Holzlöffel

Many people think German is ugly but I’ve come to love it. I’ve lived here almost two decades and still learn something new everyday. Some think the sound of German too hard. My brother finds it hilarious. When I visit him he greets me and the kids by shouting all the German words he knows (and laughing about it), a list that includes Schnitzel, kaputt and Totenkopf. We laugh, too. German is funny, sometimes, but also expressive.

I admit to loving all the high-falutin’ words that float about intellectual circles – Zeitgeist, Weltanschauung, Weltschmerz, lebensmüde, Schadenfreude- as well as words with less ambition.

One of my first favorites was fünf, a simple little one, meaning five. It reads as if you’re trying to clear lint from your nose. The /ü/ is pronounced like a deep /u/, only purse your lips and flatten your nostrils. Sort of. Fünf would make a good name for a cat or small dog, or a whiskered pig.

Another is wunderhübsch, which is the product of German’s ability to smush words, as many as you like, up together into a new word. Literally it means wonderfully pretty. The first and last time I heard someone use it was when Luisa was a baby and a young woman said Luisa was wunderhübsch. I found that very sweet. Luisa was and still is wunderhübsch, but this is not a word I hear much. Hübsch alone is also good!

I also like the words that start with /pf/, like Pfirsich, or peach. It’s such a jumble of consonants, and when you say it, it goes down so suddenly it’s hard not to be amused. I also love Pfeffer, Pferd, Pflaume, pfiffig, and I mourn the Pfennig.

One I learned fairly recently is Stickstoff – as in nitrates, used in fertilizer. This is a laugh. Don’t forget that in German an S before a consonant is pronounced sh. It’s funny to hear grown-ups having a conversation about Stickstoff.

One of the best words is doch, the word used to contradict a naysayer. It’s irreplacable, and I love it for its right-on usefulness rather than its sound. The closest English equivalent would be “did, too!,” (or "is, too") as in “you stepped on my foot,” – “no, I didn’t,” – “doch!”

I also love Schmutz (dirt, grime, smut) and Dreck (ditto) and Gejammer (wailing or complaining), and a lot of anatomical words. But I’ll leave those for another day.