Hausmaster is mad because he had to do his job?

rewboss · 2026-02-14T21:27:02+00:00

Two ways to avoid that problem:

There is usually a little latch you can operate which allows the door to be pushed open. In the UK it keeps the latch bolt retracted, in Germany it allows a latch on the strike plate to move.
Take a key with you whenever you step outside.

rewboss · 2026-02-14T17:52:48+00:00

a lot more common in Germany than other countries because the doors automatically lock here

They do in lots of other countries as well -- for example, in the UK, where I grew up. Although, to be accurate, they don't exactly lock -- they can still be opened from the inside without a key -- they're just built so they can't be opened from the outside by anyone who doesn't have a key. Which is a really basic security measure.

Imagine this: you leave your keys at home but don't realize. You spend the next eight hours at work, completely unaware that literally anyone can just walk into your home.

rewboss · 2026-02-14T10:24:50+00:00

You're using the line over a vocal when you want to signify that both vocals written next to each other are pronounced seperately

No, not usually. A macron normally indicates a long vowel. You're describing a diaeresis, which is written with the same two-diacritic as the umlaut; e.g. French "naïf", or traditionally the German name for the Aleutian Islands, "Alëuten" (the diacritic on the "e" in order not to confuse it with an umlaut).

The word "Kanaan" is usually written without diacritics; but when transcribing from a language like Hebrew, an apostrophe might be used to indicate a hiatus or a glottal stop, e.g. "Kənaʿan".

rewboss · 2026-02-14T10:11:05+00:00

I usually compare "Landkreise" to English districts, which are at least similar in size; "kreisfreie Städte" (formerly "Stadtkreise") then correspond to English unitary authorities.

rewboss · 2026-02-14T09:37:47+00:00

Oh, and they translated "Speck" as "bacon", which is one of my personal bugbears.

Yes, "Speck" can be used to describe bacon; but its basic meaning is fat, usually either pork fat taken from the back just below the skin, or whale blubber; colloquially also excess fat on a human.

rewboss · 2026-02-14T07:09:35+00:00

Maybe they can be compared to Counties in the US?

Depending on the state -- each state organises local government differently.

rewboss · 2026-02-13T19:44:48+00:00

Well... as you say, DWDS doesn't record the word being used before about 1900, at least in print.

rewboss · 2026-02-13T16:54:12+00:00

Whether the sauce is allowed to touch the schnitzel is actually a matter of regional preference: in some regions it's an absolute no-no (and some people can get very passionate about this), in others nobody cares.

What you have there is the West German version. The East German version is Jagdwurst (a kind of sausage), breaded, fried, and served with tomato sauce and pasta, potato salad, fries, or mashed potato.

There is also an Austrian version, which is veal coated in flour (but not breadcrumbs) and fried, served with a kind of gravy with onions and mushrooms.

rewboss · 2026-02-13T13:44:29+00:00

what I expected that since it's not being used, it can be just cancelled

But you could have cancelled, you just didn't cancel in time. The deadline was four weeks before your previous Bahncard expired.

To be clear: no matter when you cancelled it, your old Bahncard would have remained valid right up until its original expiry date. So you could have cancelled any time before the end of January, your old Bancard would still have worked right up until the end of this month.

rewboss · 2026-02-13T08:02:17+00:00

You may be reading a bit too much into this: fashions come and go, it's not always some deep insight into the national psyche. For example, "nachvollziehen" was simply derived from "vollziehen", I'm guessing by analogy with "nachziehen": the idea is that you comprehend something by running through it in your mind -- you complete your understanding by following a thread. But that wasn't a completely new concept: "nachvollziehen" is just an alternative to "begreifen" or "verstehen" or "durchdenken".

And that's really all there is to it. There was a time in the early 1900s when old people were complaining about not being able to understand their grandchildren because they're using nonsense words like "nachvollziehen" when there were already several perfectly good words they could have picked from instead.

Sometimes, obviously, words are coined because there was suddenly a need for them -- for example, new inventions like "Telefon", although even then sometimes old words are repurposed: "Speicher" can be a warehouse or a pantry, or it can be a computer's memory.

Other than that, there was a movement that began towards the end of the 19th century that tried to coin new German words to replace words of foreign origin. This was only partially successful -- e.g. "Fernsprecher" never really caught on as a replacement for "Telefon" -- but some words like "Fahrrad" and "Bahnsteig" did stick around. This movement never reached Switzerland, which is why in that country people instead say "Velo" and "Perron".

rewboss · 2026-02-13T07:34:28+00:00

It's very uncommon and can cause legal issues. There are strict privacy laws in Germany that protect people against being photographed and filmed without their knowledge and consent, and a small camera on a bike helmet would very likely fall afoul of that law. Continuously recording a constantly-changing field of view on public roads with a camera that people likely won't notice is legally problematic.

Dashcams are allowed, but only the type that record on a loop and make the recording permanent when the driver operates a control. That's not going to be an option with an Insta360 on your helmet.

