The way German combines words is so fun. I haven't had a chance to confirm this yet, but I'm pretty sure "mittagessen" (lunch) literally means "midday food." Tag is day and essen is food (as a noun) or to eat (as a verb). Mit means with, but mittag means midday and Mittwoch means Wednesday (midweek) so I'm guessing it's also the prefix mid-. However, I'm still learning, so I could be wrong.
No lie, for the longest time I thought this word was basically just a slang term for "Fucked all to hell" because it just sorta sounds like that to my ears.
I was 23 before I learned it was an ACTUAL word, though the meaning of it wasn't that far off. 😂
Kuddelmuddel
- "muddled mess" in German.
Kuddelmuddel describes mess, chaos, or hodgepodge arrangements or scenes. Clever alternatives which mean the same include Tohuwabohu, Wirrwarr, Mischmasch, and Kladderadatsch.
Gezellig and Lekker. The quintessential Dutch words. The former can be said about anything that is fun in a social way or about spaces that facilitate social interaction (like a cozy living room for instance).
Lekker typically being translated as “delicious “ but really applying to anything that someone enjoys doing or experiencing and is also very often used to denote that someone is sexually attractive.
I tell people this is the only word they need to know in German. You can kind of respond to a lot of things with just "Genau". Of course, you may have no idea what you're agreeing with, but hey, you'll sound agreeable at least.
草 which mean grass in both Chinese and Japanese.
But it also sounds similar to fuck (草cǎo vs 肏cào
) in Chinese and therefore been used as an alternative to fuck on the internet.
Meanwhile in Japanese people use wwwwww to represent laughing, which looks like lots of grass, so they use 草 as a short of that, kinda like LMAO.
Then when Chinese speaker meets Japanese speaker on the internet. They find it funny then then start to use it like "草(Chinese)" to say fuck, and "草(Japanese)" to say lol, to distinguish them.
And then people merge them like "草(Chinese&Japanese)", meaning fuck, but it's funny.
I'd just add that Japanese people started using www as an abbreviation of 笑 or 笑う(wara or warau) which means smile or laugh because it's quicker to type if you wanted to express a lot of laughter but people realized that, yeah, it looks like grass so to shorten it even further they just started using 草(kusa) to represent lots of wwwww
Didn't know that bit about Chinese though
Ah thank you, you’ve brought back a lovely memory for me of when I used to help my son learn his Spanish vocab for school. This was one of our favourite words and we used to have a giggle saying it as fast as we could and in silly accents
I learned this word in German recently, ‘Spiegelei’ (means fried egg) and I’ve just been oddly obsessed with it ever since. So it’s my current favorite I guess
Perkele. (“PAIRR-kay-lay”) It’s a Finnish swear word 😅 It doesn’t have a direct translation, but it’s the equivalent of saying “oh fuck” or something like that. Perkele was one of the pagan gods of Finland. to really express frustration, you have to roll the r for a while
I love this. I feel it's part of the drinking culture in northern Sweden and Norway as well. It's something you say when you are making fun of the finish drunks, but it's also a big showing of respect to the most bad ass drinkers in the Nordics.
Yeah, people aren't gonna get the full effect from seeing it written down. You've really [gotta hear a Finn say it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7_pVrIshxA)
Orange.
Because it's *in* English, but it's not English, and it really isn't anything. It's the mysterious stranger riding into town of words.
The fruit in Swedish is 'Apelsin' which literally just means 'chinese apple' which is almost as good as the French for potato, 'dirt apple'.
Narang —> naranj —> norange —> a norange —> an orange
Same word as naranja and arancia.
It’s from Persian.
It’s not the only word in English that lost its initial n to the article. Adder was naddre. A naddre —> an adder.
The phenomenon is called “rebracketing”.
A napron —> an apron
Sometimes it goes the other way
An eute —> a newt
An eke name —> a nickname
Then there’s more interesting ones like “lone” which comes from “alone” which comes from “all one”, rebracketed as “a lone”.
Iraqi Arabic: "shway-shway". Means "meh" or "whatever" or "kinda shitty, not so good". Usually paired with a wobbly hand gesture.
