From what I looked up it means something like dude or mate. It’s also used when expressing suprise? If native speaker has better insight I’d appreciate it.
The English “Yo” is a really good translation. You can use it to express surprise (“Alter! Wtf!” - “Yo! Wtf!”) or to address someone (“Alter, was geht?” - “Yo, whats up?”).
“Yo” really is the best translation I can think of.
I took German in High school… 25+ years ago. Never got fluent and never used it after that. Now I see the memes and find myself picking out words I remember to find the funny.
A more direct or literal translation of Geschicklichkeit would probably be something like or skilledness or skillfulness. Other words with the -lichkeit ending that might be more familiar are Freundlichkeit (friendliness) and Brüderlichkeit (brotherliness)
(So there are actually two endings here. -lich is cognate to english -ly, though -ed can also work. -keit is equivalent to english -ness)
The base word, Geschick, translates to ‘skill’ on its own. The difference is that it strictly (edit: apparently not) behaves as a countable noun, as in you can have a number of skills, just as you can have a number of friends, of brothers, etc. It doesn’t work when describing a quality or property someone may possess, so that’s where the suffixes come in.
It’s the difference between “there’s a lot of friend here” and “there’s a lot of friendliness here”
In English, skill is an exception to a rule. It can be used in both ways, without the help of suffixes. German, on the other hand, doesn’t generally make that kind of exception in the interest of maintaining consistency. edit: seems this exception is actually a similarity between English and German, though perhaps German slightly prefers the longer form in cases such as this one.
The Germans are probably going to roast me for this but that’s my understanding from just under 2 years of learning and a brief series of googles.
I’m German and I just use whatever sounds better and “Geschicksproblem” would sound even more like you just had a stroke. Also it’s kinda part of the meme to make words as long as possible because it’s funny.
Geschick and Geschicklichkeit are pretty much synonymous. Maybe Geschicklichkeit suggests a bit more that the natural skill is enhanced by technique and training, but that’s it.
Yes, ich_iel mostly just takes English words and translates them 1:1. Doesn’t actually make sense in German, but that’s part of the joke. If you translate it back to English 1:1 again you should understand it perfectly.
As a native German speaker I often had to translate ich_iel memes 1:1 to English first to understand them myself. Its basically English but in German.
Add comment