Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Ädoof, Nawatschn, Natschos, Papa Ratzi



Adobe architecture is an intriguing native American Southwestern architectural solution. Like with so many native American words, its pronunciation is slightly different from what we'd expect.
Adobe ist not pronounced
[*a*-dobe ~ Ädoub] but [a-d*oe*be-ee ~ Ädobi]
with emphasis on the *o*
.
Ädoof, because by now the semi-monopolistic, patent-happy software firm who took the name ADOBE from native Americans without asking - I presume!? - has been around long enough in Germany, for B5 radio announcers to know this.

Photograph: Ulrich Egert

Nawatschn: Navajos are not Nawatschos, for this the announcer at the FAZ radio in Munich-Harlaching deserves a Watschn,nay a Nawatschn, except the station no longer exists.

"Nachos"- dear, dear self-assured naggers at movie houses and trendy digs - are eatable warez which consist of a load of warmed corn tortilla chips *with* melted cheese poured on top of them. "Nachos with cheese", as they are so pervasively and haughtily presented in the German language realm, are "a load of corn tortilla chips with melted cheese on top of it, with cheese." This is the duh-equivalent of "Der Wiener Schnitzel", a hot-dog chain in America.
I won't even get into it what the Anglo-Saxons mean, when they say "chips". It's boring.

Cute, if pointless, is the British press' coinage of "Papa Ratzi", for the Papa is said to be shy; less cute is that of "Papal Rottweiler".

END of Recovered from Translation
Gisela Strauss
Tech Translations, Website Localizations -EN/DE
in the Greater Munich area and virtually, everywhere.

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