Wednesday, 9 July 2014

See you .... whenever

So there are common phrases in English for departing a conversation. Things like:

See you soon.

Be right back.

Talk to you later.

Later.

...and so on.

So what are the  ways to say these sorts of things in German?

Lets start with simple a "bye".

Informally this would be Tschüss. Formally this would be Auf Wiedersehen. In Auf Wiedersehen the "sehen" part means see. So the phrase does mean to see you ... sometime. Literally is means
"to see again".

wieder-sehen : again - see


But there are a series of "see you ... whenever" sayings that are also important. They all start with the word "bis".

For example "bis bald" which means "bye for now". The word "bis"  can be means to be "until" or "up to". It depends on the context and the time frame meaning of what is said with it. Here are some other examples:

"bis später" - see you "soon" ; expected to be within some hours , usually same day


"bis gleich" = soon, but expected to be within minutes from no, this is similar to "be right back"

"bis bald" = "soon" ; in the yet undetermined future, usually several hours/days/weeks 

Tuesday, 1 July 2014

"Is mir völlig wurschrt"

I don't care in the least. This is how I am going to start my first post on learning German. I have started a few times and I am planning to continue, but one way to help in learning is to log what I am learning.

So the subject of this post, "Is mir völlig wurschrt" comes from the most popular YouTube video in Germany today at:

Per Mertesacker ZDF-Interview Deutschland Algerien 2:1, Fußball WM 2014: Was wollen Sie von mir?

The video is of an interview of Per Mertesacker, centre back for Arsenal and the German National Team after Die Mannschafts ("The Team") dismal performance against Algeria in the 2014 FIFA world cup in Brazil. After the game he was interviewed which was captured in the above YouTube link.

In this interview he said:  "Is mir völlig wurschrt" in response to the initial question.

This is common for "I don't care in the least". It's when someone asks you a stupid question, to which's answer you don't care at all.

More formal German would be: "Ist mir volkommen egal "

Mertesacker was annoyed with the question and only cared about the game result.