<3

GNU TERRY PRATCHETT

GNU Terry Pratchett

this sentence is 210 years old today <3

And still true 🙄

Absolutely. Too true

who else remembers the entire Doctor Who crew dancing to 500 miles with David Tennant because it’s the purest thing you’ll see today

Man, remember when people in TV had fun

Kleiner Mann - was nun?

Wie schön ist das denn bitte?

(these are all real words btw)

x

I present to you: the German language

Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind?

Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind

Der König Erl

Wer reitet so spät durch Wind und Nacht?

Es ist der Vater, es ist halb acht.

Im Arme den Knaben er wohl hält,

Er hält es warm, denn es ist erkält't.

Halb drei, halb fünf, es wird schon hell,

Noch immer reiter der Vater schnell.

Erreicht den Hof mit Müh' und Not,

Der Knabe lebt, das Pferd ist tot.

Heinz Erhardt (1909 – 1979), German comedian, musician, composer, entertainer, actor, and poet

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (2005) + improvised moments

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

• A question mark walks into a bar?

• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."

• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

• A synonym strolls into a tavern.

• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

• A dyslexic walks into a bra.

• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony

- Jill Thomas Doyle

A zeugma walked into a bar, my life and trouble.

Goethe-Institut did a web series a while back aimed at new arrivals in Germany and I like how it make sure to teach people that a lot of Germans are rude af

like, this is a genuine scene from an ep:

#Ok but for a second there I was like #this is a bit exaggerated #it’s not that rude to say hi to strangers #just a bit weird #but then I realised #the rude person is probably meant to be the one ignoring the ‘hi' 

Well she’s obviously doing it wrong. You got to mumble “Guten Tag” in no one’s actual direction upon entering the waiting room. Then you don’t speak a word (you gotta grab a magazine though, because if you’re on your mobile people will find that asocial) until the doctor calls you and when you get back to retrieve your jacket you mumble “Auf Wiedersehen”.

If you say “Guten Tag” while sitting down it’s either because you’re passive-aggressively shaming the person you’re talking to for not saying “Guten Tag” (which is of course highly respectable, but weird if they did say it) or worse: 

You’re trying to make small-talk.

See also: when entering a crowded bus, tram, subway or train, you do not say a single word. You look for an empty bench. If there are none, you will have a neighbour. You stop at an empty spot and mumble something like “tschulli-ng” or “s-nch-frei?” to the person occupying the other spot on the bench. You nod in an upward direction. They reply a mumbled “türlich” while vaguely looking somewhere near your face and moving their bag if neccessary. You sit down, nod gratefully, and keep your mouth shut for the rest of the ride. Neither of you wanted this. You wanted freedom. Don’t bother each other.

If an entire bench in front of you becomes available at the next stop, though, it is not the polite thing to free your neighbour and yourself up. No, you stay right where you are. The silent stranger next to you is your silent stranger now.

Welcome to Germany. This is how we express love.

None of these people are joking.

And if you’re the one sitting at the window and you want to get off at the next stop, you begin to loudly rustle with your bag whatever, because that way you can signal the other person that you need them to get up without having to speak to them.

Like man I get scared of interacting with people but this just takes it to a whole new level.

and today i learn that i socialize in public like a german

It’s nice to be reminded sometimes that Dutch culture and German culture were one and the same for a really long time and in many ways they still are XD

Though here the other person probably wouldn’t actually shove a literal magazine in front of their face. They’d probably say “hello” back in a super confused voice while doing their level best to nonverbally express their confusion that you tried to interact with them in the first place and please don’t do that again.

I’m having trouble deciding between moving to Germany immediately or never going there ever.

Visit Sweden, spend at least 30 minutes in public there, then move to Germany and soak up the friendly social atmosphere.

(seriously. I’m Dutch, autistic, and an introvert and I sighed with relief when I returned from a trip to Sweden because thank fuck, here there are actual people engaging in verbal communication in public spaces. The constant quiet in Sweden freaked me out. Me. Who normally has to fight urges not to commit bloody murder on public transport because why do people have to make noise all the time. I was relieved to be overhearing 3 conversations and 2 phone calls at once because at least it was better than deadly silence. In Sweden the above image series would’ve ended not with a single raised magazine but with an entire waiting room full of people staring at the person who spoke in public like they’d personally kicked open the gates of hell and unleashed the armies of chaos.)

Anyway my point is Germans are actually quite friendly, they just don’t like small talk. Same mostly goes for Dutch people. And if anyone tries to convince you that we’re standoffish, visit our northern neighbors and bear witness.

This is fascinating. They need to teach this shit to American travelers, because this is probably why Europeans find Americans so obnoxious and we find them rude. The cultures could not be more different.

Entirely true. I remember seeing a post on Quora that was like “Europeans, what do you not understand about Americans” and one of the answers was a German saying we’re creepy because we smile all the time. Meanwhile I absolutely could not fathom inflicting my RBF on a stranger.

Austrian here. Its the same in the big cities BUT if you go to the country side and dare to walk somewhere everyone and their dog is greeting you and as a city kid its so unsettling

Also, there are moments when Germans will start to socialise with strangers on a train and it’s when there are issues. We’re half an hour late? We’re standing around in the middle of nowhere, no clue when we’re moving again? Some dumb apology from the staff? Everyone will start making sarcastic remarks about how great Deutsche Bahn ist and sometimes even generally start to chat.

OMG, I haven‘t laughed hard like this in such a long time. How can something be so right and so wrong at the same time?