German is a silly language

Dec 7, 2024 8:08 PM

It's my cake day, have some words from my native langague that sound silly when I translate them into English literally.

Handschuhe. Now that's still weird because shoe go on your feet, but there is logic here.

Regenschirm. It schirms you from the Regen. Works.

Zahnfleisch. The flesh around your teeth.

"Meat" is flesh you can eat, if I understand correctly. You see, we don't have different words for those. "Fleisch" means both "flesh" and "meat".
This pattern will come up more.

Nacktschnecke. Now that is pretty non-bullshit straightforward. It's a snail, it's just missing it's house. No need to come up with a new name.

Let's do more animals.

Faultier. It's a Tier and it is faul.

Stinktier. Again, we took the most pevalent attribute of the animal and called it a *that* animal.

Schildkröte. Could also go for "Armored Toad", if we're being generous.

We don't have different words for turtle and tortoise either, we distinguish by adding their place of dwelling: "Landschildkröte" and "Meeresschildkröte". Land shield toad and sea shield toad.

Glühbirne. Do you see the pear shape?

Technically, a LED light bulb is not a glühbirne, as it doesn't have a Glühdraht, but we still call them that if they're pear shaped.

Brustwarze. The first image on Wikipedia is a female nipple and I had to go hunt fuirther for a male one. Because, as you know, female nipples are pure evil and make the internet explode and bring about the end of days.

Schlagzeug. "Zeug" as a suffix means "Thing(s) that..." As in Flugzeug (Airplane), Zaumzeug (Bridle) or Fahrzeug (Vehicle). But I wanted to include it only once.

Honorary mention, @kirbyvictorious
You gave me this idea. =)

Cat tax. Midna insists: She is baby. The human baby will have to find a different stroller.

Woohooo, Frontpage :D

That's it, post's over, everyone. Lid closed, monkey dead.

Fußboden = foot ground

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

What if you do the reverse, taken English words and translate the literally to German rather than the correct pronunciation or is there less the other way round?

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Seems very sensible to me.

2 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

German is a programming language in disguise

2 years ago | Likes 18 Dislikes 3

and that language is either INTERCAL or Brainfuck

2 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 1

#3 Rain screen makes more sense than calling it "little shadow" (which is the latin meaning of umbrella).

2 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

Especially as German also has a word for "Sun screen" when you use it for shadow (they call sunscreen "sun cream"

2 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

#9 My master would now say, "Es gibt kein Leuchtobst (there is no such thing as luminous fruit)"

2 years ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

Leuchtmittel bitte! nicht Glühbirne!

2 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

Or Glühlampe.

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

German is utilitarian. It is efficient. There is order. You will obey.

2 years ago | Likes 15 Dislikes 2

No, that would be Hungarian

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 6

Does this count?

2 years ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 1

Flammenwerfer literally translates flame thrower. Maybe English is a silly language, too. Consider this a "pine apple".

2 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Germannis a beautiful language and here's why: once you learn basic communication and words, complex conversations are naturally open to you. There are very few specific technical words in day-to-day day german.

Animals are a good exmple: nearly everyone is just animal. Exclusions just make sense, like raccoons being Wash Bears. They're little bears that wash things in water.

2 years ago | Likes 24 Dislikes 1

Actually a lot of animal battles in french are more like in German than English, racoon is raton laveur, Lille in German but in french.

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 1

You wouldn't know what a platypus is, unless you've already seen one. But a Schnabeltier aka beak animal? At least you can make some reasonable guesses. An animal with a beak, that's not a bird? Not too many of those around.

2 years ago | Likes 9 Dislikes 0

It IS a beautiful language.

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Makes me mad that mom stopped speaking it when I was young. My husband and I are relearning

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Klobrille - toilet seat (literally toilet glasses 'cos of the shape)

2 years ago | Likes 10 Dislikes 0

2 years ago | Likes 46 Dislikes 6

German humour is no laughing matter.

2 years ago | Likes 11 Dislikes 1

Fun facts about Germany: get back to work.

