Help with translation of idiomatic German, please.
January 24, 2024 8:08 AM
While moving my parents to their new house, I came across an old beer stein with an inscription that has puzzled me since I was a teenager (oh, so many years ago.) The inscription reads:
"Guter trunk und guter Witz
Sind zu viele Dingen nütz"
Which, applying my high-school (and later, college) Deutsch, I was able to translate as:
"Good drink and good wit (jokes?)
Are too many things to use (be useful)"
And now, the online translator confirms my literal translation.
But this has never made sense to me, especially since I think good drink and good jokes complement each other rather well. Obviously, there's some idiomatic meaning that I'm missing. Online searching has turned up nothing useful. If it helps, the bottom of the stein reads "Made in West Germany", which indicates the time frame.
My best guess is that it means something like "When you're drunk, you're not as funny as you think you are." Am I close?
"Guter trunk und guter Witz
Sind zu viele Dingen nütz"
Which, applying my high-school (and later, college) Deutsch, I was able to translate as:
"Good drink and good wit (jokes?)
Are too many things to use (be useful)"
And now, the online translator confirms my literal translation.
But this has never made sense to me, especially since I think good drink and good jokes complement each other rather well. Obviously, there's some idiomatic meaning that I'm missing. Online searching has turned up nothing useful. If it helps, the bottom of the stein reads "Made in West Germany", which indicates the time frame.
My best guess is that it means something like "When you're drunk, you're not as funny as you think you are." Am I close?
Yeah, my own college German tells me that you'd need "nützen" not "nütz" for it to be an infinitive. And it's not "too many things", it's "to many things." While I lack a German technical grammar vocabulary, "zu" pertains to the verb here; it's not an adverb modifying "viele[n]."
posted by praemunire at 8:22 AM on January 24
posted by praemunire at 8:22 AM on January 24
yeah, the full phrase is "zu etwas nütz sein" which means "to be useful for something". "Zu" is used as a preposition, not as an adverb.
posted by sohalt at 9:53 AM on January 24
posted by sohalt at 9:53 AM on January 24
Vielen dank! Mistranslating the "zu." That's an embarrassing mistake - I really should have known better!
posted by dono at 11:36 AM on January 24
posted by dono at 11:36 AM on January 24
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"Guter Trunk und guter Witz
sind zu vielen Dingen nütz."
It means
"Good drink and good jokes
are helpful for many things"
"sind nütz" is short for "sind nützlich", are useful or helpful.
Hope that clears up your confusion!
posted by amf at 8:15 AM on January 24