Otto Waalkes
His Ottifant made it into the Duden
Otto Waalkes with his Ottifanten on the stage.
© imago/Sven Simon
Otto Waalkes is very happy: his comic elephant Ottifant has made it into the dictionary.
The comic elephant by comedian Otto Waalkes (74) has made it into the Duden, the German spelling dictionary. That makes the inventor of the little Ottifant immensely proud, as does he with his Instagram post indicates.
Otto: “Staaark – my Ottifant is now in the dictionary!”
For a screenshot of the Duden entry he writes: “Staaark – my Ottifant is now in the dictionary!” As befits a comedian, he garnishes the message with a joke. Because it goes on to say: “Now I can always read how to spell and pronounce it correctly, where it actually comes from and even what its genitive is like. I didn’t even know that it had a genitive – he never showed it to me.” . With his famous “Holdrio” he concludes his message to the almost 390,000 followers.
The fans rejoice with Waalkes. Under the post they joke “…I’m just missing an Ottifant Emoji”, “Why am I hearing your voice while reading” or “Only now?”. Another user writes admiringly: “Now you could (please not) retire. That’s all you can do. Come up with a word and get it included in the dictionary. Awesome”.
Even when he was at school, Otto drew cute pachyderms, as it is called by his music publisher: “They brought me bread for a few good Ottifanten drawings. My mother always made funny ones that didn’t taste good,” the Emden native is quoted as saying.