Speak German II

Well, after part I naturally follows part II now, right?

Some more weird stuff. About 60% of German people - they state in the book - don´t speak English.
Ok. Define German. Many, many of the kids of the "guest workers" in the third generation don´t speak proper German, let alone English, yet they are born here and hence are German.
Add up my parent´s generation - it was WW II. They were stuck in the bunker, not learning much at all.
They say of the 40% who state they speak proper English, many obviously exaggerated.

There are... hmmm. pretended English words we "create", like Twen for people in their twenties.

Funny also... how people from US and GB get a flat so differently!
Guess I´d understand the right thing each time (tyre/condo), but I never thought of it. Or do both use both? I think so, huh?

This book teaches me also that not everything we adapted is totally stupid but some come with a history - what a relief! ;-)

The US Army had walkie-talkies, right? After 1945 they had smaller ones, not so heavy and they called them handy-talkies - this is why we call our cell-/ or mobile-phones "Handy".
I mentioned this before and just shook my head about us saying Smoking for tuxedo.
In GB the English Man wore a smoking-jackett when going to the smoking room. And this is why we still say Smoking for tuxedo .
So if you use a dictionary in "reverse" and give the German Smoking, you get the translation dinner-suit, -jacket, or tuxedo.

How easy it is to "Get Lost In Translation", huh? ;-)

What do you think?