Let me assure that the mere Sautscheck word evokes no pejorative
undertones at all to me although the Sau- prefix is pretty common here
and means just what Stewart says. It is not very rude, though. Can be
used talking to your mother-in-law without any risk. Sautscheck merely
sounds vaguely slavonic which is more or less synonymic here with
probably ok but take care of your car. What a silly thing all those
prejudices are, aren't they?
g
I have only been wondering why the more common spelling Sautschek has
not one hit in the phone directory and Sautscheck has seven just as
Roman says!
On 08.06.2008, at 23:38, Stewart McCoy wrote:
I have contacted my German lecturer friend by email, who has kindly
replied at once to explain what he had meant. He writes, "Sau is the
German for sow (as in female pig), but is used frequently as a (fairly
rude) prefix to indicate a pejorative, e.g. Sauwetter (what we have
been
getting up to the last couple of days, saukalt (extremely cold) etc
etc". He suggests that the "-tscheck" part of "Sautscheck" might be
derived from the German word for Czech. He was looking at the word
from
a purely etymological point of view.
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