this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is a satirical book right?

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's German, so probably not.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago

For the longest time I believed Germany had no comedians, then someone told me that Mystery of the Druids was meant to be satire of English Police.

Then I was like "Okay that explains a lot."

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 88 points 2 days ago

We were Americans driving through Europe and the late '90s.

It was before Google translate and before Google maps. I had an HP PDA with translation app on it. I had purchased language packs for the countries we were visiting.

Down the highway we go. This beautiful black and white sign appears in the side of the road. It was 10-12 ft square with a skull and crossbones. Below the skull was a VERY long word.

We laugh nervously. What the hell was that? Yeah right?

After driving for a little while another one. Fuck. I don't know is the serious?

Another one. Now I'm breaking out the PDA and trying to remember the alphabet soup underneath the Grimm imagery. It doesn't have any idea what I'm talking about. We'll see another one coming up and we debate sitting in front of it until I get a chance to get it into the translator.

It was probably the longest compound word ever created to express the term drunk driving.

[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I can read "help," "groups," and "drive" in the word, but I don't know the others.

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Hilfe – help
Leistung – action (closest translation for this context)
-s- to make it sound less awkward
Lösch – root of the verb "extinguish"
Gruppe – group
-n- to make it sound less awkward (Gruppen being the plural, is incidental)
fahr – root of the verb "drive" or "go" in the context of vehicles Zeug – basically "thing"; hence Fahrzeug = vehicle

[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It's no coincidence that two of the words I recognized are cognates in English. "Fahr" I knew because I was always amused by the phrase "Gute Fahrt!"

EDIT: I just realized there are still remnants of "fahr" cognates in English, such as in "wayfarer."

[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 194 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (10 children)

I mean, yeah. This is an important part of the German language. They create composite words to describe a thing, and learning to break it down into its constituents is a fundamental part of reading German.

Hilfeleistungslöschgruppenfahrzeug

Hilfe - help
leistung - performance
Hilfeleistung - assistance
lösch - delete, extinguish
gruppen - group (team, department)
löschgruppen - (fire) extinguishing team or department
fahr - drive
zeug - thing
fahrzeug - vehicle

Assistance Extinguishing Team Vehicle

Now translate

Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft

[–] rockSlayer@lemmy.world 66 points 2 days ago (19 children)

It's also one of the most difficult parts of learning German as an adult, despite being a relatively simple syntactic rule and something we kinda-sorta emulate in English. The other part, at least for me, were false friends. Also sorry to all the lurking Germans waiting to comment, I forgot all of my German the moment I graduated college.

[–] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 45 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Alles gut. Deine Vergesslichkeit hindert mich nicht daran, hier zu pfostieren.

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[–] VitaminF@feddit.org 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It makes more context to translate "Zeug" as "tool" in most compound words, it is its original meaning like in Feuerzeug, Flugzeug, Fahrzeug, Rüstzeug.

[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

In English, I like to think it would be a "thingie." Like Germans are constantly trying to remember the word "lighter" and they're like, "you know, the whatsit, the... fire... thingie."

[–] Jonnynny@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

It's a good joke but I don't think it's too far off. The comment about it being "tools" kinda falls short of explaining things like Spielzeug=toy (play thing) and Schlagzeug=drum (beating/striking thing). I think "thing" is better. Might be somewhere in between though. Ich weiß nicht....

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[–] DandomRude@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yes, these compount words might be the reason why we couldn't get rid of the damn Nazis for good: After the Second World War, we Germans ourselves probably didn't understand what the purpose of the "Entnazifizierungsbehörde" (authority to combat National Socialist ideology) was and, accordingly, could not really grasp why it was so important. A serious mistake that still has consequences to this day, unfortunately...

/s, obviously

[–] tamal3@lemmy.world 29 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

My personal favorite is when Pieter cuts off a little girl's hand:

The words are less impressively compound, but the images speak for themselves. This one is good too:

Great children's literature!

[–] JayObey711@lemmy.world 23 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Peter was the guy with the nasty hair and nails. The kid in orange is Konrad or little suck-a-thumb. His thumbs are cut of by the a random man with big sharp scissors because he wouldn't stop sucking his thumbs. So he kind of had it coming. He was even warned by his mother.

But seriously the girl on the bottom is maybe the only good story I would actually tell my children. It's about a girl who kept playing with fire even tho she was repeatedly told how dangerous it was.

