Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

German help needed

Posted on February 13, 2007 Written by Diane

I used to speak German — I probably wouldn’t call myself fluent, but I did well enough to argue with another German when I was drunk, to always end up speaking German after the Germans had exhausted their English, and once, when hanging out with a bunch of other Germans, they guessed everything from Norwegian (I’d dyed my hair blonde) to Dutch to Canadian before finally guessing American. (Sadly, this says more about the state of Americans leaning the language than it does about my abilities. Still.) But I haven’t done anything in German for the past 10 years or more.

So last night I have a dream in which I’m trying to get to Berlin and I find a book entitled something like Berlin auf Fluchthaft. I looked up “fluchthaft” in Babelfish and it gave me “escapeful”; the various dictionaries on-line gave me “No such word, bucko.” However, there are several pages (via Google, natch) that use the word “fluchthaft.”

Is “escapeful” the best translation for “fluchthaft”? Or does it mean something else in slang?

ETA: My father-in-law says it means “something that keeps you from fleeing,” from Flucht=flight and Haft=arrest (or constraint). So now I am really wondering what that dream meant!

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Filed Under: All About Moi, Questions

Comments

  1. Allen says

    February 16, 2007 at 12:54 am

    Google translates it as “leaving detention”

  2. cody says

    February 22, 2007 at 3:07 am

    I got berlin on flight custody.

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