Ich liebe diese handgedrechselten Umlaute 💖
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 🇩🇪
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?
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 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.
Or for the example in the actual original post “ice box.”
Ah yes, the re-frigid-air-inator
Read it in his voice!
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.
Yeah sounds cool but do you remember their genders?
Sorry for the you tube link, but it’s too relevant: When people speak English but with German grammar.
Aua
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.
🤷🏼♂️ thank you for clearing that up.
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.
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
Japanese: コンピューター (Kon pyuu taa) 🗿
Now do Gloves = Handschuhe — Hand Shoes!
Slug = Nacktschnecke – naked snail.
What would snail be if they had named slugs first? “Shellslug?”
Seehund always cracks me up. It’s the perfect name.
Mehrfamilienhaus = more families house / apartment
Why new words when old words good?
I like new words, like Rucksackriemenquerverbindungsträger (the horizontal connection between the straps of your backpack that makes the backpack magically less heavy when closed)
So like “icebox”?
Eiskasten, Oida!
Really, nobody is going to point out that “cupboard” = “cup” + “board”?
The issue that makes it less intuitive is the “board” part. I’d assume a “cupboard” used to be a shelf, a board for putting cups on, but it evolved to have wooden walls around it so is it really a “board” anymore?
The board is still there, but “cupbox” might be more accurate. 🤔️
And if that board rots away and is gradually replaced, at what point does it cease to be the original board?
The cupboard of Theseus
Krankenwagen = sick car = ambulance
Krankenhaus = sick house = hospital
German (as well as most of the germanic family) does word construction really well.
救護車
救 --> save/rescue
護 --> protect
車 --> car/vehicleaka: Ambulance
An ambulance is a life saving car protecting you, or to abbreviate it, an SCP.
An ambulance is an SCP confirmed.
Interesting what languages go with, as Japanese keeps the save part but drops the protect in favor of hurry/emergency, so it’s the “hurry up and save you car” 救急車
Even ambulance itself comes from the French phrase walking hospital, and then the hospital part got dropped. We still retain the word ambulant to mean moving in English
Help I’m kranken, someone call a krankenwagon to take me to the krankenhaus before I krank again
Entschuldigung, but the Krankenwagen is krank and must be taken to the Wagenkrankenhaus in the Krankerwagenkrankenwagen.
We will send the Krankenpfleger Klaus and his Krankenschwester Klara to pick you up in a Rollstuhl.
Oh no, Klaus will pick me up with his Flurfördergerät.
The “en” part puts “krank” in genitive though, so “car of the sick” or “sick’s car” would be a more accurate translation. The car is not sick after all.
Krankenhandy
Danish uses “hospital” as a word, but they also have “sygehus” (house of the sick).
Apparently, English also has “sickhouse”: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sickhouse#English
Germany has Hospital as well. But it sounds archaic.
If I recall correctly hospitals were just the only “hotels” sick people could afford. So that’s where nuns would go to care for them. So more sick people would come because they would get good care there. Until they made the hospitals the official house where they care for sick people.
In Switzerland, the word Spital is in use instead of Krankenhaus
While that may be an element it also comes from the Knights Hospitallers who would set up rest stops for pilgrims. The thing is pilgrims would often get sick and have to be taken care of by the Hospitallers, which also blends into what you’re talking about.
That’s probably the full story. I couldn’t remember it all.
In swiss german it still is “Spital”.
That’s why “hospitable” isn’t anything you expect the average hospital to be.
How about sick move?
Kranke Bewegung, but we don’t say it in that context, not even for Parkinson patients who literally got sick moves.
English really is the weird one in this. Constructing new words with old ones makes a lot more sense than just stealing the words from other languages and mashing them in without changing much
All languages borrow, including German. English is not at all weird in this way.
Borrowing itself is normal, yeah, but english tends to go to the extremes with that. Even yoinking words like smörgåsbord as they are
English does have an above-average percentage of loanwords, but not the highest. Armenian and Romani are over 90% borrowings, for example.
Also, note that “smorgasbord” has undergone significant phonological adaptation in its borrowing to fit English’s phonotactics - it’s definitely not borrowed as-is.
Fair enough
