Things you were shockingly old when you learned

ha! :)

I seriously have no idea half the time if he's just saying idioms from back home, or if he is a genuinely wacky dude. I think a little bit of both and I love it.

Sort of in keeping with the thread mandate, I thought until sometime within the past year that I'd just been remiss in learning all about the function/historical significance of Stonehenge but it turns out that nobody actually knows for sure what it's all about and my ignorance is shared with the entire rest of the world?

only julian cope knows for sure iirc

x-post Yeah like literally translating them so they make no sense. My dad does that all the time. It's amazing.

Maybe it's a German thing, I work with a German guy whose English is mostly flawless but every now and again he'll come out with some weird mangled phrase that almost makes sense in English.

I think I had pica as a kid because it took me way too long to learn that I wasn't supposed to eat peanut shells and shrimp tails. Surprised I never munched on some produce stickers.

So

Football men- let's blame the ne plus ultra of the breed in Tony cascarino and his time amongst the crafty continentals in Marseille etc al- refer to 'nowce'; that little bit of know-how, the cleverness that has been creeping into the English game this past few decades, going down under anything less than an ICBM strike, running past a fatter player (disgraceful this) and moving in anything other than a bus route.

As written above, the word is pronounced "nowce" think mouse but with an n and an air of admiration tinged with the resentment of a retired wet-worker who had to give up his garrotte and shiv along with his badge.

I had always happily presumed that our Tone had just nicked 'nous' off the back of a lorry at le Havre and shaved off a tricky silent n here and jiggled a few vowels there in order that the import people weren't going to ask any hard questions.

Nowce they'd say, and id have a little jolly to myself, this is going back years and years and I'm so chuffed to know more than grown men albeit football men, nowse they'd say and oh how we laughed

In a related digression let us now break to examine the opening segment of the wiki page for Philippe Auclair:

Philippe Auclair (24 June 1959), also known by his moniker Louis Philippe, is a French singer-songwriter, musician, news correspondent and football journalist who has been active from the mid-1980s onwards. He is associated with the short-lived él record label, where he served as an in-house writer and producer.[2] Since the label's demise (1989), he has grown into one of the 'elder statesmen' of indiepop.[not verified in body]

Now we can presume Philippe parlayz byen le fransay because at least one of his parents was french and he is french

Guardian football weekly podcast welcomes our MEC Philippe on the reg to discuss the sport in the cultured tones of a man that could steal your wife in ten minutes without you, she or indeed he even noticing.

Last week he says nowce.

I listen to the podcast at night, in bed (this may or may not be unrelated to my nagging suspicion that the bar for stealing my wife is quite low).

I didn't get a wink. The world is fucked. Fucked.

Nowce he says. The pouns.

xxp

There are many many amazing German expressions, and webpages devoted to their translations.

I like "and now we have the salad" (everything is fucked), "I only know train station" (I will not respond to the confusing and/or stupid thing you just said), "and here is where the rabbit lay down in the pepper" (this is where we fucked up), "there's no standing on one leg" (don't leave before having a second drink), "that's not my beer" (not my business), and my personal favourite, "you're walking on my cookies" (you're getting on my nerves)

I have read your last post deems three times and don't get it but I do like some Louis Philippe

That is an unlooked for but positive outcome and I am not a prescriptivist <3

Love love love I only know train station I'm having that

omg thank you so much for this knowledge, fgti

"which part.. gives you the most heartburn?"

deems obv. has not seen nearly enough episodes of The Sweeney, I don't think you can pin that one on Tony Cascarino.

In the spirit of the Sweeney he was available he was suspect and I never liked the slegggg

Those are all great fgti

Posted this elsewhere on here years ago but under the bio thing on skype my dad has written:

"be. happy you lif longery and walk on the wild seid the last shirt you wear has now packets."

I have to say his typing and spelling skills have improved a lot since the wrote that but the "last shirt you wear has no pockets" thing confused the hell out of me until TWU helped me figure out that it was a German idiom that basically means you can't take it with you when you die. The be happy and walk on the wild side stuff he added himself.

I played Galaxian for a couple years thinking it was "Galaxina".

but Deems is that not a word of Greek etymology coincidentally spelled the same way as the French collective noun?

Aha!

...I think he knows that now, hence posting to this thread

oops as you were LG x

I knouse nou such thing but I am better informed, thanks mattk

I was fair shook so that is welcome neouws

The foyer/lawyer thing is not just common but typical, as is Anglicization of many other French words. However, while "faux news" is a not-uncommon online dismissal, I seriously doubt more than a few Americans actually pronounce faux as fox in that or any other context.

On the other hand it’s the English who say “gárridge” for “garage”

"I only know train station"

You having a laugh?

^ versteht nur Bahnhof

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxLKS3_QL_M

"I only know train station" has a Nazi origin, iirc. Nazi soldiers would get orders from their commanding officers over the radio like "march at 6am, destroy the bridge, recon the village, return to camp, then at 11am tomorrow if you survive, go to the train station and you'll be relieved of duty" and the soldier would respond "ich verstehe nur Bahnhof" (I only understand train station), the joke being "didn't understand anything you just said except the part where I go to the train station and go home"

i am here for this kind of talk

Here's a collection of phrases i.e. https://worldgoespassau.wordpress.com/2013/12/15/i-think-my-pig-is-whistling-german-idioms/

My other favourite that I don't see here but is amazing is "life is not a pony farm" which is pretty self-explanatory

The word for pony farm is Ponyhof

It's a great phrase

Das Leben ist kein Ponyhof

Milkshake fucked on I only know train station what a world

Autocorrect fds

fur deutsches sake

I know exactly which bits of my projects give my heartburn, Germans OTM.

So the only ways I can think of to pronounce 'foyer' are:

The correct French way

Irishman saying 'fire'

Is there... a third way?

FOI-yur

lol which i guess is your Irishman way

Ahem, an Offaly man maybe

Or the lobby as they call it in Scotland.

Have also heard people (possibly me?) pronounce it "foi-ay"

I mis-heard "Das Leben ist kein Ponyhof" as "Das Leben ist klein Ponyhof" the first time my husband said it.

i was reading a while back about german humour and why it doesn't translate well

the whole article was so funny and really helped me understand my germanic brothers

(searching for it)

i believe it was this one

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/may/23/germany.features11

sorry that wasn't it

it was this one: http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170802-why-people-think-germans-arent-funny

there are several distinct German modes of humor, in my experience

one of my instructors in college was of the "Germans are serious, and when they're being funny, they act EXTRA serious" variety and I would crack up at his jokes when no one else would

from that first link to the guardian

On my first night in Hannover I had gone out drinking with some young German actors. "You will notice there are no old buildings in Hannover," one of them said. "That is because you bombed them all." At the time I found this shocking and embarrassing. Now it seems like the funniest thing you could possibly say to a nervous English visitor.

yeeeah, this is the mode my instructor was permanently wired into

Not really tickling my funny bone there tbf.

That all the different kinds of tea are really the same plant that has been processed/oxidized differently.

(in my defense I only started drinking tea regularly in the last year)

My favourite German joke, which was actually told to me while driving down the autobahn, had me asking "there are so many arrows saying Ausfahrt" and my German friend replying "yes, it's the biggest city in Germany"

lol