Wie bitte?

Usually, I appreciate English for its artistic freedom, the way it lets you play with words. I love that the word “breakage” is a thing, I love that you can turn any body part into a verb by slapping “to” in front of it and then getting a little nasty, et cetera. It is rare that I actually complain about words English doesn’t have. Famously, I grieve for “Guten Appetit”, the German version of “bon appetit” that exists in many languages in some way, but not in English. Earlier today, I was complaining to my spouse, not for the first time, about the lack of direct translation for “Treppenhaus”. The literal translation is stair house, and the internet is currently telling me that “stairwell” is the English word I’m looking for. I guess it is translatable, then. That’s fine, this was all just supposed to be a lead-up to another word anyway, one that really doesn’t have a proper English translation:

Feierabend!

Clunky English translations include closing time, quitting time, but also after-hours, off-hours, and of course the clunkiest, end of the work day.

So, the first question burning on my mind is:

Feierabend is a genuinely important part of German culture, and a treasured word among many of us. It is so salient that there is a BBC article about it. So what’s it mean?

Well,

Believe it or not, Saturday Morning Cartoons were a thing in 1990s Germany, too.

And believe it or not, when I was five years old in 1996, I had a huge crush on Robin in Batman: The Animated Series.

So there’s two inflammatorily worded sentences that probably did not surprise anybody at all.

I don’t actually remember how early it really was when TAS was on TV on Saturday mornings. All I know is that it was early enough that my parents usually weren’t up yet. Back when I was five, I was still an ill-advisedly small amount of years away from having my own TV in my room, so my older brother and I had to watch cartoons on the big tube TV in the living room. Of course, when you’re five and seven years old, you can’t just go and use the family TV like some sort of anarchist. You have to ask your parents first.

Also, back when I was five, I was a girl. I personally was not aware of the impact that particular detail would have on my future just yet, but my big brother already knew to work it to our advantage. If you have a little sister, and you have to ask your parents for something, chances are you should have her ask them instead. YMMQOV*.

I’m telling you this because I’d like to introduce you to Scheiße’s friendly and lovable little sibling today.

You remember Scheiße, yes? I generally assume people know what it means, just sort of through cultural osmosis. But to be safe: Scheiße means shit—the noun if capitalized, the adjective if not. German has a lot of fun with it as a word, we use it as a prefix, as a suffix, we build sayings around it. Sayings such as: Nett ist der kleine Bruder/die kleine Schwester von Scheiße. Literally: Nice is shit’s little brother/sister.

I personally have only ever heard that first version of the saying, where nice is shit’s brother. When I looked it up prior to writing this, I found a lot of people using the second version, where she’s shit’s sister. So, first of all, diversity win! This adjective is bigender.

(If you’re actually learning German and starting to worry about grammatical genders: Sorry, don’t worry. As an adjective, Nett doesn’t have a grammatical gender.)

Now, why have Germans decided that these two words are in some way related to each other? Is it etymology? Some sort of linguistic history that connects the two? Wouldn’t that be crazy? No, it’s just that describing something as “nett” makes you sound like you actually thought it was shit.

I’m not entirely sure how well this translates into English. I know that “nice”, as a compliment, isn’t terribly strong. Much like in German, if you use it to describe someone’s personality, that’s perfectly fine, and has no negative connotations. A person can be called “nett” no problem. But if I’m really excited about my new haircut and someone else tells me that it looks “nice”, I personally might feel a little underwhelmed by that response.

Hence, being a country of pessimists (though I very staunchly am not one of those), we’ve decided that anyone who calls something nice must actually mean that it sucks, and is only—or at least—trying to be polite about it. And that is why Nett is Scheiße’s little sibling: Picture Scheiße standing in the hallway knowing that no one is going to like if they comment on someone’s haircut, so they carefully push their little sibling through the door to do it instead.

The only thing I am still left to wonder is what the rest of that family looks like. Personally, I’m a middle child (and I will be taking donations as acknowledgment of my suffering, thank you), and I very much can picture an oft-forgotten but surprisingly punchy sibling between Nett and Scheiße: Okay.

so i had a threesome with a couple the other day (i know, #humblebrag), and as we all unstuck from each other and lined up on the bed, we came under threat of a post-coital awkward silence. to battle this, the guy looked at his girlfriend and prompted, "tell him [me] something about yourself."

bit of a mean prompt, but that's not what this is about. she told me that she'd moved from malaysia to germany only 3 years ago and was "still" struggling with the language. to which, of course, i replied that that's a very short time to have been in a foreign country and that it's a tough language to be learning! she then mentioned that she still struggles with it being a gendered language, because there is simply no way to know what gender a german noun is going to have. "why, for example," she cried, "is Mädchen neutral? why isn't it die Mädchen?"

Mädchen is german for girl. and, yes, confusingly enough, while Junge = boy is masculine, and Frau = woman is feminine, our word for girl is neutral.