2 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 1

Will, according to Robin Williams, they did kill most of the funny people in the country between 1938 and 1945

2 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 2

I disagree with him on that, German Jews are German and thus are not funny, simple as.

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 4

I guess we'll never really know, now will we

2 years ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 0

As a swede i feel i cant make fun of this cuz we have a lot of similar words going on.

2 years ago | Likes 176 Dislikes 0

I think it's not really silly but instead simple, cause you just have to think about what the item does and you can guess the actual name by that. At least most of the times.

2 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

*cries in Dutch

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

As an Estonian, seeing the pattern of what things are named in this post: It seems it's English that's weird.

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Same with Danish, obviously

2 years ago | Likes 13 Dislikes 0

And Norwegian

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

As a Dutch person I have the same problem.

2 years ago | Likes 15 Dislikes 0

That's because you're a Swamp German.

2 years ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

Don't listen to Jingles.

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Slut

2 years ago | Likes 8 Dislikes 0

2 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

No you stop

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

True. I know what you call a train station at the end of the line.

2 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

The slutstation is never as fun as it sound =(

2 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Even worse is when we just import a German word and make it look Swedish.

2 years ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

Their parliament is named "Reichstag"?... let's name ours "Riksdag"!
Their word for emperor is "Kaiser"?... our word shall be "Kejsare"!

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

To be fair, both are a derivative of a Roman cognomen that became a title meaning "emperor", starting with the reign of Gaius Iulius Caesar and adopted by his successors.

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Just add some å and ä, noone will notice.

2 years ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

We have ä in German, and in the Bavarian dialect there's å too (though nearly nobody writes Bavarian).

2 years ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

I had the fun of conversing with a Bavarian speaker when I was in Germany. Took me entirely too long to realise neither one of us had hit the bar *that* hard yet, he was just impossible to parse. Then he took pity on my American ass and switched to English and it *somehow got worse*. But it was super cool because I love languages and accents/dialects, so it was an awesome challenge. Also, it did not get easier once we were both confirmed sober, fyi.

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

There's no fun here. Only German.

2 years ago | Likes 54 Dislikes 3

I only have 6 problems with German. Der, Die, Dos, Dem, Des, Den,

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

How many Germans does it take to change a lightbulb? One, they're very efficient and not very funny

2 years ago | Likes 22 Dislikes 0

Two, one to screw the pear in, second one to add glow to it.

2 years ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

I took a semester of German in college and absolutely hated the grammar and structure, especially separable prefix verbs. A couple years later I was so ashamed to realize English does a lot of the same dumb stuff.

2 years ago | Likes 27 Dislikes 1

Oh, don't worry, we hate the grammar too. In school at least.

2 years ago | Likes 10 Dislikes 1

I have an inescapable Minnesotan accent and that’s layered on my southwestern accent codices and evidently whenever I said something in German during my college class I’d sound something akin to someone trying to sound like someone speaking words like High German in the most country bumpkin accent imaginable.

2 years ago | Likes 8 Dislikes 0

English is the result of trying to impose Latin grammar on a Germanic language. This has a lot of weird results like the rule about not splitting an infinitive--because in Latin, an infinitive is a single word, whereas in English, it's "to" + whatever verb. "to go" can therefore be split as, e.g., "to boldly go".

2 years ago | Likes 8 Dislikes 0

You know what else we don't have different words for? "Venom" and "poison". We have a single word for "stuff that will harm or kill you if it enters your body".

That word is "Gift".

2 years ago | Likes 14 Dislikes 1

https://www.dasgifthaus.com/

I’m sure that any German speakers are quite amused by this

2 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

And in sweden that means both poison and married.

2 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

Isn't there something similar with chinese ideograms?

2 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

You forgot about the BEST one: cellphone = Handy!

2 years ago | Likes 97 Dislikes 0

I love receiving a Handy from someone as a gift!

2 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

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2 years ago (deleted Dec 8, 2024 12:35 PM) | Likes 0 Dislikes 0

"Taschentelefon" never ever heard that before.

2 years ago | Likes 11 Dislikes 0

tbh, a cellphone is handy

2 years ago | Likes 10 Dislikes 0

That's where it comes from. It's a handy phone.

