It was a beautiful Sunday morning as we were on our way to a small Dorf one hour from Munich: Altötting. Villages with churches on the top of hills passed through the windows of the train, farms with brooks and horses appeared before our eyes and quickly passed by. On our way to that very traditional little village, the heart of Catholicism in Germany and a beloved destination of Pope Benedict, the topic of our conversation was an unexpected one: slang words. Andrea, our friend from Munich, laughed at our question and, after some reflection, said: “I guess I am too old to know what slang words young people use most often nowadays, but I know this one: Chill mal die Base!” That mixture of English and German, pronounced by our friend with so much swag, made us laugh, but even funnier was the next slang she remembered. This time, we were walking back to the Bahnhof of Altötting, after a beautiful day spent visiting churches, eating huge spaghetti ice creams, and talking for sweet long hours at a local Biergarten. “Oh, I actually remember another slang word, and this one I know young people use all the time: ‘alder’!” “Alder?!” we said, “what does Alder even mean?” It turns out that “alder” is the colloquial way “old man” is pronounced in spoken, ‘slangish’ German. It is a funny expression, because it is only used by teenagers among those who share the same age as them, never with someone actually older. And the funniest thing is that, in Brazil, we actually have the same expression, with the exact same usage! Teenagers often call themselves “velho” (old man), in a very informal way. The question is: how did that slang come about? Did it have just one origin from which it reached both Brazil and Germany? Or was it exported from one country to another? As we asked ourselves those deep philosophical questions and waited for our train back to Munich, a young boy came to us and asked if we could change his 20 Euro bill. The opportunity was too good to let it go, and we asked him what slang words he used most often. Promptly, he exclaimed: “Alder!”
