Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day. And this time it’s time for another so called Wundertüten-Special. A real Wundertüte is bag full of wonders…. well, actually more a bag full of stupid little stuff like gum and stickers. But kids love it and I think you might like the word-Wundertüte too. What is it exactly? It’s bag full of cool surprise words. You know.. these colloquial terms that you won’t get in the official study material. Their meanings are often quite specific but often they are really the only way to express a certain idea so people use them every day. Maybe every other day. Okay, at least once a week. Well, definitely more than they use Birne which is part of many a beginners text books… unless… if they’re really big fans of pears they actually mig… okay, I’ll stop that now. The words in the last Wundertüten-special were definitely pretty cool so I’d say let’s open this one and find out. Sounds good? Awesome.
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Just to add some Portuguese lore here
We have the exact same expression for “Halt den Schnabel”
Being “Fecha o bico” (Doesn’t sound all that offensive, like, it is, but not all that)
Translating literally as Close the beak
There is an old English word to troddle. So that makes it easier for me to remember. “The fox troddled past the chicken coop.”
A Jewish toy and game ie a “dreidel_) a popular game and gift for HANUKAH. SEE WIKIPEDIA
Hier ist ein Hipster, der noch Deutsch lernt!
Falls du mal gedacht hast, dass ich schon aufgegeben habe…
Die Wundertütenspecials gefallen mir sehr. Ich freue mich auf den Nächsten!
Hahaha… schön, dass doch noch ein Hipster mitliest :D
Das Wort “Schnäppchen” gefällt mir irgendwie nicht. Klingt cheesy. Na, Geschmacks-/Gewohnheitssache.
Echt? Nee, cheesy klingt das für mich gar nicht. Aber ja, ist definitiv Geschmackssache.
I think it’s flea market. What is the song?
Yeah, I already made a flea treatment :). What about the video though, can you not see it? Then here’s a link
https://vimeo.com/25617940
Wieso schnappt das Krokodile nach der Gazelle? Kann es sie einfach schnappen? (ohne ‘nach’, also mit dem Akkusativ)
Toller Post!
Kann es auch. Dann hat es mit Erfolg nach der Gazelle geschnappt :).
– nach etwas schnappen … the attempt (usually made with the mouth)
– etwas schnappen… successfully catch it
one of the most common English phrasal verbs for “purchase,” when used in the context of a bargain or good deal, is “to snap up.”
“We went to the used-clothing store, and we snapped up some great bargains!”
The verb suggests prices that are so low that you must act immediately or lose the opportunity of buying them:
“Big sale tomorrow at Megastore–get there early, before the bargains are all snapped up!”
So “schnäppchen” makes lots of sense to an English speaker–“things that you will snap up”.
I’ll add “swirl” to that first list. Odd that all three rhyme…
So now you made me check up all the words on Etymonline.com and turns out they’re actually not related… that was a surprise. “Whirl” apparently comes from the same root as the German “werfen” (to throw) and is at it’s heart about “turning”. “Twirl” comes is related to “twist” which is related to “two” and “twine” so it’s about intertwining two things. And for “swirl” they say that it’s of unknown origin (though I find that to be unlikely).
While looking this up, another German word came to mind: der Quirl
Used to “twirl” food. Oh and when made of metal with a kind of spokes layout it’s called a “Schneebesen” – a snow broom. Because you can make snow from the white part of the egg :)
Thank you for following up. Very interesting post, by the way! :)
They have different origins, but they most probably influenced each other’s evolution, so in the end it’s not that surprising :)
PS: swirl (n.) Look up swirl at Dictionary.com
early 15c., “whirlpool, eddy,” originally Scottish, of uncertain origin, perhaps related to dialectal Norwegian svirla or Dutch zwirrelen “to whirl.” The meaning “whirling movement” is from 1818.
Trödeln with respect to the image of falling leaves you describe is one of those really beautiful German words that I don’t think is really translatable to English in a single word. The closest I can come is “twirl” or even “whirl”. Regarding the meaning describing the activity at a flea market, “dawdle” doesn’t really do it either — because in English, “dawdle” is sort of a negative thing. “The president is dawdling on his decision on how to confront the situation in the Middle East.” That implies he should be doing something else, whereas at the flea market, it is a desirable way to behave in that environment. Then again, I could be full of it :)
Just to make sure… the “falling down while twirling” is “trudeln”, not “trödeln”. And “trödeln” in sense of “being slow on purpose” is negative in German as well. The image of walking slowly across a flea market is just something I made up to connect the too but vibe-wise they don’t fit. I guess, that was a bit confusing on my part.
