German expressions that don’t exist in English • Hacker News Board

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#11

Post by a_bonobo » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 7:25 AM UTC

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 to fix yourself, very expensive to have serviced, for no real gain, pure overengineering. Is there a word?

(edit: there's an opposite for OP's 'Lebensmut' - 'Lebensmüdigkeit', literally 'tired of being alive', i.e. suicidal)

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#12

Post by lower » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 7:26 AM UTC

jonnym1ll3r wrote: post #2

"Wehmut" literally: 'The courage in feeling pain'. This is powerful. I feel like this courageous curiosity has been the primary virtue or trait that I've been exploring and aiming to cultivate more than any other during the past couple of years. As a non-German speaker I'd be interested how this relates to melancholy (these to me feel like quite different emotional states).

I think it's a mistranslation, though. The "mut" in "wehmut" does not mean courage. Looking up the etymology, the word "wehmut" seems to come from "wehmütig", which literally means something like being in a painful state of mind.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#13

Post by steve1977 » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 7:26 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

jonnym1ll3r wrote: post #2

"Wehmut" literally: 'The courage in feeling pain'. This is powerful. I feel like this courageous curiosity has been the primary virtue or trait that I've been exploring and aiming to cultivate more than any other during the past couple of years. As a non-German speaker I'd be interested how this relates to melancholy (these to me feel like quite different emotional states).

> I'd be interested how this relates to melancholy Melancholy pertains to one’s internal state. It is a state of being, and one that accepts the circumstances as they are. (It also contains notes of inevitability.) Wehmut is more active. The outcome is evitable. One accepts them, and the pain they will cause, but perseveres, usually towards a brighter outcome. At worst, it’s Sisyphean with an unknown ending.

This is not how Wehmut is used in German, sorry. As nice as it sounds. ;)

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#14

Post by atoav » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 7:27 AM UTC

steve1977 wrote: post #9

jonnym1ll3r wrote: post #2

"Wehmut" literally: 'The courage in feeling pain'. This is powerful. I feel like this courageous curiosity has been the primary virtue or trait that I've been exploring and aiming to cultivate more than any other during the past couple of years. As a non-German speaker I'd be interested how this relates to melancholy (these to me feel like quite different emotional states).

As a native German speaker, I wouldn't translate "mut" in Wehmut as courage. Here it rather is the same as "mood" (and the English word has the same roots). Like in "Anmut", "Dehmut", "Unmut" etc. So Wehmut literally would be something like "woeful mood" and you could use it more or less synonymous with melancholia (or nostalgia for example).

I don’t really think it is 100% synonymous with melancholia, but that’s probably (sadly?) the way it used today. Wehmut is a little bit of a rare and oldfashioned word which got fashionable in the romantic era through (among others) works of Goethe and got modern reuse in the fantastic Donald Duck translations of Erika Fuchs.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#15

Post by lower » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 7:28 AM UTC

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.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#16

Post by riedel » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 7:28 AM UTC

jonnym1ll3r wrote: post #2

"Wehmut" literally: 'The courage in feeling pain'. This is powerful. I feel like this courageous curiosity has been the primary virtue or trait that I've been exploring and aiming to cultivate more than any other during the past couple of years. As a non-German speaker I'd be interested how this relates to melancholy (these to me feel like quite different emotional states).

I actually would not read too much into these. The German language builds heavily composed words. To me intuitively they mean mostly just the translation presented in the post and I would rarely reflect about the origin. There might be slight changes in connotation from the English, but I doubt it says all too much about the German using them (at least I can tell that about me when using the word wehmut). Particularly the stem "mut" is much to ubiquitous and mostly meaningless to the speaker these days.

Sure it is interesting but one can also dig into the etymology of any other language...

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#17

Post by y4mi » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 7:29 AM UTC

jonnym1ll3r wrote: post #2

"Wehmut" literally: 'The courage in feeling pain'. This is powerful. I feel like this courageous curiosity has been the primary virtue or trait that I've been exploring and aiming to cultivate more than any other during the past couple of years. As a non-German speaker I'd be interested how this relates to melancholy (these to me feel like quite different emotional states).

According to Wikipedia, melancholy included the present in it's reflection. I.e. you remember how great that house you grew up in was, and how your current apartment is terrible in comparison

Wehmut on the other hand doesn't need a current reflection... Which is much harder to find an example for, which is probably also why it's basically never used irl

While the memory is kinda painful, your personal mood doesn't necessarily have to become negative from wehmut either, while it's easy to write like that... Good luck finding a situation in which this applies.

I know the definition but really struggled to find an applicable example. Maybe if you're recalling a broken leg some time ago and how hard life was with it? It still feels like we compared it to the present, honestly. We just didn't spell it out.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#18

Post by anticensor » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 7:31 AM UTC

Schweigen, because English people did not reckon when to stop talking.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#19

Post by tacomonstrous » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 7:32 AM UTC

schappim wrote: post #7

Let’s not forget schadenfreude!

Ah, but it does have an equivalent in English: it's schadenfreude.

Re: German expressions that don’t exist in English

#20

Post by larusso » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 7:38 AM UTC

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…

What about “vertüftelt”? “tüfteln” means to tinker around. The word means that you bring something into the state of being tinkered together or is complex.