“Korb your enthusiasm”
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Unglaublich wie viele Wörter wir gemeinsam haben. Auf Schwedisch heißt es „få korgen“ = „den Korb kriegen“ (also bestimmte Form), ist aber heutzutage nicht so gewöhnlich.
juttakul – tack så mycket!
Yeay, finally finally some Scandinavian language speakers in the comments :D
Tack själv! :)
Ist korgen sowas wie “Korb”? Und was ist “få” … ist das von “finden”?
Die Artikeln in den skandinavischen Sprachen (also Isländisch habe ich rausgelassen; die anderen sind fast gleich) sind lustig. Auf Schwedisch:
korg: Korb
en korg: ein Korb
en vit korg: ein weißer Korb
korgen: der Korb
den korgen: der Korb da
den vita korgen: der weiße Korb
Also gibt es den bestimmten Artikel sowie als ein Suffix zu dem Wort (-en/et) wie als ein selbständliches Wort vor dem Nomen (den/det). Die beiden entsprechen der/das/die.
få = kriegen/bekommen
fånga = fangen
Ich glaube, sie haben dieselbe Wurzel, aber ich bin nicht sicher.
This reminds me of the scene in “The Goonies” with the water well and the rejection bucket.
Re: Korbball aka Netball…
Of all the sports that involve scoring some kind of goal, netball is the only one I know of where the closer you get to scoring the slower and less interesting the game gets.
There are so many rules about where you are allowed to stand and what contact you can make with other players… You basically have to politely wait while your opponent takes a shot at scoring a goal. You aren’t allowed to run in and tackle them, or bitch-slap the ball out of their hands, or anything interesting at all. It’s just… Stretch your arm up and wait, and hope their own incompetence prevents them from scoring.
It’s depressing and frustrating to watch, and it’s unfeminist imo.
Women are perfectly capable of running fast, hitting hard, throwing accurately, etc. There is no reason to create a sport that treats women like porcelain dolls.
And let’s be honest… Whilst netball is a female dominated sport in the UK, it’s only ended up that way because men already know it sucks and they don’t want to play it. Its not exactly a shining example of female empowerment.
Great article. When I click on the sound arrow, the sound is faultless but always misses the first few words of the text. 100% reproducible, always starts at the same point.
Maybe because I am playing the sound from Windows 11 (PC) via Bluetooth to Phonak hearing aids? But doesn’t occur with other apps.
Pretty sure that’s got to do with the heading aids.
The clips are only downloaded once you press play. So you press play, then it loads and then it plays. But before that, it’s silence and so maybe the whole system realizes too late that there’s actually sound. I feel like they might have some sort of auto mute if there’s just noise.
Does it happen if you play the same clip twice in a row??
If yes, then my theory is wrong, because the clip gets loaded the first time but then it’s already there.
I’ve read somewhere that Kürbis and Korb are possibly connected through a Latin common ancestor. Don’t quote me on that though.
The German source that I mainly use (DWDS.de) says that Kürbis comes from Latin cucurbita and they don’t mention a connection to Korb. But that’s not a definite no.
Ich habe erfahren, dass “Korb geben” jetzt als einfach “korben” ausgedrückt werden darf, also “Ich wurde gekorbt” oder “sie hat ihn gekorbt.”
Never heard that, but I’m not really in the dating game. I’d totally understand it if someone used it in context.
I have an old English-German dictionary from 1933 which suggests that you can also say “Hahn in Korbe sein” which the dictionary translates as “to be cock of the walk” (in more modern language perhaps to be dominant in a group of people?). I guess this could mean that a rooster in with a gang of chickens in a basket would be the number one guy, or at least that’s how I think of it. Any thoughts on this? Is this expression still used or not?
“Hahn im Korb sein” is still used and it means that someone is the only guy in a setting where all the other people are women.
Think of a small team for instance that’s all female except one guy. He would then be called “Hahn im Korb.”
Hope that helps.
Dein Blockflötenspiel! XD
<3
It’s not mine, I just downloaded the clip somewhere :)
My own Blockflötenspiel is absolutely flawless, of course.
oh that was just brillant!!!! :) especially the flute/whistle at the end! hahahhahah :D
Einfach toll Emanuel! Die Redewendung kannte ich nicht und die Geschichte mit der Etymologie hat mir viel Spaß gemacht. Weiter so!!!
