Hello everyone,
and welcome back to your favorite German learning Wodcasts. Wodcasts are podcasts, but in written form and it’s going to be the next hot thing.
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So yeah, welcome to the show, and today, we’ll take a virtual trip to Quizzington, because today, it’s time for another episode of:
German Expressions Quiz
And today’s lot has an especially high daily life factor :).
As usual, we’ll do 7 expressions, which is a good number for one session.
I’ll give you the German expression along with a literal translation and an example and then, I’ll give you a few possible meanings and you have to try and pick the right one.
And then, along with the answer, I’ll give you some information about the logic or origin of the expression and possible things you need to know when using it.
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Would einen Hals kriegen be the same as „getting pissed off“, or is the latter more coarse (linguistically )?
Hmmm, tough one as I’m not sure about how “intense” getting pissed off sounds to an English native speaker.
I think “That pisses me off” feels like a good fit for “Da krieg ich einen Hals.” but the lack of vulgarity might affect perceived intensity.
“Wenn mir eine Sache wirklich beim Abnehmen hilft, dann ein paar Binsenweisheiten.”
I don’t really understand this sentence. What does “dann” mean in this context?
Doesn’t mean much. It’s quite similar to an “if-then” that’s used for emphasis:
– If anything could go wrong, then it’s the weather.
Not sure if this is the best example, but I feel like the phrasing does exist in English.
This was a fun and helpful quiz. I’ll plan to take it again in a few days, as you suggest.
Some typos:
In the second answer for “Binsenweisheiten”
“inisght” –> “insight”
In the explanation for “runter wie Öl”
“Scandinavian word ‘ol'” –> “Swedish word ‘öl'” OR
–>”Scandinavian word ‘öl’ or ‘øl'”
The Scandinavian word “ol” would be the Danish word that means “80 things” or the Danish/Norwegian “OL”, which means “Olympic Games”. :-)
Hello, I am new here and I wanna thank you and all the members for having me. Can’t wait to learn from this website ! :D
Herzlich Willkommen, Larissa!
You’ve come to the right place:-)
Hey Emanuel , this is a great website for learning German ! Thanks to you and all the other members for having me here so I can learn German in the best way !!
German though uses SOOOO much English in casual communication, probably without thinking about it, much as English too will often use French in a slangy manner, even if the speakers basically don’t know a word of French:-)
My teen cousins Mandy and Bristol, both fellow Berliners, respectively sixteen and seventeen, invited me to a friend’s birthday party. When the birthday girl finally arrived, all dolled up in a funky outfit, Mandy calls out,
“B-a-a-h, dressed to kill!” She might not have known what it meant (her English
still isn’t very fluent), but she hit the situation dead on.
Excellent! Thanks!! Another good colloquial translation for “lala” might be “naff”. It’s another negative comment, suggesting that something is uncool, worthless or just not very good. Am I right?
I’ve never heard “naff”, so I can’t tell if it’s similar, but the description matches. Just to be sure… the phrase is “so lala”. The “so” must be there.
Cool, I didn’t know almost any of them. But can you explain the example sentence about Binsenweisheiten? The second part of it doesn’t make sense to me: “if there’s anything that helps me lose weight, then a few platitudes”?
It’s an ironic statement.
The (imagined) speaker before it said some platitudes about weight loss and the person now basically says “Thanks, these help a lot … NOT.”
Does that help?
I also tripped over the syntax in the example sentence. I understand your reply to Amir’s question, but am still not clear on the syntax. It’s as though a few logic words leading to the dann part are maybe assumed rather than (boringly) said?
Hmmm, let me maybe try to give an English example… a mom talking to her son about him not finding a job:
The German version would be:
Could you tell me what it is about the syntax that you find confusing? I’ll try to help then, but I can’t really put my finger on what might be the issue.
Maybe it’s because there isn’t a verb in the second half. Or the verb is implied, so you just have “dann.”
And in English, I don’t think you can leave it out.
In the example with playing Minecraft, would you ever say the part in parentheses out loud (“dann ist das”)? Or just “dann”?
You can say it, it’s just not necessary, so it’s usually skipped.
“Binsenwahrheit” might also be translated as “truism”, although “platitude” works just as well, I suppose.
I was wondering which of the two is more common overall. To me, Binsenweisheit sounds way more familiar, but that’s just me. Which would you use in daily life?
I’d probably use both, although the latter does sound slightly more up to date. On the other hand, when I lived in the States, “platitude” and “truism” were interchangeable.
6/7 without using any hints: “Binsenweisheiten” got me the first time through. I think I’ve only seen one of the expressions in the wild: I’m pretty sure that I’ve heard you use “so lala” somewhere, perhaps within an Easy German podcast episode. The episode about “KI” in which ChatGPT stubbornly refused to actually *misbehave* rings a bell, but I’m not a member at the moment, so I can’t check the transcripts.
There are a fair number of minor slips within the quiz:
==================
It’s baed => It’s based
It means that you step being shy.=> It means that you *stop* being shy.
It means to get a cold or sour throat.=> It means to get a cold or *sore* throat.
Surpisingly cool. => Surp*r*isingly cool.
It’s something obvious por common knowledge passed on as an inisght. => It’s something obvious **or common knowledge passed on as an in*si*ght.