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Still, it's odd the Germans didn't call it a praktisch, as they are generally quite fobic about English terms.

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 4

Actually, they aren't. All kinds of shit get English terms now because "it sounds cool".

2 years ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 0

Ah, the classic Scheinanglizismus!

2 years ago | Likes 24 Dislikes 0

Damn. Yes. That one is so blunt, it went right past me.

2 years ago | Likes 24 Dislikes 0

Well, that's a (misspelled) swabian word. When the Swabians saw the first mobile phones at the time, they were very surprised and immediately asked curiously "Ai, hän die koi Schnur mehr?" And some marketing jerks who, as we all know, LOVE english and have to use it everywhere, regardless of whether it makes sense or not, have simply turned it into the erroneous anglicism ‘Handy’.

2 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

As it makes no difference whatsoever, I choose to accept this fact as true.

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

On the other hand, there's generally no silent letters in German (*states at French*).

2 years ago | Likes 60 Dislikes 0

French is what you get when you add seven extra letters to every word for fashion, and then pronounce them by gargling air.

2 years ago | Likes 14 Dislikes 0

French has silent letters out the oiseaux.

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

You just pronounce them through your nose

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Because why use a letter you don't speak anyway, that's not efficient ;D

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

And you always know whether a word is spelled "I before E" or "E before I": it's always the *second* one that actually gets pronounced. (Unless you're speaking *Swiss*-German, in which case I think that rule gets reversed.)

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

It's the second *letter* that gets pronounced, I should clarify. In "Zahnfleisch", you pronounce the I, not the E. In "Faultier", you only hear the E, not the I.

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

We have something called "stummes h" ("silent h") when it's not pronounced but written like in Weihnachten.

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

What? There are a lot of silent letters! For example "Wie bitte?" is pronounced "Hä?".

2 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

*laughs in Finnish

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

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2 years ago (deleted Mar 11, 2025 11:17 PM) | Likes 0 Dislikes 0

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2 years ago (deleted Dec 8, 2024 10:52 AM) | Likes 0 Dislikes 0

No it doesn't. It's a sound that does not exist in English pronunciation.

2 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 1

Funny you should mention that when a French U is just an Ü, which is virtually the exact same as Y in all germanic languages except for English which doesn't have a /y/ sound and instead uses Y as some weird /j/ and /aɪ/ hybrid letter.

2 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

When I was in UK, the mom of my hosting family could not speak Ö from my roommates name Björn. She was struggling and ended up with sth like Bjo-ern. So I told her to say "word", and then "put the sound of the o from word and put it into Björn". It worked, sounds exactly the same.

2 years ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 1

it's just an u with a higher pitch.

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 1

Was thinking about it and you have an Ü sound: for example in "Surgery". Just speak it like the u in surgery.

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 3

That sound is close to ö not ü.

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

t's not 100% but an 8 out of 10 :D

2 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 2

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2 years ago (deleted Mar 11, 2025 11:17 PM) | Likes 0 Dislikes 0

hahaha

2 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

kindergarten - a garden of children (like plants, children need constant care to develop properly)

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

There is Kindergarden in English which means the same.

2 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Baumschule. Tree school.

2 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

I was going to write a post about how "anteater" is actually "Earth Pig" in Dutch, but it seemed like too much aardvark

2 years ago | Likes 42 Dislikes 1

It's "ant bear" in German , Ameisenbär. But then we also call raccoons "wash bears", Waschbären, so maybe we're just not very good at identifying bears.

2 years ago | Likes 13 Dislikes 0

I just learned today that raccoon in French is raton lavere- the rat that washes.

2 years ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 0

Nice

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Furry, 4 legs, claws, predatory. Thats a bear alright.

2 years ago | Likes 9 Dislikes 0

Only if it's also rotund. if it's sleek it's sort of a cat. And if it's rotund but not predatory, then it's sort of a pig.

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

BEHOLD! A MA...Wait, wrong meme.
Carry on.

