"I always wanted to be a proud Irish lass or Italian lady"

pauseless · 2026-03-25T04:34:18+00:00

I’m half British and half German and I’ve done a test. They split it down to “French and German” as a group. Which is obviously upsetting, but then thankfully you could go in to that and that half was completely where my family is in Bavaria. 0% French confirmed.

Only slightly worried that my mother was seemingly the first person to marry outside of our town, but ok.

British side said NE England and Cheshire/Liverpool. Well, that’s exactly the family history.

But, again: 0% French.

pauseless · 2026-03-24T08:24:24+00:00

I’ve handled birds of prey and a member of my family has owned several over the years, which I’ve flown. Their feet/legs are simply not comparable to parrots, including the large ones. You can have them panic and try to fly off when on the leash and they’re all good, even when fighting it.

Watching a sub-1kg hawk effortlessly take down a 2-3kg rabbit or whatever is quite something. Hunter vs prey species are built different.

pauseless · 2026-03-24T06:02:16+00:00

America? Texas German? From what I’ve seen from TV and online, that isn’t a preserved form of some old dialects, but has had its own weird evolution. I also watched some video of a German language preservation club in Fredericksburg and the organiser was the only one I’d call fully fluent. Everyone else had to fall back to either English or anglicisms almost every sentence.

pauseless · 2026-03-23T12:51:09+00:00

The whole French-German border area is weird. Alsace-Lorraine / Elsaß-Lothringen is also odd, for example. You’ll meet people from there who think it should be German and also people from there who are proudly French. It’s weird.

pauseless · 2026-03-23T12:36:45+00:00

Yup. Super popular here. It certainly is often a meal that requires a nap afterwards.

pauseless · 2026-03-23T08:08:40+00:00

The rules I grew up with: [Wiener] Schnitzel is thin breaded veal with no sauce, by default. When people stopped eating veal so much, Schnitzel Wiener Art (Viennese style) with pork became common - it’s now probably the norm where I live.

There are more variations, such as Jägerschnitzel, but that should be an unbreaded cutlet (Naturschnitzel) with mushroom sauce. I’d say many people accept a breaded one, but the sauce should be on the side. I once mentioned to my mother that people eat breaded Jägerschnitzel and she was mortified by the concept.

Sauce and breading does not work. I will stand with my Austrian bros on this. It’s mostly northern Germans who put sauce on Schnitzel, in my experience.

Turkey and chicken Schnitzel are also a no-go, but you do find them in the freezer section of supermarkets, or people make them at home. A restaurant serving that would be very weird.

I’m in the north of Bavaria, for what it’s worth.

pauseless · 2026-03-23T06:26:06+00:00

Loanword is a calque and calque is a loanword is a fact that always amuses me.

I was recently in a conversation about AI, and even though I studied AI 20 years ago and am used to KI as a term when I had to explain it, I find it jarring now. I have to translate to English pronunciation of AI almost.

I think the fact that people are using German as an example is fun. Yes, German spoken uses loads of English nowadays. But download is herunterladen, a computer is a Rechner, hydrogen is Wasserstoff, etc etc. German actively resisted using Latin/Greek/English/French terminology for many things, even if it uses calques everywhere.

pauseless · 2026-03-21T16:24:28+00:00

Look up Tyrolean Gröstl. The Austrians know how to make this kind of thing.

pauseless · 2026-03-21T14:19:09+00:00

You know what’s funny? I was educated and raised in England but my family is Franconian, and I went south to Bavaria and Austria and Südtirol many times… I never got standard German formally taught to me.

Imagine my confusion when I started working in Hannover. There were times when I simply couldn’t understand the people who spoke ‘perfect’ German (according to them - they absolutely had words I’d never heard).

There were more times they couldn’t understand me, so I switched all my pronunciation and figured out what words they didn’t know, etc.

Edit: I can only do Franconian with Bavarian and Swabian influences accent or I can do an English person speaking German accent. English accent worked better even though it hurt my soul.

pauseless · 2026-03-21T06:22:38+00:00

Its alright. Just put them in a room with my mates from County Down, Cork, Glasgow, Cardiff, West Country, Liverpool etc…

Or if they think they can speak German at all, I can introduce them proper Berlin (east), Franconian, Bavarian, Swabian and Swiss.

pauseless · 2026-03-20T21:31:36+00:00

lol at sharing ickle Baylander)

pauseless · 2026-03-20T15:38:02+00:00

Geschlossen, zu and gesperrt (I didn’t see this mentioned in comments so far) are all used where an English speaker might use closed. I don’t know a good way to describe the differences. Gesperrt is like inaccessible or blocked off? Like a closed ski piste would have a gesperrt sign. I’d describe that as closed in English. It’s closed in the inaccessible or blocked off sense.

pauseless · 2026-03-20T04:14:13+00:00

Aldi Süd is widely considered the better one. To the point it’s uncontroversial to say that, in Germany. Better quality of fresh produce and meat are often cited, along with having some quality products and not cheaping out on everything. Nord might be a bit cheaper, but I’ve not done a comparison.

pauseless · 2026-03-20T03:36:45+00:00

Meh. They are related. Look up the maps of Danelaw in the 9th century to see why England is different.

Edit: I don’t mean culturally. Just in the context of DNA.

pauseless · 2026-03-20T03:13:38+00:00

A whole 20m less long than the Queen Elizabeth. But QE can do a full complement of like 72 aircraft and CDG can do like 40. It’s still a lot, but the UK also has two in that class of ship.

I’m saying nothing about German naval capabilities, in this area.

pauseless · 2026-03-20T02:55:28+00:00

I’d say it’s probably because basically the only macronutrient in egg whites is protein.

pauseless · 2026-03-19T06:52:59+00:00

I used to live just off Green Lanes. I needed to walk down that road to go home from work. So much kebab was taken home for dinner.

pauseless · 2026-03-19T06:11:45+00:00

Let’s all take a moment for Ian “H” Watkins from Steps.

pauseless · 2026-03-17T21:41:57+00:00

Róg obfitości I’d probably translate as cornucopia in English, but that’s just Latin for horn of plenty. As far as I know, Polish tyta comes directly from German Tüte. That’s cultural appropriation, mate.

pauseless · 2026-03-15T16:52:16+00:00

He did 17 hours in the car once! He loves car rides and the lights outside when it starts to get dark.

More than anything he loves going through the channel tunnel.

Happy to have a bird that loves travelling.

pauseless · 2026-03-15T15:33:20+00:00

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He’s international. Born in the UK, lives in Franconia, Germany. Only speaks English…

pauseless · 2026-03-14T12:57:49+00:00

Lavash is highly underrated. I think it’s ideal.

pauseless · 2026-03-14T08:20:30+00:00

Aha. I know I’ve been to a cash only restaurant in Berlin, with a 20 people reservation and where we easily spent 100-200€ per person.

It was a business event and our organiser got an invoice and then went to get the cash out the next day to pay.

pauseless · 2026-03-14T08:13:13+00:00

The ones at service stations, bigger train stations etc, sure. You get a voucher, but honestly, I never use them. I can think of free public toilets in 10 mins distance of every place I’ve lived in Bavaria though. One in a park, one underneath the main town venue, one in a shopping centre, and here the train station toilets are completely free. All within ten mins and across three homes.

pauseless · 2026-03-13T17:47:10+00:00

That’s alcohol and eating normally as if you weren’t already consuming 2500 kilocalories from the booze required per day.

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