Even though you might not use the Germanism in the English language that I chose to discuss today, you will probably immediately understand its meaning. Wunderbar (pronounce: ‘voondah-bar), just like the German term wundervoll (pronounce: ‘voondah-foll), is translated as wonderful. There is no big surprise in the similarity of the words in German and in English – both are Germanic languages, and thus there has often only been the shift of a vowel or a consonant to determine a word to belong to one language or the other. The German noun Wunder means miracle, the related verb also contains the element of surprise or astonishment. So, the adjective wunderbar means astonishing.
Some of you may remember the song “Wunderbar” from the musical Kiss Me, Kate:
I grew up hearing the song on the radio very often. I never knew that it is also the title of a song by the British punk band Tenpole Tudor:
But it goes to show that the word has a certain fascination for different generations and different genres.
Now, we all know that the English language lends itself to double-entendres and puns because it contains a lot of homophones, words that sound the same but carry a different meaning. Whereas the German syllable “-bar” simply turns a word into an adjective, the English language has a whole lot of different meanings for these three letters. And accordingly, there are quite a few word games on the Germanism of wunderbar.
Wunderbar is the name of … numerous bars in Germany and here in the US! They usually have a slightly unconventional interior design, most of them celebrating art themes, some of them also having LGBTQ+ related concepts.
Another Wunderbar is a chocolate bar sold in Canada and Germany; it is produced by Cadbury, and you might know it as Starbar. It contains peanuts and caramel surrounded by chocolate. The Canadian sales slogan is “Wunderbar is wunderbar” – go figure!
There are Wunderbar soaps – another fun wordplay! I wonder whether there is any geological feature in the world called Wunderbar?! And why not call pressure in meteorology that makes everybody feel great, Wunderbar?!
Let’s face it – it’s not so much the German syllable “wunder” that is so wunderbar in these puns and plays on terminology. But does it matter? I find the fact that one CAN create a lot of meaningful terms from just one homophone simply … wunderbar!
