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Just wondering what the German versions of these words would be, they're all slang words.

  • "Like" - It's like not that bad, Sarah sighs
  • "Sis" - "That's not it sis"
  • "lowkey" - "I'm lowkey about to die"

Also, I see a lot of Germans using the English wtf, lol and lmao so I'm assuming there are no equivalents for them.

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Alex Collins
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    They (WTF, LOL, LMAO, ROTFLMAO, IMHO, RTFM, etc.) are used because they are known worldwide (coming from Usenet, actually) and have been in use for a long time already. Inventing German equivalents would be silly, and probably hardly anyone would know or use them. There are few specifically German ones, but I personally never use them, so I don't know them. – Rudy Velthuis Jan 13 '19 at 20:24
  • FWIW, there are German Internet acronyms too: https://german.stackexchange.com/a/664/27048 . – Rudy Velthuis Jan 13 '19 at 20:36
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    You cannot directly translate slang terms or filler words. Slang grows within the groups using it, and different groups (like in different nations) mean different slang terms used. – Robert Jan 13 '19 at 20:47
  • A German equivalent to FY (or WTF in some meanings) would be LMAA ("Leck mich am Arsch"). The abbreviatioin is much older than the internet. I definitely heard (orally) and saw (in writing) it in the 1980s already. – Christian Geiselmann Jan 14 '19 at 11:51

2 Answers2

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Those "slang words" aren't translateable as single words because they are only understandable in the right context. Which is a number of specific phrases. Germans have different specific phrases.

For example, drinking bros of my age sometimes greet a group as Mädels:

Alles frisch, Mädels? – All fresh, girlies? (A man to a group of men.)

Mädels! Wir müssen reden. – Girlies! We have to talk. (A man to a group of men.)

I don't think those are understood as friendly mocking if you translated them.

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Janka
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    I think they are actually understood, if you change girlies into girls (which is also a good and valid translation for Mädels). Don't think only Germans mock friends like that. – Rudy Velthuis Jan 13 '19 at 20:04
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    "Girlies" is wrong. "Girls" might be ok – PiedPiper Jan 13 '19 at 23:31
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    Girlies sounds gives off an Old man or pedophilic vibe, just sounds odd. I think the English equivalent is Ladies which can be used in a friendly mocking way, girls sounds more mocking than friendly and you'd get weird stares. :3 – Alex Collins Jan 14 '19 at 22:08
  • It's meant that old man way. Mädels is insulting even if you address actual girls. – Janka Jan 14 '19 at 23:41
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    Since when is "Mädels" insulting? I'm using it frequently, e.g. "Ich und meine Mädels (=meine Freundinnen) gehen morgen feiern." – Iris Jan 15 '19 at 09:52
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    Well. Now think of a man doing that. – Janka Jan 15 '19 at 18:39
  • @Iris: "Mädels" can be considered insulting or offensive, depending on who says it. I know women who would seriously object to it, just like I know women who object to being called "girl" (they consider it derogatory or pejorative) or German speaking women who object to being called "Fräulein". Of course if you say it about yourself and your friends, that is different. – Rudy Velthuis Jan 15 '19 at 19:29
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Like (how it is used in the example sentence) is a stopgap to avoid saying er..., IOW a word inserted to keep the flow of the sentence going. There is no direct or indirect translation. It is not even slang, just an ugly habit. I know a guy who keeps inserting "wie schon gesagt" for the same reason, but that is not a general translation. Filler words exist in German too, though.

Sis is just short for sister (more or less the female equivalent of bro) and in that capacity not really a slang word either. Or did you mean one of the more obscure meanings?

Lowkey, if used as adverb, is indeed slang, more or less meaning nicht wirklich (not really), or kind of. I don't know a direct slang equivalent in German. Of course you can say: "Ich bin irgendwie halbtot" (or even "Ich bin iwie halbtot").

Rudy Velthuis
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    If "like" is only a filler in conversations, German "so" serves a similar purpose (as in: "Ich so zu ihm: ..."). But it doesn't seem that it can be used as a translation. – RHa Jan 13 '19 at 20:29
  • Yes, "so" is indeed sometimes used for the same purpose, in German conversation. Some people also abuse "also" for the same reason (pun not intended). – Rudy Velthuis Jan 13 '19 at 20:31
  • @RHa "so" in your example is a (bad) substitute for the verb. – Robert Jan 13 '19 at 20:48
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    @Robert: no, it isn't. One could just as well say "Ich zu ihm: ...". "So" is indeed used as stopgap/filler here. – Rudy Velthuis Jan 13 '19 at 20:51
  • @RudyVelthuis Exactly my point: your new sentence does not have a verb either. – Robert Jan 13 '19 at 20:53
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    @Robert: It doesn't have a verb, indeed, but in the example, "so" is not used as halfway replacement, just as a filler, like "like" in (US) English as spoken by some youths. – Rudy Velthuis Jan 13 '19 at 20:56
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    In my example the verb has been omitted, but "so" is not really a replacement for it, it's rather a modal particle. – RHa Jan 13 '19 at 21:20
  • A very common stopgab word equivalent to like is, in German, *sozusagen* (often pronounced sloppily *sozagen). Some people also say ich sag mal* (or sloppily dialectally *ich sach ma). Other phrases occur only in individual speakers. I had a literature professor at university who said literally in every sentence at least once nicht wahr also*. Once I counted them in a 45 minutes lecture and got to about 230. This, however, was an individual tic; the phrase is not in common use. – Christian Geiselmann Jan 14 '19 at 11:47
  • @Christan: it's stopgap (stopfe Lücke ;-). – Rudy Velthuis Jan 14 '19 at 17:49
  • @RudyVelthuis Thanks for the answer <3, I guess slang terms meanings are pretty subjective since there isn't any proper definitions for most of them but to me "like" is used either a) like you said a filler (or stopgap I guess) or b) (And the most common way my friends and I use it) to reduce the edge off a statement, most commonly over text. "I'm dead" is pretty serious sounding like they've had a seriously bad/hard day and they don't want to talk, mean while "I'm like dead" feels more like after partying hard and the next morning you're texting a group chat about your headache. – Alex Collins Jan 14 '19 at 21:53
  • @RudyVelthuis also Lowkey doesn't translate to not really in any context I know of, an example sentence would be "He's lowkey fine" but really you mean oh my good god he is finnneeee. Or the ultimate slang mindfudge, "I'm highkey dying but lowkey thriving" = translation: I feel so tired but I feel like I did good, (maybe after studying maths for 4 hours and finally understanding some stuff) – Alex Collins Jan 14 '19 at 22:02
  • @Alex: AFAIK, "lowkey" more or less translates to "kind of but not really". And the original meaning of "like" (German: "wie") is indeed what you use when saying "I'm like dead" ("ich bin wie tot"). Fact is that in the "slang" version, it is merely a filler word and has no meaning at all, like "um", "er", "right", "you know", "yeah", etc. Most of, er, these have, like, meaning too, right, but not when used as, um, filler words. – Rudy Velthuis Jan 14 '19 at 23:06
  • @RudyVelthuis I guess its a slang word with the whole has two meanings that are opposite of each other then because I know it as "Kind of not but kind of is" but with more emphasis on the Kind of is. Ive been speaking English for almost 17 years but the language still lowkey (teehee) confuses me. xD Thanks for the replies tho <3 – Alex Collins Jan 15 '19 at 16:32