A Fuehrer in the coal mine

German 4 expertz.

We haven't heard any complaints recently about how "the German language" suffers from stupid students, English creeping into it, and so on. And we, in turn, have not complained about the fact that any native speaker of English around here will be drafted as a tutor. Resistance is futile: people will practice their English on you or with your agreement, so smile and go with the flow.

The other day, we compiled several German word usage examples which we decided to call "elasticity of use" in lieu of the more tempting "error" or "bad".

The one about "Fuehrer" is quite interesting. After the death of Hugo Chavez, a big German paper wrote Chavez was the "Anfuehrer" of Venezuala. It looked just slightly odd, so we checked.

Leaving aside that Fuehrer used in an English sentence has a whole raft of meanings attached to it, we wanted to know what "leader" means in German.

It is "Fuehrer" or "Anfuehrer", and the difference is? In a political context, "Anfuehrer" in any German text is seriously negative. Gangs have one, so do rebels, so do terrorists.In case you head some delegation to Germany and you get referred to as Anfuehrer, you may want to correct that.

Another report was about a coal mine accident in China, and the report used "Kohlemine" in German, where you "would expect" the term Kohlebergwerk. But gold mine in German is usually Goldmine.

If, for some reason, you ever want to say x-rays in German, note that you can use X-Strahlen if the person you are talking to is a hundred years old or older. Mr. Roentgen, who got to them first, called them X-Strahlen, which became x-rays in English. Then the Germans decided to honor Mr. Roentgen and renamed them to Roentgenstrahlen, throwing up yet another obstacle to the few foreigners who wanted to learn the language. If you are either lazy or an expert, gamma will do fine.

Then there is the German word "Mobbing", pronounced like the English, only a little more German.
It means bullying.

The final one for the day comes in handy. The Germans call a cell phone or a smart phone a "Handy". If the screen is larger than a USPS Forever stamp, just call it "Smartphone".  The next big hype is the "Socialphone" aka. Facebook Home, aka. I wish I was an orphan.

And if someone writes "egal" on a bathroom stall door, it is neither an eagle nor an Igel (hedgehog), it means "I don't care" or "it's all the same to me".

So, once again, it's all about labels and convention, some are more sticky than others.