Der Geist Mein Geber…
( With serious aplogies to Dr. Stu Savory and German speaking people everywhere! I obviously have no comprehension of the German language and am plagued with gehim der furz. )
English adoption of the German word zeitgeist is widespread. We see and hear it almost on a daily basis. Some people can even tell you that it roughly translates to spirit of the time or mood of an era. So when I stumbled on this one, I knew it was German, knew it had something to do with time (zeit), but having never seen or heard it, a trip to dictionary.com found this:
zeit·ge·ber noun
Pronunciation: ‘tsIt-”gA-b&r, ‘zIt-An environmental agent or event (as the occurrence of light or dark) that provides the stimulus setting or resetting a biological clock of an organism.
Look at that pronunciation - could pass for a dialect of Klingon!
Try working that into a conversation without sounding like a smart-ass…
4 Comments so far
What you are trying to say with “gehim der furz”
does have a real word for it.
It is “Matschhirn”, literally ’scrambled brain’
Pronounced ‘Mah Churn’
Stu
PS: There are vowelless Klingon words in English too, c.f “crwth”
One of the simple-minded translation dictionaries spit out “gehim der furz” when I entered “brain farts”. A couple of others gave different results, so I used my finest scientific training and skills to choose the one that sounded best.
I never heard of “crwth” and thought maybe you had a great word there for Scrabble. Alas, the dictionary says it is Welsh, not English, and therefore not valid for Scrabble. And the Welsh certainly do have their own version of Klingon!
That would be Gehirn Furz. (ge-HEARn foorts)
Zeitgeber just means “time giver.”
“Der Geist Mein Geber” sounds like the title of a Lutheran church hymn. It means “the spirit my giver.”
I’d thought CRWTH was English, after all, all Welsch words have to stadt with LLLL surely?
See http://www.savory.de/zug0.jpg