"ah," said i, "that's because it's a diminutive."

now, in my defense, my best friend has a degree in computer linguistics, and my spouse has one in literature, so i tend to be around people who know what a diminutive is. i absolutely am not saying that it's a failing not to know. i am saying that i behave like a language nerd, because i am one.

so after looking into confused faces, i elaborated, "a diminutive is like a small, or a cute version of a word. if it ends with -chen, it's a german diminutive, and it's always neutral."

her boyfriend, a german man from an austrian-german family, said, "oh, i didn't know that."

it is at this point that i would like to stress how immediately post-boink this was. we were all in various states of undress. i was entirely naked, i was spread-eagle on my back, and one of my wrists was still in a cuff tied to a bedpost.

so, bare ass naked, one arm attached to this man's bed, i look up at him and his girlfriend and i say, "yeah! like how Brot [bread] turns into Brötchen [bread roll], there used to be a word that over time turned into Mädchen. you would think it was Mad, but it was Magd [think of the english 'maid'], and it used to mean girl hundreds of years ago, like in the middle ages i think [i was correct]. and Magd was feminine. but then we gradually shifted from Mägdchen to Mädchen [the g fell away because it's easier to pronounce without it], so now it's neutral."

"huh," said the man next to me, with his cock out.

ID: screenshot of text which reads: beziehungsbezogene Belastungsbewältigungsbemühungen. end ID

Okay. I am being so, so honest with you right now. That probably makes me sound less honest. But I mean it. I picked this word yesterday. I already knew I was going to write about back pain yesterday. I didn’t start yet, but it was a firm plan I had. And then, this morning, literally the first thing that happened to me right after getting up, I pull a muscle in my back.

Coincidence?

It can’t be.

Magic??

Probably!

(Disclaimer: I was being honest about yesterday’s plans and today’s back pain. I do not actually believe that magic causes pain. If you or your loved ones suffer from pain, please seek out evidence-based magic. I mean medicine. Evidence-based medicine.)

So, you know how we didn’t have a lot of that, back in the olden days. Evidence-based medicine. What we have always had, as a species, thanks to our hilariously engineered bipedal bodies, is back pain. Now, don’t get me wrong! I am not here to normalize having chronic back pain, and if that applies to you, you should really get that checked out. But something much more normal is having the occasional lumbar blunder. Muscles and nerves are all finicky and under a lot of constant strain and movement back there, and sometimes, for reasons that, honestly, even today are often still beyond us, we just get really sharp pains in our lower backs. A more Latin term for this is lumbago, which you may have heard before.

All of those sound like words of a sane person, yes? In 2023. Lower back pain, or lumbago, that’s what it is, you either just name the pain, or you use the language all of us have at some point agreed should be the language of medicine. To imply that there is something perfectly explicable at play here.

WRONG!! It’s WITCHES!!

I have heard German people say “Lumbago,” but only because I’ve worked in hospitals, and the only ones I’ve heard using that term were German nurses. Take that with a grain of salt, obviously, because everyone else I know talks funny. I’m not actually a great sample size for regular German speech. I know all the weird words, though. Like Hexenschuss.

Yeah, that’s right. Hexe means witch (which is a pretty cool word for them, I think), and Schuss means shot, and when you get a sudden pain in your lower back then that’s because a witch just shot you. No, seriously. More than once I’ve had an actual certified doctor tell me with a straight face that what I’m experiencing is a witch’s shot. Because that’s what we call it. And it really is because, several hundred years ago, we figured that if we can’t explain something, it’s probably because witches.

As a little bonus, here’s a picture from the German Wikipedia page for Hexenschuss, from circa 1490:

(ID: A black-and-white woodcut depicting a woman aiming a bow and arrow at another person from the back. The person seems to be in the process of stumbling and falling, missing one shoe. End ID)

So, it's August 20, 2023. :) On August 20, 2022, I walked to the pharmacy by my house and picked up my first 3 bottles of TestoGel, and applied some the minute I got home. It's a joyous occasion, and much has changed about my body since then, but there's one thing in particular I wanted to write about for today. Because, as always, it's funny.

I've always had very thick hair, and it's longer now than it's been in a long time, so I'm not sure if it's thicker now than it was before, but it definitely feels that way. It has not thinned, so far, is what I'm saying. It'd be fine if it did! I'm 31, it happens. If you're bald, hi, you're hot.

So I'm not bald, and I'm not balding per se, but T has made my hairline change. You're familiar with what I'm talking about, those spots around the temples where people tend to bald first, at varying ages. I have those now, which is extremely cool and sexy of me.

You will not be surprised to hear that German has a word for those. A long, silly compound word for a very specific part of some people's bodies. You may now take a few moments to sit and guess what that word might be. Let me know if you come up with anything!

The word is.....

Geheimratsecken!

It is very much one of my favorites. As always, I'll break it up for you:

geheim = secret, as in the adjective. A secret (noun) is das Geheimnis.

Rat = not a rat. That's Ratte. This one means council.

Ecke(n) = corner(s)

A Geheimrat is a privy council, one like the ancient Romans had. That's where this word is believed to have originated. Because, you could only be part of this council if you were of a certain age. Anyone whose temples weren't bald and sexy and naked yet - and you know the Romans were all about being sexy and naked - was too young to be part of a privy council.

So it's a feature of honor! To this day, we call these bald spots at your temples privy council corners, because it shows that you're wise enough to give council to Caesar. And we all know how that worked out for him.

I used to think that it meant more that the corners are for the privy council. Like there's some round-ish shape hollowed out there where you can put like.... a table and some chairs..... to hold council.... But then you sweep the rest of your hair over it so nobody can see and that's why it's a privy council... Anyway. I actually like the true meaning more, because it makes me feel cool.