bestandwurstofgerman

PAUSE

This post was written 10 years ago.

Sat, 20 Dec 2014

Football's finished today in Germany for the holiday period, giving players there their customary winter break, or WINTERPAUSE. That's because PAUSE means "pause" or "break". Meanwhile, back in the UK, the English and Scottish leagues will be carrying on as normal with their busy Christmas football programme, with games played almost non-stop. The Germans always find this really odd and if there's one thing you can guarantee about Christmas in Germany, it's that there'll be an utterly predictable article in the papers about how odd it is that the British have no winter football break. As if none of their readers remember an almost identical article 12 months earlier. Before those very papers then proceed to report about everything that happens in those Christmas fixtures because they're secretly missing their football.

While we're on PAUSE, it's useful to know that a "half-time break" in a game of football is a HALBZEITSPAUSE. This word also reminders me how delightfully straightforward German spelling is. In English, in contrast, I can think of three distinct words that all sound the same but have very different meanings: "pause", "paws" and "pours". It certainly gives you pause for thought over the WINTERPAUSE

tags: football

This post was written 10 years ago, which in internet time is really, really old. This means that what is written above, and the links contained within, may now be obsolete, inaccurate or wildly out of context, so please bear that in mind :)

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