The headlines of The Economist

 When my students as me to recommend some good reading material, The Economist is one of the few publications that I recommend. As I tell them, the hardest part of the journal to understand are the headlines, as more or less every single one of them incorporates a pun.

Here is something that caught my eye today:

Pilsendämmerung   (as opposed to Götterdämmerung)

Helles for other people  (instead of "L'enfer - c'est les autres" - hell is other people. As Satre once said)

A nation loses its taste for its most heavenly tipple,

Germany is losing its taste for beer—at least the boozy kind

• The Economist (EU)
• 9 Aug 2025

SUMMON THE idea of the German at play, and chances are you see a rosycheeked Lederhosen- or Dirndl- clad youngster bearing half a dozen overflowing steins of beer. Never mind that—as the rest of Germany will hasten to remind you—you have taken Bavaria as a synecdoche for the entire country. The real problem with this image is that Germans are losing their taste for the tipple that once defined them.

On August 1st Germany’s statistical office announced that in the first half of 2025, six-month beer sales had fallen below 4bn litres for the first time since it began counting in 1993. In 2005 the median German quaffed 112 litres of the stuff. The figure is now less than 90. Germany remains the sixth-biggest beer market in the world. But whereas Germans once downed more than anyone bar the insatiable Czechs, they are now eighth in the per-person league table. Worse, the decline is gathering pace. “Panic” has gripped some breweries, says Gerrit Blümelhuber, a consultant.

Some of the culprits are familiar: Germany is ageing, and younger folk are less keen on booze. Some blame cost, though that seems hard to square with the €15 ($17.40) Kisten (crates) of Paulaner on supermarket shelves. Struggles in hotels and restaurants point to a broader hospitality problem. And yet the decline in wine-drinking is much gentler. “There is a noticeable thirst for beer in Germany,” says Volker Kuhl, CEO of the C&A Veltins brewery, but “no desire for a third or fourth glass”.

If there is a glimmer in the glass it is the booming non-alcoholic sector, which now accounts for almost one-tenth of beer brewed in Germany (though it is excluded from official statistics). Rare is the Biergarten without an alkoholfrei offer; last year Munich saw its first devoted solely to boozeless brews. Germany’s sometimes-staid Braumeister are trying new techniques like using wild yeasts that do not ferment all the sugar in the brewing process. But Germany’s storied purity law, which limits what can be marketed as beer, is not always an invitation to innovate, warns Markus Raupach of the German Beer Academy.

Even in the brightest forecasts, non-alcoholic beer cannot possibly compensate for the decline in the boozy sort. Nor can exports, which are dwindling even more quickly than domestic sales and now face Donald Trump’s tariffs. Nearly 100 German breweries have closed in the past five years; more will surely follow. A sobering thought.

Lucky to be alive today

This morning, before continuing to do battle with a text that someone else had 'translated' by putting each sentence into DeepL and pasting whatever came out of it into the English text, I went for a walk around the large park 100 metres from my front door.

On the way back, I was walking on the footpath along a hedge and was approaching the corner where I would then turn left. Shortly before getting to the corner, a monstrosity shot round it: a large container with a pre-pubescent girl sitting in it and behind it, a woman on the bicycle, presumably her mother, pedalling very fast. I took another step or two forward and then the father, in another monstrosity, with yet another child, shot round the corner, only very narrowly missing me. Another step, and I'd have been killed.

I screamed at the father, "Sind Sie verrückt? Sind Sie verrückt?" ("Are you mad? Are you mad?"). No reaction. The bastard (no other word for such an arrogant moron)...the bastard didn't slow down. He didn't look back. He couldn't even condescend to throw an "Tschuldigung" ("Scuse me") over his shoulder.

And then, with the realisation of how close I had come to death - I am not exaggerating - my knees turned to jelly, I started to feel dizzy and I was suddenly close to tears. 

