@RickiTarr True story: I was visiting my German grandmother with my wife a few years back, and I had been trying to teach myself German at the time.
At some point my wife asked me what the word for gloves was. Not knowing the actual word in German, I decided to come up with the most absurd construction I could think of just to be funny.
She wasn't buying it. "There's no way they're called hand-shoes."
I told her to ask my grandmother if she didn't believe me, figuring we'd all have a laugh about it. So she did, and my Grandmother with a completely straight face replies, "Yes, of course, Handschuhe, what else would they be called?"
@RickiTarr I think (I may be wrong) they have a phrase for comfort eating called “kummerspek” or something like that, that literally means “grief bacon”.
@RickiTarr lots of English words from German: Uncle(Onkel), Aunt(Tante), Mother(Mutter), Father(Vater), Hound(Hund), House(Haus), Garden(Garten), Kitten(Kätzchen) and Grocery Store (Lebensmittelgeschäft).
@RickiTarr they have a rather... logical way of naming things. "Hand shoes" for gloves isn't that far fetched since we used shoes on feets so why not shoes on hands ? Same goes for "Ambulance" called "Krankenwagen" (meaning car for sick people). ALso 99.9% of the language actually pronounces all the letters in a word you cannot make mistakes based on spelling.
@paprika@RickiTarr
If I recall correctly, Dutch for hospital is “Ziekenhuis” house/building for sick people. 🤷♀️
They say English is a Germanic language, but we sure took it a long way away from the sensible guys more closely related.
@RickiTarr my personal favorite is “Backpfeifengesicht” which means “a face that’s begging to be slapped” or “a punchable face”. I use it frequently! 😠
@RickiTarr
I don't know the word for "penguin" German, but if you told me it was a literal combination of "Little fish-bird that looks like it's wearing a tuxedo" I would believe you.
@RickiTarr#German is usually consistent and should make sense. for example, a team is called "mannschaft". makes sense, teams used to be all men. so how do you call a women's team? you'd think easy "frauschaft". WRONG, it's "frauen mannschaft" 😅 wheelchair is "rollenstuhl" (rolling chair), but elevator is "fahrstuhl" (travel chair). i would've picked differently 😅. finally, "Bauen" is to build something, so you'd think builer is "Bauer" but it's actually farmer. builder is "Baumeister". enjoy
@RickiTarr It has some amazing words, such as schadenfreude, freundschaftsdienst, verschlimmbesserung. Guess those words help offset all the extra words it takes to say other things. 🙂
@RickiTarr Not to spoil the fun but these memes are a pet peeve of mine. It always tries to make fun of German by portraying it as shouty. A certain Austrian painter is the reason - understandably - but after years it is just not funny.
I could take any given English word, shout it, and then say how ugly English is.
That's just not true, though....
(that said.... drawing actual shoes on the German's hand is funny)
And you can actually have A LOT OF FUN with long German words
@RickiTarr German can be very soft and poetic as well. Take for instance this beautiful ballad by Einstürzende Neubauten, a band otherwise mostly known for their harsh and noisy industrial music played on unconventional instruments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Nz9t_4XLcc
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