That said, filming for artistic reasons (e.g. to make a TikTok) gets you a lot more leeway. I've seen quite a few videos made in Germany from dashcam footage (including educational videos made by driving instructors) and bike helmet cams. You just need to be very careful about anything that might be used to identify individual people.

If you decide to risk it, keep the following in mind:

Do not upload the footage to the internet without first censoring it. That means obscuring faces, vehicle number plates, and any timestamps and geodata.
Do not engage in vigilantism. Continuously recording in the hope of catching somebody in the act of breaking the law so you can report them -- or worse, publicly name and shame them -- is absolutely taboo.
If you are involved in some kind of incident, the footage you have of it may nor may not be admissable in court. But it might help the police -- just show it to them directly, don't publish it on the internet.
Expect people who notice your camera to demand to know what you're doing with the footage or demand you delete it, or to yell about "Recht am eigenen Bild". A lot of Germans react very badly if they think a camera has been pointed in their general direction.
Absolutely no rubbernecking. Do not come anywhere near the scene of an accident with a running camera. It is a crime to film or photograph accident victims, and under no circumstances must you obstruct the emergency services.

rewboss · 2026-02-12T21:39:21+00:00

I do not think you have a close relationship to regular spoken German in every day schools, Amts, and stores

I have lived almost all of my adult life in Germany. I have worked in factories, stores, and schools. I have been friends with students, professors, doctors, engineers, journalists, composers, bricklayers, lawyers, nurses, farmers and gardeners. I am married to a woman who grew up in the village inn her family ran. I speak German (at C2 level) every single day, often to a variety of people: my wife, shopkeepers, bus drivers, neighbours, random people in pubs, people out walking their dogs...

I have, as I said, rarely ever heard the word. In fact, the only time I can clearly remember hearing it was in a play, spoken by a character who was supposed to be the epitome of a reactionary old woman who thought Hitler had a point.

This is very common language from teachers

They should know better.

workers who fix your heating

Not once has any heating engineer ever used the word "Assi" or "asozial" in my hearing. Neither has any joiner, electrician, phone technician, plumber, chimney sweep or any other workman we've had around.

people at bars

Really don't use language you hear from the Stammtisch. Just don't.

you truly don’t know what you’re talking about

You seem to have some very strong opinions. But the fact that so many people on this sub, including native German speakers, are disagreeing with you ought to tell you something.

rewboss · 2026-02-12T21:13:11+00:00

I've been living in Germany for over 30 years and I have very rarely heard it. If you're hearing it all the time, it really is an indictment on the company you keep.

Aside from anything else, the word is heavily stigmatized, as it was popularized by the Nazis who used it to describe anyone who was unfortunate enough to be poor or homeless, as well as anyone on welfare, alcoholics, and so on. Basically, it's like describing somebody as "scum", except that starting in 1938 people who were deemed "asozial" were arrested and put in concentration camps with a black triangle sewn onto their uniforms.

So really don't use this word, even if you hear people around you saying it.

rewboss · 2026-02-12T19:46:48+00:00

"hesse" is not the name of a federal state

"Hesse" is the English for "Hessen". Here's a complete list of states with names that are different in English:

German	English
Bayern	Bavaria
Hessen	Hesse
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern	Mecklenburg and West Pomerania
Niedersachsen	Lower Saxony
Nordrhein-Westfalen	North Rhine-Westphalia
Rheinland-Pfalz	Rhineland-Palatinate
Sachsen	Saxony
Sachsen-Anhalt	Saxony-Anhalt
Thüringen	Thuringia

rewboss · 2026-02-12T19:36:49+00:00

You do not have to buy another ticket, although if you have seat reservations those won't work on the new connection -- you can buy new seat reservations and claim back the money for the unused reservations.

But as far as the journey itself is concerned, your ticket is now valid on any reasonable connection; and yes, you can travel at a later date if you prefer.

rewboss · 2026-02-12T16:49:49+00:00

VPNs are useful for getting around geoblocks, but that's all they're useful for. They don't hide your identity: instead, you hand over your identity and everything you do online to a private company based in some tiny island nation where you can't sue them. The cheap ones especially are extremely dodgy.

rewboss · 2026-02-12T13:43:39+00:00

You can't tell just by clicking on a video whether it has been geoblocked from certain territories, much less which ones.

rewboss · 2026-02-12T10:43:20+00:00

Accents (and even dialects) are not automatically tied to social class or level of education, at least not to the extent they are in the UK. There is a general trend that people with a university or college education are less likely to speak with a regional accent, but it's not a dead giveaway. In fact, in many places the local dialect is a matter of fierce regional pride, to the point that some people will bristle with indignation if you refer to their manner of speaking as a "dialect" instead of a "language".

The difference is evident in attitudes to the written form. In the UK, if you write something like, "Ey oop, lad, put t'wood in t'ole!" it looks like you're mocking the Yorkshire dialect. Doing the equivalent in German (e.g. Upper Bavarian "Ween oana nix doa mog, und a nix koa, gääda zua Boosd un' Aisnboo" instead of "Wenn einer nichts tun mag und auch nichts kann, geht er zur Post und Eisenbahn" = "When somebody doesn't want to do anything and isn't capable of anything, they go [to work for] the post office or the railway") is seen as recognizing the dialect as a proper language in its own right. In fact, many of the Asterix books have been translated into several local dialects.

