Germany @feddit.de nodimetotie @lemmy.world 7 mo. ago

What are your favorite examples of German words making it into English?

92 comments

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?
  
  I'm scared to ask, but what's a body bag in German? I've never heard that one used before.
- That sounds hilarious
  
  For context: Germans call mobile phones "handys"
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!
I think doppelgänger is the most spread one.
- That's a good one!
  
  Gracias compadre!
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 :((
- 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
For the chess people: Zugzwang and Zwischenzug!
- Zugzwang is self explanatory but what is Zwischenzug?
- Not a chess person, never heard of them
Zeitgeist

Spiel

Schadenfreude

Kindergarten
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.
Gift. No wait
- 9
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.
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"
- 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
- Wanderlust
Bremsstrahlung
- was soll das sein?
  
  Strahlung, die beim Abbremsen von Partikeln entsteht.
  
  https://www.spektrum.de/lexikon/physik/bremsstrahlung/1974
  
  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.
Halt!
- Hammerzeit!
Abseiling
- First orderly an abseiling
- I guess I should try that sometime
  
  "Einen abseilen" can also mean going number 2
In mathematics:

Eigenvektor
- Nonmathematical, but same root, eigengrau, aka, the patterns you see if you press on your closed eyes.
  
  Aah, there's a word for it. I have been looking for it for ages.
- I think the original mathematician that proposed this idea was named Mr. Eigen, so eigenvector doesn't actually refer to the german word "eigen".
  
  If I remember right the term was introduced by Hilbert
  
  this is not true. The eigenvectors direction remains unchanged by the matrix representing alinear mapping. it is therefore characteristic to the matrix, hence the term "eigen".
Abseil.
Zugzwang
Doppelgänger
"Ouch"
Weltschmerz
- Now I know how to describe my feeling properly
- Wow, never heard of it
Nagelbrett. https://coenbrothers.fandom.com/wiki/Nagelbett
- das Nagelbrett hat mit deinem verlinkten Nagelbett aber nichts zu tun, brudi.
Does "Neuschwanstein" count? As in the castle in bavaria. Because I find it amusing how native english speakers just stumple over the pronounciation. Also "Gesamtkunstwerk" because it seems kinda superflous.
“Fuck”
- Was zum Fick
- Why are you getting downvoted? This German word is like the #1 English word PERIOD.
  
  Ignorance, I guess 😅
- No fucking way
Some of these are more personal to me (a Brit).

Scheissesturm. It's not originally from Germany. It's a Germanified Anglo word.

Apparently Germans imported "shitstorm" from English. When I read about it in the newspaper I decided to re-import it into English by using the German translation.

Personally I enjoy using curse words from other languages but I especially love German curse words so I also use "scheisse", "verdammt" and "Gottverdammt".

Because Dutch sounds so funny I took one of their curses and use it for a funny pisstake insult - "kanker hoer" followed by a laugh.
Ersatz

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