Guten Appetit

Just having a moment of clarity and wondering:

In Austria/wherever/parts of Bav. they say "Mahlzeit".

In D-Land, the say "Guten Appetit".

France, Italy, etc. bla-bla-bla.

In the civilized part of the English-speaking world, YOU DON'T SAY ANYTHING. (OK, sometimes enjoy your meal, but that's covered below).

So why are these people always saying this? What the heck is "Guten Appetit" anyway?

Have a good appetite? Well, holy crap, what a revelation! I have come to this eating area and organized food to be sitting in front of me, but am I waiting for my darned appetite to finally show its presence. Oh dear appetite, please meet me in the space/time continuum so that I might take advantage of this juxtaposition of presence of mine and this food! But alas, this will be expidited by someone wishing me a good appetite! Oh thank you person! There are nice people on the planet! Wow, I am soaring now!

<beat>

And what about saying "Danke"? Why am I saying "Danke"? I mean, I think the "Guten Appetit" wisher meant well in general, and thank you, but what am I actually thanking you for?

And crikey, why are you saying bless you or "Gesundheit" after I sneeze? And why am I saying thank you to that too?

2007 will be the year of no more illogical behavior!

"Guten Appetit" will no longer be answered by "Danke", but rather "Ich habe das oft gehört, können Sie mir erklären was Sie eigentlich mir damit wünschen? Ich wollte endlich wissen."*

(*I have often heard that and need to be able to read simple German phrases since I live in Germany.)

are you bored at work?

Wow! How psychic can you get? Pretty good there.

Take a vow of silence and you'll be rid of the whole nasty "interacting with others" conundrum.

Combine the two: Bless you, laß dir`s schmecken.

Tomasino - i'm right there with you on this one.

after one year here, i never did understand this! in fact it becomes a pain in the back-side having to stop eating at least five times during lunch to say "thank you"!!!...

maybe work is boring today!

You but isn't interaction more interesting without the pretention?

Work is boring...sometimes.

Just be thankful you don't have a German colleague who finds it amusing to say "good appetite" to you (in English), normally followed by "you don't say that in england, do you".

I guess we'll miss you here on Toytown, then, since posting your troubles/happinesses/conundrums to a computer forum is hardly logical.

that's not really civilised then, is it?

pretty funny though...

Where exactly is the uncivilised part?

Stoke.

and how do you define civilised? or uncivilised

Birmingham (both English and American ones).

Coz it's polite...

Another thing about "Guten Appetit" is that it hasn't always been a given that your meal wouldn't give you serious indigestion.

Birmingham in Michigan or the better-known one in Alabama?

Actually I think it's a lot nicer to say "Enjoy your meal" ... which it basically is. I'm at the point now when I go back home to the UK that starting a meal feels rude that everyone fires in without a word.

I usually reply with "Ebenfalls" oder "Gleichfalls" ... as meaning "likewise" rather than a "Danke" (unless it's the chef/waiter(ess) when I am as polite as possible in the hopes they don't spit in my next course)

I agree with you about Mahlzeit ... that's just crazy .. people going about saying "Lunchtime", and then replying "Lunchtime" ... cookoo

"Mahlzeit!" is simply an abbreviated form of "Gesegnete Mahlzeit!", roughly the equivalent of "Guten Appetit!", which is quite a nice thing to say to someone as you are going to lunch...

"Enjoy your meal" ... I hate that at the table in English, it reminds me way too much of McDonalds!!

This phrase always reminds me of Basil Fawlty,

In Northern England they used to say "Grub up, muck in".

luxury! in Liverpool, our 'grub' was actually muck

I have a colleague who says "Malzeit" when he comes into the office usually at around 10.30 every morning. and always in the canteen at lunch time as well which was quite confusing when I came over here.

Question: Do the natives say "Danke" in reply all the time, or even frequently? At times since our arrival I've felt I'm saying "Danke" way too much - especially when maybe only half the time I'm met with "Bitte". Perhaps a smile and a nod would suffice?

Well Gesundheit is good health so i guess people just assume you are getting sick when you sneeze!!!

But the english, bless you, comes from way back when, the people thought that evil spirits were trying to get out (or was it in?.. hmm not sure) and so they would say god bless you, which has been shotened to bless you. course i don´t have any links or anything to confirm this, just what i have heard!! someone can contradict me if they wish!!!

not sure about the güten appetit, mahlzeit thingy but i do find it way more polite than the english way of not saying anything, and agree just say gleichfalls rather than danke!!

"Bless you" relates, I believe, back to theBlack Death in the middle ages. Sneezing was one of the first symptoms, people were saying, "may god bless you", i.e. "save you". Similar to saying, "you poor sod, nothing earthly can help you know" The phrase has been carried over into the present day. The childrens rhyme "A Ring a Ring of Roses" has the same origins.

You can't say that. Guten Appetit is just as crazy!

Random blindness.

Which makes no sense, so let's just stop saying it...

Ready, set, stop.

This also makes no sense. What is it, a command? Will it make the food taste better?