2 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

What do you call a hedgehog? In Danish it is "stick hog" (pindsvin)

2 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

Igelkott in Sweden. Leech cone (as from pine cone, not VLC media player cone)

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

I can't see a pig in a hedgehog, rather a mouse - that animal should be called "ouch mouse" instead. Ok, jk - but the Japanese got it right: harinezumi = needle mouse!

2 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

Ha, that's our word for porcupine, Stachelschwein! (Although I guess Stachel is more like a stinger or a thorn than a stick).
Hedgehogs actually have a non-silly non-compound name: Igel (pronounced like the English "eagle")

2 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

but "Erdferkel" exists and is a different animal from the "Ameisenbär"

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Yeah, i think the comment I replied to was more interested in making the "too much aardvark" pun than in taxonomical correctness. :D
But I was strictly talking about the anteater part.

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

What I love about German as a language is that it comes up with new words by smushing old words together into one word.

2 years ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 1

All Germanic languages do this, even English. Though over time it mostly switched to smushing latin/foreign words together instead, and placing spaces between them.

2 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Schwiegermuttertechtgeber.

Warmduscher.

2 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

You forgot about Feuerwehr lol

2 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

What's weird about Fire Defense?

2 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

The comments are a goldmine in that regard. I could do two or three more of these.

2 years ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 0

foreign colleague asked me once what "abhängen" means. I explained that there can be different meanings like taking a picture off the wall or hanging out (with friends) and asked for context. He said "something regarding a car chase". Yeah, it also means to lose someone who is chasing you :-)

2 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

There's this anecdote of a comedian in the 1930s, brandishing a framed picture of the mustache man.
"Ich erwarte viel von diesem Herren, ich bin mir nur nicht sicher, soll ich ihn aufhängen oder an die Wand stellen?"

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Deine Katze ist schön!

2 years ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 0

Danke sehr. Sie ist sehr niedlich, sie ist bereits voll ausgewachsen und nur drei Kilogramm schwer.

2 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

Swedish for sloth is late walker. Sengångare.

2 years ago | Likes 8 Dislikes 0

Mmmm. I would say ”slow walker” is more better.

2 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

I prefer the Danish/Norwegian "Dovendyr" which means "lazy animal"

2 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

I constantly mix up "safety" and "security" as we Germans have only one word for that.

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

In Finnish as well, translation for both is “turvallisuus”. People in the safety or in the security actually tend to use the English terms to disambiguate.

2 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Not only Sicherheit may be used for both safety and security, also Schutz (protection) may be used for both safety and security.

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

And the last one, stroller, would be Kids Car, or Kinderwagen. (Wagen is related to waggon, german and English are pretty similar in many words)

2 years ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

Yes, that's the Anglo - Saxon part of English. Girl / Göre, Wind, Nord / North, and so on.

2 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

Yes, so interesting and funny with etymology. For example "window" comes from old german "wind aug" (eye of the wind), probably evolving in a time where glass was not as tight as today. And also eleven or elf, should be eins-zehn in german or one-ten in english, following the logic. But it's called eleven because it comes from counting to ten and then "one left" or old german "een left".

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

do queue

2 years ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 0

Tell me how you say "birth control pill" in German.

2 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

hihihihi...

"Antibabypille". I don't think a translation is needed. :D

2 years ago | Likes 14 Dislikes 0

Schadenfreude.

2 years ago | Likes 9 Dislikes 0

A tricky word. It translates to "Schadenfreude" in English.

2 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

"Harm Joy," as in "joy at seeing someone harmed". "Schaden" is cognate with Old English "scathe" (like "unscathed", meaning "undamaged").

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Injury happiness. Or perhaps injury joy, I suppose.

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

KRANKENWAGEN

2 years ago | Likes 24 Dislikes 4

NATURWISSENSCHAFTEN!!!

Still. That's "Krankentransportwagen" for you, sir / madam. Except if it's the First responder kind, then it's a "Rettungswagen". Duh.

2 years ago | Likes 20 Dislikes 0

Handschuhschneeballwerfer

2 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

BONDAWAGEN!

2 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

SORRY Schnuckiputzi

2 years ago | Likes 9 Dislikes 0

Ist schon in Ordnung, Mausi.

2 years ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 0