Context: I’m missing a cutting board. So I wrote in our telegram family group: “Wo ist eigentlich unser zweites großes Schneidebrett hin?” (literally: “Where is actually our second big cuttingboard thither?”).
By using the modal particle “eigentlich” I insinuate that something is oddly off and express an emotional state of curiousity and/or mild discontent.
By adding “hin”, I notify that I ask because it is not where it is supposed to be and not because I don’t know where it should be.
Now I ask myself, how would I express this additional information in English?
Yes we have that in English too. But we also have the use of “stolen” to mean “borrowed without checking first”.
It implies zero or only the tiniest possible wrongdoing on the part or the one who took it. The use of the strong word “stolen” is meant as a sort of disjunction to eliminate any interpretation of mild annoyance.
It’s sarcasm basically, but without the tone. It’s like when I say “Uh I took one of your french fries when you were away from the table” and someone else says “oh you’re going to jail Bud”. It’s a sarcastic escalation of the severity, to signal the opposite: “It’s totally okay”