I see your Super Osama Kulfa Balls and raise you by two unfortunately named German choko-treats

And my German friends all laugh when they see the soda brandname “Spritz up”, which is of course a 7-up knockoff… “spritz ab”, which sounds identical, is the divided form of the verb “abspritzen” which means to ejaculate.

„Dick“ is of course the normal word for ‘fat’, cognate with ‘thick.’ Perhaps more weirdly, Irish Mist (‘Irish shit’ to the juvenile-minded German-speaker) did not see the need to rebrand for .de and .at, and still seem to be selling respectably.

Sorry, Henry, that’s a string bet.

The action stands at one Super Osama Kulfa Ball to go….

New post category?

Formerly known as “Dickmanns Negerküsse” (“Dickmann’s Negro kisses”).

Polcari Sweat isn’t just a ’70s thing. My girlfriend fell in love with it so much when she was living in Japan she gets it specially imported to the States. To my palette, that stuff is just as disgusting as it sounds.

Enjoyed in Australia with a slice of Coon cheese.

And what German child doesn’t love his or her Puky bike?

In Egypt I used to enjoy a chocolate bar called “Mr. Long,” which featured on the label (in English), “When you’re this long, they call you mister.”

Two words “ pork faggots“.

I owned (and put into a collage I sold) A box of Darky Toothpaste. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darlie

I love the new tag. It suggests posts wandering in out of Platonic space, and taking a wrong turn somewhere in the Internets.

I understand the English are still fond of spotted dick; some brands may be more dubious than others.

@ 9
It sure as hell was called “Darkie”– and i have the box (c. 1966) to prove it. The image is minstrel-show outrageous.

@23
My upbringing precludes my use of the “N” word, but my German friend assures me that they were called “N***** Kisses” by all and sundry.

Mr. Brain’s Faggots

Oh, and we can take it the other way around too, I think. There’s a Peruvian restaurant I know of by the name Las Conchitas Calientes. I’m not sure what that means to Peruvians, but where I learned my colloquial Spanish you don’t say that in polite company.

I discovered Darlie toothpaste while in Beijing last summer. This weekend I noticed that at the Asian market (named “Asia Market”) nearest to my house (in North Carolina), they had stocked a supply of it behind the register. I was rather surprised that it’s sold here.

Sadly no longer in production, and conspicuous in its Internet absence, many’s the happy hour I spent chewing those old SorBits back in the day.

@9, 23, 27: If Wikipedia is to be believed, my compatriots – much to my surprise – claim to be the inventors of the flødebolle – formerly known as negerkys. (Calling somebody en flødebolle amounts to a serious insult).

You can still eat jødekager (jew cakes), though, especially around Christmas. Recipe here.

While we’re at it: An ordinary white bread is known as a French bread (franskbrød) in Danish. In Sweden, I’ve seen those sold as Danish French (danskfranska). Nothing adolescent or scatological in this but perhaps worth an honourable mention.

Surely there is a worthwhile distinction to be made between non-native English-speakers hilarious cock-ups, the tolerance for ‘forbidden’ expressions in other languages, funny foreign words [oh, how sophisticated], and even funnier names, like ‘faggot’, for things that meant what they mean long before becoming infantile slang for something else?

Just saying guys, OK?

Danielle @27,

My upbringing precludes my use of the “N” word, but my German friend assures me that they were called “N***** Kisses” by all and sundry

The German Neger is, or at least till fairly recently was, a neutral descriptor corresponding not to the N-word but to the English “Negro”. The latter term is obsolete as a neutral descriptor in America these days and would be somewhat offensive (except, possibly, when used in jest by black people themselves), but is nowhere near the social H-bomb that is the N-word. Similarly, Neger is dying out in Germany as a neutral descriptor — today you’re far likelier to hear schwarz, which is simply “black”. Older people still sometimes say Neger, though, and I’ve never had the impression that they (or at least, the ones I’ve heard say it) meant it in any way as pejorative.

Subject to the observation supra, yes, everybody used to call these things Negerküsse. One still hears the word from time to time, but there’s an increasing consensus that it has had its day. I’m more familiar with Mohrenkopf (“Moor’s head”), which is not, come to think of it, much better; though its archaic quaintness somewhat dampens its force.

Whatever one calls them, though, the name is perhaps less disturbing than the practice (beloved of German schoolchildren) of smashing one between the halves of a bread roll and eating it as a sandwich.

Oh, and because turnabout is fair play, when English-speaking cold sufferers ask, “Vicks, please”, they should not wonder when their German-speaking companions smile.