Regarding the pronunciation training feature: in my environment, when your text is quoted sentences, only part of the first sentence is reported in the green (hopefully) boxes. The results for the rest are not reported. If I remove the quotes in the pronunciation box, it then reports my success (or failure) for each word again. This has been an annoyance, and I am happy to have found a work-around.
Hey, that’s actually a great bug report. I can fix that easily I think, I just need to remove the quotes before sending it of to the AI.
I’ll do that once I’m done with the calendar. Thanks for letting me know and if you have other ideas to improve it, I’m all ears.
Ein Korb geben reminds me of the old (1840-1968) saying in America to “give someone the mitten” when you reject them. Oddly enough, a mitten is also a woven item! (Interesting, but probably not relevant…)
Oxford English Thesaurus quotes it thus:
1844 J. C. Neal Peter Ploddy & Other Oddities “Young gentlemen that have got the mitten… always sigh.”
I doubt very much that women lowered baskets with weakly made bottoms and risked killing their suitors. Naaahhh… didn’t happen. I bet it is short for some longer phrase or word. Like… Abfallkorb? (wastebasket). Sadly, Abfallkorb does not appear to have been in use until the mid 1900’s, so we need something from much earlier. But you get the gist of what I’m looking for…
Interestingly, the old saying “Hahn in Korb” is “the only man in the company of several women.” Maybe one of them took him out of the basket and decided to put him back in?
I found lots of very old references in German to “being in the basket” as related to being allied with the devil (1500’s). (Maybe she’s giving him the devil?) So this might be VERY old.
Fun, huh? Thanks for the post. Always wonderful.
Yeah, I also find that basket story hard to believe.
But if it were a shorthand for something, I would think that they’d have some evidence for that somewhere.
But then again, it’s hard to say how intensively these things have been researched. Maybe it was a topic of a PhD thesis at some point (colloquialism for dating and their history) , but maybe it was just a 30 minute quick search for a newspaper article.
Luckily, it’s not really important for us here that it’s 100% accurate. Whatever helps to remember it, is fair game (not saying I am making stuff up, but the learners have carte blanche)
In English we have ‘basket case’ meaning ‘a failure’, so ‘it’s (or he’s) a basket case’. So maybe ‘einen Korb kriegen’ was originally understood as something like being offered the trash can to put yourself in. Not that we make the connection in English, either – no-one knows or stops to think ‘why basket?’
I really enjoyed the idioms quiz, and look forward to more.
Oh, nice. I have heard basket case many times lately and I always assumed it was about something that belongs to a “group” of cases. So this is good to know :).
I don’t think the German idiom is related to trash cans though. There was no mention in this direction anywhere and if that were the case, it would surely be traced.
Sehr interessant, und vielen Dank! I had never heard the phrase einen Korb kriegen before now, but then again I know hardly any colloquial German — except when muttering «Ich habe einen Kabelsalat» when crawling under users’ desks at a previous IT job. Not even sure if that counts as colloquial.
The origin story sure sounds bizarre! Something else weird: American English has the expression “to score” (e.g., euphemistically, a basket/goal), often used in dating contexts. This seems almost the same literal meaning as einen Korb kriegen (“to get a basket”?), but has the opposite colloquial meaning.
Oh yeah, “Kabelsalat” is definitely colloquial and very useful if you work IT or anything with movie lighting or life audio.
And yes, to score is basically the opposite of getting a Korb.
Deutsche Welle in their “Das sagt man so” series had a lesson “Einen Korb bekommen”. That was back in 2016, but it may still be available.
It is still available!
https://www.dw.com/de/einen-korb-bekommen/l-18745518#:~:text=sch%C3%B6n%20und%20praktisch.-,Einen%20Korb%20voll%20mit%20Obst%20zu%20bekommen%2C%20ist%20zum%20Beispiel,%E2%80%9Esch%C3%B6n%E2%80%9C%20bewusst%20ironisch%20klingen.
Cool, thanks for digging that up!
This is great, got two dates lined up so I’ll get to share how bad they’ll go correctly!
Interessant find ich auch, dass man auf Französisch “se prendre un rateau” für dasselbe zu meinen. Eigentlich wie eine Harke kriegen, ich weiss aber nicht woher das kommt…
Auf jeden Fall, danke dir für alle deine Artikel. Die sind immer sehr angenehm und unterhaltsam zu lesen !
