Bad Mood in German – Let’s collect Vocabulary

Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German word of the Day. Spring is coming. The sun is warm. Flowers are blooming, birds are singing, new couples are tongue wrestling in public. Time to grump it out. Time to be miserable.

Nah… I’m kidding. Spring is nice. I just said that as an introduction. Yeah, I’m cheap like that.Today it is time for another Style Special. Style specials bring you heaps of vocabulary.
Words you’d probably never look up but words that are part of the daily language of people. Will it get you an A in the exam? No. Will it get you a hot Spring fling? Well, usually I’d say yes, but not today because our topic is

Expressing bad mood and just being negative

And if that doesn’t tell you very much… Crying, whining, nagging, constant complaining… that is what we’ll talk about today. I just couldn’t think of a better title. But hey you know what.. if you don’t like it, that’ll be your very own problem and you might as well just stop listening. You’ll never learn German anyway, you know.
Nah I’m kidding. I’m just trying to set the mood right :)… oh wait… I mean
:(, or better yet :C… or :ç. The last one is grumpy because it has herpes.
Sorry… let’s just start.

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Being Grumpy in German

In German you don’t say you ARE in a bad mood.
You say you HAVE it.

• Ich hab’ schlechte Laune.
• I’m in a bad mood.
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There is also an adjective schlechtgelaunt which means the same but sometimes it is really handy.

• Schlechtgelaunt begann er seinen Vortrag.
• In a bad mood, he began his presentation.
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A quite colloquial way to say the same thing is this

• Ich bin schlecht / nicht gut drauf.
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Which literally means “I am not good on it”. People use that a lot so I think you’ll probably hear it. It also works as a question

• Mein Chef will mich sehen. Hast du eine Idee wie der heute drauf ist?
• My boss wants to see me. Do you have an idea what mood he’s in?
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Next let me give you a list of words that describe how you are ranging from irritated to enraged.

• nicht gut drauf – angefressen – genervt / gereizt – verärgert /sauer/angepisst – (stink-, scheiß-)wütend
• not in the best mood – slightly annoyed – annoyed /irritated – angry / mad / pissed off – very angry/furious

And now let’s get to the verbs that kind of fall into that area… the first group is grummeln which is essentially a deep rumbling sound. It describes the mumbling and muttering a grumpy person does. There is also an adjective grummelig which would translate to mildly grumpy but as far as adjectives go, my favorite one is muffig. Muffig is originally a word for smell…. kind of… old air. A dark moist basement is muffig for example. But it is also used to describe how people are.

• “Kaffee, Schatz?”
  “Nah..”
  “Tee, Müsli”
  “Nahh… ”
  “Du bist so ein richtiger Morgenmuffel, weißt du das?”
  “Nah..”
• “Coffee, honey?”
  “Nah…”
  “Tea, Müsli?”
  “Nahhhh…”
  “You’re so not a morning person, you know that?”
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Now, of course a Morgenmuffel has to eat, too so I eventu… I mean … he eventually agrees to having breakfast. But there it goes again

• “Das Ei ist zu weich.”
  “Tut mir leid.”
  “Und die Butter ist zu hart.”
  “Dann wart halt mal kurz.”
  “Ihh… da sind Stückchen in meinem Kaffee.”
  “Das ist normal bei Biomilch, das ist nur Rahm.”
  “Die Gurkenscheiben sind zu dick.”
  “Och jetzt hör doch mal auf..”
• “The egg is too soft.”
  “I’m sorry.”
  “And the butter is too hard.”
  “Well, then just wait for a bit.”
  “Ewwww…. there are pieces in my coffee.”
  “That is normal, it’s organic milk, it’s just cream.”
  “The cucumber slices are too thick.”
  “Oh, could you knock it off…”
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Quite a lot of complaints. Now, the dictionary translation for to complain is sich beschweren or sich beklagen.

• Ich beschwere mich darüber, dass das Ei zu weich ist.
• I complain about the egg being too soft.
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For these two it is really really crucial to have the self reference there. They do not work without it. But beschweren is rather official… or at least… for more serious things. The better verb here for that is meckern. Originally meckern is the verb for the noise goats make. And I can totally see why this would become used for just general small scale complaining :) “Mäh äh äh äh” (that’s how a goat sounds in German)

• Deutsche meckern immer über das Wetter – zu warm, zu kalt, zu wenig Schnee, zu viel Schnee, zu perfekt.
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A nice variation is the word (he)rummeckern which is kind of prolonged meckern about one particular subject.

