Guatl
The friendly colleague St. told us that the old word Guatl always reminds him of his grandmother. She always said: “If hois (neck) scratches, take Guatl with you.” He probably never used the High German terms bonbon or the – medicinally sounding – pastilles, writes St. slightly wistfully. Because the word Guatl is getting lost in the vortex of language change. It’s a shame that there are no Advent markets, because sweets such as cotton candy, roasted almonds and Guatl are for sale there. Like French candy, the guatl (gutti) comes from the language of children. Bon also means nothing else than good. There are extensions like Gutsl and Zuckerl, and the Platzerl are just bachane Guatl. In some places one also says tent. In the grocery store Holzapfel in the Bavarian Forest village of Kasparzell there was a tent stand until it closed a few years ago. Glass balls were fastened to it, in which gummy mushrooms, sugary strawberries and cherry lollipops glowed seductively. The tent stand once aroused similar longings in children as a smartphone with a flat rate does today.
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In the “Oberbairischen Fest-Täg-und-Alte-Bräuch-Calendar for the year 2022”, published by Raab Verlag, there is an article about the cattle drive with the heading “Boid schneibds an Schnee”. In German you actually say: It snowed! The verb schneien (sniwan), which is already common in Old High German, appears in variable forms over the course of history. It gets entertaining when the Bavarian dialect forms come into play. It is snowing and it is snowing, say some. It has gschniebn (gschniem), say the others. Interesting is the inserted letter “b”, which can be observed not only with snow, but also with spitting (Bavarian: spitting, screaming). The “b” in schneiben and in the stem end of gschneibt can be traced back to the historical pre-forms with “w”. Old High German already knows the hardening of the w to the b (snibit). The “b” also appears in Ludwig Thomas’ classic “Holy Night”: “Alle Weg san vaschniebn / Is koa Steigl net stayedn.”