A California man says his mother used to respond to his inquiries about what they were going to do by telling him playfully, “We’re going to Buxtehude!” Decades later, he wonders whether there really is a place called Buxtehude, or where in the world she got that phrase. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “We’re Going to Buxtehude”
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Terry from San Diego.
Hi, Terry. Welcome.
Hello, Terry.
Hi.
My question is about an expression my mom used to use.
When I was a child, when I asked my mom where we were going, she sometimes would answer me, bucks to Huda, and she said it in kind of a playful way.
My mom’s parents were fluent in German, so we thought Bokstehude was a German nonsense word or maybe someplace in Germany.
And then years later, we found out Bokstehude was not a place but a musician from the 17th century.
So my question is, was this a common regional expression in Germany? And what was the meaning behind it?
Yeah, Bokstehude was a Danish composer, right?
I believe so.
Yeah, yeah. So did you ever go visit a Danish composer?
No.
But you have to spell this for me, Buxdehuda.
Okay, it’s B-U-X-T-E-H-U-D-A.
All right, because the correct spelling is with an E at the end.
Oh, okay.
And you’re going to get a lot much, you’ll get better results with an E at the end.
The cool thing about this is that the Internet is an awesome resource, and if we Google this a little bit, we can find pretty quickly that there is a German expression, aus Buxdehuda, which means in English, if you translate it not literally but colloquially, colloquially, from the sticks, or from nowheresville, or in the United Kingdom, you might say, from the back of beyond. And so there is a German colloquial expression that uses that word in a way that’s very similar to the way your mother used it. What do you think about that?
Oh, well, that’s really interesting.
You’ll find a few variants in the spelling because some people have transcribed it differently.
But if you Google that, you’re going to come across it in just a few places, even in a couple of books about traveling in Germany that will talk about it.
Yeah, and actually it was the setting for a story by the Brothers Grimm.
I think it was the bunny and the hare or the hare and the turtle or something like that.
But I think a lot of Germans thought of it as a fanciful place when it actually is a place in Germany, and so that may have contributed to the expression.
So it is a place?
Yes, there is a city there.
So maybe you’re going there.
Maybe you’re still going there.
Okay. Well, thank you very much.
Okay, Terry. Thanks for calling.
Okay, bye.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
If you’ve got a question about this sort of thing, we’d love to hear stories about language that you learned from your parents and your grandparents, these kind of things that are passed along that are mysteries to you but might not have been mysteries to them.
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