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Shouldn't this be a wikitionary article?--The Kooky One 21:14, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
"Ersatz" is just the German word for substitute - e.g. a substitute player is called "Ersatzspieler" where "Spieler" means player. The word has not gained its meaning in the WWs, and it has no aftertaste for German speakers as is indicated in the article in the first three paragraphs.
I suggest to reorganize the article - get the meaning, get the usage of the word in English and then add the part about WWs. --WebWombat 16:35, 24 Sep 2005 (GMT+01)
I reedited the article as described. --WebWombat 10:59, 02 Oct 2005 (GMT+01)
"The German word for such product is Surrogat (surrogate)." - I think the text should point out, that this is a rather technical German term, that is not as commonly used in German as the word "ersatz" is used in the English language. 93.129.96.89 (talk) 11:40, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
- just restating the previous statement. Actually i think noone would use surrogat in German. It sound so technical and distant, i wouldn't even consider it a German word. ––Christian Günther (talk) 23:46, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
Why does the article say that the germans gave ersatz coffee to pow's because they did not have real coffee, is it documented that they wished to give real coffee. I think it would make more sense that in a time of war pow's may not be treated extremely well and because of this would be given lower quality foodstuff. But really in a wikipedia article we should just say that they gave them ersatz coffee period, unless we have strong information saying why they did it we should leave out speculation about their motives. If someone could make this change I think the article could be better, if you wish to edit my comment to make them fit proper format feel free as I am not competent enough to do so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.113.54.80 (talk) 23:37, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
- Whether they would have given the POWs real coffee if they had it, we'll never know. What we do know is that they didn't have real coffee. Germany was under British blockade in both World Wars and hence could not import coffee. I will say this, though. The Germans only invented ersatz coffee because they didn't have the real thing. I doubt they would have wasted their time inventing a fake coffee just to spite POWs if they had the real stuff on hand. Jsc1973 (talk) 19:23, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
POW edit
I think this article needs to explain what is "POW"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.212.45.250 (talk) 18:13, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
I don't want to make any changes,just want to communicate. I wonder why the article is to be deleted? I looked up the word "Ersatz" after reading a book 'A Woman in Berlin, Eight Weeks in the Conquered City' where she was drinking ersatz coffee, and I wanted to find out what that was. So I found out that it means "substitute", but I would like to know what the substitute coffee was made from. Merike Johnson — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.215.211.36 (talk) 02:25, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
Ersatz-… vs. …-ersatz edit
To always get a negative meaning of ersatz in German, you can use Ersatz es second word in a compound Word: Kaffee-Ersatz, Brot-Ersatz, …
That is not as widely applicable as Ersatz-…, though (and Ersatz-… does have the negative implication for some words). — Preceding unsigned comment added by ArneBab (talk • contribs) 12:48, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
Speedy deletion edit
This is just another foreign word that adequately covered in the Wiktionary. If we accept entries such as this, we are going to end up with entries for "cockiness", "cheekiness", etc etc Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 11:35, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
- First of all, I disagree that this qualifies as a "speedy" delete.
- On the other hand, I agree that the article as currently written is too much about the word, and not about the concept. We should fix that. --Macrakis (talk) 13:40, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
- I agree with you that the article can be improved. However, as per deletion criteria, I see this as an entry more suited for a dictionary and not an encyclopaedia. Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 15:45, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
- I think it should be deleted as an encyclopedia is for nouns and proper nouns, not for adjectives. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mtmoore321 (talk • contribs) 13:25, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
- I'd also suggest that the stub should then redirect to Inferior_good which could perhaps be expanded with a note about the word ersatz. Most of the foreign language versions of the article seem to be about substitute goods, not the actual word 'ersatz'. user:mtmoore321
War Sausage edit
Though there were certainly some substitute products devised due to shortages, I want to question some of the stated ones. The war sausage in particular coming to mind, as with some Googling I managed to find a 1918 British illustrated report about how bad German substitute food was, one included some of the claimed ones here, such as a sausage made from meat scraps, 'plant fibre', water, and coagulated ox blood bleached with hydrogen peroxide. These examples being seemingly cited from what's probably at least in part, typical old wartime propaganda, I think at least be noted. 217.209.145.79 (talk) 23:42, 16 February 2022 (UTC)