From the invaluable website Our World in Data, a map comparing the relative happiness of East and West Germany:
Who knew that the taciturn Schleswig-Holsteinians were the happiest Germans?
Month: June 2017
German Word of the Week: Hä?
Ahh, German women. What can you say about them? On average, they tend to be clean, orderly, practical, tallish, amply-chested, of normal weight, with shoulder-length straight hair, and less heavily-tattooed than their sisters to the North, at least for now. They also really like to attach tiny stuffed animals to the zippers on their backpacks.
There, was that inoffensive enough?
But enough of flimsy stereotypes and ignorant generalizations. One thing that German women, and only German women do, is say "hä?". The sound of this is about halfway between the English "heh" and "Hey!". It's an exclamation, said as a reaction to something the woman finds distasteful or implausible. It's universally accompanied by an unflattering grimace. Its meaning is basically: WTF?
But good writer not tell, he show.
So here's a hä? caught in the wild. This is 2 seconds from a recent commentary by German TV host Anja Reschke:
We'll ignore the substance, as we so often do on this blog. What's important is that Reschke has just summarized an argument she disagrees with, and inserted her very own hä? to show her disgust. Let's have a closer look at that expression:
The hä? is the German answer to American vocal fry — a speech pattern that is almost exclusively female. I've only ever seen men do it when imitating women.
The hä? seems to be unique to Germany. In fact, it's one of the first thing people notice about German women, once they get to know them well enough to see them drop a hä? Once, at a party, I had the chance to watch a French man react to his first hä?, which was delivered with gusto by a sozzled German co-ed.
He instinctively backed up and dragged me with him, saying: "Oh my God, she's about to throw up!"
German Joys 