Kartoffel

What it means

1. 1.

   An ethnic German, as seen from outside — the blunter, older sibling of Alman. Where Alman mocks behaviour, Kartoffel names the group.

2. 2.

   Widely reclaimed: Germans use it of themselves ('meine Kartoffel-Seele'), and the 2017 novel and film title Die Kartoffel is part of why. Between strangers it is still a dig, and at the hostile end it is an ethnic insult.

Literally: Potato.

Examples with translations

• Meine Eltern sind Kartoffeln, bei uns gab's nie Gewürze.

  My parents are white-bread Germans — we never had spices in the house.

  Note: Self-deprecating, from a German speaker about her own family.

• Er redet wie eine Kartoffel.

  He talks like a total German.

  Note: Of accent and manner; can be teasing or contemptuous depending on the speaker.

Where it comes from

The potato as the emblematic German staple, part of a family of food-based ethnic labels found across Europe. In circulation in German-Turkish and German-Arab speech since at least the 1990s, long before Alman, and popularised beyond it in the 2010s by comedians and writers of migrant background.

First attested: 1990s