Bill calls from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to say his late wife, who was from South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, would jokingly tell him You talk like a sausage! What exactly did she mean? Although Germans have many expressions that include the word Wurst, or “sausage,” you’re more likely to be criticized for talking nonsense with the German expression that means “to talk cheese,” or Käse reden. There’s also a Dutch expression that roughly translates as “he talks like a sausage without the fat” or “He talks like a sausage that has escaped the fat.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “You Talk Like a Sausage — It Doesn’t Matter Where I Cut You Off”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Bill Schmalfeld calling from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
How are you doing today?
All right, how about you?
Wanted to get some information from you guys.
Although I’m living in South Carolina now, I’m originally a Midwesterner.
And my late wife was a South Milwaukee girl.
And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you guys what a rich place Southern Wisconsin is as far as regional dialects and colloquialisms and that sort of thing.
We were having a discussion, and apparently she disagreed with what I was saying.
And she said, Bill, you’re talking like a sausage.
And I said, I’m talking like a what?
She said, you’re talking like a sausage.
I had to state the obvious here.
Well, sausages can’t talk.
And she said, right.
And you’re making as much sense as a sausage would if it could talk.
I decided that was the point to just kind of let it go.
But after that, anytime somebody wasn’t making sense on TV or a politician, that guy is such a sausage.
So I’m wondering, is she the only person in the world who spoke like that?
Or have you guys heard that before?
Or am I still talking like a sausage?
Bill, this is so interesting that you bring this up and that she was from Milwaukee.
The south side of Milwaukee.
South side of Milwaukee.
Very important.
Right.
Because my first guess when I first heard this expression was that this has to be of German origin because Germans love to talk about wurst, you know, sausage.
But I can’t find a German expression that directly correlates with that.
If you’re talking nonsense in German, you’re talking a lot of cheese, kaiseriden.
And then there’s a Dutch saying that roughly translates as he talks like a sausage without the fat.
So I don’t know if there’s any Dutch in your family.
But I think that she had the right idea, that the English version simply reflects the fact that it’s absurd to think that a sausage could talk.
And maybe also that, you know, a sausage is stuffed full of all kinds of things.
Nonsense. I’m looking at a newspaper article from 1907 in the Mount Sterling Advocate from Kentucky, and somebody says, it is now considered highly improper to say he talks like a sausage.
The proper expression is, he orates in a manner similar to that which would be adopted by a wienerwurst, were it gifted with the faculty of speech.
I think that’s kind of where she was going with that, though.
But we know it’s older than that, Bill, just so you know.
Yeah. Yeah, it is older than that.
And some people play with the expression by saying, here’s another example from 1907.
I must close, but my talk is like a sausage. It is good wherever you cut it off.
So that’s one way to end a speech.
So, Bill, I think we might conclude that your wife was right.
I had to call a nationally syndicated radio show to get that.
Thanks, guys.
All right.
Take care, Bill.
Keep talking like a sausage.
You bet.
It’s working out for you.
I love your show.
You guys just roll on and do what you do.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Thanks, Bill.
Bye-bye.
Be well.
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My grandma from northern Illinois used to say this! Her parents came over from Germany in the 1890s, IIRC, and Grandma was born in the US in 1905. “You talk like a sausage” was an expression she used (in English) to imply that you weren’t making sense.