Speak your Language Day: German
It’s Speak your Language Day! I know I have some German speaking followers/mutuals, also fühlt Euch alle grad mal herzlich gegrüßt und geknuddelt! I have a bigger project on the backburner inspired by this very day. It will take a little bit (’N Bisschen? Wen versuch’ ich hier eigentlich grad zu veräppeln?) more time and work, but I promise it may will be worth the wait.
So today I’d like to share a German word with you I use in relation to Tiallu’s Sims all the time. It captures the essence of my sims shenanigans and has three possible origins:
Fisimatenten, die
Noun, female, no singular, colloquial IPA: [ˌfizimaˈtɛntn̩] Fi-si-ma-ten-ten Fisimatenten means (making) excuses, trying to avoid awkward explanations, causing trouble by doing irresponsible things, doing unneccessary things, trouble, annoyances, and shenanigans. It was included in the Duden, the most popular German dictionary, in 1880. It’s origin on the other hand is unclear. Possible origins are:
1. From middle high German fisiment. Fisiment describes meaningless ornaments on drawings of medieval coat of arms. 2. From Latin visae patentes. These were thoroughly inspected official documents. The process of checking these documents could take an unneccessary long amount of time, because well you know, if Germans perfected one thing it’s bureaucracy. 3. My favorite one. Fisimatenten as a phonetic transcription of a French phrase. At the beginning of the 19th century parts of Germany were under French occupation. In the evenings French soldiers would walk around and ask young women to “Visitez ma tente.” Visit my tent. It’s said that concerned parents who soon knew what these Fisimatenten were about warned their daughters to “Mach’ mir ja keine Fisimatenten!” Don’t do any Fisimatenten! Don’t visit any Frenchman’s tent!
Funfact: Where I live Fisimatenten is pronounced differently due to our local dialect. It’s pronounced Fissematenten here. When I did my research for this little post, I realized I was spelling the word wrong the entire time.
