Because I’m gonna make this a thing, dammit.
Last time, I was a little annoyed with everything, but I don’t know whether it’s growing on me, or whether Liam has toned the accent down. His actual German is still excellent.
Soo, first up, the toilet horse. WC is the abbreviation for water closet, Wasserklosett, which is indeed a rather old-fashioned word for toilet. WC is used more often, but usually only to label the way to bathrooms. When you need to go, you usually don’t go to the WC, but to the Toilette or aufs Klo. Which is derived from Waterklosett! Sometimes, language makes sense.
Then at one point, Caleb said “Halt den Mund” – “shut up,” or, literally, “hold your mouth”. Not as fancy as hold your tongue, but out of the gajillion variations of this, still one of the more polite ways to tell someone to shut up. Others exchange the word Mund with several other things. It can get colorful.
Marisha also mentioned Oktoberfest as an example for why Beau’s pretentious rich people home town might celebrate Winter’s Crest, and then everyone made fun of the international imitations which are only people getting drunk. To be clear, Oktoberfest is not a universal German thing. It’s a Bavarian thing. Bavaria is kind of like our Texas. It’s also where American soldiers were stationed after WWII, and thus the image most Americans have of Germany is heavily influenced by it, much to the chagrin of literally everyone else.
Like, as much as the German accent annoys me, one thing Liam thankfully does well is NOT make it a Bavarian accent. That’s the problem most German accents on English-speaking TV or in movies have, they’re not “German” so much as they’re Bavarian. Or Austrian. Differences there are too nuanced for me to comment on them, but they sound somewhat alike, and nothing like how the rest of us talk.
Okay, and lastly, the real, legit Oktoberfest, the Wies’n, only happen in Munich. And during September because who cares. In Munich, it’s still a lot of tents full of people getting blackout drunk on beer, but there’s also rollercoasters and ferris wheels and other rides like that and confection stands and it’s fun for the whole family if you ignore the blackout drunk people.
Literally anywhere else in Germany, it’s basically the same as US or other international imitations. People get drunk on beer in a tent while wearing clothing no one outside of Bavaria ever wears, and even in Bavaria, it’s not worn during everyday life much, outside of the rural areas. Lederhosen and Dirndl are not traditional clothing anywhere else in Germany. This has been a PSA.
Okay. And now the final thing. The weird tendency for people to roll the number 9, which prompted Liam to make the statement quoted in the title. For those of you not in on the joke, the number 9 in the English language and the word for “no” in the German one sound identical. The spelling is different – nine vs. nein – but they sound the same.
Of course, this has been made famous by both Rammstein (a German metal band that is waaaay more successful abroad than it is around here) and a certain movie in which Hitler shouted it very dramatically. Both of which has become a bit of a meme.
(Tangentially related: Trevor Noah doing stand-up about learning German. Yes, also being African in the US and other stuff, but it all fits together. Treat yourself.)
The joke works backwards, by the way. I vividly remember listening to a story during 7th grade English class which involved someone calling an ambulance and dialing the number 999, which is apparently the British equivalent of 911, causing an entire classroom of German teenagers to start giggling and miss why the person actually called that number. Oh, the German equivalent for that, if you ever find yourself here and in need of emergency services, would be 110 to call the police and 112 to call an ambulance or fire fighters. Yay, another PSA!
If there were any other German-isms in this episode or previous ones that you have questions about, I’m, like, here, and this is something I actually have fun talking about, so feel free to ask 🙂
Overdressed & Underappreciated 