Johnny Germanic

@LauerundWehner Da ihr um Feedback gebeten habt: Die Jingles am Anfang der Sendung finde ich eher nervig. Lieber direkt in medias res gehen! 😊

I only post things at the other place now: @johnnygermanic" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">mastodon.social/@johnnygermanic

@Lynn_Nothegger Not sure. But it wouldn’t work anyway, as illustrated above.

@Lynn_Nothegger Ah, so that one’s already taken!

@abertrotzdem I gave it a try!

@EnglishGibson Any idea?

@Lynn_Nothegger However, you could say: – “Can you imagine that?” – “Yes, I can.” So how about “the imaginers”? Or even better, as already suggested in one of the replies, “the imagineers”.

@Lynn_Nothegger Unfortunately, the most obvious translation wouldn’t work, either on this level: – “You couldn’t make it up?” – “I could.” (because it wouldn’t make sense to say “I could make that up!”) or on this level: Die Ausdenker = The maker-uppers

@_learn_german That Duden entry doesn’t seem to specify the third person singular present. “Sie likte” must be the simple past. And based on “du likst”, the third person singular present must be “likt”. Although I gather “liket” is also used.

@EnglishGibson Laut Duden angeblich: "du likst; sie likte; sie haben gelikt" duden.de/suchen/dudenon… 🤷

Did she? When did Mother Earth like it? 
I am of course being facetious. Clearly the past tense ending is meant to indicate the third person singular present tense in German. And fair enough. After all, the pronunciation makes sense. And “liket” would probably look even weirder.

Serious Street

DJ Heat Pump!

If only they’d used the default/idiomatic collocation “by bike”, their name would have been a perfect alliteration 🫤

German: Die sind nicht gerade Top of the Pops 
English: They’re not exactly the best of the bunch (or crème de la crème… basically anything but “top of the pops”)

Expressing disapproval/surprise at what some person said: 
English:
“And then along comes [the person] and says…” 
German:
“Und dann kommt [die Person] um die Ecke und sagt…” 
German with an adverbial flourish:
“Und dann kommt [die Person] um die Ecke gebogen und sagt…”

Bitte nicht mehr über ChatGPT twittern.

Mini linguistics lesson: 1) bilingualism is not double monolingualism 2) standard language is invented, not natural 3) no one is accentless

@ElkaSloan They could have called it “The Crime Scene Cleaner”. But I like the idea that people will think: “The Cleaner? What’s that about? … Oh THAT kind of cleaner!” It’s also reminiscent of Harvey Keitel’s “the Wolf” character in Pulp Fiction.

@EnglishGibson Would still seem more appropriate than "The Cleaner"

Yet another example of German using a compound noun where English gets by without one is provided by the BBC’s answer to the German TV series “Der Tatortreiniger”:

“The Cleaner”.

@abertrotzdem Yes! Two good reasons why German can’t get by without a compound here.

@EnglishGibson But 'Der Reiniger' means the actual cleaning agent not a person cleaning. And naming a series 'Die Putze' is a bit off putting 😉

"Please have a native speaker proofread your paper," said every journal editor who fails to know that nativeness does not mean an inherent expertise in proofreading.