Explanation: Germans used to (apparently only in my bubble) call cellphones “Handy” and many people still do that. My friends from america found that quite hilarious.
“Used to call”? No?!
Most people in my bubble stopped saying that. They usually just say “smartphone” now.
With my peers it’s mostly just “phone” nowadays. Likely because landline phones are really rare now.
I also do that but I think „Handy“ is still the most common term. When there is any need for clarification for what you mean by „phone“, „handy“ will clear it up for everyone.
phone
You mean, your German peers literally use the English word ‘phone’ or do they say ‘Telefon’?
would you use the german equivalent of the work handy or the actual english word handy? and if so whats that word, could you use it in a sentence lol
Well you have basically three options in my bubble.
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Handy
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Wischkästla (translates roughly to swipe box)
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Mobiltelefon (mobile phone) this one needs to be pronounced very precisely in order to get the sarkasm of using the old correct German word.
Wischkästla
What kind of demonic incantation is this?
Kind regards,
- Someone from Schleswig-Holstein
Weird. Everyone I know calls it Handy. I do not think that is ever going to change.
We still call them so.
Yes. Or even composition of words. I remember during a class discussion translating “Thanksgiving” as “Danksgebung” on the fly. At least I greatly entertained my professor—and I’ll never forget “Erntedankfest”.
Its not your bubble, when I learnt German Handy was the word for phone they taught me
I may be wrong regarding that it isn’t widely used any more.
And yes, it was the first word I learned for mobile phone, too.
idk what circles you guys live in but I grew up in rural south and been living a decade in Berlin. If a German talks to a German and they are not doing nerd talk and are just commoners having a chat they have been and still are using the word “handy”. It still is the most commonly used word to describe a mobile phone in German language
Duolingo is insistent on calling it a handy. It does my head in.
The term ‘Handy’ for mobile phones started to become common around 1992. There are various different theories about the origin of the term but none of them has been conclusively proven.
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In WW2 Motorola produced a Handie-Talkie (SCR-536) that could actually be hold in your hand (the famous Walkie-Talkie was strapped to your back). There have been plenty of successors with the same name but researchers doubt that this was really that widely known at the beginning of the 90s. Yet, one of the first GSM phones by Loewe was subsequently named HandyTel 100.
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German-speaking CB radio circles used the term already before 1992 for hand-held transceivers. There are actually magazines and other things from as early as 1986 where the term is used.
It must have spilled over from these circles to maybe a marketing department (Telekom claims it was theirs, without prove though) to public consciousness.
My parents recently got a hummingbird feeder and my dad was bragging about how many “Hummers” he was getting in the yard.
