Monday, February 21, 2005

To tell someone off

There was a Bavarian dialect expression in the lyrics of Zruck zu dir (Hallo Klaus) that I wasn't sure about. So, I looked it up at Google. It's actually a sweet expression, sounds pretty tenderly wheras its true meaning is in fact not that sweet.

The line was:
'Dann heng i eam gschwind no a Goschn an'.

The expression within is:
'a Goschn anhenga' (Bavarian dialect) = 'jemandem die Meinung sagen' (German)

You can see a pretty common Grammar demand here, too:
In German many verbs are cut into two halfes if used in a sentence.
anhenga is a verb and it actually means to attach sth.
As you can see, it is cut into the two halfes an and henga.

I had translated it with 'back talk at him' which was quite right. However, a slightly better translation probably would have been 'to tell someone off'.

The literal translation of 'a Goschn anhenga' would have been:
'to attach a yap/mouth to someone'.

Just for fun: Here are the other words of that Bavrian dialect line and their literal translation into German and English:
BavarianGermanEnglish
danndannthen
anhengaanhängen to hang/attach sth.
iichI
eamihmhim
gschwind(geschwind)/schnell fast/quickly
nonoch'additionally'
aeinea
goschnMaul/Mundyap/mouth

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