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Published: December 25th 2007
Our neighbors were over to help us remove the exhaust fan filters in the kitchen. We were talking “Germlish” and exchanging vocabulary that sounds similar in both languages such as swimming, when Romas mentioned, “schlepping.” Everyone looked at him like he was crazy!! They corrected him with the actual word for sleeping:
schlafen and we laughed. Romas asked what “schlepping” meant and after some thought, Dieter laughed and pointed to his shoe. He explained that it is a word used in a different dialect of German. We were hysterical and Romas remarked, “I guess that what happens when you learn German from a Chinese man!!”
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Mike Wascher
non-member comment
Many German dialects
My father, from a small German speaking village in Hungary, grew up speaking a Swabian dialect. My mother, from Sudetenland which was part of Czechoslovakia when she was born, spoke a more modern dialect. After being together for more than 30 years, and living in the US now, they'd occasionally have to use English to translate German in to German.