Was watching the rather predictable Costa Rica v GermanyWC tie on French TV when it was slightly enlivened by my suddenly realising that one of the TF1 commentators had just described the German team as << La mannschaft >> (using their German nickname in French) I’d assumed this was because ‘equipe’ is feminine, but I’d also (reasonably) assumed that in German ‘Mannschaft’ would be masculine ('cos of the ‘Mann’ and all that) so was surprised to discover that it’s not. Strange that although the two languages have totally different words for a team, both nouns are feminine, even though the words probably originated in a time when there were few, if any women’s team sports.
Although I love watching live football, sometimes you have to work a bit harder to make it interesting…
Sorry, but not at all, I used the qualification ‘sometimes’ - if I’d been watching rugby, whether League or Union, I’d have opened a book or fallen asleep within minutes…
And, furthermore who and why did they come up with such a weird shaped ball ? Maybe a baguette shape would work better cos it’d be easier to tuck under the arm… and of course the baguette now has UNESCO Cultural Heritage status and that might help make a really boring minority sport a bit more popular around the world.
Nah, now that’s back pedalling. Having to sometimes work harder to make something interesting means to me that ordinarily it is always uninteresting.
Why bring rugby into the conversation?
And why does the ball look like a squashed Zeppelin? Given that France is such a big rugby nation, even though Les bleus are far more popular, surely the French rugby authorities could push for a more baguette shaped ball that players could more easily tuck under their arm, and of course you could also have little twists of the paper in teams’ colours. Now wouldn’t that might make rugby a bit more interesting?
However, I suspect that some on SF might disagree with the above…
Football, A feminine game as the England women so rightly proved this summer by playing an interesting game when nothing, not even sometimes was needed to make it lnteresting
I was referring to Costa Rica v Germany being predictable, of course if stout English yeomen footballers (who are nevertheless seldom as stout as their English rugby counterparts) had been playing, the outcome would have been less predictable, even against Costa Rica, and presumably therefore the game would have been more interesting.
If true, the disgusting amount of money that Ronaldinho is being paid to go to Saudi Arabia makes it totally repulsive.
Rioting in Belgium just because their national team lost, makes the supporters just as bad as the clubs.
Would you call FIFA an example of a well run sports body?
@Geof_Cox
Sort of! The articles for the plural look like the feminine singular in nom/acc/gen cases but not in dative: but the adjectives etc remain whatever was the original gender of the thing they qualify. Not nearly as bad as rules for agreement if numbers in Arabic though
all the same meaning.
German is a great language for elegant ways of saying what you mean. Also for combining bits to make new meanings very clear, subtly or humorously.
Interessengemeinschaft could be used in all sorts of ways broadly meaning ‘commonality of interests’. Often there are double or even triple meanings with a good writer, depending on phrasing and context. So subtle digs can be included especially where the language is quite flowery (German can go really over the top flowery even in semi-normal discourse). So the regular meaning will be there, but there’s a subtle dig there too.
I would like to know more swear words and insults in German though as unfortunately my very formal education missed out on that - and insults are another key strength of the German language
