Studying phrases and proverbs in a foreign language can be both useful and entertaining. Many frequent sayings are actually literary citations, both in English and in German. They may have been slightly adjusted to fit for everyday situations, and probably not every person using them is aware of their origin.
Surprise: German proverbs have borrowed heavily from English literature. And most German speakers probably aren’t aware where these phrases originally come from. But, and this may be the second surprise, the scope of English sources is rather limited: Virtually all well-known English literary phrases have been penned by Shakespeare.
I’ll list a couple of well-known sentences you will probably recognize without further remarks. I suppose it is also relatively easy to guess the occasions to employ them:
Ende gut, alles gut.
Da ist der Wunsch der Vater des Gedankens.
Viel Lärm um nichts.
Morgenluft wittern
Es gibt mehr Dinge im Himmel und auf Erden, (als eure Schulweisheit sich träumt.) (usually cited incompletely)
Der Zahn der Zeit (hat daran genagt.)
Es ist etwas faul im Staate Dänemark.
Ist es auch Wahnsinn, so hat es doch Methode!
I tried to roughly order to the top the most wide-spread sayings, while the lower ones might not occur but in slightly higher levels of speech.
Note that these are phrases that can actually be used in normal speech, without being necessarily recognized as quotations. Of course, it will ring a bell for most Germans if you ask questions about Sein oder Nichtsein, or engange them in a discussion about telling Lerche from Nachtigall. But the practical use of these topics seems to be limited – limited to witty puns, actually.
Probably the list extends much longer. One quote I didn’t show above actually seems slightly more common in German than in English: die nackte Wahrheit. More common? Perhaps at least more prevalent in, um, family-friendly contexts. This, however, is just my personal impression.
It turns out that this ingenious poet has coined phrases which are really useful even when translated. In his own words (sort of): Gut gebrüllt, Löwe!
This ends today’s post: Der Rest ist Schweigen.
.
Speaking German? 
Leave a comment