Rubber neck

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The term Gummihals is a Swiss ethnophaulism for a German citizen in Switzerland who is said to have an opportunistic behavior .

The term comes from the late 1970s and was initially used primarily by students at Swiss universities who wanted to complain or make fun of their German fellow students or lecturers. The exact meaning of the word has been speculated for years. The term was used, for example, when the intrusive verbosity of Germans was out of proportion to the rather reserved language of the Swiss . The rubber neck derives from the exaggerated comparison: "Even if you could twist their necks, they would still keep talking."

In the mid-1990s, it was mistakenly assumed that the rubber neck was a synonym for the word " turning neck ", which became popular during the German reunification in 1989/90 . This thesis was refuted at the beginning of the 21st century. Linguists at the University of Zurich have found that the term rubber neck comes from the 1970s and is therefore older than the term reversible neck.

Since the turn of the last century , 40,000 German citizens have moved to Switzerland every year. This fact meets with resistance from the population , especially in large parts of German-speaking Switzerland, and so the term “rubber neck” has experienced a renaissance since 2000. The author Bruno Ziauddin describes Grüezi rubber necks in his book . Why the Germans sometimes get on our nerves these cultural differences in a humorous way. According to Ziauddin, the term "rubber neck" comes from the fact that young German doctors always nod vigorously when chief doctors talk to them. The Swiss take this as "approval upwards".

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