Usually I write about all the fun caused by the German language. But one thing that is even harder to remember than all these crazy German vocabulary (words like Bannmeile or Nacktscanner!) are passwords.

Don’t you have the same problem? Sitting in front of your computer, wanting to log into a website and you can’t figure out your password? OK, it’s easy for websites that you use on a daily basis, but what about ebay? I don’t buy and sell things every day, and I always forget my password.

I’ve tried everything: Writing it down (can’t find the piece of paper anymore), memorizing it, making up a story around the password (forgot the story)… Maybe I should think about a tattoo.

Anyway, maybe it’s just me who has a limited capacity of remembering passwords (because my brain is full of German vocabulary). So here’s the solution: Check out the website allyve.com. It’s like a Vokabelkasten for your passwords. Using allyve as a starting page, you have an overview of all your favorite websites in one shot, you don’t have to log in or log out all the time, and you can use your entire brain capacity to remember German vocabulary instead of passwords. Cool stuff, I would say!

Ever wondered which is the correct one to use when? I think this simple example illustrates the use in a brilliant way. For a more detailed explanation, however, I suggest you read an article on Spiegel, I won’t be writing again with my own words what has already been written in an exhausting and yet comprehensive manner by an expert.

I knew it was too good to be true! Such a wonderful word that sounds very formal must have had a special history. And as a matter of fact, it has. The moment I saw it today, it became my personal favorite of a day (I’ve heard it many times before, but sometimes it’s only when you see it written that a word puts a spell on you) and I automatically put into a drawer with all those formal, stuck-up, long, complicated and sophisticated words. And then I googled it. What a surprise it was to discover that in fact originally it is a humorous neologism coined by German students. It has been used a lot, however, therefore making many people believe it was a ‘real word’. Most dictionaries still mark it as colloquial but the fact that such a creation made it to the respectful dictionaries is already impressive. How I love to get to like one word and then discover a whole story behind it! Long live German!

It’s almost weekend and I would like to share with you a funny thing I have come across recently. I’ve always found it a bit awkward to watch the mannequins ‘changing’ in the shop windows. H&M now found a brilliant and hilarious way to prevent the passers-by from staring – they covered the the shop window and the notices on the covers say:

Sometimes even mannequins don’t know what to wear.

Please do not look!
Our mannequins are getting changed just now.

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Although I love Hamburg more than any other city in the world, at times I wish I was somewhere else instead. This time is now. It’s called… right, that’s the thing! It has so many names: Karneval, Fasching, Fastnacht… When I watch those serious, often elderly people going crazy on the streets I wish I was in Cologne or Mainz. I’m not even really sure that would be fun for me but I’ve never been so I don’t know and I wanna find out and watch how the Germans sich gehen lassen (lose their self-control). And the picture is my collage on the funniest names for the last day of carnival I found: Śledzik (little herring) in Polish and Veilchendienstag (Violet Tuesday) in Mönchengladbach. The herring should remind people that the party’s over at midnight and it’s soon time to shrive!

I was watching a late night show on German TV the other night and the host was interviewing a famous German actor about his new projects. It was then that he used a verb greenlighten, or to be even more precise a beautiful German past tense form of the verb: gegreenlightet. I am a huge fan of ingenious neologisms but does the German language have to absorb English words only? English words most of which have neat German equivalents. It’s always the same scheme: we take an English word that sounds ‘fancy’ and germanize it by adding appropriate endings. Boring!!

I know it’s February already and speaking of rankings that sum up the year 2009 is a bit outdated but I’m still quite amazed at the choice of words made by the German young people. German “youth” word of the previous year is ‘hartzen’ which means ‘to hang around doing nothing (usually due to being unemployed)’. The funny thing about it is that when I asked my German friends about it (they’re not teenagers any longer but you wouldn’t actually call them old yet) they didn’t really know what it meant. Most of them associated this word with ‘kiffen’ so ‘to smoke weed’. When I told what it’s supposed to mean, they accepted it, I mean it’s logical, the word comes from the unemployment benefit called ‘Hartz IV’ (after an adviser to former German chancellor). So the meaning is easy to guess if you have a few options or if you deduce logically, but is it really used?? That’s the thing with such contests – the language of the young people seems to be too regional, too quick-lived, and too ephemeral to  be subject of such rankings. Well, I just have to say that I find this particular word ‘hartzen’ especially funny because it reminds me of a somewhat entertaining Polish verb ‘harcować’ which means ‘to caper (about), to frolic (about)’.

I watched television for the first time in a while the other day and noticed that, with a hiss and a roar and a dash of David Beckham, the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games had finished, just as quickly as they had begun.  This always seems to happen with the Olympics, don’t you think?  Four years of construction of Bird’s Nests, selection of mascots, international political controversy, promotion, preparation and excitement and then – in the blink of an eye – it’s over.

Perhaps it felt that way for the poor old German athletes who aimed for 50 gold medals and came away with 16  – although I think saying “Crisis is putting it mildly” (as the Süddeutsche Zeitung did) is a bit harsh.   If they want to feel good about themselves, they can always compare themselves to Neuseeland, with our 3  (count them, three) glorious golds.

At least some of the downtrodden Sportlers could enrich themselves linguistically in the ‘Chinese Learning Area’ of the Athlete’s Village, or culinarily with traditional Chinese street food.  How do you say ’seahorse-on-stick’?