What the hell is it?! Well, it’s a superfluous fancy kitchen implement dedicated to the highly complex task of cracking a boiled egg.
What’s wrong with bashing it with a teaspoon…? Nothing. Unless you’re a bored German (or possibly Swiss?) engineering student. I haven’t checked out its provenance, but who else would come up with a pointless gadget like this???
Then again, it’s a rather nice example of one of those long German words that people seem to be so fascinated with.
Let’s briefly dissect the word, for those of you who are interested in language stuff.
Eierschale = eggshell. You’ll have worked that part out by yourselves.
“Sollbruchstelle” is an engineering term, but pretty self-explanatory once you understand its components: Soll = should, Bruch = break, Stelle = point.
So, it’s the point at which a stressed material naturally breaks or is designed to break. Think of a KitKat – it snaps along the thinnest parts, i.e. between the fingers, rather than across them. Plenty of confectionery products and packaging are designed with such “Sollbruchstellen” to make life easier for consumers.
Verursacher = cause, i.e. an agent that causes something
To re-cap:
Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher = Eggshellshouldbreakpointcauser
Clear as mud?
Thought so.
You may also be interested in my specialist language blog, see here: http://multilingualbychoice.blogspot.com
God I love German! That’s fantastic!
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I’ve seen these in Karstadt. Bizarre the things you Germans come up with 😉
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I think this one’s out of the realms of even my fertile imagination…
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Lol! Love it and the way you just string a load of words together to form a new noun.
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Yup… none of this is-it-two-words?-Is-it-one? guessing nightmare that we have to go through in English!
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I think instead of ‘fascinated’ you meant to use ‘frustrated.’
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Nah, the compound noun thing is very easy to master. It’s all the other grammar stuff that’s frustrating, like the impenetrable case system.
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Um, when I’m bored I throw scrunched up sheets from my novel in a wastebasket. Probably why I’m not rich like this bored person. And you discouraged me from trying to learn German.
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Well, that’s an aim of sorts… 😉
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Not sure you can call my shooting aiming. Basketball was never my sport.
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No sport was every my sport… far too uncoordinated 😉
I can read and type, that’s about it.
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No sport was ever my sport… far too uncoordinated 😉
I can read and type, that’s about it.
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I am officially requesting a video of you actually saying this word (and any other 30+ letter words that strike your fancy)!
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I haven’t made my debut on YouTube yet, but you never know… 😉
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Did you buy one? Did it work?
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I much prefer doing it the old-fashioned way 😉
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So hilarious. You might have seen it already, but your post reminded me of this video I saw a few days back. So hilarious! http://www.buzzfeed.com/hnigatu/how-german-sounds-compared-to-other-languages
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I’ve seen it 😉
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sounds like he tried to imitate hitler
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Had to send this to my mother! For several years she wrestled with German – even took German literature classes, agonizing over writing her essays in German and was the only non-native speaker in the programme. I used to sometimes type her papers and found the logic and length of the words fascinating! Thanks for sharing. 🙂
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Always happy to amuse 🙂
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Well, I really do like suffixing languages.
I don’t even eat boiled eggs but I still really want one of these.
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Do the Koreans have lots of baffling gadgets…?
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