Guten Tag!
Yesterday in German class, I had occaision to wonder: how do you say 'What the f*ck??' in German?
So, I'm taking Deutsche 101, and we're learning how to describe people. Sie ist Amerikanerin! Er hat blaue Augen! It's very exciting. So my professor starts a powerpoint presentation of a variety of German cultural players and we are practicing describing them. We see (in order of the images above) director Werner Herzog, the wholesome musical group Rammstein, author and Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, and poet Gunter Grass. So, straw poll: if you saw the photos above, in response to which one would you, perhaps, guffaw? Could it be the old dude with the bushy 'stache? The latex-clad dudes wearing the codpieces?
Well, in my class, my fellow students started whooping it up in response to Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelenik. Comments included, "Oh my gawd, she's so ooooooold!", "She's the palest woman I've even seen!", and "She's so uhhhhhgly!" Just to be clear: I am not exaggerating, at least half the mostly male class was in a miniature uproar.
My poor instructor looked so confused! Are people laughing at how long the word Nobelpreisträgerin' is? No, they're laughing at the (not) ugly, (not particularly) pale Nobel Prize winner! You know, she is a chick so if she's not hot, f*ck all that writing and shit!
2 comments:
Every Indignities is off to a bang! Well done Liz! The stories you have of the immature yobs in your Wayne State language classes are always appalling. It's sick the ways these men view women, attractive = valuable, non attractive = worthless. It's sad that after 90 years of the women's movement, here we are. Great writing as well!
By the way, in german you would say “Was zum Teufel?”. It means “what the hell” and is the most common way to say WTF in german.
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