If German was English
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Theres one big difference between German and English. German allows you to just take multiple words and pack them into one word. This is a
bugfeature English does not have(or at least not to this extend). That's also the reason why its sometimes very hard to translate some gean words because you have to split them up and then translate them individually. -
I think every language probably sounds silly if transliterated into another language
You’ve clearly never heard of Torpenhow Hill, which translating all to English, means Hill Hill Hill Hill.
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Agreed. Stoff would be the German for stuff. The Germans had a rocket propelled interceptor plane called the Komet, and its two parts of fuel were called C-Stoff and Z-Stoff.
I imagine the military looking at the names for the things and going “yeah, we need to dumb it down for our grunts.”
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German is weird in more ways, namely word ordering
Sie dürfen nicht ein Feuerzeug mit ins Flugzeug nehmen
You're not allowed to a fire stuff with you in flight stuff bring
But all languages are weird. Here's some french for you
qu'est-ce que c'est?
I don't have the proper knowledge to translate this properly but it's something like "wh'is-at what that is" (its the way they say "what is that")
And Swedish, my native language
I eftermiddags åt jag jordgubbar. Nu ska jag äta middag.
This after middle day ate i soil old men. Now I'm going to eat middle day. (This afternoon I ate strawberrys. Now I'm going to eat dinner)
Given that Swedish is my native language I'd also like to inform you that the English word "smorgasbord" is completely ridiculous. It's literally just the Swedish word "smörgåsdsbord" but without å and ö, so it's pronounced completely wrong. The word smörgås is however also a bit weird, it literally means "butter goose". So your English word smorgasbord means "butter goose table". Also window means wind eye, it's the old Swedish word "vindöga"
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Guten Morgen ist ein Oxymoron!
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a language would sound the same when transliterated to another language
Eh, not totally. Some languages have phonemes that are completely absent in other languages, and some phonemes (especially vowels, though sometimes consonants, eg: "r") are different enough that a transliteration can never do them justice. Although, I guess transliterating into the international phonetic alphabet would do the trick...
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My favourite stop on the London Underground is Knightsbridge - 6 consecutive consonants.
I once saw on an italian restaurant menu the word Taramasalata. I am not sure why but it was very amusing to me that every second letter was 'a'
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Well stuff is literally Stoff, so...
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Childless but many of my friends have kids and seeing that top panel... Just... lol.
"this is a tool, not a toy"
How many times have I heard that said, or even said it myself, to children.
Your point being?
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Beender Beending Rodriguez
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the thing about compound words is that they become a new word and people usually don't think about them by breaking them up so they don't sound ridiculous. if another language has a dedicated word for it, comparing them with the direct translation of the broken up compound word makes a funny comparison.
if you'd like to break up some English compound words to see how they might sound weird or basic in other languages here are some examples:
- arm chair
- arm pit
- blue print
- cup cake
- dead line
- eye lash
- fire fighter
- fire man
- fire works
- home sick
- horse shoe
- lip stick
- make up
- news paper
- pass word
- pine apple
- pot hole
- work place
be cause
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That would be: Sie dürfen nicht eins Feuerdings mit in
hineindas Flugdings hinein bringenThe hinein from 'into' is optional in German.
Better would be:You allowed no firegear with in the flightgear take.
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Yeah, that may be a better translation
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Thanks! My German isn't that good. I've been studying it for four years but sometimes it feels like we're getting nowhere.
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Yes, that's true
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I'm sure you can find a lot of parallels in Europe since English shares a lot with Germanic and Latin languages but what I mean is any language could easily have a single dedicated word for it and these would relatively sound funny.
for example you could imagine a language having "extinguisher" as a job title, which makes sense, but then you'd say "in English they call extinguishers 'people who fight fire' like they're fucking boxing isn't that funny"
but also I don't know maybe it's because I'm fascinated by language I don't actually think it's funny. I think sick people house makes a lot of sense. much more than hospital to be honest, which means guest house, which is more appropriate for a hotel, which shares etymology with hospital!
