#oneaday Day 577: Einen, Eine, Ein

German (I wish my iPhone would stop autocorrecting that to “Herman”) is a funny language. I kind of like it, though as is often said, it’s not a very romantic language. You can’t whisper sweet nothings in German very well (though everything you say sounds like you’re talking dirty) and it’s full of harsh sounds.

My knowledge of the language is fairly limited, though I could probably get by if the average German didn’t already speak English as well as their own language. There is, however, one small problem, and that is the rather important matter of nouns.

It’s all very well being able to say “Excuse me please, I would like…” but what good is that phrase if you don’t have a word to put on the end of it? German is quite a literal language in many senses, in that a lot of nouns describe the thing they are quite well — the word for “nurse”, for example, is “Krankenschwester”, which literally means “ill sister”. The words for “entrance” and “exit” make it clear if they’re for walking or driving — “Eingang” and “Ausgang” versus “Einfahrt” and “Ausfahrt”. The German word for diarrhoea — “Durchfall” — literally means “fall through”, and the word for constipation — “Verstopfung” — seems very apt.

But it’s little things that are easy to forget. Desire a can of Coke rather than a bottle and how do you indicate that without pointing and grunting? (hint: with the word “Dose”, as I suddenly remembered out of nowhere today) How do you ask for your Currywurst (which, incidentally, are delicious) to be provided “to go” rather than to eat in? How do you indicate that you’d prefer a T-shirt to a hoody?

That’s what they need to put in travellers’ guides: a big list of handy nouns. Then even the most inept linguist would be able to get by just by bellowing “Schweinfleisch! Soße! Erdbeer! Rückgeld!” at members of the service industry. Though exactly what they’d end up with after asking for that particular combination of things is anyone’s guess.