As for “whirl” and “twirl”… there’s “zwirbeln” and “wirbeln” in German. The latter is what a gust of wind does to dry leaves (yes, I do love leaf-imagery :)… a hurricane is also called “Wirbelsturm” in German. Because it whirls :). “Zwirbeln” is what you do when you twirl together to two or more threads. “Sich den Bart zwirbeln” means to take a bunch of hair and twirl them together.
OH and there’s the word “der Zwirn” which is a specific kind of thread (sewing context) that is very thin and very stable. Not directly related to the post but I thought I’d mention it for vocab’s sake :)
Korrektur: “flee” heißt “fliehen” – Englischsprachler trödeln auf “flea markets”.
Oh, danke :)
Not sure how best to explain this in German, but regarding “beak” vs. “bill”: pretty much only ducks/geese and platypuses (Schnabeltiere) have bills – it’s basically a beak that’s flatter and more or less rounded. It’s also the word for the front part of a baseball cap. It’s also OK to call a duck’s “nouth” a “beak.” Any other bird has a “beak,” which describes something sharply pointed.
As for “pecker”… um, don’t use that. And don’t look for it on Google without SafeSearch on…
Hahaha. Yeah, best avoid “pecker.” That a common word used by boys aged about 10-13 — and really, no one else anymore :)
And of course the Schuhschnabel :)
One of my favorite zoo animals when I was a kid.
Jetzt nicht mehr? Ein prächtiger Vogel.
Sheiß die Want an! :O This is even better than “hippopotamus” being a “river horse”… A “shoe beak”… How cruel and how sweet at the same time… (Q.Q) Thanks for the awesome vocab, I loved “etwas schnabulieren”, we have that in Ukrainian/Russian too! (“чего-то поклевать”).
P.S. Suggestion: could you make a post about things exploding in German? I have stumbled upon just so many expressions already: “Mir platzt gleich der Kragen/der Sack/der Arsch/derKopf”, “Ich platze gleich” (as in “I’m so full”), “Ich platze vor Wut” and I am sure more of those which I don’t know about. Is it always about people or do you have some with stuff? Just curious :)
Hmmm… I think you just gave me an idea for a post. Not exactly what you suggested but similar :). Danke. Oh, just to make sure… the bird is called shoebill in English… AS A COMPOUND… how crazy is that :D.
Here are a few other German animal names you might like:
– Löffeltier
– Ameisenbär
– Rotkehlchen (such a cute name)
– Zaunkönig (he OWNING them fences :D
Don’t know if you got the comment of Berlingrabers so I’ll just say it again… hippopotamus is “river horse” in Greek :)
Just thought of some more:
– Haubentaucher
– Spitzmaus
– Stinktier
– Gürteltier
– Zilpzalp
Just for the record (@ Maria), “hippopotamus” means “river horse” too – just in Greek. :)
Wow… Greek can make anything sound scholar-y, it seems.
It’s funny how much that’s the case in English, that Latin and Greek terms are really part of the everyday vocabulary. It’s especially true for medical stuff (experiencing my wife’s pregnancy here has made me learn more gynecological German than I ever thought I’d need to…), but then there’s “hippopotamus” and “rhinoceros” (again, exactly the same literal meaning as “Nashorn”) and such.
Sorry to be always drawn in to discussion/dispute about English usage, but…. There are birds called “hornbills”, “thornbills”, and “shoebills”, none of which have flat bills/beaks. There’s a cockatoo called the “long-billed corella” and even a “sword-billed hummingbird”! Pigeons “bill and coo” in courtship when they do the bird equivalent of kissing, with body parts that are neither flat nor noticeably rounded. One suggestion is that in common usage birds of prey have beaks, other birds have bills, although there is a bird of prey in the Americas known as the “hook-billed kite.” The platypus is referred to as the “duck-billed platypus”, not the “billed platypus”, which suggests that a duck’s bill is different from (at least some) others. It seems to me that the words “beak” and “bill” for bird mouth parts are generally interchangeable. I’d be interested to know if that has always been so. Maybe there are regional variations as to which is more commonly used.
As for projecting front parts of caps (baseball or any other variety) – in the English I know they are peaks.
That’s funny, I call that part of a cap or hat the “visor.” A quick search on Wikipedia of “baseball cap” includes, “[t]he peak, also known in certain areas as the ‘bill’ or ‘brim’, was designed to protect a player’s eyes from the sun.” :-)
Your basic point is definitely right – there’s not any real, clearly defined difference between the meanings of “beak” and “bill.” But at the same time, I think the counterexamples you list are either the sorts of things only known to bird experts/aficionados or not quite really counterexamples after all. For example, I note that the Wikipedia article on the thornbill states that the bird has a “thin long beak” – so “bill” in the name doesn’t necessarily mean anyone (at least any layperson) would actually describe the bird as having a bill.