The illustration looks like a shot from “Herman’s Head.”

39: Older people still sometimes say Neger, though, and I’ve never had the impression that they (or at least, the ones I’ve heard say it) meant it in any way as pejorative.

Probably not. But the German Wikipedia says: “Er ist heute wegen seiner rassistischen Konnotation weitgehend aus dem öffentlichen Sprachgebrauch verdrängt” i.e. “Today it [the word “Neger”] is largely avoided in public speech because of its racist connotations.”

gdr @45,

yes, that sounds about right. But you’ll still find a lot of older people who say it, and I’d be surprised if too many of them were trying to express what one expresses in English by using the N-word. (In fairness, I should note that there are also plenty of older Germans who, when told by a younger generation that Neger is a word one doesn’t use any more, stopped using it.)

Perhaps one can think of it like this: Neger is on its way out of acceptable German usage just as “negro” has left acceptable English usage. The process began later in German than in English, though, and isn’t yet quite complete. In English, I don’t think one can any longer use “negro” and claim in good faith that one is not trying to give offence. In German, people can still say Neger in good faith; but the people who do so will probably be dead in ten or twenty years.

I once had Gorilla Balls. They came in a can and were made of carob. This was decades ago.

Why? Did I miss the news stories that HMG has suddenly realised what the Americans are up to and, in indignant protest, pulled all troops from Iraq and refused any further collaboration with the Bush regime?

Oh, I wish, I so do. The Government is not the People [especially not when it’s “Her Majesty’s” – give it back, woman, you’ve had it 56 years, and you haven’t done anything useful with it yet!]

Meanwhile, I was actually thinking more of a little town called Geneva, but there you go…

Dickmann’s: As recommended by Ozzy Osbourne impersonators.

In English, I don’t think one can any longer use “negro” and claim in good faith that one is not trying to give offence.

So seeing as you just used “negro” in an English sentence, you are admitting your racism.

And now I just did. Damn it.

What do inverted commas have to do with it?

If I was to say Bush is an “idiot”, a “liar” and probably “insane”, that means he shouldn’t take offense at it?

Surely the point is that any word, no matter how offensive it can be in some contexts, can also be obviously clearly inoffensive in other contexts. It has nothing to do with what punctuation is used in the vicinity of the word.

When I was in New Zealand, I saw a dentist advertisement that promised, “Smashing Great Teeth” which sounded very strange to this American.

A brand of toilet paper found in Sweden: Krapp.
Soft and fluffy and an unfogged favorite.

I once went to a supermarket in Thailand called “Shit Supermarket”. I don’t think “shit” is a popular Thai word, so I’m not sure what they were going for there.

Many moons ago when I was shacked up with my now wife in Finland, my future father-in-law called asking after her. I had not seen her all afternoon but really stumbled over relating that over the phone. You see phonetically the Finnish word of “to see” is only one subtle vowel difference from “to know our daughter in the biblical sense.” After that I made it a policy to incorrectly say that I had not “looked” at her all afternoon, although the formulation was not correct it was safe and easily pronounced.

How about Mr. Pibb? The cans used to have stylized upper-case Bs thus rendering them MR. PIßß. Drink up!

67. Ukko, I had the same problem in Denmark with the Danish equivalent of “cozy.”

khr @73,

you’re right about ficken, but you’re wrong in thinking that’s a correction.

The German counterpart of “to wank” is wichsen (s/l “vixen”); wichs (s/l “Vicks”) would be the imperative singular.

And while I have no way of checking at the moment, I’m pretty sure you’re also wrong about “Wick’s”, and for that very reason. A German would pronounce that name the way an anglophone pronounces Vicks, and there we’d all be, giggling like schoolchildren. I’ll have a look next time I’m down at the Apotheke, but I think the stuff is sold here under the name “Wick”, which when pronounced à la boche is not going to conjure up any troubling images, save perhaps that of an androgynous young Viking. (If you’re familiar with 1970s German children’s television, you’ll know what I’m referring to.)

Germans reading, as opposed to anglophones saying, “Vicks” wouldn’t think it equivalent to “wank”, b/c they pronounce “V” as F. But that would create problems of its own.

mrs.tilton @74

I was not entirely correct: the German name of Vick’s health-care products is “Wick”, not “Wick’s”.

Here is their homepage:
http://www.wick.de/

Greetings
khr

If you can stride into an English-speaking country with a brand called, say, Smeg, it shows a swaggering confidence in the authentic quality of your product. I laugh at your Anglo-Saxon focus-groups! I am Volvo, hear me roar!