Never did I ever hear this Germanism in the English language. Yet, it seems to exist: Bandsalat (pronounce: ‘bunt-zu-luut, meaning ribbon salad, aka tape salad). It is something that will probably fall more and more out of use in the future. For it relates to objects that are not much around anymore: tapes of any kind. Technology has been changing so much that it is hard to come by any tape recorder anywhere these days. I still have one. But I listen to the radio rather than a tape I may have recorded back in the day.
Salat (with a long “u” on the second syllable) basically describes a mess. Originally it describes anything that was salted down! But today, anybody will use the term Salat for a mix of food items (usually veggies or fruit) that has been cut up into smaller pieces and marinated with a dressing. Just like the English term, only with a “t” at its end.
Germans also know the idiom “Da haben wir den Salat!” (pronounce: duu huubn veer den su-luut) – There we have the salad. No, it’s not describing a salad that is presented to you. Basically, in this case, salad means a mess that was foreseeably caused. So, it means: What a mess!
Let’s get back to tapes of all kinds – audio tapes, video tapes, film tapes. Sometimes (and don’t ask me why), the tapes didn’t roll up as they should on or inside their devices. Which made them, when running in a recorder, collect outside the medium and coil up inside the recorder. Anyway, countless are the times that I disentangled tape from tape recorders and wound it back with a pencil inserted in the tape. The hearing/viewing experience the next time was slightly distorted, of course. Unless you hadn’t stopped the recorder in time and the tape had ripped. You might still have Bandsalat, but disentangling wouldn’t solve the destruction of the tape. Unless you were a cutter who knew how to repair such tapes. I am not, and I didn’t.
So, if you knew that your tape was already slightly messed up and you ended up with a Bandsalat, you’d definitely have cried out, “Da haben wir den Salat!”
No matter when – if ever you hear me exclaim, “Da haben wir den Salat!” in German, we’re really in a mess. Trust me!
We still use the word band in the word bunting
Though etymologically the source of the bunting is not clear, it definitely doesn’t derive from Band. As it is bunting is colorful decorations/flags, it is more credible that the German word bunt (pronounce: boont) is at the bottom of it – which means colorful.