My Gift to the People of Switzerland
I realized, while in Switzerland, that there is no German word for "brunch." So I gift to the wonderful people of Switzerland my coinage, früstagessen.
There will be statues of me at Swiss brunch places 100 years from now.
There will be statues of me at Swiss brunch places 100 years from now.
Speechless.
ReplyDeleteA quick look on Wikipedia tells us:
ReplyDeleteGerman-speaking countries readily adopt Anglicisms, and "brunch" is no exception, defining it as "a combination of breakfast and lunch." However, the German language has its own word for "brunch": Gabelfrühstück (literally, "fork breakfast")
"German-speaking countries readily adopt Anglicisms" is only very recently true. Like the Academie-ruled French, they went to any length to avoid Anglicisms, preferring to translate morpheme by morpheme into some kind of Germanic, e.g., Fernsehapparat = Tele (far) vision.
ReplyDelete'Gabelfrühstück (literally, "fork breakfast")'
ReplyDeleteWell, that seems to be news to the Swiss! (They were familiar with 'brunch,' however.)
A travel writer in the New York Times writes:
ReplyDeleteA Second Breakfast Pays Dividends
By JILL KNIGHT WEINBERGER
...But, happily, I cannot entirely divorce my devotion to gabelfrühstück from the cultural experience it represents. I feel more rooted to a place, less like a stranger, when I partake of it as seriously as the Germans, the Swiss or the Austrians. .....