View new posts | View your posts a couple of questions to native speakers

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Linguistic and cultural issues.
English is not my mother tongue, so some things were unclear to me while watching the series. Perhaps someone can explain?
1. "Gesundheit". As far as I know, it is a German word. Is it a commonly used borrowing? Is it used now, or it was popular in 80's? Is/was it used in the whole English language or only in the American variant?
2. Jokes about New Jersey. I've noticed there are quite a lot of them in the RGB series. Why? What kind of cultural phenomenon is it?
Just curious...

1 gesundheit is what people say it when someone sneezes in germany.

2 new jersey sucks

1. Gesundheit literally means health, and is traditionally used when someone sneezes the same way people say, "Bless you". In general, all languages have some version that's a short stand in for saying "I hope you're not getting sick." It's been around for ages in North American English (lots of German immigrants over the last 200 or so years)

2. New York likes to be number one, and as such New Jersey gets picked on. When you hear someone making fun of New Jersey, they're making fun of the bits within easy reach of Manhattan, and fair enough, those parts weren't always that great, but New York in the 70s and 80s wasn't exactly a glittering metropolis all the time either. Somewhere along the way it became an easy joke to make. A lot of US cities are on a similar joke hit-list - Cleveland comes to mind. End of the day, New Jersey is huge and there is some beautiful countryside, but all people see is Jersey Shore on TV, and the myth persists. Every country does the same thing. I've heard no end of UK comedians using Essex in a similar manner. Newfoundland gets picked on a lot in Canada.

Thanks for explanation! in fact i did know about the meaning of gesundheit, I just wondered if it is used

New York and New Jersey have always had a rivalry.

Same with Edmonton and Calgary.