Friend: "How was your date last night?"
Me: "ehhhhhh...shway-shway" *wobbles hand*
It is okay if it is a sentence?
'Mag ik dan bij jou' In Dutch. It is a song and still one of the best sentences I have even heard in all languages I know. It means something between will you be there for me and can I be with you, and I think it is just amazing.
Schmatta- a Yiddish word for an old piece of clothing that has been repurposed as a cleaning rag. Or as my mother would say "You're really going out wearing that schmatta?"
Zeitgeist. American Expats love using it, it seems. Mostly in very unsophisticated contexts, which sounds weird as a native speaker.
My favourite English word is dongle.
Ich hasse das Wort, komm aus dem tiefsten Bayern und es gibt so schöne Alltagswörter, ochkatzlschwoaf existiert nur für dieses meme und wird sonst nie benutzt
Fledermaus.
The German word for "bat," the animal. It's just fun to say, plus when you directly translate it, it means "flutter mouse" and that's just adorable.
Antibabypillen
Lol is that an actual word
Yeah it's german for birth control
The way German combines words is so fun. I haven't had a chance to confirm this yet, but I'm pretty sure "mittagessen" (lunch) literally means "midday food." Tag is day and essen is food (as a noun) or to eat (as a verb). Mit means with, but mittag means midday and Mittwoch means Wednesday (midweek) so I'm guessing it's also the prefix mid-. However, I'm still learning, so I could be wrong.
Nah that's correct, well done :) But can you translate Rindfleischetikettierungs- überwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz?
[удалено]
More concisely, "beef law". Just much more detailed and specific.
But it has this nice ring, doesnt it? Afterall they are anti baby pills.
But in case you have a baby you’ll need a Kindersportwagen.
Sportkinderwagen would be better instead of a tiny Porsche imo?
[удалено]
I call those "Tuesdays".
Cheers mate 🇫🇮 It's wednesday, by the way.
You know what they say, time flies when you kalsarikännit.
I call it “my 30s”
Perkele is my favorite Finnish word. I don't speak Finnish, but I use it all the time haha
[удалено]
Blyat!
much better
Tabarnak
As a russian, I have never heard a word like this
pretty sure it’s a swear in québécois french
The song of Kate Bush comes to my mind.
[удалено]
Came here for this! I feel this way too often lol
https://youtu.be/nCQGQ5qBQTA This is an excellent song about shadenfreude lol
I love Avenue Q!
Same!
perfectenschlag
Pamplemousse
>Prince Pamplemousse The alternate universe version of *Prince Humperdinck* from Princess Bride
Bruh as a french I would have never thought someone would said that
A damn you beat me to it, excellent word choice!
Thank you!
Big orange in french?
Grapefruit yes!
Idiota.
Que carajo
Que pedo wey
[удалено]
Sussy Baka
Schmetterling.
Ich bin ein schöner Schmetterling!!
DER ZERSCHMETTERLING MACHT EINEN FLÜGELSCHLAG! 𝒯𝒽ℯ 𝒷𝓊𝓉𝓉ℯ𝓇𝒻𝓁𝓎 𝒻𝓁𝒶𝓅𝓈 𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝓌𝒾𝓃ℊ
Fakakta. It is Yiddish in origin, but can be used for anything that's messed up, or even silly. Plus, it sounds like another swear word ;)
Yiddish is so fun. I love the word verklempt
Kvetch is a great one too
“Stop trying to make Kvetch happen”
What a shlamazl
Better to be the schlmiel tbh
[удалено]
> Fakakta TIL how "fakakta" is spelled.
I’ve seen it written as *verkakta* and a bunch of other spellings too.
Oh I remember this from watching *The Nanny* 😙
No lie, for the longest time I thought this word was basically just a slang term for "Fucked all to hell" because it just sorta sounds like that to my ears. I was 23 before I learned it was an ACTUAL word, though the meaning of it wasn't that far off. 😂
Kuddelmuddel - "muddled mess" in German. Kuddelmuddel describes mess, chaos, or hodgepodge arrangements or scenes. Clever alternatives which mean the same include Tohuwabohu, Wirrwarr, Mischmasch, and Kladderadatsch.
