Let’s have some fun with this weird German language!
In this series of posts, I’ll show you how to make your German speaking colleagues laugh, with ONE simple sentence.
Tote Hose
(Dead pants)
Can pants actually die (sterben)?
Not really (nicht wirklich) :-)
But, what about the opposite (das Gegenteil)?
Imagine some really alive, swinging pants…
And now, imagine some “dead pants”, some that are really dead boring (totlangweilig)…
So what we actually mean by the expression
- Tote Hose!
is
- Nothing going on!
- It’s dead boring!
Got it!?
So here’s your action step:
Imagine it’s Friday evening and your German-speaking colleague Karl-Uwe invites you to this new cool salsa bar in his town (in seiner Stadt).
Once you enter the bar, you start looking for other people, but… no one is there (keiner ist da)…
Then, look at Karl-Uwe and and say to him (sag him):
- Hier ist tote Hose! Lass uns nach Hause gehen. (Dead boring here! Let’s go home.)
And this is what it sounds like:
Then, tell me in the comments below how he reacted :-)