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German expressions that don’t exist in English

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Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#111

Post by kenmendin »

LeonW wrote: post #99

Another word someone brought up is "Geborgenheit", which translates to comfort or security. Briefly researching the origin it, it seems to come from the terminology around "Burg" (castle), and the feeling of safety and comfort we feel when we're inside one. In my understanding it also has a considerable amount of warmth next to the sense of safety and comfort. Overall, definitely one of my favorite words that I think…

Geborgenheit: I always think this is a how a kid feels while sleeping on a couch under a blanket along with loving parents at a warm home while it is snowing outside.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#112

Post by davrosthedalek »

georgeplusplus wrote: post #80
Hermel wrote: post #31

No, these expressions exist in English, they just have a slightly different meaning. And in the case of “Entwicklung”, the English pendant “Development” even has the exact same origin: to unwrap or unfold (the opposite of envelope). There certainly are German expressions that do not exist in English, but this list does not do a good job at collecting them. My personal impression is that German makes it easier to expr…

I dislike when people say “this cannot be translated correctly into your language” as it logically doesn’t make sense. perhaps they mean word for word? I’m sure any language can conjure up a similar feeling and combination of words. Maybe not a literal translation, but by virtue of being a human construct, any language can be crafted and molded into anything.

While you can translate the immediate meaning, either word-for-word or with a description, this will not give the full collection of meaning and concepts the word has to the culture it's from. An example in the reverse direction is "accuracy" and "precision", which have different, well established meanings in English, but translate to the same thing in German, "Genauigkeit".

Weltschmerz and Schadenfreude are examples where Germans have a wider net of associated concepts around it. To capture all of that, you would have to do more than translate it. For example, there is a commonly understood limit of what Schaden you can have Freude about, and what modifies that limit.

I find it fascinating how the existence or non-existence of certain concepts in a language influence our approaches at problem solving.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#113

Post by davrosthedalek »

deng wrote: post #83
Hermel wrote: post #31

No, these expressions exist in English, they just have a slightly different meaning. And in the case of “Entwicklung”, the English pendant “Development” even has the exact same origin: to unwrap or unfold (the opposite of envelope). There certainly are German expressions that do not exist in English, but this list does not do a good job at collecting them. My personal impression is that German makes it easier to expr…

I'm sorry but I must disagree: "sachzwangreduzierte Ehrlichkeit" is absolutely horrible. If you like this kind of talk, you'd make a good politician (or consultant).

The only time I could imagine hearing such a thing if somebody is making fun of politicans or consultants.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#114

Post by lispm »

jablan wrote: post #66
skytreader wrote: post #57

Me: Moved to Hamburg this year, has 320 days on Duolingo and finished an actual beginner's German course so far. I can only partially agree to the statements made in this thread about the quality of this list but I've been fascinated with German words that have no English counterparts, at least not completely. My favorite one so far is "Waldeinsamkeit"--literally "forest soltitude" but the translation does not captur…

Fellow Hamburg immigrant here. I admire your optimism and the will to perceive an intention behind the darkness (which was also one of my first impressions of Hamburg). Unfortunately, I don't see it that way, but more as general unfriendliness of the city towards a random individual. Other things in the same vain that I noticed (coming from the Balkans, if important) are: very few overhangs that the buildings offer a…

There is the concept of light pollution, Lichtverschmutzung. If a city is too bright, you won't see the stars, animals would have difficulty to sleep, etc... The city has areas which are lighted, but in other areas it's darker. See the link to the Lichtkonzept I've put in another comment.

> public water taps

That's an interesting question. A few decades ago this was more common, but it has been removed over the years. I think there is a fear of pollution and also costs involved. There are only a few in the city:

https://www.hamburgwasser.de/privatkunden/themen/trinkwasser...

The Aussenalster is a popular jogging training track and it has public water there.