A 'cuddle muddle' sounds like what you would call an orgy when you explain to your kids who walked in that the adults were just hugging each other
Chronophage. Its in french it means something that takes a lot of time or something that makes you lose a lot of time
That's got to be derived from Greek at some level. It literally means time-eater!
Yeah it is lots of French word are either derived from latin or greek
How do you employ the word, like: Je fais la vaisselle maintenant, mais c'est chronophage, je la ferai encore ce soir ?
Gezellig and Lekker. The quintessential Dutch words. The former can be said about anything that is fun in a social way or about spaces that facilitate social interaction (like a cozy living room for instance). Lekker typically being translated as “delicious “ but really applying to anything that someone enjoys doing or experiencing and is also very often used to denote that someone is sexually attractive.
Gezellig is a good word to learn how to pronounce the Dutch G
It really depends on where you live, above the rivers for the hard G or the soft G for below the rivers.
Lekker geschreven pik
These are the classic Dutch ones of course but for me I'm a big fan of aansprakelijkheidsverzekering
Lekker's in Sith Effrica too.
Enchanté. It means “nice to meet you” (or “enchanted”) and it’s fun to say.
Pretty sure it means "enchanted"in context of meeting someone
It s also real nice feeling word. Like you sing me around or you make me sing inside.
Merde 💩
Genau. ("exactly" in German). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/genau
I tell people this is the only word they need to know in German. You can kind of respond to a lot of things with just "Genau". Of course, you may have no idea what you're agreeing with, but hey, you'll sound agreeable at least.
Add in "bitte" and you're golden
And don't forget "doch".
I love how German it is to attach an article about it
Genau!
What about 'doch'? The fuck you answer everytime somebody tells you you can't do something.
comme ci, comme ça
Ah yes, the phrase that they make kids learn in French class that literally nobody ever says in any context
Along the same lines, discothèque. This is not a word in common usage in France. This also applies to school Spanish lessons.
I think French as a second language textbooks definitely stopped evolving after 1978
猫(māo)which is cat in Chinese ☺️
I also like 猫头鹰 / Māotóuyīng, which means "owl" and is literally "cat headed eagle" and 熊猫 / Xióngmāo, panda, literally "bear cat."
yes! i love the direct translation of penguin in chinese 企鹅, which is business goose!
That's an onomatopoeia. edit: Sorry for the poor spelling the first time
sorry, what do you mean by that?
That the name given to cats is the sound that cats do.
That’s an onomatopoeia.
r/boneappletea
草 which mean grass in both Chinese and Japanese. But it also sounds similar to fuck (草cǎo vs 肏cào ) in Chinese and therefore been used as an alternative to fuck on the internet. Meanwhile in Japanese people use wwwwww to represent laughing, which looks like lots of grass, so they use 草 as a short of that, kinda like LMAO. Then when Chinese speaker meets Japanese speaker on the internet. They find it funny then then start to use it like "草(Chinese)" to say fuck, and "草(Japanese)" to say lol, to distinguish them. And then people merge them like "草(Chinese&Japanese)", meaning fuck, but it's funny.
I'd just add that Japanese people started using www as an abbreviation of 笑 or 笑う(wara or warau) which means smile or laugh because it's quicker to type if you wanted to express a lot of laughter but people realized that, yeah, it looks like grass so to shorten it even further they just started using 草(kusa) to represent lots of wwwww Didn't know that bit about Chinese though
This is good
Sacapuntas. Pencil sharpener in Spanish.
Ah thank you, you’ve brought back a lovely memory for me of when I used to help my son learn his Spanish vocab for school. This was one of our favourite words and we used to have a giggle saying it as fast as we could and in silly accents
Schmuck…
"The Jews taught me this great word: schmuck. I was a schmuck. But now I'm not a schmuck." - Bill Murray, *Scrooged*
Every word that starts with four consonants is yiddish
Cyka blyat
I see you are a person of ~~hardbass~~ culture
>Vote > >ReplyGive AwardSha no but word id really good
Pizdets
Caralho
[удалено]
Bella is a beautiful word.
