If there is one thing I’ve learned over the last week, besides more about the sports I love, it is that the Internet is a far reaching and widely-read medium. Actually, I knew this already, but the fact was driven home when I received a deluge of e-mails about an earlier post made on how I’m a fan of the use of the word “Cheers.”
Wow…who knew what a big response such a small word would receive. And, I want to thank those who looked up my e-mail and have shared their wider, and more accurate, knowledge and ears with me. I love to learn, so even when being corrected, as long as I get it right, then I’m alright with it.
One reader who happened to live in the beautiful city of Aachen, Germany, looked up my e-mail and took the time to share a bit of history. I learned from this reader that I had it all wrong. In fact, it wasn’t the word “Cheers” that I was hearing people use when they were saying, more of less, “goodbye.” No, my ears hadn’t deceived me; I just had the wrong word.
“Tschuss!” (Imagine the letter U having those two little dots called “umlauts” over it) is the REAL word I was hearing. And it has some interesting etymology to boot. I have to thank a reader named Stefanie for pointing me in the right direction. I owe you one, my new friend.
I immediately turned to one of my favorite sources for information, Wikipedia.com. There, I learned the following…..
“The word ‘Tschuss’ is an informal way of saying ‘farewell,’ used in much the same way as ‘good-bye’ in English-speaking countries such as the U.S. It is derived from the Low German language, and has historically been more common in northern Germany, though it has gained country-wide acceptance. It is also commonly used in Switzerland, at the very least in Zurich, and its outskirts. It derived from the French phrase ‘a Dieu’ (‘with God’), which in several German dialects soon became ‘ad juss’, then shortened ‘tschuss.’ The form ‘adieu’ is still a today’s (obsolete) Standard German equivalent for ‘Good Bye’ or (German) ‘Auf Wiedersehen’ - mainly in the southern part of the country, Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, etc.”
Now that the German lesson is over…we’ll get back to a thought-provoking topic in Tuesday’s blog – humility in our sport.
Tschuss!
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