• Ich meckere am Frühstück herum.
• I bitch about the breakfast.
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And if you do that all the time.. then you are what we call a Meckerfritze. Berlin especially has a renown to be filled with Meckerfritzen. Like… there is no small talk… there is only “small meckern”. Go ahead and ask the lady at the bakery if it is really possible that public transportation has raised prices yet again (“schon wieder teurer geworden”)… you’ll be the best friends within seconds. If people don’t meckern, that already means something…

• Da kann man nicht meckern.
• One can’t complain/bitch about that.
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Some say this is the biggest compliment we’re able to give in Berlin. Of course that’s not true, but does sound very very affectionate to my ears :).
Now, meckern is not the only word for this small scale complaining. Another really nice one is nörgeln. It is a bit more restrained, more composed than meckern. But negative nonetheless. The word nörgeln not only captures the tone of the voice, but also the face and the whole way of gesturing I associate with that kind of behavior. And of course there is also rumnörgeln.

• “Dein Rumgenörgel geht mir ziemlich auf die Nerven.”
  “Pffff… jaja”
• “Your constant nagging/whining kinda gets on my nerves.”
  “Pshhh… whatever.”
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A slightly lighter version of nörgeln is nölen… which perfectly captures the way you speak, look and move. Nölen is broader, more general than nörgeln and not always do you need to have a real complaint… you’re just “meh”-ing around so to speak.
Anyway… after breakfast our hero went to the store to get groceries. As he waits the kid in front of him spots the candy bars which unleashes a forceful series of requests to the mother who retorts with a series of “no”s. The kid pretends to let go of it but then starts muttering how mom is so unfair and never buys any candy and how mommy is mean. And then because kids are schizophrenic sometimes the kid turns back to mom and says something like: “Just a really small one, please please please… you buy a small one and I will bring down the trash, I promise.”
And all this is quengeln.

• Hör jetzt auf zu quengeln sonst wird die Mama böse.
• Stop whining/nagging now or mommy will get angry.
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Quengeln is actually rather childish. You can use it for your friends or your partner but maybe more in a joking way. An adult alternative is nerven. Nerven is quite similar to nagging as far as grammar goes… you can nerven someone or can just nerven. But nerven literally means to go on one’s nerves. And there are a million ways to do that. Quengeln is quite specific. It implies that you appear to be not so far from crying AND it also implies that you do it because you want something… like a chocolate bar… which supermarkets put right at the cashier exactly for that reason. Mom and dad have to wait in line, kid sees colorful packaging and there we go… bitte bitte bitte bitt… oh … we have a call here, Hanson from Missouri, hello Hanson you’re on the air.
“Hey Emanuel, I was driving in my car and as I was checking the radio I heard you say something I want to object…”
Oh… which is…
“Well, I so happened to be a store manager of a supermarket chain and I can assure
the that the only reason the chocolate bars and sweets are where they are is because
we simply didn’t have room anywhere else.”
Ohhhh…. right, right… then I guess the fact that the area in front of the cashier is commonly called Quengelzone (nagging zone) in German is a coincidence…. hello? Hello Hanson? Hmmm… hung up. Couldn’t admit it, I suppose. By the way, this article called “Well prepared into the Quengelzone” gives a few tips on how to react to your child’s tantrum.
The mom in front of me hasn’t read it and so I… god, why do I keep saying I… the fictional character watched the situation escalate. The kid decided to take the initiative and started loading the cart with Kinderüberraschung and other items. And that’s when mom lost her temper and scolded the child. And that is called schimpfen. It is basically a strong, serious and directed meckern.

• Die Mutter schimpft mit ihrem Kind.
• The mother scolds her child.
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You can also just schimpfen, then it is kind of like to rant but meckern might be the better choice.
Anyway… so the mom scolded and the kid started crying and that brings us right to the second part.
But first… a commercial, a banned commercial . It’s kind of dark but the acting is great. (you might want turn down the volume a bit if your at work :)

Being Sad in German