Austrian for foreigners

The story is about the Basilisk, a mythical creature that is said to live in the sewers of Vienna. The Basilisk is a hybrid of a rooster and a lizard, with a deadly gaze that can kill anyone who looks into its eyes. The legend is that the Basilisk was born from an egg laid by a rooster and hatched by a toad. It was first sighted in the 13th century, when it terrorized the city and caused many deaths. One of the most famous incidents involving the Basilisk happened in 1212, when a baker named Hans Resel discovered the creature in his well. He tried to kill it with a spear, but the Basilisk's gaze turned him into stone. The people of Vienna were afraid and did not know how to get rid of the monster. They consulted a wise man, who told them that the only way to defeat the Basilisk was to make it see its own reflection. A young apprentice named Johann Rettensteiner volunteered to carry out the plan. He took a mirror and descended into the well, where he faced the Basilisk. He held up t

Some entertainment with chicken today. As always: Henderl is a smaller version of chicken. Hendl would be used where I am from. And Pipi is for chicks - small chicken, because that's the sound they are making. Enjoy! - And if you have a headache after, don't blame me!

Today something German: The great author Hermann Hesse. The line "Und jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne" ( "A magic dwells in each beginning ") is just so current. As I ran into many "Page not found" errors, I simply copy the URL and the text. Enjoy! http://www.hhesse.de/gedichte.php?load=stufen Stufen Wie jede Blüte welkt und jede Jugend Dem Alter weicht, blüht jede Lebensstufe, Blüht jede Weisheit auch und jede Tugend Zu ihrer Zeit und darf nicht ewig dauern. Es muß das Herz bei jedem Lebensrufe Bereit zum Abschied sein und Neubeginne, Um sich in Tapferkeit und ohne Trauern In andre, neue Bindungen zu geben. Und jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne, Der uns beschützt und der uns hilft, zu leben. Wir sollen heiter Raum um Raum durchschreiten, An keinem wie an einer Heimat hängen, Der Weltgeist will nicht fesseln uns und engen,

Today, the Viennese newspaper Die Presse published a quiz on the dialect used in Austria. If you read the blog and did the assignments, you should be easily able to complete the questions. Good luck! http://diepresse.com/home/bildung/5197542/Oesterreichisch-fuer-Fortgeschrittene_Was-ist-ein-Heckenklescher

Today we are talking about the great word "Surm". "Surm" is a noun and our friends over at Rind Vieh http://www.rindvieh.com/Dialekte/Oesterreich/Surm Say that this is a stupid human. However, they place it into the category of harmless words . Harmless words are for them abusive language for every day use. Interesting definition! "Surm" causes a lot of confusion, as in different people use it in different ways. We over here at "Austrian for foreigners" have the mission to make things clearer, or at least more fun. "Surm" is definitely one of these words that can provide that kind of entertainment. Simply looking to our authoritative friends over at Ostrarichi  , t hey have two variations: First they call Surm a meat heat: http://www.ostarrichi.org/wort-2245-Surm-Dummkopf.html Second they call Surm a confused person: http://www.ostarrichi.org/wort-15574-Surm-ein_verwirrter_Mensch.html User ant18ikes does the only thing t

As you know, Austrians are very friendly people. Part of being friendly is to have manners. Having manners includes that you greet. You also know, that Austrians are super-efficient. As such, they have multi-purpose words: You can use the same word in multiple situations. One of these words is Servus. The word comes from the Latin servant of slave. According to Wikipedia "The phrase is an ellipsis of a Latin expression servus humillimus, domine spectabilis , meaning "[your] most humble servant, [my] noble lord." No subservience is implied in its modern use, which has the force of "at your service." Servus is the origin of the word serf ." - But that sounds very complicated. Servus is great, because you can use it to say Hi when you meet somebody. You can use it when you cheers with somebody. You can use it to say Good Bye. Or to put it with the words of the late and great Peter Alexander:  Every city has their own  parting words; in Paris you

This is just an administrative message, in case you have not read the update on Google Friend connect here: http://buzz.blogger.com/2015/12/an-update-on-google-friend-connect.html Basically, Google Friend Connect should be a way to easily follow blogs. I cannot comment on this, as I never got it to work. https://www.google.com/friendconnect/admin/site/setup always came up with some strange error messages. In theory, once should have been able to able to log into Friend Connect with a number of accounts, including Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers and then use this Friend Connect account to follow blog content. Please, if somebody is using this tool from Google, could you please post in the comments section your experience with it? Update from the 19th of January As I did not get feedback in the comments, I will post the Google Help text here: Manage blogs you follow You can read the latest posts on your favorite blogs by adding them to the reading list on

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

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

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

I hope after todays posting you don’t say about it: “ Des is Holler! ” “ Holler ” is “ Hollunder ” in Hochdeutsch and “ elder ” or “ elderberry ” in English; the scientific name for the plant is “ Sambucus nigra”  - Now, please don’t tell anybody, that I am not specific! :) And here you have a pretty picture of an elderberry flower, once again powered by Wikipedia. I have fond childhood memories collecting the flowers with my mummy and producing the syrup together afterwards. I like elderberry flower juice; and as I am not the only one liking it, there is commercial supply for the syrup these days as well: In case the flowers are not cut off, the plant can build a fruit, which then looks like this: The elderberry plant is a strong plant, it is close to impossible to kill it once it grows and it grows close to everywhere

Did you see the news? Austria won the Eurovision Song Contest. Find all details on the website of the BBC . Last time Austria won the Sing Contest was 38 years ago with this great song: If you want to see past entries about this please go to that section of the blog .

