Comments on: Quick Tipp - Figuring out new words

By: Florian Blaschke

Florian Blaschke — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 06:12:17 +0000

For those who like English combos, check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding

and for even more curious vocabulary, I mean, weirder words:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglish

Gotta love the resurrected Old English words

By: Florian Blaschke

Florian Blaschke — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 03:26:14 +0000

Germans have been painstakingly creating such neologisms for centuries to replace foreign words. Indeed, the idea was to make German terminology easier to understand. The “Eindeutschungen” did not always catch on, but very, very many of them were very successful, either replaced the foreign word, or keep existing alongside it, or sometimes developped a meaning of their own. Even some unsuccessful “Eindeutschungen” remain in the language, for example “Dunstkreis”, which was originally coined to replace “atmosphaera”, or “Stelldichein” for “Rendezvous”. This makes the German language very figurative and colourful indeed. We may not have a word for everything, but we can always coin a new word if needed, and nowadays we should really do that more.

Anonymous: “Titten” is not imported from English, it’s simply Low German

By: Wiebke

Wiebke — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:28:27 +0000

Hedgehog=Igel
Hair Dryer=Fön
Hair style = Frisur
Keyboard=Tastatur
Policeman= Polizist

I think, one focuses just on the foreign compound words that aren’t compounds in the own language. But I’m not sure if there are really more compunds in German than in English…

By: John

John — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:13:26 +0000

Fabian, everything here is pure comic genius. Either carefully planned or a inspired by a burst of brilliance, everything you read is certainly on purpose.

By: Fabian

Fabian — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:17:16 +0000

Here’s wondering if the word “handy” was put with “spell stuff like it sounds” on purpose

By: Ric

Ric — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:00:34 +0000

That way you could trash any given language.
And by the way, the “english” term diarrhea is greek and means exactly “Durchfall” (dia=through, rheo=flow). It obviously was translated literally into german while in english it remained a fancy foreign term, only understood by the pundits and used as a not self-explanatory noun by everyone else. I wouldn’t call that a “better” approach per se.

By: Wirtrstrst

Wirtrstrst — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:56:03 +0000

Germans aren’t spelling stuff like it sounds. They just think they do. When I was in Slovenia with school exchange, the Slovenian teachers told us that Slovenians are spelling stuff like it sounds. But we had to learn how to read Slovene first.

By: Minze

Minze — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:29:48 +0000

Whatever you say about Bandwurmwörter: they can be rather helpful if you want to get an awful lot of swearing done in a very short amount of time.

By: Benedicta

Benedicta — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:36:54 +0000

… or the most beloved sentence of linguists trying to parse English:
“Time flies like an arrow”
(… and fruit flies like a banana…)

Look here: http://www.zeitfliegen.de/timeflies.htm

By: 1of3

1of3 — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 12:53:02 +0000

> It goes the other way also when translating German to English

> Traffic Jam = Verkehrs Marmalade (German Combo) = Stau

Indeed.

Hair dryer < trocknet Haare < Fön.

Also note that English can do things with compounds German cannot.

For example you can say “traditional flight week” in English and that would probably be a week dedicated to traditional flight.

“Traditionelle Flugwoche” is something. It’s a traditional week dedicated to flight, because adjective (like traditionell) always belong to the head noun (woche in this case).

In fact the “traditional flight week” could be a traditional week dedicated to flight, as well. In English you cannot know to which part the modifier belongs from the syntax alone.

And that gets you all kinds of fun like “pretty little girls’ school”.

- Pretty little school for girls.
- Pretty school for little girls.
- School for pretty and little girls.
- School for pretty little girls.
….