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Deppenzepter

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Today, we don’t talk about an indigenous, Austrian word. But it is great. So I could not resist. We are talking about the Deppenzepter . If you Google the word , you may not find that many hits, yet. Let’s do the normal thing and dissect the word. It consists of the German Depp which could be translated as idiot, fool or joker. As well as the work Zepter which is scepter, sign for the king. Or better the Joker, as in this playing card: To get an idea about the meaning of the word, think about the last time you were somewhere nice and you nearly got beaten by a person with a stick. Never happened to you? That’s just because the person did it unintentionally. And the stick was sophisticated with a phone on the other end! Does it start to make sense? As an image tells more than a thousand words, let’s place a great phone from a guy with a Deppenzepter here: Thanks Heise Foto for the great article! Homework: Please have a healthy laugh about people making selfies, espec

Fenster Putzen

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Austrians have an obsession with cleaning windows. Cleaning, or better clean places, in general. But cleaning windows especially. Being born and raised here I never even thought of that this could be out of the normal, but today I realized that this must an Austrian special obsession. I only realized that today. We have lived a year in the Caribbean , where I wanted to get the windows of our apartment cleaned. Every maid told me that they “don’t do windows”. So I tried to clean the windows myself, which produced not the result – spotless clean windows – I wanted due to the burglar proving. I looked up professional cleaning companies which all responded with dismay to my request of cleaning windows – or better having clean windows. Today, first meeting of the cleaning lady in Austria and she insist of cleaning the windows – which look spotless to me. Which reminded me of some discussions on a popular social networking site where some of my friends dissed some of my other friends, beca

Na no na net!

Today, I found a great resource on Facebook: smoonr They are talking about a great phrase: "Na no na net!" which is the Austrian phrase for "Yes!". You may have learned in school that a double negative is a bad grammar, but you know, we are talking about Austrians: what is a rule not to to do somewhere else is endorsed here. Kaffeepause? #nanonanet #wortschatz Posted by smoonr on Monday, April 13, 2015