Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Oh, for Smurf's sake! Getting German wrong

One of my friends uses a German term, "schimpfen," that means "to scold" or "to reprimand." It's what one might use to describe someone berating a jaywalker for walking when the light is not green for pedestrians. Germans have been known to do this, although I can't say that I haven't been the direct recipient of this yet (thank goodness!).

I was having drinks with an international group and effected quite the laughter when I used what I thought was the correct word. The Germans died laughing, saying that the word I used wasn't a verb, which confused me greatly until they explained that I was using the German word for Smurfs.

So, one doesn't "Schlumpfen" someone else; they would schimpfen. Oy vey, do I feel silly! However, after reading some articles, I did find that in the Smurf world, they DO use the word "smurf" as a verb. So there.

2 comments:

  1. haha! And what does 'to smurf' mean in the Smurf world?

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  2. According to Wikipedia, 'A characteristic of the Smurf language is the frequent use of the undefinable word "smurf" and its derivatives in a variety of meanings. The Smurfs frequently replace both nouns and verbs in everyday speech with the word "smurf": "We're going smurfing on the River Smurf today." When used as a verb, the word "Smurf" typically means "to make", "to be", "to like", or "to do".'

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