German is awesome

there you had swine gehabt.

 

Just two more examples of original German expressions and figures of speech that came to my mind.

#1
08/15 means "ordinary" or "average": "That's just another 08/15 game!" (speak zero-eight-fifteen, or in German: Null-Acht-Fünfzehn (nooll ahht fynf tsehn))

08/15 is a common German "adjective" for average, ordinary and boring stuff. This expression derivates from the first world war in which The model 15 of the Maschinengewehr MG-08 was the standard machine gun of the German forces, the MG-08/15.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MG_08

The true origin of the expression 08/15 is heavily debated amongst historians. Some claim it originated by soldiers being bored of that goddamn 08/15. Others say the expression was actually formed in the 2nd rather than the 1st WW because the Wehrmacht was partially supplied with old stock of MG-08/15's and soldiers regarded the weapon as outdated trash from decades ago.
The term "08/15", however, is still used in today's everyday language and even every kid knows and uses the expression. Just thought I might share it because I've haven't known about the "words"' roots until a couple of years ago and I found it quite interesting.

#2
Figure of speech:
"Dem Ingenieur ist nichts zu schwör" ("Nothing's overweight for the engineer")
Not really used in colloquial language anymore, but everyone knows the expression and it's been used for decades. The rhyming form (turning "schwer" into "schwör" to rhyme with Ingenieur) was introduced by our famous Disney translator Erika Fuchs in the early 1950's. Engineer Gyro Gearloose used to say it from time to time in Barks' comics and it didn't take too long until it invaded the German everyday language.

A little less known is that Erika Fuchs didn't invent it in the first place. She actually took a line from Dr. Heinrich Seidel's poem about engineers (he was one himself): "Loblied auf die Ingenieure" (ca. 1870's)
The first line is "Dem Ingenieur ist nichts zu schwer(e)"

Erika Fuchs is known for referring to important German philosophers and writers in her translations. She actually rendered the German translation of Carl Barks comics literarily superior to the English originals - that's a fact.

So far so good. More to come.