I think in everyday, lay usage, my rule of thumb is still right. When in doubt, call it a “beak”; most of us wouldn’t ascribe a “bill” to non-waterfowl. (And as always, that might just be a particularly American perspective – even a regionally conditioned one, whichever region my English actually reflects…)
As for the history, Etymonline.com says “bill” is Old English/Germanic, while “beak” is 13th century via French bec, so evidently it’s just one of those historical redundancies in our language (obviously supporting your point).
Oh, also, regarding baseball caps – Alex, “visor” sounds more like the “proper” or technical term for it to me than what I’d default to calling it. I wonder where the “bill/brim/visor/peak” boundaries lie…
Just for trivia… in German this part of the cap is called “Schirm” because it schi… wait, I think I just got an idea for a WotD :)
Berlingrabers, my platypus example is claerly nonsense. The bird names given, however, are all common names. Names used by ordinary people who take enough interest to want to distinguish one variety of bird from another. Experts use scientific nomenclature.
I might venture that generally animals other than birds (e.g. squid & turtles) have beaks not bills, but the platypus is a glaring counter-example to that notion. The only rule is that if there are any rules they have exceptions. ….clearly demonstrated on (American) website budgerigar.com – “Bill and Legs – A budgie’s legs are usually bluish-gray in color, and it has an olive-gray bill,” and a little further on the same page “Beak Grinding – While asleep, budgerigars often nibble or grind their beaks.” Take your pick!
“Schirm” seems much more sensible for that part of a cap. It sounds as though it would apply to the projecting part of any hat, whether front, back or all around…and even to the sort that has no top, which is one of the things I’d call a “visor” in English.
I’m not sure anybody writing for a website called “Budgerigar.com” counts as a layperson. :)
All’s I’m sayin’ is that even when I know the name of a bird has “bill” in it, I would strongly tend to call its actual mouth/nose part a “beak” unless it looks kind of ducky (probably the shoebill is the only one of the examples you list where I’d go back and forth on what to call it; I’d certainly say the spoonbill has a “bill” as well). And I’d be pretty surprised if that didn’t turn out to be the case for most people with a not-above-average familiarity with ornithological terminology. It’s a thoroughly unscientific and possibly embarrassingly uninformed opinion, but hey, that’s what the internet is for. :D
Oh, and agreed on that meaning of “visor” as well, though I wouldn’t be confused by saying that a hat has a visor. To me, “brim” would be the most broadly applicable label for the sun-shade part of a hat.
I’m not quite ready to surrender on “visor” just yet. Maybe, as alluded to above, it is a more “technical” term. I spent over 20 years in the Army, where we’re known to develop and use an annoying unique vernacular of our own (which might fall under “technical speech or usage). But that part of a cap was always called the “visor,” and not the “brim/peak/bill.” When a captain is promoted to major, his primary uniform change is that his dress cap now has embroidered “scrambled eggs” on the visor. It is a common way of congratulating someone on his/her new promotion to that grade. “Those scrambled eggs look really good on your visor.” With the Army’s near “anal” fixation on uniformity, the way a soldier tries to “form” the visor on his fatigue cap (baseball-style cap) is another issue that’s commonly brought up. And the correction is to tell the soldier to “reshape that visor, the curl is too exaggerated!” I do know that “visor” is also a separate type of hat all on its own, the type once pretty much only female tennis players used to use, but that is something different. In my standard, regular English usage, I’d call the part of a hat discussed here variously as the bill, brim, peak, etc., the “visor” as my very first choice to describe that part, even colloquially.
Just remembered this scene from the wire :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3hD9ZbguIg
Too funny! :)
Wow. As seen/heard on TV!
All this English usage discussion reminds me of the observation that “we really have everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language,” from that master of it, Oscar Wilde.
@Ruth. Well said and alas, very true.
Off topic. That clip from “The Wire” is very funny. I read where most of the performers in that HBO series were local actors and even non-actors who also happened to actually be from Baltimore. But I live about 40 miles from Baltimore (in the DC area), and I can tell you the cop in this scene does not speak with that quintessential Baltimore accent. He’s definitely from the East Coast, I’m guessing somewhere between Southern New Jersey and NY City/Long Island. Given the recent upheavals between the police and the residents of West Baltimore, that scene is hilarious, but at the same time, a little chilling.