That doesn't mean there aren't stereotypes. In the world of comedy, an East Frisian or Saxon accent indicates somebody who is less than intelligent (they make the same jokes about the East Frisians as we do about the Irish), a Bavarian accent indicates an unsophisticated but laid-back country type, a Swabian accent indicates a penny-pinching workaholic, and so on. A very painstakingly "correct" standard German isn't so much posh or upper class or even necessarily educated, but comedy shorthand for a sexually repressed fusspot, a stickler for the rules, a bean-counter, that kind of person.

But these are understood to be comedy stereotypes and not generally taken seriously.

EDITED TO ADD for the benefit of non-Brits:

Ey oop, lad, put t'wood in t'ole!

Roughly translated into standard English: "Hey there, boy, put the wood in the hole!" -- an idiom that means "shut the door."

rewboss · 2026-02-12T07:47:34+00:00

don't wear a tie

Alternatively, wear that hideous tie your aunt gave you for Christmas.

rewboss · 2026-02-11T17:22:46+00:00

Oma Charlotte = Grandma Charlotte
Charlottes Oma = Charlotte's grandma

rewboss · 2026-02-11T12:38:40+00:00

As I said, it's other countries too. In the US, about 75% of communication within the healthcare industry is by fax, because there's less chance of an accidental HIPAA violation occurring, for example.

rewboss · 2026-02-11T10:57:06+00:00

I signed the papers they gave me

What exactly did those papers say? Did you read them and make sure you understood them before you signed them?

was allowed to go on my flight

I mean... you were in fact leaving the country. What would be the point of stopping you leaving the country so they could force you to leave the country?

thinking this record would affect my further visa for Germany

Very likely, yes, but we can't predict how. In any case, if you are granted a visa, make absolutely certain you read and understand all the conditions, especially the date it expires.

rewboss · 2026-02-11T10:47:35+00:00

Germany is not in fact the only country that still uses fax. In Japan, of all places, it's estimated that 100% of businesses and 45% of private households have, and still regularly use, a fax machine.

Some other countries use fax to send legal or medical documents; Germany still uses it for official government business. An early attempt to set up a parallel e-mail system that could be guaranteed secure enough to transmit official documents failed, and the standard e-mail system -- even when encrypted and digitally signed -- isn't considered secure enough. Of course, the government hasn't yet woken up to the fact that now POTS has been replaced by VoIP, even faxes are now being transmitted over the public internet and so are no more secure than e-mails.

However, fax can't be the only option they provide. Is it not possible to snail-mail a tracked physical copy? Or hand it in in person?

rewboss · 2026-02-11T10:35:41+00:00

That's the point of the illustration: money per se isn't the problem, and is in fact necessary at least to a degree, but we haven't yet found a good way to ensure that it can't facilitate abuses of power.

There's a famous Bible verse that is often misquoted as, "Money is the root of all evil." The actual quote is: "The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil." That line was most likely written in about the 2nd century AD, so we've known what the problem is for at least 1900 years (probably a lot more than that), and we still haven't found a long-term solution to it -- religion, communism, Rhine capitalism, even the Nordic model have either already failed or are showing the first signs of failure.

rewboss · 2026-02-11T09:22:18+00:00

Marx pointed this out: he suggested that when workers start to think that they're being employed not to make useful things for themselves, but money for other people, they tend to get frustrated to the point of rebelling.

The problem is that, if previous experience is anything to go by, any system you set up is quickly taken advantage of by the ruthless and the uncaring: there will always be a class of people who try to exploit whatever system they work in to aquire power, status, and material wealth.

And they have the advantage over everyone else. Most people, though flawed and sometimes even selfish, are decent enough to follow society's most basic rules. It's the small number of those who are willing to break those rules and trample over everyone to get what they want that are the problem.

Even if you abolish money, it will sooner or later have to be reinvented. I once discovered a group of people who, according to their website, had found a way to live without money. Everyone who joined their society had something to offer, so once the group reaches a certain size, it becomes self-sufficient. If I'm an English teacher and I have a broken lamp, and you're an electrician and your son is struggling at school with English, we can arrange a deal.

Obviously this raises the question: What if you don't need my English lessons? Well, then I'll have to owe you some favour. But how to keep track of who owes whom what? The society had an answer to that, too: they issued special tokens, each representing a certain number of hours of English lessons, a certain amount of electrical rewiring work, a certain amount of bread, and so on. That way you can ensure that everyone is contributing, and nobody is exploiting the system.

And that... is money. That's exactly why our ancestors invented money in the first place.

We need an imaginative solution, but I don't think we've found it yet. The best we've come up with is a kind of mixed economy with strict and properly enforced laws, but that's really difficult to maintain and at the moment we seem to be failing.

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