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Schadenfreude
Zeitgeist
Kindergarten
Haven’t heard Schadenfreude, good one to know
Tanking joy in someone else’s suffering
I prefer English words making it incorrectly into German. “Getting a handy from your buddy at a public viewing” is totally innocent in German.
Yeah, I brought the beamer in my body bag.
Beamer is a projector, right?
Yep.It’s interesting, because there is a document class for presentations in LaTeX that is called beamer
I’m scared to ask, but what’s a body bag in German? I’ve never heard that one used before.
it’s a Rucksack, but with an english sounding name. 🙄
That sounds hilarious
For context: Germans call mobile phones “handys”
Yeah, I know. I wonder why, though. It sounds English.
It’s a pseudo-anglicism, like Oldtimer (antique car), Homeoffice (work from home) and Flipper (pinball machine).
Pseudo-anglicisms arise when a languages lexical composites are known in a non-native population without perfect knowledge of the actual vocabulary. All the words above are build out of perfectly fine english composites, just put together in a way that “feels” english to Germans.
There are also pseudo-germanicisms in english too by the way, the NYT had an article about “Freudenfreude” which was supposed to be a german word with the opposite meaning of Schadenfreude. But while it would be a logical german composite-word, it doesn’t exist as such. “Freudenfreude” is only ever found in english literature.
If Freudenfreude means what I think it does there’s no need for the word to exist in Germany
I think because they are handy to have and they fit perfectly into your hand.
Edit: Or maybe from “handset”.
My friend in Australia is a doctor studying psychiatry and he kept asking me what certain worlds meant and half the time I had no idea what they were or how to explain them lol.
Very random. Here’s a wiki list but I remember there were some others too
Anwesenheit
Dermatozoenwahn
Entgleisen
Gedankenlautwerden
Mitgehen
Mitmachen
Pfropfschizophrenie
Schnauzkrampf
Wahneinfall
Verstimmung
vorbeigehen; vorbeireden
Witzelsucht
Würgstimme
Word salad/Wortsalat
Zeitraffer
Zeitlupenwahrnehmung
It’s kind of interesting to see the long lasting effect of Germans pioneering the medical field for a very brief time in history.
Very cool!
Gesundheit
Poltergeist
Spiel
Stool ( Stuhl )
Rucksack
Good ones! Rucksack is interesting because it also exists as a backpack, which is literally the translation of rucksack.
…German even is my native language and I didn’t get it :((
You’re welcome)
I don’t think I heard Gesundheit used in English much, though
It is usually used as an alternative to the religiously framed “bless you” when someone sneezes
Good to know!
I think doppelgänger is the most spread one.
That’s a good one!
Gracias compadre!
Zeitgeist
Spiel
Schadenfreude
Kindergarten
Gift. No wait
9
For the chess people: Zugzwang and Zwischenzug!
Zugzwang is self explanatory but what is Zwischenzug?
Not a chess person, never heard of them
Eigenvalues and eigenvectors, which however, were not discovered by the well known mathematician Eigen. Ansatz ist also commonly used in research articles.
It’s funny how both the German and English stems from the whole word.
But surely eigenspaces were discovered by Dr. Eigen. Right?
And don’t forget the famous Binomi brothers.
Who discovered the binomial distribution? Of course. Although they are probably not as famous as Prof. Normal who came up with the Normal distribution. No, wait…
They’ve discovered the binomial formulas too.
Iceberg
Really?
I mean the English usually don’t call mountains Berg, right? Berg is German for mountain. Ice of course being Eis. And we like compound words.
But it’s Berg in the Scandinavian languages, too.
They are germanic languages after all. There are many words you’ll find in German and e.g. Norwegian, especially if you overlook slight spelling differences (endings, v or f, s or z,… )
I never made the connection, thanks!
As an American: Hamburger
I guess Wieners and Frankfurters would also count
I guess mine would be kaput
Kaputt*
In English, it is, surprisingly, just “kaput” with a single “t”
Funny! So we can say “‘kaput’ is(t) kaputt.”
Probably a mistake that got so common that it is now accepted as correct
That’s ok, just tell us when it’s working again
Nah, it’s kaput for gut
(German) Angst Apfelstrudel Kindergarten Oberlichte …
Meister
Gestalt
Gestalt is an awesome word
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Bremsstrahlung
was soll das sein?
Das ist, wenn du auf Toilette warst, die Spülung es aber nicht ganz schafft, dein Werk verschwinden zu lassen und stattdessen an dessen Oberfläche am Porzellan, der sogenannten “Bremsspur”, kollidierendes Wasser nach oben an deinen Allerwertesten abstrahlt.
Strahlung, die beim Abbremsen von Partikeln entsteht.
