Redewendungen — Idioms

Six idioms worth owning, and the discipline of not using a seventh

German rewards a well-placed idiom more than most languages a learner will meet, because they are unmistakably not translatable — producing one correctly signals time spent listening rather than studying, in the same way the modal particles of lesson 92 do. The corresponding risk is that producing one incorrectly is conspicuous in exactly the same measure. The six in this lesson were chosen for frequency rather than charm, and each earns its place. jemandem die Daumen drücken is what you say before someone's exam, interview or operation, and it is the direct equivalent of crossing fingers — German thumbs are pressed inside the fist rather than crossed. nur Bahnhof verstehen is the most useful thing in the lesson for a learner, because it is a self-deprecating way of admitting total incomprehension and gets a friendly response every time. Schwein haben is a lucky escape. die Nase voll haben is having had enough, of a situation rather than of food. den Faden verlieren is losing your thread mid-sentence, which will happen to you in German and is worth being able to name. auf dem Schlauch stehen is being stuck on something obvious. And unter vier Augen is a genuinely necessary phrase at work: Können wir das unter vier Augen besprechen? requests a private conversation without drama. Etymology is where discussions of idioms usually go and where they should be treated with caution. Explanations circulate for all of these — that Bahnhof comes from soldiers who could think only of the train home, that Fettnäpfchen comes from a dish of grease by the door of an old farmhouse, that Schwein haben comes from a consolation pig awarded to the loser at a contest. Some of these may be right. Most are unverifiable folk etymology, repeated confidently in a great many places, and a German speaker who tells you one is passing on what they were told. Enjoy them and do not build on them. The discipline half of the title matters more than the list. There is a strong temptation, having learned six idioms, to use six idioms, and that is the failure mode. Native speakers produce them sparsely, in reaction to a situation rather than as decoration, and they never produce two in one breath. An idiom deployed to demonstrate that you know it reads exactly as such. The quiet version of the skill is to recognize fifty and use five. A closing note on the one thing not to do: do not translate an English idiom into German and hope. It fails reliably and it fails in a way that is hard for your listener to repair, because they cannot tell whether you have misspoken or meant something they have not understood. Where you do not know the German expression, say the plain thing. Viel Erfolg, Ich habe genug, Ich komme nicht weiter, Ich habe es nicht verstanden — all four are unimpeachable German, and none of them will ever have you standing on a hose by mistake.