this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2025
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[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

English is so pathetic. A Cupboard is not a board and it's not just for cups. Then they add insult to injury by just failing to coin the word chillgrill.

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[–] synapse1278@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You won't believe how to spell vacuum cleaner in German !

[–] Schmuppes@lemmy.today 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)
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[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Robot - Der Bipenböpenmann

[–] captain_unicode@feddit.org 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's >der< Bipenböpenmann, please. "Mann" is grammatically masculine, so all composite words of it are, too.

[–] hakase@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

This is called the "Right Hand Head Rule"; that is, the rightmost member of a compound in languages like English and German (almost) always acts as the "head", the member that determines the grammatical information of the entire compound.

There are also many languages, such as Hebrew, with a Left Hand Head Rule, in which the leftmost member is the head. (Also Thai, as seen in a comment above!)

[–] Gladaed@feddit.org 3 points 2 days ago

Every language is. German not having a word for fridge is fine. Compound words are a product of lack of a dedicated wird in a lot of languages.

[–] AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Slightly different thing cause this is agglutination but:

Ill/illik: fit/fits

Illet: concerns someone

Illeték: duty(kinda)

Illetéktelen: one without the duty, in english unauthorized(look at "staff only" for why "duty" makes sense)

Illetéktelenek: multiple unauthorized ones

Illetékteleneknek: for the multiple unauthorized ones

Then you can a use it in a sentence "Illetékteleneknek belépni tilos", "Forbidden for unauthorized ones to enter"

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 days ago

Ahh yeah i kinda forgot to write that. Its hungarian tho this is kind of an extreme case. Most words youd use in a normal sentence has 1 to 3 suffixes.

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[–] MalikMuaddibSoong@startrek.website 3 points 2 days ago (3 children)

German must have its own share of disappointing terms.

Pferd comes to mind as an example. I really expected something more metal like horzdraken or comical like hoofenstreider. But no, just a boring Roman loan word.

[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

The latin word, for those who are curious, being paraverēdus (additional postal horse, postal horse for special occasions), according to https://www.dwds.de/wb/Pferd

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[–] Venat0r@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

but a cold cupboard is the the technology that predates the refrigerator, so how would you know which one people are talking about in German? (j/k)

[–] darklamer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 days ago

Just in case there's someone here who'd like to know: that "cold cupboard" technology that preceded the refrigerator in people's homes is called Eisschrank in German.

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