Is the new pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a cannibal who favors his Argentinian fellow-countrymen as a delicious meal, just like the headline in a German newspaper suggested? Admittedly, I have no idea what kind of diet Francis, the 266^th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church prefers but I’m pretty sure that he is not after human meat. Why do I float the question whether Pope Francis has designs on humans for supper?

A German newspaper brought forth: “Der neue Papst isst Argentinier”, which means “The new Pope eats Argentines”. Actually, the writer of this newspaper articles wanted to say this: “Der neue Papst ist Argentinier” (“The new Pope is Argentinian”). So, what led to this linguistic accident?

The conjugated forms (2^nd and 3^rd person singular) of the German verbs “sein” (to be) and “essen” (to eat) share one and the same sound chain, that is, “ist” and “isst” are homophones – the pronunciation of both these forms is identical – but orthographically they mean two different things. In order to make sure that you do not walk right into the same trap, I give you an overview of the correct conjugated forms of both the German verbs sein and essen:

As you can see, German shares one and the same form for English “you”, “she”, and “they”, which is “sie” and “Sie”, respectively. When you refer to your immediate counterpart in personal communication make sure to use a CAPITAL letter in formal address.

Unfortunately, the editor’s mistake is irreversible but one thing is for sure: he or she is most probably a laughing stock in the office and definitely among members of the language police. My final remark: Spell-check can save lives!