Last night we had some friends over for dinner. We had der Rehsbraten (roast roe deer), das Blaukraut (red cabbage), and die Klöße (potato dumplings; the word is related to the English “clod” and is pronounced somewhat like clues, only not so much, and with an “eh” sound on the end). Of course we had das Bier and also das Wein (we’re on the border between a famous wine region of Unterfranken and the beer capital of the world, Oberfranken. I commented on my beer glass, a very nice traditional Krug from the local Fußballverein, not one of those gaudy Oktoberfest ones that you buy in the airport, and one of the guests asked what it would be called in English.
Now, I’ve known since my first day or two here that beer glasses are called die Krüge (singular der Krug) and that der Stein means “the stone”; but I still thought maybe some of their beer glasses, such as the ceramic ones, might sometimes be called steins. First, I said that the style I had would just be a mug, but he said “I think a mug is for coffee”, so I told him yes, we’d call any large beer glass (other than an English pint glass), but especially a German style mug, a “beer stein”, but the generic name is mug. He was quite puzzled by “beer stein” as that would mean a “beer stone”. He explained that all German beer glasses are called Krüge, but that the ceramic ones are more precisely Steinkrüge (stone glasses). No one would ever think to call a Steinkrug a “Stein”, though.
Although we didn’t get into this last night, to confuse things a little further, a glass of beer can also be called ein Seidel (which refers to the quantity, today it is translated as a half-liter). In Franconia, where we live, this is known as a Seidla, the “la” ending being roughly equivalent to the English “ette” – smallish and not exactly manly. Although the half-liter is the most common volume of beer these days, ein Maß (or very locally in this part of Franconia: a Moß), a liter krug, is the traditional volume, primarily reserved for festivals now.