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Reply | Germany appreciation thread
at 09:58 4 Jul 2021
After 30 years of football-watching together, Frau GloryHunter has astonishingly waited for this week to reveal to me that Red Card in vernacular German is Arschkarte. Yes, it translates exactly as it sounds. Allegedly, when yellow and red cards were first introduced in the 1970s, most German homes still had black-and-white TVs. So viewers couldn't tell which colour card the ref was brandishing. So the referees adopted the practice of keeping the yellow card in their shirt pocket, and the red card in their back shorts pocket. So the ref reaching behind him for the Arschkarte was bad news for a player. "Er hat die Arschkarte gezogen" - lit. "He pulled the ass card" has become standard German slang for having a bit of bad luck, or drawing the short straw, or getting sacked. But I'm not sure that every German is aware of its origins. |
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Reply | Germany appreciation thread
at 22:58 2 Jul 2021
Suffolk-based QPR fan here. I come in peace. And I have a German wife.
Agree that the German footy experience is something else. £8 to get in, Standing on terraces if you want. Drinking beer from proper sturdy plastic glasses (one Euro deposit, that you get back at the end). And a bloke with a beer tanker on his back walking around topping you up during the game.
Regarding the der, die & das thing - masculine, feminine & neuter - after 20 years, I finally asked Frau GloryHunter how all the Turkish shopkeepers in Berlin seemed to cope with this so much better than I could. That's easy, she said, they just say d' before every noun. So that's what I do now. She says I sound like a Turk speaking German, and I say that's good enough for me! |
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