Today we cut air. Say what? How do you cut air? Generally it depends on the consistency. The consistency on the components. If there are a lot of things that attribute to bad air quality, the Austrian is quite quick to say “ Die Luft is zum scheiden ”. But these things that attribute to bad air quality don’t need to be physical necessarily. They can also be verbally and/or nonverbally between two people. Then the outsider would say that “ zwischen die zwa kaunst die Luft schneiden ”. The saying is just that you can cut the air. It does not tell you how. In German you would say something like “ es herrscht dicke Luft ” which translates to “there is thick air”. The meaning is the same. In Austria you would use that phrase if three or more people are involved in changing the consistency of air to be able to cut it. Not only can you use that phrase in a figurative way, but also when actual physical things make the air so thick that you c

Another great phrase for "I don't care" in Austrian is " Des is ma Powidl ". First, you need to learn what Powidl is. Here you have an image of Powidldatschgerln: Sorry, if you are hungry now; I definitely am. Above seen delights are made out of tasty potato tough filled with jam from plums. I am sure they are calorie reduced. But then Garfield the comic cat stated that calories are there to be eaten and not to be counted… Now, we call jam in Austria Marmelade , we don't care about the European Union telling us that Marmelade must be made out of citrus fruits, we would rather exit the EU than renaming our Marmelade to the German Konfitüre . Also, we call our plums Zwetschgen . We would never even dream of calling

Summer is coming - or at least so we hope - therefore ice cream needs to be eaten. The right way to eat ice cream is with friends, outside on a hot day, in a Stanitzel like this: The great linguist Johann Siegmund Popowitsch  (sorry for the article in German, if you want to have details about him in English, please post exact questions below and I will answer them as good as I can) said that it originates from Slovenian: škarnicelj, Croatian: štanicl, respectively škarnicl Serbian: štanicla or Hungarian: stanicli . - I am sure he is right about this! Stanitzel is a great example for the difference between Austrian German and German spoken in Germany. If you order a Stanitzel in Germany, nobody will understand you. You need to order a Tüte in Germany. However, if you order a Tüte in Austria, you might get into troubles with law enforcement, as you are ordering illegal drugs! Homework: Look outside the window. If t

As promised before in this article, if you do your homework and post in the area provided below the posts, I will write an article about the phrase “I hob gern”. There were thousands of comments; thank you for doing your homework so proper! As you know by now by reading this blog, Austrians are fun people. You can only be a fun person if you like what you are doing. Unfortunately, if you like to much what you are doing, you might overdo from time to time - and this is exactly what happens sometimes. The phrase “I hob gern” means translates “I like”. A good utilization of the phrase is to tell a loved one “I hob’ Di gern” - “I like you”. As stated before, mostly used for love, but can also be used for a close friend or a family member. Another very prominent application of this phrase is “Du kaunst mi gern hobn!” - literally translated to “You can like me!” - But in no way this is a request for love! It is merely a request t

Today's word is as great as the English “ isn`t it ”. Something that you can easily append to every sentence. However, as we are taking Austrian, so the word must be better, mustn’t it? You can use Oida for everything and this repeatedly! A construct like “ Oida, wos wüst Oida ” is perfectly fine. Originally, Oida would translate to something like old man. However, in no way the person addressed needs to be old (I would even say the opposite is true) or male - remember we Austrians are politically very correct, especially colloquially. So words that imply that they are only male can be applied to females as well. A fine piece of art was produced by the guys from Trackshittaz who made a great song with the mind enriching title “Oida Taunz!” Please have a look at it yourself here:   By the way, the Trackshittaz were Austria’s nomination for the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 with the song " Woki mit deim Popo " (the title of the Song would translate to “Shake your

Thanks for checking on today's smart entry! We are talking about g’scheit, the short form of gescheit and according to dictionary the German word for smart or educated. However (did you realize that however is one of the most used words in this blog?), you can use g’scheit for more. For example you can tell a child: “Sits g’scheit!” In no way you are telling the child to sit like Auguste Rodin's The Thinker (French: Le Penseur). Just in case your forgot what I am talking about, please find an image here: No you are just telling the child to sit proper. Or you can tell somebody: “Des hot g’scheit weh dau!” Again this was not something that hurt and made you smarter in any ways, it just really, really hurt! As always, Austrians are positive, so they also say "Der is owa g'scheit deppat". They don't mean that somebody is stupid in a smart way, I think you can figure out yourself what is meant. The Homework for today: use positive language . If I

Today’s word I have actually seen on a playground in Munich: “Voll Karacho ins Vergnügen? Aber sicher! We regularly check our equipment; however, should a toy be faulty, please call our service line.” I have no idea where the word is coming from or what its word stem is. The meaning of voll Karacho is something is going with a high velocity or full force. Unfortunately, this great word seems to fade away. When I was a child, we used “ Na der is owa voi Karacho g’fohrn ” for every vehicle that went just above walking speed. It was very nice to see this word on a playground. Thank you, Munich! You made my day. Homework: Tell somebody about a fond childhood memory.