Now that I have been living in Austria for almost ten years and I get around pretty good, it’s come to my attention that there could actually be two of me – German-speaking Debbie and English-speaking Debbie. Because I’ve had people tell me that they notice a difference in my personality when I speak one language or the other. And well… it does make sense.
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One of the huge advantages that streaming delivered was the ability for me to easily watch movies and series’ in English. Austrian television, unsurprisingly, is in German, and I don’t think I’ve actually watched more than five minutes of it since I moved here (also unsurprising). Even something originally created in English is dubbed with German voice over here. So if ‘Bad Boys’ is on TV, the voices are replaced with odd sounding German (odd to me, because that’s not the way Will Smith speaks!). And the funny thing is, because there aren’t as many German voiceover actors as actors (duh), after watching a few German-dubbed shows, you start to hear the same voices over and over.
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The German language is known for its long words. Without even going into the ridiculously long words (which to be honest nobody uses anymore anyway) try Entschuldigung instead of simply saying ‘sorry’ or Kniebeuge for ‘squat’. Though in all honesty, part of the problem is that the German words just don’t fit well in our English-speaking mouths – they come out all clumsy and end up sounding a lot longer than they do when spoken by a native speaker.
But there are exceptions. So I’ve made a list of 10 words that are actually shorter in German:
German is not an easy language, but then neither is English. And kudos for everyone who didn’t grow up in an English-speaking country, because that means they probably handle multiple languages on a daily basis.
Read on for some of my favourite, commonly used mis-translations that Austrians often say in English.
an aussie in austria 