How to use an eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher (and for eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher newbies, what the heck is it?)

Those pesky german verbs!

meaning

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Oh, what a sweetie!

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Isn’t it? :slightly_smiling_face:

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Oh! It’s a big bang theory joke… no wonder I didn’t get it, I’ve never seen it.

Obligatory Mark Twain:

Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.

(Twain #2, that is),

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Fixed your post.

Sadly, German spelling is just irregular enough to be annoying to students, but too regular to make for interesting competitions. There is no such thing as a German Language Spelling Bee.
(I am sure I would have won when I was in elementary school!)

I guess translating between German and Japanese is actually easier than from either language to English…
Also, be glad that Latin isn’t that important any more, those pesky Romans also had the tendency to put the entire verb at the end of four-level-deep nested sentences.

But who cares about verbs?
When delving beyond the standard international language of “bad English” and into actual literature written in English, the poor English learner is beset by overwhelming numbers of specialized verbs. But then: the information contained in the nouns and adjectives renders all those beautiful verbs and their nuanced meanings redundant.
In the above sentences, the verbs hidden by spoiler tags also happen to be the words that i consider hardest for native German speakers to understand - but by the end of the sentence, the meaning is clear even without the verb.
So, conversely, when dealing with a language like German: don’t wait for the verb. By the time you get there, you’re supposed to know already what’s going on.

Just so the non-German-speakers get a taste of what they’re missing:

Kurty Tscholsky - Advice (1930)

(1) For a bad speaker

Never start at the beginning, but always three miles before the beginning!
Like this: “Ladies and Gentlemen! Before I come to the topic of this evening, allow me to shortly…”

Here you already have about everything that is needed for a beautiful beginning: a stiff address; the beginning for the beginning; the announcement that you want to speak and what you want to say, and the little word “shortly”. This way, you will immediately capture the hearts and ears of your listeners.

It gets even better from there, but unfortunately, translating is hard work…

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Okay, let’s start with something easy:

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You are a heathen.

Put Marmite on your toast soldiers and get back to me :smirk:

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The Marmite is already spread. Not to do so is also heathenly.

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The third panel is bring me a latte and a something else… I don’t know what ein Hornchen is (imagine the umlauts)?

A horn, but in this case it’s something like croissant with a filling.

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Hörnchen:

Latte (Macciato):

Eichhörnchen:

Holzlatte / Dachlatte:

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