“Empty heads make weary bones,” so don’t forget what you went looking for or you’ll wind up exhausted for no reason! This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Empty Heads” Hello, you have A Way with Words...
Restekuchen, or baked goods made with leftover ingredients, are popular in Germany, where their name translates as “scrap cake.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “German Scrap Cake” Hello, you have A Way with...
In parts of Wisconsin where the dialect is heavily influenced by German, it’s not unusual to hear phrases, like “Let’s go buy some bakery” for “let’s buy some baked goods,” and “from little on...
Mesmerize, meaning to attract strongly or hold spellbound, comes from Franz Mesmer, an 18th-century German doctor who promoted a theory he called animal magnetism. After completing a medical thesis in Vienna in 1766, Mesmer treated patients with...
Amanda Kruel from Knoxville, Tennessee, wrote to say that ten years after learning French, she was studying German and her mind would jump from German to French, instead of English, when she was at a loss for a word. This is known as faulty language...
If you say, “He stuck his spoon in the wall,” you mean that he died. In German, the person who’s deceased has passed along his spoon, and in Afrikaans, he’s jabbed his spoon into the ceiling. These expressions reflect the...