12 Days of Christmas Day 9: Sweaters

Gorgeous!!

Part of what makes this season my favorite is the ability to get all cozy and put on some warm layers. Sweaters, scarves, hats, mittens, boots, stockings... So many possibilities! By far my favorites are the sweaters, though. And I'm not even just talking about the ugly Christmas sweaters that are so popular nowadays. I'm talking about the Norwegian sweaters. Seriously, put "Norwegian sweaters" into an image search. They look so beautiful and cozy! Something about a luxuriously soft and warm sweater just screams "Christmas!" to me.

Yep, I'd call that ugly!

Sweatshirts like this are all the rage.

                     

Bis morgen!

Witzige/Wichtige Worte on Wednesday VI: "Vokuhila"

(der) Vokuhila: short for "vorne kurz hinten lang"; mullet

Since this one is pretty self-explanatory, all I have to say is, "Business in the front, party in the back."
Also:

Bis bald!

Witzige/Wichtige Worte on Wednesday V: "Irgendwie"

irgendwie: "somehow"; kind of, sorta, somehow, like

Irgendwie is very similar to the word "like". It comes up in conversation all the time, and 90% of the time it's a filler. I guess, to be fair, irgendwie isn't technically used as a filler. But, in my experience, the sentence and the point being made would lose no validity by dropping the word.

Here's a short German text to illustrate what I mean:

Ich hatte irgendwie das Gefühl, dass ich irgendwie beobachtet wurde. Weißt du? Es war irgendwie als ob hinter jedem Busch stände irgendwie ein Typ oder so. Irgendwie wollte ich nur da weg. Ich fühlte mich irgendwie völlig wohl. Keine Ahnung. Es war alles irgendwie komisch.

"I kinda had the feeling that I was, like, being watched. Ya know? It was sorta like there was a guy, like, standing behind every bush, or something. I, like, just wanted to get outta there. I felt, like, totally uncomfortable. I don't know. It was all, like, weird."


Who knows? I might be wrong with this one. That's the way it always seemed to me, though.

Bis dann!

Witzige/Wichtige Worte on Wednesday I: "Doch!"

doch: still, yet, however, on the contrary (can mean any one of these or multiple/all at the same time)

"Doch" is honestly one of the most useful words in the German language. You can stick in nearly countless sentences and phrases to add emphasis and/or cut corners. It's primarily used to negate a negative statement. This word is so pragmatic in the German language, I have to stop myself from using it in English conversations nearly every day. Let me give you an example from a few weekends ago.

My brother and his girlfriend were introducing me to an old high school friend of his. The conversation went something like this. (Parts written in italics were thoughts.)

Brother: Hey, Friend, this is my sister.
Friend: What? No way! I didn't know you had a sister!!!
Brother: Yeah, a lot of people don't.
Friend: I don't believe you! She's not your sister!
Me: Doch! I'm totally his sister.
Friend: Nuh-uh!
Me: Doch. No, really.
Brother: Dude, she's my sister.
Friend: She might be a cousin, but not your sister!
Me: Doch!
Girlfriend: Seriously, she's his sister.
Friend: No way!
Me: Doch!
It took showing this guy my and my brother's driver's licenses to convince him we're actually siblings.

But, that's not the only way to use doch. You can use it to put emphasis on something. Take the sentence "So you do want me to pick up dinner on the way home." The emphasis on "do" implies that the other person didn't want it at first, but changed their mind. If the English language had a direct and accurate translation of doch there would be no need for verbal emphasis, and the sentence would like this "So you want me to doch pick up dinner on the way home." Practical, no?

Doch. Very handy. Very versatile. Definitely a word we should adopt. I mean, we've already taken words like Doppelgänger, Zeitgeist and Sauerkraut. Doch is just the next logical step.