Sunday, June 22, 2014

German 4 Dummies:"SatAn", with a capital A

Apologies for not having a photo to prove it. We'll get one if we see another instance.

Germans looove their compound nouns, and Satellitenempfangsanlage (satellite plus receiver plus device) is one such beauty. It is a satellite dish for TV.

In popular parlance, they also call them "Satellitenschüssel" (satellite plus bowl) which is the the equivalent to the satellite dish.

We will never know why one company decided to abbreviate their device to "SatAn" *. The capital A in the middle will not stop any hardcore conspiracy nut, nor will it stop a comedian.

Maybe the person in charge of shortening the name so it fit on a dish and was nicely readable from four or five floors down had a bad day.

Maybe the man's child went daddy, I have an idea, and it happened to be Father's Day and dad felt guilt about working too much and not being there more often for the kids.

Maybe the abbreviation was done by a computer.

It does not matter.

We get a post out it, and that's all we care about.

* Satan is indeed the same person or entity in German as in English.

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