Wort der Woche

(It's finally the end of the semester. Let the Wort der Woche entries return!)

Every non-native student of German has come across the awkward expression das machte Spaß for "that was fun." It takes your brain a while to get used to this completely new construct, and forces you to really think in German. Well, there's a similar phrase out there that took me a while to get used to:

jemandem über etwas Bescheid sagen = "to let someone know about something"

This is most commonly used when, for example, you answer the phone for your roommate, and the caller asks to leave a message. You'd tell the caller something like Ich sage ihr Bescheid for "I'll let her know."

The word der Bescheid in this case means "notification" or "information," so a good way to remember this phrase is to think of "giving someone notification."