Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

German expressions that don’t exist in English

leowid.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 184 posts

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#171

Post by camillomiller »

distances wrote: post #64
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.…

Interesting that you find beautiful days to be a rare occurrence in Berlin. Perhaps because you're coming from Italy? I have the opposite attitude -- summer days are easier to spend inside in Berlin, as the weather is generally very good and there's always another beautiful day coming!

What you describe is making Sonnenschuld worse, because you know you have to take in as much sunny days as possible in the summer, preparing for the depressing gray days of winter!

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#172

Post by camillomiller »

zwaps wrote: post #161
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.…

Sonnenschuld is a beautiful word! Thank you!

Glad you like it :D

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#173

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

zmix wrote: post #98
kaybe wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no 'underengineer' either though, is there?

If one would really want to name the two terms in question, one might say: * überentwickelt for overengineered (not really used) * unterentwickelt for underdeveloped (matches the word, even) "Unterentwickelt" is a term we do not use lightly, since it is a word we often used in elementary school to bully some kids, so that has that smell to it. (Usually you also add a howling sound to that word and give yourself a sma…

When it's not 'hochwertig' und 'langlebig', dann ist es 'Schrott'.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#174

Post by skytreader »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #167
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…

Funny. When i came to HH in 2004 it was the city where there were no real dark places. Depends on where you are i guess. The lack of 'night life' apart from a few (touristy) clusters is true, visually. You have to know the places, they are not obvious from the outside. You could also look into "Protestantische Arbeitsethik", which may explain that (culturally). As the night owl that i am, i should know. How do you pe…

The traffic lights don't really bother me but then I take the bus so I don't interact with them directly. The closest thing I can comment is I'm relieved the street crossing signals are bright enough even for summer days when the sun is high and you are viewing them at very tight angles.

I gotta try going to the Elbekreuzung too then! I notice it is acceptably dark around Bahrenfeld. I got to take this last summer, during my first month here: https://flic.kr/p/2i7ML2V . Not ideal for a photo--there's way too much ambient light pollution from the nearby apartments--but at least you could make out the stars, which is more than what I can say for other urban settings. (Maybe I should retry this shot with a narrower focal length, i.e., not fisheye.)

Incidentally, the handful "nooks and crannies" I've been referring to as having almost no streetlight are all around Bahrenfeld.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#175

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

skytreader wrote: post #174
LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny. When i came to HH in 2004 it was the city where there were no real dark places. Depends on where you are i guess. The lack of 'night life' apart from a few (touristy) clusters is true, visually. You have to know the places, they are not obvious from the outside. You could also look into "Protestantische Arbeitsethik", which may explain that (culturally). As the night owl that i am, i should know. How do you pe…

The traffic lights don't really bother me but then I take the bus so I don't interact with them directly. The closest thing I can comment is I'm relieved the street crossing signals are bright enough even for summer days when the sun is high and you are viewing them at very tight angles. I gotta try going to the Elbekreuzung too then! I notice it is acceptably dark around Bahrenfeld. I got to take this last summer, d…

When you are located in Bahrenfeld, then there is another nice place to be, not so far away. I noticed that by chance one summer night, walking down the Baron-Vogt-Straße from the S-Bahn Station Klein-Flottbek (Botanischer Garten). I could see many stars and even some meteors, while walking down to the Elbe, and then thought why not enter the park here?

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenischpark

It has downsloped open spaces, and the glare from Airbus Industries and parts of the harbour on the other side of the Elbe are visible, but the field of view from straight up to maybe 50° above horizon is ok. It's better than Altonaer Volkspark or Lise-Meitner-Park in my experience.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#177

Post by efaref »

missosoup wrote: post #162
jgwil2 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an entirely subjective judgment on your part that you are advancing as though it were a matter of fact. Have you considered the possibility that you know English least well of your three languages, and that you are therefore better able to express yourself in the other two? Also, please provide a source for your "fact" that some languages are inherently more "expressive" than others (whatever that means).

I provided a trivial and concrete example: мат. English is inherently incapable of expressing мат. And English being my strongest language, I'd say no, I don't think it's because I know it least well of the three. Perhaps this is just something that doesn't make sense to people who only know one language, but it self-evident to multilinguals. If you want a source, click TFA - a list of German expressions that don't e…

Seems to me like мат is just "yo mama".