How can these bastards on a bicycle - with children in their care!! - be so bloody careless about other people's safety? Both parents cut the corner so sharply that they came very close to the hedge themselves. Don't these bastards think that there might be someone round the corner? If I'd been older and in ill health, I might have died from a heart attack anyway.

Sometimes, I think we should have the right to carry guns. To rid the world of these dangerous bastards. How society can allow them to have control over their own children beats me. 

A rousing quotation

I'm very fond of quotations to give me guidance in life. One of my favourites is from John F. Kennedy, the US president assassinated on 22 November 1963. In his inaugural speech [Antrittsrede], among other things, he said this: "Ask not what your country can do for you...ask what you can do for your country."

I often think of this rousing [mitreißend] quotation when I think that "someone should do something about that". Whatever "that" might be.

Back in 2013, when my walking group was at risk of falling apart because three of the regular walking guides had other priorities, I kept saying: "Someone has to do something. Someone has to do something!!"

And then I remembered John F. Kennedy's quote, as mentioned above. And I realised that I can't expect other people to do what I wouldn't be willing to do myself, so I tentatively [zaghaft] started to offer some walks around this town. Later, I added walks around Wuppertal, Solingen and Remscheid, as I got bolder and more familiar with the countryside.

Why am I mentioning this quotation? It's because after more than 50 years, an opportunity for people to meet up has come to an end as no-one wanted the responsibility of making tea and coffee and putting some cups out. The last person to organise this meet-up, an Italian woman, had done so for around 6 years. She always asked for some help, for someone to arrive 30 minutes earlier to help her set out the teacups. Only one woman regularly did so once a month.

Everyone else liked to come to drink tea and coffee, eat biscuits, and chat, but no-one wanted to do anything to continue the "institution" that had been in existence for more than half a century. Shame on them.

It's the same with my walking group. When I regularly offered walks, some fellow walker would frequently sidle up to me [sich an mich heranschleichen] and tell me of a great walk they knew. When I said that they could lead the walk themselves, they would gasp and look at me in horror and say, "Aber ich bin berufstätig!" ("I work!") And I wondered what they thought I did all day. In those days, there was a lot more translation work around. And I wasn't the only walking guide who was still working.

More than 300 people get the details of each month's walks, which means that if everyone led one walk a week, then each person would only need to lead a walk every 6 years. Scarcely anyone is willing to do so, but lots of them want to enjoy the walks. 

Well, I believe that, these days, fewer and fewer people are willing to put themselves out [sich jds wegen wegen Umstände machen]. A great shame. 

As another quotation says: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. 

So, if you want a friendlier, more communal society, you have to be willing to get out there and to help bring people together.

Preposition proliferation

Have you noticed how, over the years, prepositions have been creeping into places where they never used to be? They seem to be proliferating [sich ausbreiten].

For example, in the past, you would say, "I'm meeting Tom in town this afternoon. We're having lunch together at our favourite restaurant." Nowadays, people feel the need to slip in a few extra pronouns, as in, "I'm meeting up with Tom in town this afternoon."

People used to say, "I'll call you this afternoon". Now they say, "I'll call you up this afternoon." The same with "I'll ring you" and "I'll ring you up".

This is okay if the extra preposition or two doesn't change the meaning of what is being said. But I've seen some very worrying examples. The first one is this: "The pipes allow for the water to flow into the drains." In this case, the word "for" is completely unnecessary and it actually changes the meaning of the verb, making it totally inappropriate for the sentence.

What the sentence should be is this: "The pipes allow the water to flow into the drains." That is to say that they enable the water to flow into the sewage system [Abwassersystem].

The verb "to allow for" means something completely different. I shall let the Cambridge English Dictionary define it for you:

to consider something when you are planning something:

We allowed for living expenses of £20 a day.

[ + -ing verb ] You should allow for the plane being delayed.

We have to allow for the possibility that we might not finish on schedule.

