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.
We still call them so.
this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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Using "so"instead of "that". This guy germans.
Yup, slipup.
Naja. So ist es wenn man eine Fremdsprache spricht. Ich genieße nur diese Momenten wenn ich sie identifizieren kann. 😁
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My German family still does too
"Used to call"? No?!
Most people in my bubble stopped saying that. They usually just say "smartphone" now.
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
We frankonians just like to call things differently.
Weird. Everyone I know calls it Handy. I do not think that is ever going to change.
Maybe. Again, most people (except old people) in my friends circle has stopped calling it like that. Why? I don't know. But I definitely noticed it.
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
"Ich habe mein Handy verloren." "I lost my cellphone."
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.
It is still very common
Oh whats most commonly used now?
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
Ok good I was afraid my vocabulary was out of date
i can confirm that in (the german-speaking parts of) switzerland "handy" is the only word i've ever heard used to describe a smartphone
In my friend circle, it's usually just "phone".
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I’m sure this is where the joke about Germans being overly friendly came from.
Listen, guys. I lived in Germany for my entire life and even though I know that "Handy" is common, I'm trying to say that I personally don't hear it nearly as often as I used to a couple years ago.
So what do Germans use nowadays?
Apparently, "handy". In my group, it's usually "smartphone".
It's like people are trolling, everyone calls it a handy because that is what it is called.
Duolingo is insistent on calling it a handy. It does my head in.
It is the correct term. I would just like to know who came up with that?
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.
Our German family also calls them handys.
Did you also tell them about "handy flats" in Germany? (Flatrate für Smartphones)
I found this out as a visitor when a local told me I could get a handy at the T-Mobile store. I was like "for real? I only saw kids working in there. That's kinda gross."
In Lebanon, “Handy” means a cordless landline.
In the US, it's apparently a handjob.
Ich, ein Auslander: "Wie sagst Man 'Hand' auf Deutsch? ... Ach, ja."
Reminds me of my first day studying abroad in Germany and trying to ask a random guy at the train station to borrow his lighter.
Me, miming lighting a cigarette: "Wie sagt man—" Him: "Man sagt FEUER!"