Töggeli Kasten
Swiss German: Töggeli Kasten
High German: Tischfussball
English: table soccer
Archive for the ‘Language’ Category
Swiss German: Töggeli Kasten
15
Jan
Wiener Chicken
06
Oct
The cafeteria at work is at it again. There was a great offer last week for a plate of Wiener Chicken. Mmmmm sounds good to me.
Ferrovie Autolinee Regionali Ticinesi
07
Jun
Some acronyms just don’t translate well to English. Here is a perfect example from Lucarno in the Italian speaking region of Switzerland.
Quiet Friday Night
18
Feb
Baden Police Office
A few weeks ago I brought in an old pile of photography magazines to work. They had been collecting dust in my closet and since they were in English I thought someone at work might like them. English literature and magazines are so expensive in Switzerland that many expats in the office freely trade books back and forth.
With all the technophiles I work with I was not surprised when the magazines were a bit of a hit. It turns out one of my colleagues became very interested in HDR photography after reading one of the articles and we have been chatting about photography all week.
I give him a few pointers every day, he goes home tries it out, and then reports back on his successes and failures. Sounds like he is making some progress towards improving his skills.
With all the talk about HDR photography it seemed like tonight would be a good night to get out with the camera and tripod to take a few photographs. The police sign at the police station caught my eye this evening so I parked outside the police station for about 15 minutes until I got something I was happy with. I like the outcome. I was glad I was feeling a bit inspired tonight.
Language Revolution: Press 4 For English
17
Nov
About two years ago I decided to go through the pain of calling Swisscom, the local mobile phone provider, to setup internet access to my voicemail. I used to use a web interface to check my voicemail in the U.S and find it to be much quicker and easier than waiting for the automated voice to remind me of all 12 menu options every time I would connect to voice mail with my phone.
When coming to Switzerland I had not been quick to set up web access. Firstly there was of course the entire language incompetence so I didn’t even know it was available until I could read enough German, and secondly to set up access you had to ‘call the service center’ to start the service. At the time I dreaded speaking German over the phone so it took a lot of courage to get over it.
Of course after going through the pain and torment of setting things up at some point I forgot my web password after a vacation and I hadn’t written in down. Not wanting to deal with a German phone call again I did not call to reset my password.
Today, I got over it. I decided that I needed to belly up to the bar, and make the call. Yes even in German.
Imagine when I dialed in and started listening to the menu. “Duetsch druken sie Eins, Par le France touche duex, per italiana stamp tre.” Just as I was about to press 1 a new voice came on. ‘For English Press 5′ What!? English?! The clouds parted and a light from heaven came down and shined direclty on my desk phone. ‘Thanks be to Swisscom I though to myself as I pressed 4 and made the sign of the cross.
Is this a new trend in Switzerland. Have businesses finally realized that with 20% of the population coming from abroad there may be an under served market of non native Italian, German or French speakers that would prefer to do business in Globish (International English).
I sense a change coming and I am sure those Swiss based service businesses that incorporate English language services will see an increase in their market share of the expat population.
Are you longing for service in English? If you could pick one service to provide service/support in English what would it be?
Learning the Dirty Words
24
Oct
Peeing On The Church Organ
It seems like whatever language you learn the first words are always the raunchy ones. I don’t know if that his because the words are common, or because it is somehow just fun to learn curse words in another language.
It’s not just curse words that make for fun, it is the random idiotic phrases that a person reads or hears and seem to stick with you.
One early example for me was a quote from one of my favorite movies, The Big Lebowski. The quote had the words carpet, teppich, and peed, gepisst it in. I’ll save you the details.
I found another great headline in the pop culture reader Blick Am Abend yesterday. The headline reads Über die Orgel uriniert. I probably don’t need to translate that for most of you except maybe to say that an Orgel is a Church Organ.
Somehow I don’t think I’ll forget that headline anytime soon.
Why Not Get A Subscription to the SHJ Newspaper?
18
Oct
I have found the perfect Christmas gift for any expat, german speaking, culture vulture. Why not get your dear friends and family members a subscription the the SHJ-Zeitschrift. And was is that you ask!?
Well how else are you going to keep up on the latest Schwingen stats, or Hornuss league standings, or who has the best Jodel club in the land of cheese.
Even if you can’t read German the pictures on the SHJ website are great.
How did I come across such a great website? It is almost to embarrassing to admit. So maybe I won’t admit right now. But I might let you in on my secret in a couple of weeks. Keep coming back and maybe I’ll share the story.
Globish, Hand Shoes and Other Compound Words
29
Aug
When learning German one of the fun things you come across are strange sounding compound words. One of my favorites that has graced the pages of my blog before is Handshuhe which translates directly to Hand Shoe (a.k.a. Glove).
The other day I was speaking English, as I often do and came across an English compound word that I am sure has the same kind of strange sound to non-native speakers. Headphones. If you think about this the word headphones is not really descriptive as its pure components. Headphones are made up of neither a head nor a phone.
For all those non-native speakers, or speakers of Globish, I would like to suggest a more descriptive and accurate word. Earspeakers.
If you aren’t familiar with Globish maybe you are familiar with Esperanto. Globish is the new Esperanto. Here is a short video to give you some amusing background on the world’s next global language.
So what are your favorite foreign words? Leave a comment.
Swiss German: Putschibahn
08
May
I was talking to a Swiss coworker this week and learned a great new Swiss German word.
Putschibahn
What a fantastic word!
Putschibahn is the word for bumper cars in English.