Kim: A game of two halves, missed a sitter, clean sheet, nutmeg, dink. Words and phrases football fans up and down the country are more than a little familiar with. But it’s not just UK supporters of the game that have got their own lingo going on. Here in Germany, they give us Brits a run for our money when it comes to footballing words and phrases. So I’ve come to meet a German football language expert here in Berlin, to find out more.
K: Hi I’m Kimberley, nice to meet you.
Christoph: Hello, Christoph Marx, hello, hello.
K: So Christoph, we know now that Germans love football just as much as people in the UK, but that wasn’t always the case was it?
C: No, it was not always the case. In the beginning, especially the establishment in Germany, don’t like the game. Because they see it as a very emotional game, that was not typical German.
K: Am I right in thinking that Germany really wanted to distance itself from England when it came to footballing phrases?
C: As a way to make this “English” game to a German way was the method of language. To replace every English original phrase to a German one. One German teacher, Konrad Koch, from Braunschweig had made it his task to replace every phrase.
K: And when I was researching for this interview Christoph, I came across the word “Bananenflanke” which is obviously to curl the ball in German, I hope I got the pronunciation right.
C: It’s like the curve of a banana.
K: Yeah, yeah and we’ve got a similar phrase in the UK. A lot of words and phrases seem to come from animals and from fruit.
C: We have our “Gurkenspiel” – “cucumber game”, it’s a game of very poor quality. And there’s another word “Fliegenfänger” – “catcher of the flies”, if a goalkeeper defends very badly and a lot of goals were scored. One other really nice phrase is “Kopfballungeheuer”, it’s a monster of the header, to score a goal. Harry Kane is always a Kopfballungeheuer.
K: Now, in the next few weeks there is going to be an influx of England and Scotland fans coming over here to Germany ahead of the Euros. Could you teach me one key phrase that we all need to know?
C: There’s a phrase of the phrase, it’s the one phrase you can use nearly in every context and that’s “Das ist Fußball” – That is football. If you win, if you lose, if the game is beautiful, if it’s ugly. “That is football”, it’s a phrase that works everywhere. And perhaps for English it’s interesting, “Elfmeterschießen” – Penalty Shootout.
K: Don’t bring them up Christoph!
C:Penalty killer! Penalty killer! It’s very interesting, I think you will be in touch with this.
K: We live in hope, but either way das ist Fußball!
C: Ja, das ist Fußball, genau! You win, and sometimes you lose.
K: Finally Christoph, I could not let you go without asking you as a historian specialising in football jargon, what your favourite words and phrases are in German?
C: One of the phrases I like most is “Fußballgott” (Football God). You can hope we are lucky to win and we hope for the Fußballgott to be on our side.
K: Well Christoph, it has been lovely chatting to you but I do hope the Fußballgott is not with you this time and it’s with England and Scotland, the Home Nations.
C: Yes! We will see, we will see!
K: We’ll see!
Source link : https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zbhk6rd
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Publish date : 2024-06-14 13:56:16
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