Some German phrases don't translate well.
This came up in a German class today, where the 'professor' wanted to introduce the word 'Autoschlange'.
It basically means that you've gotten onto the autobahn, and hit some heavy traffic....with movement limited to marginal speeds (meaning 10 to 30 mph). It typically means a construction zone or an accident having occurred.
The African guy in the group stopped the teacher, asked 'schlange'? It means 'snake'. In his homeland, the minute you utter that....folks are doing a 360-degree view within ten feet to ensure what snake you are referring to. He looked over at me and I was kinda in agreement.....in Alabama, if you uttered snake....folks would be eyeballing the ground carefully.
The professor wanted to reassure both of us.....the only snakes around Germany....are the non-'gift' snakes (non-poisonous). This phrase was only concerning autobahns.
There are various words like that in the German language, which really don't translate well, and you have to wonder where the phrase started.
But then this whole snake thing got into some talky-talk phase, and probably wasted 25 minutes of the language class for today. Yep, that's all it took, to get fifteen-odd people wrapped up into a non-language subject.
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