Sunday, December 04, 2022

Gesundheit

I grew up understanding that "Gesundheit" meant "God bless you," as in the thing you say when someone sneezes. It's something that I learned from my dad, whose family came from eastern Germany in the late 1800s, and it was one of those things that got handed down.
So it threw me off when I started seeing Gesundheit in unexpected places like magazine titles and store signs. As it turns out, gesundheit only *in usage* means bless you; a more literal translation is "health." It's funny how you can go through so much of life without questioning the things that are closest to you, only to learn a new perspective halfway through.

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