Actually, if you already made it to a date, “Korb” is not the best anymore. It’s what you’d get if you ask for a date and you get turned down. Or if you ask for being exclusive and you get turned down.
But for a date going “action-free”, that wouldn’t be called Korb.
Either way… good luck :)!
Hello,
This article seems to be completely typo-free!
I’ve read the expression “einen Korb kriegen” many, many times in books.
I actually make notes and lists of similar expressions as I find them in books, so I’m leaving here a suggestion: how about an article where you collect a few and pass them on?
I also have a question for you: event though I watch German TV every day and am always reading a German book, I feel like I’m not making any further progress (this could, of course, be subjective). What would you recommend in this situation?
Bis morgen!
Hmmm, tough question, because I don’t really know what your level is.
I think watching TV or listening to podcasts will do precious little to advance you in any way.
You have to put in actual work. Reading a book is good, but there too, you need to add more “work”. Either by writing out every single word you don’t know and study that vocabulary.
Or by writing a short summary about every page. A couple of sentences about what happened or what you read.
And read out loud to yourself.
You could also start journaling in German.
And then re-read it a few days later. You’ll be surprised at how many mistakes you find.
But yeah, it sounds like you’ve hit a plateau where you’re functional within your context and the body doesn’t ever strive for more than being functional, so if you “just” function (watching TV, passive reading), there’s not enough pressure for it to adept.
There are too typos!
“and if your flirt skill suck” (skills)
“check on the laundry basket” (in)
There will always be typos.
Haha, very true!!
“Even if I am a really attractive chad with a chiseled chin?”
Wouldn’t that be “chap” rather than “chad”
Whoops: “chad” does seem to be an American english term which is not used here in Australia to my knowledge.
It’s an internet subculture term for the personified “alpha male”.
Plays football, good with girls, good looking, good in bed, smart, but also a really good human being with all the right values.
There’s a cartoon version of him:
And there’s also a real life person that the internet calls “Giga Chad”.
A model from Russia, where for a long time people thought it’s a deep fake.
These two images are VERY famous.
Ich habe vergessen: Schönen Tag und danke!
Dir auch :)!
In English (American) we also have the expression “going to hell in a hand basket “, mostly used by grumpy old men(oops, I meant people) to describe the present state of the world .
Rather useful for all in these times of war, inflation, climate change and so forth.
Buiiiuiiuiii…. the sexist police is coming to cancel the comment.
Kidding, of course.
I have never heard this phrase ever, despite watching a lot of Youtube content from millennial doomers, so it really seems to be an old men… people thing.
About the world… my theory is that none of this is new and the fact that we perceive the world as especially chaotic or weird is simply because we have no clue about history. Like, not the broad strokes, but the day to day chatter.
Things were always weird, wild and crazy. People 100 years ago had the exact same feelings that we have now, even more so. “World is crazy, everything is so fast, I can’t keep up,…”
I found a thread on Twitter for example that was called “A brief history of Men not being manly anymore”
It listed newspaper articles with this theory, and you can find them in the 2000s, the 80s, the 70s, the 50s, the 40s, the 20s and even so far back as 1890, people would write about how men are becoming too feminine and women are becoming too strong.
I found that VERY revealing. Lot of what we experience and how we perceive the world is nothing special at all, and generations before us have felt the same way, just in a different world.
Just wanted to share my thoughts :)
Ja! Genau, was ich schon immer gedacht habe.
My German daughter just told me the same view yesterday! (I’m learning German because she’s lived near Frankfurt about 10 yrs!)
Camille
P.S. I used to hear “going to hell in a hand basket” quite often. It must be out of style now.
I love the origin story! That could easily be true. People also used to say “it’s raining cats and dogs”, which came from Medieval heavy rains washing animals from their perches in thatch roofs.
Wow, that’s hilarious :D!! All those cats falling down because it’s wet and slippery. Actually, it kind of makes sense. At least more than the alleged origin of Korb.
Hahahaha!
A wonderful phrase! Found the reference for it in the Oxford English Thesaurus:
Originally and chiefly North American. to go to hell in a handbasket (also handcart, etc.) : to deteriorate, esp. rapidly. Also to send to hell in a handbasket and other variants.
1865 I. W. Ayer Great North-Western Conspiracy “Thousands of our best men were prisoners in Camp Douglas, and if once at liberty would ‘send abolitionists to hell in a hand basket’.”
So… the earliest use of the phrase is associated with the South/North conflict of the Civil war. :)