German Words We Should Adopt

Building upon a splendid proposal

Two years ago, Rob Watts, the eponymous host of Rob Words, posted a program calling for the English-speaking world adopt ten untranslatable German words.¹ In homage to that video, I offer my own list of expressions that, in my own most humble opinion, we Anglo-Saxons ought to import from the Müttersprache of our Continental cousins.

Let’s start with katzenfreundlich.

Literally translated as ‘friendly like a cat’, katzenfreundlich describes a person who feigns friendship in order to obtain an immediate reward.²

With little difficulty, I found an apartment at Körner-Strasse 17, up a flight of stairs, above a butcher's shop. I hardly ever saw the landlord, who was Polish. His wife was a typical dyed-in-the-wool Berlin landlady, katzenfreundlich when she wanted something, but otherwise inclined to scratch.