You want to loose weight? => You want to *lose* weight? (A real gamer’s mistake here… Definitely *not* recommended to let this one get loose too often!)
“KI” in quotes. Love it. It’s funny cause it’s true!
I recently heard someone in a Youtube video call OpenAI a “linear algebra company that wants to be a trillion dollar company”. That made me laugh.
That said, I have an “AI” tool in the pipeline and I have to say… I wanted to punch my computer while interacting with ChatGPT.
“… however, you used “werden”, but this is the past participle of “werden”. The correct form would be the present participle. So the sentence should be “[…] geworden.”
Arrrgh!!
Hey, Nvidia is a 3 trillion US dollar company on the back of this “linear algebra industry”, so es gibt noch viel Kohle darin. And then the old mathematician in me wants to scream out “it’s not fucking *linear* any longer whenever you’ve got some sort of ReLU unit involved”. ((Sowieso…))
I occasionally dip into the chatbot world for a little practice, and more often than not get great results, but as for the idea of programmatically deploying something (and guarding against the sort of stupidities that I know it’ll eventually emit…) in this fast-churning space… well, “yeah-nah”, as we say (all too often) down here.
“Nvidia is a 3 trillion US dollar company”
For now.
Maybe when Mr. T gets elected, they can stay up there for a while longer, but the valuation is crazy.
Is there a term for the type of algebra (if it even is algebra still) that we deal with once ReLU is involved? I’m asking, so I can move a little further toward the right in the vast Dunning-Kruger-Valley. Beautiful valley. I have many friends there. Good friends. Very smart people. Incredibly smart people.
The best valley. The best people. They’ll all want to work for you (yeah, *for* and not *with*: let’s get that straight up front…). Silicone people, silicon valley, silliness writ oh-so-large.
[[Why TF am I such a doomer these days? Gee, let me consider the state of the game, and I’ll get back to you…]]
After careful consideration I can only offer up an unadorned “Algebra” as an all-encompassing term, which isn’t amusing to anyone. Having spent way too many years drowning in algebras generated by various projections, periodic multipliers, twisted translations, and a couple of associated almost-commuting unitary operators (that would be C^*-algebras and von Neumann algebras, if anyone’s following along at home) it’s tempting to try and condense things into a particular, well-encapsulated object, but that sort of neat classification feels like a distant dream these days. Stick with “linear algebra”: barely anyone will bat an eyelid :-)
On matters T-ish: I think I might even prefer the righteous Mr T to the self-righteous POS that is hovering around the US court system at the moment. Man, what a long, drawn-out shitshow we’ve both had and are in for…
Hallo,
Great Wodcast :)))
Only one typo :)
“are a really weird because depending on the example…” (are really weird because, depending on the example…)
I did the quiz without using the hints, just the audio, and failed the first two… I interpreted the first one as exactly it’s opposite, for some reason… after redoing the quiz with the hint, I would have got it right. And the thing is, I actually know the Swedish word for beer, but would never think of it playing a part here ;)
The only expression I already knew is “so lala”.
Does durchgespielt have a nuance of “outgrowing something”? As in “been there, done that, bought the T-shirt” and am now sick of it? Or is it more neutral?
Bis bald!
Yeah, that notion of “have done it, time for something new” is definitely there, but probably not as strong. “durchgespielt” can also be used in contexts where the focus is on someone being really good at something, because they have “durchgespielt” this. Like, socializing at parties for instance.
The “Öl” in that other saying… never ever would I have thought this would come from “beer” :). It made just too much sense to me with actual oil in mind.
Of course these are ancillary meanings, apart from the original meaning literally of “to play through”, as at an audition or the like.
“Sie hat die Mondschein Sonate vor der Jury durchgespielt.”
What a nice guy Emanuel is. Thank u for all the sponsors who made subscribing possible for me.
I wanted to thank people who sponsored my account and let me learn German at this beautiful platform. I really appreciate your kindness! I’m happy to have this opportunity! :)
These are really fun, interesting, worth knowing in their own right, and expand my vocabulary with some of the component words. Very much appreciated.
“Auf Zack” has a somewhat related counterpart in English: “on point.” From your example the two aren’t identical, but somewhat similar. His answer was on point means that he actually answered the question and implies the answer was a good answer. Said with surprise when reading political media and with appreciation when trying to figure out something in class.
So ist der Ausdruck “jmdn.auf Zack halten” im Sinne von “Der Chef
haelt sein Personal auf Zack.” Das Aequivalent auf Englisch “The boss keeps his staff on their toes.”
“Zackig” bedeutet auch “korrekt”, “stramm”, z.B. “jmdm. einen zackigen Gruss geben = to give someone a crisp greeting/hello
Just wanted to thank Emanuel and to the kind people who sponsored for me! I appreciate you all so much :)
Good quiz, enlightening and entertaining. Missed one, had heard something close to one before, and guessed the others with help from your audio and a couple of the hints.
Glad you enjoyed it!!
So if someone asks how my day was or how I am doing is it possible to reply “So lala” as in ..meh it was so-so, nothing special.
It’s more about hit and miss, so some parts were okay, others not so much. It’s not really about just boring. “meh” fits, and “so so” does to, but “nothing special” is a bit too bland, I think.
Cool quiz. The only one i know for sure from daily life is “so lala”. i guessed some of the others.