/ɪç fɛɐ̯ˈʃteːə nuːɐ̯ ˈbaːnhoːf/ lit. ‘I only understand train station’
German idiom, colloquial. I can’t understand any of it.
Draft Not yet checked by a native German speaker.
How do people use Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof
?
Colloquial and very common, said with a shrug when a lecture, a tax form or a fast talker has lost you completely. It works in any tense or person: “ich habe nur Bahnhof verstanden”, “Tom versteht nur Bahnhof”. It also covers not hearing properly, as in a noisy bar.
Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof
in real sentences
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Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof.
It’s all Greek to me.
Tatoeba, sentence by Pfirsichbaeumchen, translation by Zifre, CC BY 2.0 FR
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Entschuldige, aber wenn du so schnell sprichst, verstehe ich nur Bahnhof.
Sorry, but when you talk so fast, I can’t understand a word of it.
Tatoeba, sentence by freddy1, translation by sundown, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof
come from?
English Wiktionary dates it to the early 20th century. The best-known theory, which the Duden idiom dictionary puts forward, goes back to German soldiers at the end of the First World War: worn out by the trenches, they only wanted to go home, so the one word they heard in any conversation was “Bahnhof”, the station that meant the train home. Other suggestions are that stations are so noisy you can’t make out a word, or that “Bahnhof” was the one word foreign travelers knew. None of these is proven.
Mistakes learners make with Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof
Adding an article. It’s a bare noun, “nur Bahnhof”, so “ich verstehe nur den Bahnhof” sounds like you’re talking about an actual station.
Other German idioms like Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof
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?
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