Ja, Voll? NEIN!
posted April 28th, 2009 by EverywhereistLots of singing. Not that German is necessarily a good singing language. The only bits of German I know were from the time we learned to sing a translation of Frere Jacques in 6th grade, which mostly resulted in me and my friend Giselle sounding like we were coughing up a lung. Personally, I think we had potential, but we abandoned our interest in the German language roughly 15 minutes later.
But I digress. Back to the bar. After one particularly spirited chorus of “Helga is Sitting on My Pretzel” or something, everyone cheered, and my husband (who once studied in Germany and speaks enough of the language to avoid accidentally propositioning someone’s wife), shouted a hearty, “JA, VOLL!”
Our table fell quiet. When we asked what was wrong, one of our party explained that the expression “JA, VOLL” (yes, sir) had a bit of a “militaristic” connotation.
“It is something the Germans are a bit sensitive about,” someone explained.
“It’s okay,” I said. I pointed to my husband. “HE’S JEWISH!”
And with that, everyone cheered, and said, “Oh, it’s alright then!” and laughed.
A bit later, I realized how odd the whole thing was. Did my husband’s Semitic background just save us from committing some incredibly random faux pas? Is this the first time in history screaming “He’s Jewish!” has gotten someone out of trouble with the Germans? I’m still not sure. But I half expected John Cleese to pop out of the rafters screaming, “DON’T MENTION THE WAR!”
Tags: Germany, Lost in Translation
December 11th, 2011 at 6:22 pm
frere jacques is french…not german. People looked at you because they knew you were not a native. People say ja voll all the time it’s not offensive and does not mean yes sir.
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Everywhereist Reply:
December 11th, 2011 at 10:10 pm
Jenn – Yes, I do realize that Frere Jacques is French. We sang a translation of the song in German, as I note above. And while it does not technically mean “Yes, sir,” but rather, “Yes, indeed” (or something to that effect) the explanation given to us by those at our table (native Germans) was the one I noted above. But if you want to pick apart my post, you might want to note that I also spelled the word wrong.
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