It would make more sense if the food was cooked by the guy who is saying it, and there was a wish:

"I hope you enjoy your meal, I tried out some new method with the mulligatawny and I am hoping it is a hit! Again, I really hope you enjoy!"

Response:
"Thank you, for the effort!"

Logic intact.

We have so many graduates from the University of Maskeshitup on Toyton. Shame I went to Cincinnatus.

It didn't start anywhere close to the time of the Black Death.

In Natural History (AD 77), Pliny wrote that even the most unsociable of all men of the time, Tiberius Caesar, would "salute a person when he sneezes" even when he (Tiberius( was in his chariot.

No one knows why we started to it. Most people believe it had to do with superstition and evil spirits but the fact of the matter is that we don't know. Wht we do know is that it goes back a hell of a lot further in history than Medieval times.

woof.

I'd say Tomasino should be thankful that he doesn't have to sit there in silence at the dining table till others murmur the "thank you Lord for this meal and blablabla" prayer for hours... till your food gets cold and unedible...

"Enjoy your meal" is a shorter solution, anytime, quite practical... and I think everybody uses such phrases, except for the English.. (Ich nicht Deutsche sein!!!).

Some years ago I worked in the IT support department of a large company in Germany. We looked after a couple of hundred users. In oder to avoid having to say "Mahlzeit" two hundred times every lunchtime we always used to go out of the office for lunch.

Yeah, true. "Mahlzeit" is hilarious.
Don't know why my mental dictionary translates it as "rumentaing time" or "chewing time"... it makes it sound even more hilarious than already is. And, first when I was told Mahlzeit in this country... and that was about 3 years ago.. well, I thought those people were making a joke on me, or something.
I thought it was a hint that I should eat faster and go back to work!
Of course, I replied: "Ja, OK, ich weiß, es ist doch 12 Uhr, Mittagspause, oder nicht?"
("Yes, okay, I know.. it's 12 o'clock, lunch break, isn't it?")

I generally try to avoid saying Mahlzeit, I just say "bis später". "Mahlzeit" sounds so zombified and workaday-drone.

In fact it was funny to see how people at that large co I freelanced at all used to say it. Some would utter the word with gusto "MAHLzeit!!" others would bleat "maa-hlll-zeit" as regular as clockwork. Whilst others still would just "murmeln in ihrem Bart". And from some you would just hear "mlll..zeit" or just a kleinlaut "m..zeit". All in all I thought it sounded pretty Betriebs-institutionalised and droney so I decided against copying it!

or someone else thinking : i hope he chokes on it ---

...off to find some Amphibious Landing Craft shaped chips for lunch...

Mahlzeit

Oh yes - we used to have this at school (yonks ago).
But there was one old teacher who instead of reciting some stuff himself with a twinkle in his eye ordered one for the pupils "say Grace xxxx" and xxxx stood up & scarcely got 10 words of latin out before being drowned in a derisory cheer.

Not of this improved the food. About 35 years later I was invited back & taken to lunch which was totally different to what was served in my day.

According to the wonderful wikipedia, it is short for 'gesegnete Mahlzeit' which means Blessed Be What We Eat.

In Bayrish you say 'an Guadn'

And Guten Appetit is 'Formel für ein gutes gemeinsames Essen, auf dessen Bekömmlichkeit und Wohlschmecken'

Aha, now I get it...sorta

Run Lola Run had that great Mahlzeit scene in it, and in all three versions all the Germans packed up in the theatre.

Perhaps if much of these sweet nothings were intercessory, like a prayer or such, then they would have meaning.
Having said that, I think the whole deal is not that the customs are good or not or whatever, it is just that if you really deconstruct what people are literally saying, the whole deal waxes very absurd. Turning the coin over, saying "hello" and "goodbye" could be replaced by "I'm here now" and "I'm leaving", but then too much logic, in that case, would also be absurd.

Finally some sane answer to all the questions. It all comes back to customs and habits and they change and evolve through time until you don't know why you are doing or saying it or where it comes from.

Let's forget about the question and just list up some examples we can all enjoy

USA
greating: "How you doin'?"
answer: "How you doin'?"
And all of it's variations like "Howdy"
Seems the answer to that initial question is of no interest to neither of them...

Comparison to France
In France they would only say 'allo on the phone, and not when you meet.

Comparison to Spain (some parts)
When you sneeze they say "Jesus!" (now try this [He-suze])

Southern Germany and Austria
greeting: "Grüss Gott" (greet God?)
either when you come or leave. Seems like a warning of that you should always keep him in mind.

anyone? next!

Don't know any of you guys but been here 20 years and Mahlzeit has always annoyed me. Especially in situations like biting around a dripping Macdonalds burger sitting on a park bench and every stranger who walks past feels compelled to wish me "Mahlzeit", forcing me to "Danke" back with a full mouth and lift my dripping chin into full view. I don't find that polite, I find it bloody IMPOLITE to disturb my enjoyment and bring me into an embarassing situation!
In Australia we just say "two, four, six, eight - dig in, don't wait"... but maybe that's one of the uncivilised parts of the english-speaking world...