“Eating 101”
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Question… I lived in Germany a while ago. Since then, they have changed some gramma rules, i.e. “ß”. Some words still use it and some have changed to “ss”. What was the reason and why do some words maintain the “ß? Thanks.
They changed the rules twice while I was in school, which I why I stopped caring/learning them. But as far as I know, the “ß” is retained when the vowel is long.
– daß (old version)
– dass (new version, because the “a” is short)
– Straße (old and new, because the “a” is long)
Does that help?
ok
Ich lese weiter und weiter…..Du bist der Hammer, lieber Emanuel…..Ich habe das Gefühl, dass ich dem echten Deutsch näherkomme:)
Du schreibst ECHT GUT!
as for a “sip of your drink”, where I came from in New England, I’ve always said “a swig” instead of a sip. “To sip” is to take just enough to ” wet your whistle” , where as a swig is a mouthful. Just sayin’
“swig of your drink”…. sounds sooo groovy.
He’s taking a swig with swag.
kennen wir uns ‘do we know each other’ reads like ‘know we us?’ Can you explain this please as I have never noticed it before. Is it a sort of of idiom?. Thanks and happy Christmas.
It’s a normal German question, nothing special there.
Verb first, then subject and then the rest, in this case a reflexive pronoun.
– Know we us – Know we each other – do we know each other
Danke.
Happy Christmas all over
For potatoes, you could say “grab a bite of potato”. I would use that for the act of stabbing it with the fork. Or spaghetti, you can twirl it onto the fork and shove it in your mouth.
I did some googling and found a LOT of discussions about the right way to eat spaghetti. Including this gem of prefix verbs:
I don’t know what grammatical hat “mit” is wearing there, but it would probably translate as “too.” “If you twirl the noodles right, you can get the sauce and meat in there too.”
Hahahahaha, someone REALLY made it sound like a technical user manual.
Yeah, the “mit” is just another form of “auch” in this case. If the verb were just by itself, it would latch up like a prefix, but for now, miteindrehen is not a thing, so it just sits there separately. I think it’s an adverb here. Definitely not a preposition.
FYI… Italians do NOT twirl pasta with a spoon. They find it poor manners. They can always detect a tourist because they use a spoon with their pasta. LOL-
Scusi :)!
You can also say “I (just) swallowed wrong.”
That’s one of those times when a literal translation works (ver-schlucken > wrong-swallow > swallow wrong).
Would you use ersticken for the serious choking?
What type of serious choking do you mean? Choking someone, choking to death on something?
I can’t think of a specific verb for preparing a bite full of something. A phrases like “he took a fork full/spoonful” of food (or potato/stew/porridge…whatever the food is) has to be used.
Would you like a bite of my dessert?
Alternative for “Would you like to taste my dessert?
Re above, the colloquial saying, at least in American English is “it went down the wrong way”
English English too.
Agreed. I’ve also often heard, “it went down the wrong pipe.” (American English)
Wie kann man Biss besprechen ohne auch bisschen zu erwähnen?!
Jahrelanges Training und viel Meditation.
Biss dan ;)
“Do you have a cough?”
“No, something / a bit went down the wrong way”
to take a sip of – a small quantity
to sip at – to take an occasional sip from time to time
“to bite into the apple” is OK, it suggests biting with enthusiasm or taking a large bite
Ah, that kind of fits the tone of the German version then.
True. Also it could be used for literary affect to add drama…Snow White “bites into” the apple is more powerful, has more dread suspense (“no, no, stop!” you want to scream) than simply she “bites” the apple, which is just a pure observation or statement of fact.
Ich habe die beziehungen zwischen sip, sup, supper sehr interesant gefunden! Habe ich dann die Etymologien gesucht und sah dass diese woerter mit Deutschen saufen auch verwandten sind und schliesslich mit eine grosse Menge indogermanishen woerter wie Lateinische sugere (saugen/suck) –Ein uninteresanter ausserirdischen Beobachter konnte annehmen dass essen und trinken sehr wichtiger Aktivitaeten bei uns sind. (Bitte mein Deutsch korrigieren!)
So many chokes in Eng: Artichokes, car chokes, practical chokes, usw..
And swallows – African or European? Idk.. ahhhhhrrrggggghhh.
Artichokes XD
Eating a single mouthful: we would probably use “take” or “eat” or “swallow” etc.
“Not once!”. He ate a French fry moodily. “I don’t know why I bother.”
“Yes please.” She munched another grape. “But I’d better call home first.”
And we would avoid anatomy.
“Sorry! It went down the wrong way.” he said, clearing up the mess.
“I bite into the apple” sounds technical, or more like someone is translating a little too literally from german or latin.
“I bite of the apple” or “I eat of the apple” sounds biblical.
Most people, at least in the USA, would likely say “I’m biting the apple” or (less likely) “I bite the apple”.
Yes, I agree. No one would use “bite” in that sentence–it does sound like a too-literal translation. We wouldn’t say “I bite the apple”.
We might say “I will bite into the apple” or “I’m going to bite into that apple if you leave it” or “I’m biting into the apple”, but then really, you wouldn’t be able to say that because your mouth would be full of the apple.
Camille
Hallo,
Great article, although I’d also like to know how you stuff your face with something in German :)
Bis morgen!
I think you could say
– sich vollstopfen (mit etw.)
– sich den Bauch vollschlagen/hauen
– sich vollfressen (mit etw.)
– sich etw. reinschaufeln
I totally forgot to answer this one, thanks for this! And wow, great collection! All of them are idiomatic!!
Seriously, Emanuel (how do you say this in German–like, looking over my half-glasses at you and saying, “seriously, dude, how could you have made such an error?”
I can see “Wir nehmen je einen Schluck von deinem Bier. Aber weil wir 100 Leute sind, geht das Bier aus, bevor der letzte von uns es schlucken kann.”