ein Ghettoblaster

I had a meeting yesterday with a company to discuss a proposed course they want to start. It’s a group of lawyers and they want to learn legal English. Since I moved here I’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot more interesting and specialized areas of English than I did when I taught in California, at times it’s challenging but more often than not I enjoy it. It’s a relatively small group, about five people. They asked at the onset if we should speak in English or German and I felt that German was more appropriate as it is often easier to explain what you want out of a language course in your native language than in the one you want to train. We were talking about which books would be best and on which areas they want to concentrate. At one point, as each person was stating what they expect out of the course, one of the participants asked how he should address me, Du or Sie, I said Du.

After everyone had talked about what they want to focus on and once we’d agreed on a day and time, the coordinator asked me what I require when giving a lesson. I looked around the conference room and saw basically everything I needed, and then said it would be nice if they could provide something that can play CDs, whether it’s a laptop or stereo. Sometimes I have to bring my own to lessons, which isn’t that big a deal, but it would be nice not to have to schlep it around. The other participants looked around the room to see if there was a speaker system or CD player and then one person suggested that we could just use “ein Ghettoblaster.” Had I heard this from a student at the university I would have just considered it another token of using an English phrase, but in this conference room I was a bit surprised. The others agreed that it was a viable option and then I interjected, “Sagt man echt ‘Ghettoblaster’?” (Do people really say ‘ghettoblaster’?) To which he told me that yes, they in fact do.


I asked my German about it later that evening. Apparently it’s true, you can refer to a portable sound system as a ghettoblaster. When I was asked how I would call it (“ein Ghettoblaster”) in English, and I acknowledge that this term may date me a bit, I said either CD player or maybe boom box. To me (and I swear when I described a ‘ghetto blaster’ I used almost verbatim the definition from urban dictionary before having checked it), a ghetto blaster is a big radio, which can play cassettes (not CDs), and is usually seen outdoors or being carried on one shoulder. It’s a specific kind of sound system, but I wouldn’t have thought that the one I use (which has a plug, not batteries, and plays CDs, not cassettes) would have fit into this category. You learn something new every day!