I'm so excited !! Dubya (George W. Bush) arrived in Europe today. Hip hip hurray !! Hold me back !!
Where in Europe did he plunge in ? In Belgium, which is one of the smaller member states of the European Union (EU). Phew... good luck, he missed Germany just a few centimetres on the map. Belgium is located at the North Sea (adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean), just opposite to Great Britain (United Kingdom).
Dubya visits Brussels, the capital of Belgium. Brussels also happens to house numerous important European institutions, such as the European Comission. Parliamentary committee meetings and any additional plenary sessions are also held in Brussels. Hope the bureaucracy there can keep Dubya occupied for a while. (Don't get me wrong: I'm happy that we have those institutions there.)
Belgium has about 10 Mio. inhabitants. In comparison: Germany 82 Mio., France 60 Mio., ( Great Britain 60 Mio. ), Italy 57 Mio., Spain 40 Mio., Poland 38 Mio., (...) - European Union (EU) altogether about 454 Mio. as of today.
In contrast: United States 292 Mio., Canada 31 Mio., Mexico 105 Mio.: US/Mex/Can altogether about 428 Mio. inhabitants.
Allright, so what's Dubya gonna do in Europe? It's said that he isn't angry on Germany and France (Old Europe) anymore and that he forgives us for having been naughty.
Oh dang... I'm so relieved !! Thank you, oh thank you Great Dubya, you're my hero, may I kiss your feet ??
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:
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:
| Bavarian | German | English |
| dann | dann | then |
| anhenga | anhängen | to hang/attach sth. |
| i | ich | I |
| eam | ihm | him |
| gschwind | (geschwind)/schnell | fast/quickly |
| no | noch | 'additionally' |
| a | eine | a |
| goschn | Maul/Mund | yap/mouth |
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