There is also one story about a black kid that is being bullied for the colour his skin. A bystander doesn't like that and dips the dipshits in ink so their skin is even darker than that of the black child. Wich is kind of slay but still portrays dark skin as worse than lighter skin soo :(

[–] nyctre@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

How does that story portray dark skin as worse than light? What am I missing? Just sounds like the dude showed the kids that even if you change the skin color, you're still the same person.

Or do you mean because the white kids are bullying the black one and not vice-versa? Cause yeah.. that might not be perfect nowadays, but it's still just trying to teach the kids not to bully the immigrants just because they're different. Guess they could've gone for something more neutral like some animals or something, but c'mon..

[–] JayObey711@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

The comments the guy makes sound more like "yes having black skin is bad, but there is nothing he can change about it, so don't bully him." And when he dips the kids in ink he say "look at you. Your skin is even darker than his now!".

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 48 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Hanz! Get ze Hilfeleistungslöschgruppenfahrzeug!

[–] Hupf@feddit.org 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

We make these huge, clunky compound words so that we can introduce new abbreviations. That's a HLF.

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[–] marius@feddit.org 24 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Very useful for when he's done getting the Flammenwerfer

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[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 54 points 2 days ago (4 children)

As someone who learnt both German and English as a second language, german was far easier to learn. Atleast the spelling and stuff makes sense.

[–] doingthestuff@lemy.lol 29 points 2 days ago (3 children)

As someone who speaks German alright (lived there awhile and studied a few years in school) gendered nouns and all of the versions of "the" are just stupidly laborious and I never cared if I got it wrong. Even if my accent was okay (it wasn't okay, my US German teacher was Danish and I was sometimes told I sounded Danish) my lack of fucks about der, die, das, dem etc made it very obvious I wasn't a native speaker.

All of that said, I found that popup kids book pretty easy to read.

[–] sockenklaus@sh.itjust.works 28 points 2 days ago (1 children)

my lack of fucks about der, die, das, dem etc made it very obvious I wasn't a native speaker.

I employ many non native speakers and most of them struggle with their articles and are very self conscious about them. They often consider themselves bad speakers because of this and I fear they sometimes talk less because they don't have the courage to make grammar mistakes.

I always tell them that I don't give a fuck about articles. Most of the time they don't convey any meaning. You can skip them or use a generic "de" to fake any article. For me as an employer it's more important that you practice talking, get a good vocabulary and have your times (especially Präsens, Perfekt, Futur) straight.🤷

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[–] werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 23 points 2 days ago (5 children)

How a normal Mexican American misunderstands via conversations with actual Germans...say you got an avocado... Now add salt, its a saltiavocado. Add vinegar, its a saltyvinegaravocado. Now step on it while running and you just "slippedonavinegaravocado" or you had an "avocadoslip".

I call bullshit. Bullshit doesn't come.

[–] Slovene@feddit.nl 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Say you got a pen ... Now add apple, it's a applepen. Say you got a pen ... Now add pineapple, you got pineapplepen.

[–] Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

That's going to be in my head for a while. Bastard.

[–] Saleh@feddit.org 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Meanwhile there is many words that are just two words in english instead of a compound word.

Lets take a typical example for "business" compound-words:

IT-Sicherheitsdienstleister -> IT security service provider.

[–] dojan@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I don't know about German, but in Swedish it looks really messy if you sunder your compound words. In general I think people know what you mean regardless, but you can end up with peculiar double meanings. There are plenty of signs, notes, and what have you that people have posted online for a laugh.

Off the top of my head

  • Gå lättpackad i fjällen
    • Travel lightly (as in luggage) in the mountains
  • Gå lätt packad i fjällen
    • Travel slightly intoxicated in the mountains
  • Sjukgymnast
    • Physiotherapist
  • Sjuk gymnast
    • Diseased/Sick gymnast
    • Addendum. Sjuk could also be used as an emphasizer just like in English. Think "bro that's a sick outfit" kind of thing, so it could be read as "awesome gymnast"
  • Årets sista svenskodlade tulpaner
    • The last Swedish-grown tulips of the year
  • Årets sista svensk odlade tulpaner
    • The last Swede of the year cultivated tulips

It's also worth noting that the tones can be different, so if you "hear" the words as you read them, then "lättpackad" and "lätt packad" sounds different.

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[–] chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de 24 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 26 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This, but seriously. If you know the words it's trivial, and when you know a little German it's much less confusing than it seems.

[–] bitwaba@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

when you know a little German it's much less confusing than it seems

speaking German is easy. Just know German!

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago

I know it sounds silly, but my point is when you know the words, spaces are almost unnecessary.

[–] spicytuna62@lemmy.world 31 points 2 days ago (1 children)
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