I came across an interesting German word today – quatschen – which means to gab; to piffle; to talk rubbish; to chew the fat; to shoot the breeze; to blab; to yak; to squelch; to squidge [source].
It appears in a blog post in the sentence:
Aber da fragt auf dem Gathering auch niemand mehr, ob Esperanto ok ist, da wird einfach losgequatscht.
This means something like “But at the Gathering nobody asks any more if Esperanto is OK, they simply start yakking in it.” The Gathering in question was the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin, which I went to last week, and the post is about the languages most commonly used there. It mentions that apart from English, many people there spoke German, French, Spanish, Italian and/or Portuguese, and Esperanto, and that we switched between them frequently. This was certainly my experience – those were the most commonly-spoken languages there. I also met quite a few speakers and learners of Welsh, Dutch and Mandarin.
The related word (der) Quatsch means nonsense or rubbish, and the LEO dictionary gives a long list of English synonyms for this word:
folderol/falderol/falderal; balderdash; blah; blatherskite; flubdub; jabberwocky; malarkey; nonsense; nuts; punk; rubbish; taradiddle/tarradiddle; tommyrot/tommy-rot; guff; hoke; poppycock
I’ve come across some of these before, but not blatherskite, hoke, taradiddle, tommyrot or flubdub, and I haven’t heard punk used in this sense. According to the Oxford Dictionaries, a blatherskite is “a person who talks at great length without making much sense.”, and is referred to as a Quatschkopf in German, and a taradiddle is a petty lie.
There are also some related quatschian expressions:
– Quatsch! = My chin! Balls! That’s all my eye and Betty Martin.
– So ein Quatsch! = My eye! My foot!
– Das ist Quatsch! = That’s hokey!
– Mach keinen Quatsch! = Don’t be silly!
– Red keinen Quatsch! = Don’t talk nonsense!
– So ‘n Quatsch! = My ass!
Nice article, I’ve never thought about the meaning of ‘quatschen’ before. Actually, it’s often used a synonym for ‘sprechen’ or ‘reden’ but in the sense of easy, informal talking.
Example: Lass uns mal wieder quatschen (Let’s meet soon and talk about life in general)
Re Blatherskite:
Blather or blether is a common dialect word meaning ‘idle talk’ or ‘to talk idly’; skite has familiar cognates in Dutch, German and Modern English.
Yiddish has kvetshen, with much the same set of meanings as German quatschen.
German also has the word Klatsch, meaning ‘gossip’, ‘chatter’; die Klatschpresse refers to the tabloid papers, the gutter press.
I have not heard hoke before (or several of the other words listed above) but I assume it is related to words like ‘hokum’, ‘hocus pocus’ etc.
…and also ‘hoax’. http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=hoax&searchmode=none
Out of the list of English synonyms for “Quatsch” the only ones I’ve never heard of are: folderol/falderol/falderal; taradiddle/tarradiddle and hoke. Tommy-rot, jabberwocky and blatherskite I would say are a bit dated now.
‘Blatherskite’ as you go on to say doesn’t mean ‘nonsense’ (etc) but someone who talks nonsense. Where I grew up, NZ, ‘to skite’ means to boast, so for me ‘blatherskite’ always had the connotation of someone who talks a load of nonsense that tends to put them in a good light, i.e. someone who talks boastful nonsense. I’d be interested to know if anyone else understood it that way.
Good description of “quatsch”. 🙂 There is no faster and easier way of expressing, for example in a heated political discussion at the dinner table, that someone else’s statement is complete and utter nonsense bordering on stupidity, than by forcefully exclaiming “Quatsch!” It, uhm.., encourages equally forceful and heated responses by your dear family members or friends, and the use of the term typically increases with the level of beer consumption by participants. 🙂
By the way, interesting blog, I’ve just found this place for the first time.
Regards from a German in Arizona.