Christmas 2020

[Starlight]

8 hours ago, Prisca said:

I'm getting hungry now.

Same!

 

I made another sort of Christmas cookies together with my mum. @Priscaalready posted them, they're really traditional here.

 

 

[TinyLove_CJ]

1 hour ago, Starlight said:

they're really traditional here.

 

 

These wouldn't last long in my house! 

[giraffeandy]

3 hours ago, Starlight said:

Same!

 

I made another sort of Christmas cookies together with my mum. @Priscaalready posted them, they're really traditional here.

 

 

 

Are these Linzer cookies? We make them too here. 

[holdingyourdrink]

Ohh those cookies! At our house we are preparing to bake the coming days. A new cookie every day. We need to find some kind of activity during lockdown 😆 and pack those quarantine pounds 🙈

[Paoletta]

9 hours ago, Starlight said:

Same!

 

I made another sort of Christmas cookies together with my mum. @Priscaalready posted them, they're really traditional here.

 

 

Same... @Prisca i make a Christmas tree... with my mum... 

[Paoletta]

i wait to see what Mika make for the day of Christmas...  I am waiting for your video of greetings from you .. it warms my heart when you wish us well or post something from your daily life ... 

Edited December 14, 2020 by Paoletta

[TinyLove_CJ]

I'm not the biggest fan of Christmas songs, unless their by my favourite artists, Mika being one of them of course! Also David Bowie, Rick Astley, Kylie and Robbie Williams. However I absolutely love comedy Christmas songs that really are laugh out loud funny! So here are a few of my favourites:

 

Dominic the Donkey, it's one of those songs that gets more annoying the more I listen and yet I can't stop playing it on repeat 😅. 

 

 

All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth - old but gold! 

 

 

 

Grandma got Run Over by a Reindeer - I first heard this on the car radio after me and my Mum had gone Christmas shopping, we were in a bad mood because we were lost but as soon as this song came on we were full on crying with laughter all the way home (even if we did take one too many wrong turns).

 

 

I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas - Again this seemed to come on the radio station I was listening to on my phone just at the right time when I was having a horrible day. I was on a bus at the time and had a few other passengers giving me strange looks because I couldn't stop laughing. This is my Mum's favourite Christmas song because she actually would like a hippo for Christmas! 

 

 

 

 

And finally, I wouldn't call this a comedy song (or a Christmas song actually) but again it came on the radio recently and it did make me laugh. Some of you may recognise D Double E from a well known Christmas Ikea advert from 2019!

 

 

I would love to hear any other Christmas comedy songs you guys know of (ones in other languages too), please share them, we all need a good laugh I think to see 2020 off! 😂

[Starlight]

9 hours ago, TinyLove_CJ said:

These wouldn't last long in my house! 

 

Be sure, they don't!

 

8 hours ago, giraffeandy said:

 

Are these Linzer cookies? We make them too here. 

 

I guess they're called like that, too. In my region they're called Spitzbuben.

[Prisca]

4 hours ago, TinyLove_CJ said:

I would love to hear any other Christmas comedy songs you guys know of (ones in other languages too), please share them, we all need a good laugh I think to see 2020 off! 😂

I don't have a funny Christmas song that comes into mind right now, but a funny New Year's Eve sketch that is English but seems to be more famous in the German speaking countries (has been shown every year for many years now) and other countries, so my a little bit strange question, do you know it or not?

 

 

[Prisca]

The ninth German word:

 

Mitternachtsmesse = midnight mass

 

Mitternacht = midnight

Messe = mass

 

[silver]

23 minutes ago, Prisca said:

I don't have a funny Christmas song that comes into mind right now, but a funny New Year's Eve sketch that is English but seems to be more famous in the German speaking countries (has been shown every year for many years now) and other countries, so my a little bit strange question, do you know it or not?

 

 

 

We've been told about this before - I have to say that we British are a bit mystified as to why this is so popular

[TinyLove_CJ]

53 minutes ago, Prisca said:

A funny New Year's Eve sketch that is English but seems to be more famous in the German speaking countries (has been shown every year for many years now) and other countries, so my a little bit strange question, do you know it or not? 

I've just watched this now, I've never seen it before. For me I don't really get it, I guess it's just not my kind of comedy. So I have no idea why it's popular in other countries. I'm left confused by the fact that an old lady seems to be able to eat a 4 course meal in 10 minutes! I'd still be on the soup 😅

[Prisca]

2 minutes ago, TinyLove_CJ said:

I've just watched this now, I've never seen it before. For me I don't really get it, I guess it's just not my kind of comedy. So I have no idea why it's popular in other countries. I'm left confused by the fact that an old lady seems to be able to eat a 4 course meal in 10 minutes! I'd still be on the soup 😅

There is an introduction in German that I left away, so that's probably why you don't get everything. The video is around ten minutes (without introduction), but the dinner lasts longer. It's certanly a special humour, what makes me laugh is that he trips over the tiger skin, again and again.

 

Plot

Heinz Piper introduces the story as the conferencier: Miss Sophie (Warden) is celebrating her 90th birthday. As every year, she has invited her four closest friends to a birthday dinner: Sir Toby, Admiral von Schneider, Mr. Pomeroy, and Mr. Winterbottom. However, she has outlived all of them, requiring her butler James (Frinton) to impersonate the guests.

