Heya!~ Been a while since I made a thread, and I've recently been reviewing how I look at german; there's some interesting things in there. There's cool things like Langeweile (boredom) consisting of Lange (long) and Weile (a certain period of time) so boredom is... a certain period of time stretched long. Or something english speakers may be more familiar with; Schadenfreude. As a concept not so nice, but as a word itself? It can be broken up into Schaden and Freude, first meaning damage and second meaning joy or enjoyment. But then again... there's things like the shieldfrog(Schildkröte)/turtle or the flyingstuff (Flugzeug)/airplane! And considering this is a site that gathers lots of differing people from various backgrounds and communities, from countries all around the world, I imagine there is a lot that could be funny or awesome or interesting or simply make us smile! So I invite you to share your own languages oddities and quirks, and maybe find some others you find interesting :'p As always, Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, come again~
Ranton? Yepp, weird and sarcastic people must have named english fears. Like aibophobia, the fear of palindromes...
Not ordinary words, but Old English and Old Norse poetry makes use of "kennings" which specifically explore this kind of word building in more poetic ways instead of using the normal name, for example a word for the ocean you see in Beowulf is "hron-rād" which literally means "whale road". This wikipedia article lists a bunch of them.
My 5 cents: Spanish, english and chinese have the common insult that is the words "Fuck you" or "Fuck your mother" which basically means the same in each language.
Okay but..... Puke---> In English, they mean vomit But in our country, it has the same spelling(but diff pronunciation) and it means female genital XD
As a person that studied german for half semester i know only one sentence “ich liebe dich” it means i love you ❤️ And as a person studied 4 years turkish i only know “allahu akbar” But as a self learned russian i can converse verly good And as a fellow weeb i can understand japanese fairly good This shows education system is bugged you need to be more fun to learn stuff
Ich liebe Emilia. @Blitz Its more like "To God" rather than "With God." I think that whoever posted that just google-translated those facts lol
In cantonese and the sze yup dialects in particular, if you want to say that someone is sarcastic, you say "keoui gong ye yao gwut" literally meaning "their speaking has bones." You can also say that someone talks too much by saying "hao seoui dwo goh tsa". It literally means that they drink more saliva (mouth-water) than tea.
hmm on Bahasa Indonesian (the national language of Indonesian) there exist word "Rawan" it mean highly frequent, prone~ so if we put Rawan with other hmm adjective? hmmr the word associated with event it mean it high probability to happen example Rawan Bencana, it mean high risk of disaster Rawan Banjir, it mean high risk of flood or flooding Rawan Kecelakaan(accident), it mean high risk of accident usually associated with road accidents but it can mean accident on general~ but Rawan will have opposite meaning when combine with one word Rawan pangan(food), it mean lack of food..... weird no? idk the true reason why only on that combination Rawan have totally opposite meaning~ another word combination give new term that is Tulang(bone) rawan, it mean cartilage~ Rawan also have different meaning but it only used on old language of Bahasa Indonesia so not really well known even among general public~ funny word no?
A long Dutch word: hottentottententententoonstelling (ENG: tent exhibition of the Hottentotten/Khoikhoi). Its an artifical layering of syllables with ten -t's and 4x -ten repeated behind one another.
That list is sorely incomplete, even for the languages it mentions. English has the expression "see you [insert something here]". Spanish has the expression "hasta la vista", which means "untill we see each other". French has the word "adieu", which comes from "à Dieu", exact same meaning as spanish "adiós". Basically, as attested by also checking Italian, which has "addio" and "arrivederci", every romance language (and most european languages from traditionally chistian nations) has at least two different parting formulas: one that states a wish for a short parting (which takes a form that basically conveys "until the nech time we see each other") and one for indefinite or final partings (which takes the form of something like "God be with you"). In fact, for decades (if not centuries) saying "adiós" to someone close to you was frowned upon in Spanish (at least in Spain), the same way "adieu" is frowned upon in most cases in parts of France (at least in Paris; in many parts, mostly the south, it's the common parting formula). It's interesting that "shellfrog" for "turtle" in German; in Galician, one of the words for "turtle" (tortoise, in particular) is "sapoconcho" (~="toad with shell").
hahaha, that sounds cofusing... and reminded me of what @Meloman came to say before me! hmmm, that's interesting~ maybe it comes from something like... this Rawan meaning frequent ? Food isnt something you can go without for a while, it's more something you need always or constantly. Leading to something like that meaning that, yes, you had food, and maybe you will have food again, but not right now? though, that's only my own speculation
That's why when writing or communicating online, we don't usually use the word "puke", we always use vomit. XD