Currently there are plans of the local government to install hundred public water taps in the city in the coming years and two hundred in schools. That's already a movement in various other cities, too: Blue Communities.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#115

Post by mbeex »

lower wrote: post #15
a_bonobo wrote: post #11

I've been struggling to find an equivalent for 'overengineered' in German - there's verschlimmbessern, a portmanteu verb of 'verbessern' (improve) and 'schlimm' (bad), it's what you use when you want to improve something but the end-product is worse. However, German tech (to me!) has a overengineering problem, not a verschlimmbessern problem, there's nothing being improved. Just look at modern German cars, impossible…

I usually say überkompliziert.

I would probably use 'verkompliziert' or even 'kuenstlich verkompliziert' when emphasizing the active role of the responsible person/group. But the english term is good - short, a bit more specific. It is used as a 'Lehnwort' quite often even in german-speaking tech environments.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#116

Post by [deleted] »

Hermel wrote: post #31

No, these expressions exist in English, they just have a slightly different meaning. And in the case of “Entwicklung”, the English pendant “Development” even has the exact same origin: to unwrap or unfold (the opposite of envelope). There certainly are German expressions that do not exist in English, but this list does not do a good job at collecting them. My personal impression is that German makes it easier to expr…

[deleted]

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#117

Post by memling »

deng wrote: post #62

These are good examples of what linguists call a "Volksetymologie", meaning a usually wrong derivation of words which are no longer correctly understood or have changed meaning. A popular example is when a German newspaper did one of those stupid surveys for the "most beautiful German word", and the winner was "Habseligkeiten". The cited reason was because it combines "Haben" (to have) with "Selig" ("blessed"), the p…

> As a German, the word I'm really missing when speaking English is the simple word "doch", which more or less means "No, but yeah".

As a college student I lived with a few German speakers. I felt like I had "arrived" with the language during an exchange in which I said, "Ich kann nicht Deutsch" and the native speaker said, "Doch."

Of course the nuances are a bit more complex than that, and English (it feels to me) uses intonation and inflection more than particles to communicate meaning.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#118

Post by LeonW »

kenmendin wrote: post #111
LeonW wrote: post #99

Another word someone brought up is "Geborgenheit", which translates to comfort or security. Briefly researching the origin it, it seems to come from the terminology around "Burg" (castle), and the feeling of safety and comfort we feel when we're inside one. In my understanding it also has a considerable amount of warmth next to the sense of safety and comfort. Overall, definitely one of my favorite words that I think…

Geborgenheit: I always think this is a how a kid feels while sleeping on a couch under a blanket along with loving parents at a warm home while it is snowing outside.

I love this, realizing that we each have our own description and meaning of the word stored in the memories we lived. Thanks for sharing!

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#119

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

EastLondonCoder wrote: post #22

Interestingly enough the words exists in Swedish as well, spelling is a bit different but the meaning is more or less the same: German -> Swedish Wehmot -> vemod Entwicklung -> utveckling Einsam -> ensam Stimmung -> stämmning Entschuldigen -> ursäkta Aufrichtigkeit -> uppriktighet Lebensmut -> livsmod Ursprung -> ursprung Liebenswürdig -> älskvärd Note that Sinneswandel is missing not sure if there is a direct transl…

> Interestingly enough the words exists in Swedish as well.

And this is no surprise. Low German was a major trade language of the Baltic region and Swedish absorbed an enormous number of Low German words either as direct borrowings or calques. Then due to the prestige of High German as a literary language in Northern Europe, Swedish calqued further words on German models.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#120

Post by johannes1234321 »

terofle wrote: post #96
camillomiller wrote: post #34

As an Italian living in Germany, and as a lover of the German language, I think this is not a good list. It reads like it was put together to fit the author's approach to coaching. Entwicklung, indeed, is the best example of this. It is exactly the same in English. What's really fun about German: as a non native you can get to a point where you create involuntary neologisms by putting together words you already know.…

> I just cant's wrap my head around the rule of writing every substantive with a capital letter though, which I interpret as an annoying need to always circumstantiate a purported objectivity of the perceived reality. I think this rule actually exists to make reading german texts easier. IMO reading german without capitalized nouns is a lot harder, because you don’t recognize nouns on first sight.

In English and other languages this works quite well without capitalizing each end every noun. (Only "proper" nouns)

I don't know if it would hurt readability aside from habit of we'd capitalize only Eigennnamen as well.

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