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My German teacher once brought along a couple of photocopied pages from the infamous anarchist German textbook, Deutsch für den Ausländer. It's a selection of

My German teacher once brought along a couple of photocopied pages from the infamous anarchist German textbook, Deutsch für den Ausländer. It's a selection of bizarre stories about some even more bizarre characters. In one of them, the hero, who is a loser wannabe rapper, gets into a shouting match with a rival rapper. The dialogue goes, "Fick dein Mütter! Fick dein Hund! Fick dein ... etc, etc." Then he pisses himself, hides under a bus, and is eventually taken home by the bus driver. So, anyway, that's how I remember imperative informal verbs in German.

pluma 11y ago
Yeah, "Fick deine Mutter" is actually something you would hear in German, especially from a character like that. It would generally be considered one of the more unsophisticated insults, though -- it's associated with the German equivalent of British "chavs". "Mutterficker" OTOH just doesn't sit right. If you're going to insult someone's mother, just call them "Hurensohn" (i.e. call their mother a prostitute). Fun fact: "Hurenkind" is also a technical term (though these days the far less offensive "Witwe" translated from the English "widow" is often used) to describe a paragraph with its final line cut off from the page. The line itself on the next page is called "Schusterjunge" (or "Waise", from "orphan") -- "cobbler's boy".
- david-given 11y ago
  As a complete tangent, one of things I'm finding hardest about German is when a word in English will have more than one meaning --- like, as you say, widows and orphans do --- and then I'll find that the equivalent word in German, even if entirely different, will have the same set of meanings. It's amazingly hard to remember. Also, I'm totally going to have to find my own copy of Deutsch für den Ausländer.
  - pluma 11y ago
    I'd have thought that it's far more troublesome when the German equivalent merely has a subset of the same meanings but completely different meanings too (e.g. the English term for A has additional meanings B and C but not D while the German equivalent for A has additional meanings B and D but not C).

pluma 11y ago

Yeah, "Fick deine Mutter" is actually something you would hear in German, especially from a character like that. It would generally be considered one of the more unsophisticated insults, though -- it's associated with the German equivalent of British "chavs". "Mutterficker" OTOH just doesn't sit right. If you're going to insult someone's mother, just call them "Hurensohn" (i.e. call their mother a prostitute). Fun fact: "Hurenkind" is also a technical term (though these days the far less offensive "Witwe" translated from the English "widow" is often used) to describe a paragraph with its final line cut off from the page. The line itself on the next page is called "Schusterjunge" (or "Waise", from "orphan") -- "cobbler's boy".

david-given 11y ago
As a complete tangent, one of things I'm finding hardest about German is when a word in English will have more than one meaning --- like, as you say, widows and orphans do --- and then I'll find that the equivalent word in German, even if entirely different, will have the same set of meanings. It's amazingly hard to remember. Also, I'm totally going to have to find my own copy of Deutsch für den Ausländer.
- pluma 11y ago
  I'd have thought that it's far more troublesome when the German equivalent merely has a subset of the same meanings but completely different meanings too (e.g. the English term for A has additional meanings B and C but not D while the German equivalent for A has additional meanings B and D but not C).