More examples

• You have to allow for a time lag between order and delivery.
• Our range of children's clothing is generously sized to allow for shrinkage.
• Remember to allow for extra time if you are travelling at rush hour.
• Did you allow for staff absences when you drew up the work schedule?
• At least the old curriculum allowed for some variation in classroom activities.

In German, this would translate as "etwas berücksichtigen", "etwas in Betracht ziehen" or "etwas einplanen", which is not the same as "erlauben" or "zulassen", which is the translation of "allow".

People seem to feel an urge to shove prepositions in where none are needed. Another example is the verb "to advocate", which means "etwas empfehlen oder befürworten oder verfechten". 

This is a dictionary definition of "to advocate": to publicly support or suggest an idea, development, or way of doing something:

Examples: She advocates taking a more long-term view.  He advocates the return of capital punishment.

"To advocate for" means "to speak for, support, or represent a person or group of people who may need extra help or protection or representation

Examples: A lot of people living in desperate poverty are taken advantage of and need someone to advocate for them.

The Education Trust advocates on behalf of disadvantaged and minority students.

As you can see from the second example, the 'for' means 'on behalf of'. This is why it is completely inappropriate in the first examples. If you just use 'advocate', it's like saying you recommend something. You're not arguing on behalf of a person or group of people.

I am not the only person who has noticed how prepositions are creeping into places where they are "extraneous to requirement", i.e. simply not necessary. Here is a blog entry from 2015, which will give you some more examples: https://www.sevendaysvt.com/LiveCulture/archives/2015/05/29/style-patrol-prepositions-are-creeping-up-on-us 

Enjoy!

Not an inch more than strictly necessary

On my walks around the nearby park, it never fails to amaze me how joggers, who are so keen on keeping or getting fit, are unable to give me any space when passing me.

There I am, on the extreme right of the pathway in the park and there they come towards me. In the middle of the path. They can't give me some extra space as they pant by, covering me with their germs. It's as though there has never been a pandemic and the word "Abstand" (distance) has become obsolete. 

It's even worse when they come from behind you. All of a sudden, I hear a sound behind me and I jump and turn around. Some male runner might then look startled at the expression on my face, which is one of fear. Do they never think that people ahead of them might be anxious that they will be attacked or mugged by someone running up fast right behind them? I don't think any male runner has ever given this any thought. 

But as I said before, I'm amazed that they want to keep fit, but they just don't seem to have the energy to deviate from their track, not even by an inch or two, just to give someone a bit of space. If things are that bad, if even an extra inch would be too much for them, then maybe they should take a shorter route or just stay at home on the sofa. Running too close past another person is just bad etiquette.

Bulls = pigs = chickens

 Eh? A bunch of random farmyard animals are all equal? 

It's all got to do with the police. While in Germany, policemen are called "die Bullen" ("the bulls"), in Britain, they are "pigs" and in France "chickens" ("les poulets"). Personally, I think it doesn't sound too bad to call someone a "bull". After all, they're hefty animals that can crush you if they want to. That's the kind of policeman you want, someone who's nice and burly (stämmig, kräftig), someone who can deal with criminals resisting arrest. "Pigs" on the other hand - just not nice at all. Although pigs are said to be very intelligent animals, that aspect of their personality is not what one thinks of when conjuring up an image of a pig. 

"Chickens", on the other hand, why? Well, apparently, it goes back to the latter half of the 19th century. The police headquarters in Paris was burnt down by the Communards in May 1871. They were rehoused in some barracks that had been built on the former site of a poultry market. Hence the name "les poulets" or "the chickens". Much cuter than "pigs".

HNO = ENT

Don't worry. I'm not going to do algebra. "HNO" stands for "Hals-Nasen-Ohren-Arzt", which in English would be an "ENT" doctor or "ear-nose-throat" specialist.

What tickles me is that the order of the three parts of the body is the opposite way round in the two languages. Obviously, this is because they are listed in alphabetical order, but I still think it's funny that the lists are a "mirror image" of each other.