European Mouflon

Usually, in the German language I find too few words to adequately describe something that has many rich variations in English. For instance, while I can come up with dozens of adjectives that mean "nice" "pretty" or "beautiful" in English, the Germans seem to find the term "schön" covers it all well enough. There's also "hübsch" and on a rare occasion one might even say "wunderschön" but that fairly sums up the niceties :)

My day was derailed by the need to intervene again in a rapidly deteriorating situation with an exchange student. After spending a couple of hours with this young man, who is now being asked to leave his host family post haste, I had to write a report about the conflict, in German of course.

Trying to come up with the best way to describe the student's attitude, I realized that there is at least one expression in English for which the Germans have a great many fabulous adjectives!

"Stubborn"

So I got into a small argument with my spouse today about this - as I found it quite amusing that a quality or trait for which Germans are stereotypically known is one for which they have a tremendous vocabulary. He refused to see my point, insisting that Germans are certainly not (insert any of the following:)

bockig
dickköpfig
eigensinnig
halsstarrig
hartnäckig
starrköpfig
starrsinnig
störrisch
stur
unnachgebig
verbohrt
verstockt
widerspenstig
zäh

I chose to concede the argument to him, as it only served to prove my point :)