Englisch"???

The word "Tageshit" makes me laugh. Split the syllables in the wrong place and the dish of the day becomes distinctly unappetising.

Here in town there is a florists owned by the Familie Mück. There are a few signs around town directing you to "Blumen Mück"

Oh I have good ones too. Angst and Weltschmerz. Kindergarten und Ersatz. Und natuerlich Vorsprung durch Technik a saying which perfectly describes the decline of what was once a great industry. The British Motor Industry. 'Weltschmerz' is a sample which describes the depth of the vocabulary of German Philosophy, that means no other European language has the ability to describe the facets of 'Being' better then the German language . This derives from the great German philosophical tradition stretched from Leibnitz, Hegel, Schopenhauer. the great Kant to Marx, Engels, Marcuse, Gadamer and many others too. And by the bye I think 'Dittsche the real life' Sunday Evening on WDR is as good as Monty Pyton only without the cobwebs.

Not really a funny word...but an interesting name for a doctor . Spotted in the U-Bahn:

Yeah Dr. Quack - I can't stop laughing haha...

Yawn... They are hardly news. You should have done a search first.

You forgot "gesundheit" as well. That's about it though isn't it?

kitsch
schmalz
spiel (as in sales spiel)
blitzkrieg
wunderkind*
zeitgeist
weltanschauung
doppelgänger
ersatz
rucksack
über- as a prefix
wanderlust
kaputt
kaffeeklatsch (they say that in new york, i think)
to schlepp (another americanism, i think)
poltergeist
abseiling
lumpen(proletariat)

*even made it into a smiths' song (although he pronounced it wrong)

To be fair some of those words come from Yiddish z.B. verklemmt, and aren't really Americanisms.