James not only must serve Miss Sophie the four courses – mulligatawny soup, North Sea haddock, chicken and fruit – but also serve the four imaginary guests the drinks chosen by Miss Sophie (sherry, white wine, champagne and port wine for the respective courses), slip into the role of each guest and drink a toast to Miss Sophie. As a result, James becomes increasingly intoxicated and loses his dignified demeanour; he pours the drinks with reckless abandon, breaks into "Sugartime" by the McGuire Sisters for a brief moment, and at one point accidentally drinks from a flower vase, which he acknowledges with a grimace and exclaims "Huh, I'll kill that cat!"

There are several running gags in the piece:

• James frequently trips over the head of a laid tiger skin; as an additional punchline, he walks past it in one instance to his own astonishment, but then stumbles over it on the way back. In another instance, he gracefully steps over it, and in the final instance, the tipsy James leaps over the head.
• Sir Toby would like to have poured a small extra amount of each drink, and James complies with the request with initial politeness and then increasing sarcasm.
• Miss Sophie expects James, as Admiral von Schneider, to knock his heels together with the exclamation "Skål!" (Swedish for "Cheers!"). Because this action proves painful, he asks each time whether he really has to, but obliges upon Miss Sophie's insistence. The gag is broken as an additional punchline when the drunk James' feet miss each other, causing him to stumble.
• Before each course, James asks and gradually babbles "The same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?"; Miss Sophie replies "The same procedure as every year, James".

Finally, Miss Sophie concludes the evening with an inviting "I think I'll retire", to which James and Sophie repeat their exchange concerning the "same procedure". James takes a deep breath, turns to the audience with a sly grin and says "Well, I'll do my very best" before the pair retreat to the upper rooms.

[Prisca]

22 hours ago, TinyLove_CJ said:

For me I don't really get it, I guess it's just not my kind of comedy.

The funniest thing about this sketch is probably the fact that the makers sell it to German speaking people (and others) as British homour but the British actually don't think it's funny.

 

I wouldn't also not pay something to go and watch this in a cinema.

[Prisca]

The tenth German word:

 

Krippe = crib

 

[Prisca]

The eleventh German word:

 

Weihnachtsfeiertage = Christmas season

 

Weihnachten = Christmas

Feier = celebration 

Tage = days

 

I guess it makes sense that we normally talk in German about "Christmas days" and not "Christmas season" as we talk about 3 and not 12 days.

 

 

 

Edited December 16, 2020 by Prisca

[silver]

There are a lot of these compound words in German, aren't there?  The old word here for the Christmas season would have been Christmastide, which is a bit shorter that Weihnachtsfeiertage.

 

Tide was originally "tid", a time or period, related to Dutch "tijd" (and German "zeit" come from the same root).

[Prisca]

2 minutes ago, silver said:

There are a lot of these compound words in German, aren't there? 

Yes, is especially true for the nouns, you can stick a lot together that saves space.

[krysady]

18 hours ago, silver said:

There are a lot of these compound words in German, aren't there?

 

[Prisca]

2 hours ago, krysady said:

 

 

20 hours ago, Prisca said:

Yes, is especially true for the nouns, you can stick a lot together that saves space.

I guess I didn't say too much, when I said that it's possible to stick a lot together.

[Prisca]

The twelfth German word:

 

Dreikönigstag = Epiphany

 

drei = three

König = king

Tag = day

 

Again can you learn with one word three words, isn't studying German fun.

 

With all difficulties that might be there to study German, there is an advantage: German has much fewer words (general language) than e.g. English because of the compound words, you just stick everything together. There is also the word "Epiphanie" but this word is very, very formal. That is a fact that causes German speaking people problems when they learn another language because that language has probably words they can't derive from a word in German.

 

(e.g. pneumonia is "Lungenentzündung" in German. Lunge = lung, Entzündung = inflammation. There does exit the word "Pneumonie" but only people in the healthcare use that, sorry off-topic. )

 

 

[silver]

Even more off-topic:

 

Our word king is related to German König via Anglo-Saxon.  But because English is a magpie language, we also borrowed Roi from Norman French and Rex from Latin.  Each produced an adjective meaning like a king

 

King - kingly

Roi - royal

Rex - regal

 

And back on topic:

 

On December 21st there will be a Saturn-Jupiter conjunction (close alignment) which may appear to the human eye as a single very bright light  and is thought by some to have been the star seen by the Three Kings.

[Prisca]

On 12/17/2020 at 10:42 PM, silver said:

Even more off-topic:

 

Our word king is related to German König via Anglo-Saxon.  But because English is a magpie language, we also borrowed Roi from Norman French and Rex from Latin.  Each produced an adjective meaning like a king

 

King - kingly

Roi - royal

Rex - regal

I love that about English, that mix. I guess when you have English as mother tongue this helps to learn the vocabulary in many other languages because of the variety. However, if you learn English you have to memorize a lot of words.

 

I guess if I would take classes again I would probably take etymology, I love that.

[Prisca]

On 12/17/2020 at 10:42 PM, silver said:

And back on topic:

 

On December 21st there will be a Saturn-Jupiter conjunction (close alignment) which may appear to the human eye as a single very bright light  and is thought by some to have been the star seen by the Three Kings.

Oh that's something for my brother and his wife. They have installed an app on their mobile phones where they can look in the sky and the app indicates them which planet or star it is.

 

And I've looked in the sky for many years and thought I was looking at a star and it was indeed a planet.

[Prisca]

The thirteen German word:

 

Adventskalender = Advent calendar

Advent = Advent

Kalender = calendar

 

(If this word is difficult to remember, then I don't know. )