• Mr Fish@lemmy.world
    82·
    7 天前

    Krankenwagen = sick car = ambulance

    Krankenhaus = sick house = hospital

    German (as well as most of the germanic family) does word construction really well.

    • 0ops@piefed.zipEnglish
      461·
      7 天前

      Help I’m kranken, someone call a krankenwagon to take me to the krankenhaus before I krank again

      • Deestan@lemmy.world
        26·
        7 天前

        Entschuldigung, but the Krankenwagen is krank and must be taken to the Wagenkrankenhaus in the Krankerwagenkrankenwagen.

        We will send the Krankenpfleger Klaus and his Krankenschwester Klara to pick you up in a Rollstuhl.

    • uniquethrowagay@feddit.org
      22·
      7 天前

      The “en” part puts “krank” in genitive though, so “car of the sick” or “sick’s car” would be a more accurate translation. The car is not sick after all.

      • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
        3·
        6 天前

        Interesting what languages go with, as Japanese keeps the save part but drops the protect in favor of hurry/emergency, so it’s the “hurry up and save you car” 救急車

        Even ambulance itself comes from the French phrase walking hospital, and then the hospital part got dropped. We still retain the word ambulant to mean moving in English

      • Björn@swg-empire.de
        5·
        7 天前

        Germany has Hospital as well. But it sounds archaic.

        If I recall correctly hospitals were just the only “hotels” sick people could afford. So that’s where nuns would go to care for them. So more sick people would come because they would get good care there. Until they made the hospitals the official house where they care for sick people.

      • Hofmaimaier@feddit.orgOP
        221·
        7 天前

        Kranke Bewegung, but we don’t say it in that context, not even for Parkinson patients who literally got sick moves.

  • ccunning@lemmy.world
    43·
    7 天前

    It’s exactly the same in Thai:
    ตู้ “dtuu” - Cupboard
    เย็น “yen” - cool
    ตู้เย็น “dtuu•yen” - Refrigerator

    • Lumidaub@feddit.org
      14·
      7 天前

      The issue that makes it less intuitive is the “board” part. I’d assume a “cupboard” used to be a shelf, a board for putting cups on, but it evolved to have wooden walls around it so is it really a “board” anymore?

  • tatterdemalion@programming.dev
    17·
    6 天前

    I suspect every language does this to some extent. Some good examples from Japanese:

    靴 = shoes 下 = under 靴下 = socks

    手 = hand 紙 = paper 手紙 = letter

    歯 = teeth 車 = wheel 歯車 = cog / gear

    火 = fire 山 = mountain 火山 = volcano

    Sadly (?) the Japanese compounds are often only compounds of the symbols, not the spoken words.

    • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
      4·
      6 天前

      Even more than the compound words I really like the kanji that have basically pure pictograph meanings, like mountain pass being “mountain up down” 峠.

      Side note my favorite mnemonic is for the word (hospital) patient, where a person (者) ate too much meat on a stick, and now the problem is in their heart 串 + 心 --> 患者

      • Jolteon@lemmy.zip
        3·
        6 天前

        We might not have as many as German or Japanese, but we do have some. Toothbrush, waterwheel, phonebook, stovetop, bookshelf, Headphone, bedspread, newspaper, etc.

    • PlexSheep@infosec.pub
      12·
      6 天前

      I like new words, like Rucksackriemenquerverbindungsträger (the horizontal connection between the straps of your backpack that makes the backpack magically less heavy when closed)

  • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
    19·
    6 天前

    If you like this you’ll love Chinese! A language where books were printed with literal blocks of wood!

    Yes, and the language works this way too:

    电 (diàn) : lightning

    脑 (nǎo) : brain

    电脑 : computer

  • MutantTailThing@lemmy.world
    271·
    7 天前

    German is wild. Sometimes its like the spacebar was never invented and you get such beauties as Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaugabenübertragungsgesetz

  • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20·
    7 天前

    Undersea boat is my favorite German word. Why make a new word when you can mash shit together?

    • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
      2·
      6 天前

      I’m personally partial to highwayservicestations for being a compact way to say 2 words as one and shieldfrogs because shieldfrogs are awesome.

  • Tonava@sopuli.xyz
    131·
    6 天前

    English really is the weird one in this. Constructing new words with old ones makes a lot more sense than just stealing the words from other languages and mashing them in without changing much

    • hakase@lemmy.zip
      2·
      6 天前

      All languages borrow, including German. English is not at all weird in this way.

      • Tonava@sopuli.xyz
        3·
        6 天前

        Borrowing itself is normal, yeah, but english tends to go to the extremes with that. Even yoinking words like smörgåsbord as they are

        • hakase@lemmy.zip
          1·
          6 天前

          English does have an above-average percentage of loanwords, but not the highest. Armenian and Romani are over 90% borrowings, for example.

          Also, note that “smorgasbord” has undergone significant phonological adaptation in its borrowing to fit English’s phonotactics - it’s definitely not borrowed as-is.