Yeah sounds cool but do you remember their genders?
One of my favorite examples of this is when a coworker from Bosnia asked for some gloves. She knew more German than English, so she asked for handshoes.
Ich liebe diese handgedrechselten Umlaute 💖
Sorry for the you tube link, but it’s too relevant: When people speak English but with German grammar.
Aua
but a cold cupboard is the the technology that predates the refrigerator, so how would you know which one people are talking about in German? (j/k)
Just in case there’s someone here who’d like to know: that “cold cupboard” technology that preceded the refrigerator in people’s homes is called Eisschrank in German.
Ah yes, the re-frigid-air-inator
Read it in his voice!
I suspect every language does this to some extent. Some good examples from Japanese:
靴 = shoes 下 = under 靴下 = socks
手 = hand 紙 = paper 手紙 = letter
歯 = teeth 車 = wheel 歯車 = cog / gear
火 = fire 山 = mountain 火山 = volcano
Sadly (?) the Japanese compounds are often only compounds of the symbols, not the spoken words.
well every language except English I guess.
We might not have as many as German or Japanese, but we do have some. Toothbrush, waterwheel, phonebook, stovetop, bookshelf, Headphone, bedspread, newspaper, etc.
Even more than the compound words I really like the kanji that have basically pure pictograph meanings, like mountain pass being “mountain up down” 峠.
Side note my favorite mnemonic is for the word (hospital) patient, where a person (者) ate too much meat on a stick, and now the problem is in their heart 串 + 心 --> 患者
Well 🇩🇪
Zahn = Tooth
Rad = Wheel
Zahnrad = cog 🎉
We took that into Hungarian
Fog = Tooth
Kerék = Wheel
Fogaskerék = Toothywheel = CogWell, is a cog actually a toothy wheel for everybody but the English language?
Mandarin-Chinese:
冰 = ice
箱 = box
冰箱 = ice box (refrigerator/freezer)or in Cantonese:
雪 = snow
櫃 = cabinet
雪櫃 = snow cabinet (refrigerator/freezer)usually 上層 “upper level” is used to indicate the freezing part (急凍/雪藏), like where you out ice cream, for example; 下層 “lower level” is used to refer to the non-freezing part, like where you put fruits, for example. Because every fridge we had was designed like that.
Also fun fact: 電腦 means “electric” + " brain" (aka: computer)
飛機 = “flying” + “machine” (aka: airplane)
Feel free to ask questions. I’m bored and wanna see how much I know.
Ok, so I heard anywhere that there is a Chinese language, where the signs for young and women does not say girl, but chimney. Can you confirm?
The fuck?
Lol no idk what the hell you got that from.
Every language is. German not having a word for fridge is fine. Compound words are a product of lack of a dedicated wird in a lot of languages.
Now do Gloves = Handschuhe — Hand Shoes!
Seehund always cracks me up. It’s the perfect name.
Slug = Nacktschnecke – naked snail.
What would snail be if they had named slugs first? “Shellslug?”
So like “icebox”?
Eiskasten, Oida!
German must have its own share of disappointing terms.
Pferd comes to mind as an example. I really expected something more metal like horzdraken or comical like hoofenstreider. But no, just a boring Roman loan word.
Simple words are usually those that stayed with a language the longest.
Hungarian also has a very high percentage of loanwords, and a lot of those very old ancient non-compound non-calque non-loanwords are single syllable.
Like:
Horse = Ló
Road = Út
Bridge = Híd
Army = Had
Herd of horses = MénThat’s a common misconception! “Pferd” is called that, because it lives on the ground (“Erde”). If it would live in the air (“Luft”), it would be called “Pfluft”.
/j
The latin word, for those who are curious, being paraverēdus (additional postal horse, postal horse for special occasions), according to https://www.dwds.de/wb/Pferd
If you like this you’ll love Chinese! A language where books were printed with literal blocks of wood!
Yes, and the language works this way too:
电 (diàn) : lightning
脑 (nǎo) : brain
电脑 : computer
Japanese is also similar
English is the funny north German dialect that moved to an island and went mental.
Lol, It’s all the French influence
German syntax, with the “I don’t want to pronounce that letter” of French. A wonderful combination.
Don’t forget the Celtic influence that gave English the meaningless do.
Not fair. Dutch does basicly the same. Yet we rarely get credit. German does sound cooler in most cases.