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#178

Post by coldtea »

deanjones wrote: post #166
coldtea wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From the article: "the unique wisdom of some of these words, that don't have an exact counterpart in the English language". So the claim is precisely that because English doesn't have single-word translations of these German terms, that the German words somehow encode "unique wisdom", which is obviously BS. As for the general claim, not so obviously. For one, "wisdom" here is not meant as some expert understanding…

When discussing linguistic issues, it's best to use linguistic theory and terminology, rather than misleading analogies to software development. What you are propounding is a version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that language structure (such as lexical rules which allow free construction of compound nouns) somehow influences or constrains cognitive processes. Among the linguistics community, it is widely accepted t…

>When discussing linguistic issues, it's best to use linguistic theory and terminology, rather than misleading analogies to software development. What you are propounding is a version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that language structure (such as lexical rules which allow free construction of compound nouns) somehow influences or constrains cognitive processes.

No, I'm saying a much more basic, and widely accepted, undisputed even, thing: if language X has a specific term for a situation, then its speakers have captured that situation and understand it better and can refer to it more readily than people whose language lacks the term (and can only describe the notion with different ad-hoc phrases).

That's essentially what language does, even for native speakers. Captures things (nouns), sentiments, ideas, etc, to communicate them.

If a language lacks a term akin to "kawaii" then its people don't have immediate access to that notion the way Japanese have. They could say "cute" but it doesn't cut it, or they could explain it with one or more phrases. But still the person hearing it and the person expressing it would have mismatches etc. Whereas for a Japanese it's already a preset cultural notion.

I'm not saying that having such a term or having a syntax structured in such a way, makes the Japanese to thing this or that way, or affects how they think.

I'm saying that having a work for a phenomenon means you can refer to the phenomenon directly versus not having one, and people will immediately understanding what you mean.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#179

Post by goto11 »

missosoup wrote: post #162
jgwil2 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an entirely subjective judgment on your part that you are advancing as though it were a matter of fact. Have you considered the possibility that you know English least well of your three languages, and that you are therefore better able to express yourself in the other two? Also, please provide a source for your "fact" that some languages are inherently more "expressive" than others (whatever that means).

I provided a trivial and concrete example: мат. English is inherently incapable of expressing мат. And English being my strongest language, I'd say no, I don't think it's because I know it least well of the three. Perhaps this is just something that doesn't make sense to people who only know one language, but it self-evident to multilinguals. If you want a source, click TFA - a list of German expressions that don't e…

But that goes both ways. If we accept that "urspung" does not translate directly to "origin", then obviously "origin" does not translate directly to "ursprung" either. So I don't see how this proves one language is more expressive than another?

Unless you can somehow prove that any English word or phrase have a direct German translation but not vice-versa.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#180

Post by deanjones »

coldtea wrote: post #178
deanjones wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When discussing linguistic issues, it's best to use linguistic theory and terminology, rather than misleading analogies to software development. What you are propounding is a version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that language structure (such as lexical rules which allow free construction of compound nouns) somehow influences or constrains cognitive processes. Among the linguistics community, it is widely accepted t…

> When discussing linguistic issues, it's best to use linguistic theory and terminology, rather than misleading analogies to software development. What you are propounding is a version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that language structure (such as lexical rules which allow free construction of compound nouns) somehow influences or constrains cognitive processes. No, I'm saying a much more basic, and widely accepted,…

> No, I'm saying a much more basic, and widely accepted, undisputed even, thing: if language X has a specific term for a situation, then its speakers have captured that situation and understand it better and can refer to it more readily than people whose language lacks the term (and can only describe the notion with different ad-hoc phrases).

Firstly, do you have any evidence for the claim that, if a language has a specific term for a concept, speakers of that language understand that concept better than speakers of languages that require more than one term to describe the concept? I am genuinely interested in references to the studies you have read which demonstrate this.

Secondly, you contradict yourself. The following statements are inconsistent:

1. "if language X has a specific term for a situation, then its speakers have captured that situation and understand it better"

2. "I'm not saying that having such a term or having a syntax structured in such a way, makes the Japanese to thing (sic) this or that way, or affects how they think."

Either having a specific term for a concept allows better understanding of it (which obviously "affects how they think") or not.

Post reply on HN