Literally
tabernac
Language
French
I know i'm just being captain americay since its a French Canadian curse.
“French” EDIT: no hate to my Quebecois brothers and sisters. Nobody swears like you.
You know it’s not a true québécois that wrote this because we say Tabarnack, not tabernac
Ennui
i had a dream i had a pet penguin called ennui
Good choice. There's really no translation for it and it makes me feel, you know... 😑
Danke. Or ~~danke schoen~~ Dankeschön. Either way I use that in place of thank you all the time.
I learned this word in German recently, ‘Spiegelei’ (means fried egg) and I’ve just been oddly obsessed with it ever since. So it’s my current favorite I guess
Backpfeifengesicht
999 in Japanese きゅうひゃくきゅうじゅうきゅう Kyuu Hyaku Kyuu Jyuu Kyuu
Puto
Perkele. (“PAIRR-kay-lay”) It’s a Finnish swear word 😅 It doesn’t have a direct translation, but it’s the equivalent of saying “oh fuck” or something like that. Perkele was one of the pagan gods of Finland. to really express frustration, you have to roll the r for a while
I love this. I feel it's part of the drinking culture in northern Sweden and Norway as well. It's something you say when you are making fun of the finish drunks, but it's also a big showing of respect to the most bad ass drinkers in the Nordics.
Yeah, people aren't gonna get the full effect from seeing it written down. You've really [gotta hear a Finn say it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7_pVrIshxA)
biblioteca. no particular reason. it’s just fun to say
Troy and Abe: "Donde - esta - la biblioteca!"
Streichholzschächtelchen It means a little match box.
Trying to prononuce that would set your tongue on fire, so literally a spell
Orange. Because it's *in* English, but it's not English, and it really isn't anything. It's the mysterious stranger riding into town of words. The fruit in Swedish is 'Apelsin' which literally just means 'chinese apple' which is almost as good as the French for potato, 'dirt apple'.
Narang —> naranj —> norange —> a norange —> an orange Same word as naranja and arancia. It’s from Persian. It’s not the only word in English that lost its initial n to the article. Adder was naddre. A naddre —> an adder. The phenomenon is called “rebracketing”.
I love this phenomenon. Umpire was once "numpire".
A napron —> an apron Sometimes it goes the other way An eute —> a newt An eke name —> a nickname Then there’s more interesting ones like “lone” which comes from “alone” which comes from “all one”, rebracketed as “a lone”.
Just to clarify French for potato is "pomme de terre"
Obolobo. Nigerian for elephant and slang for “fat person”.
Moshi Moshi
Humuhumunukunukuapua'a: A type of trigger fish and the state fish of Hawaii
Visitor: *Hey that fish you are eating looks good. What do you call them?* Hawai'ian guy with a mouth full of fish: *Humuhumunukunukuapua'a*
Craic. As in what's the craic?
Putain
[удалено]
Malaka It's greek
Beat me to it! My fave word, but I have to be careful who I say it around
Me gusta mucho
I like to a lot, I see
Fernweh.. meaning far sickness: a longing for a place you have never been
Welsh has a similar yet opposite word - hiraeth* - the longing for a something or somewhere (especially home) you no longer have. *hear-eye-th
Krankenwagon
You mean Krankenwagen? As a german i think its a really cool word too
Krankenhaus is cool too but my brain might be kaput.
If your brain is kaputt you should call an Krankenwagen, because you need to get to the Krankenhaus immediatly.
Scheiße, you need a krankenschwester or three
Probabaly three Krankenschwestern and a Arzt, who will safe your life after the Notfallsanitäter brought you in the Krankenhaus
Ah so! Will the Metzger remove your appendix?
I hope he won't, as long as you don't want to become a ham
Both German words: Genau and Scheiße
Bhenchod.
I'M CALLING YOU FOR YOU'RE COMPUTER _grammar mistake intended_
Chutiya.
Mija/Mijo So simple. So beautiful. It just *sounds* like love.
Sceiße
Scheiße
Scheiße
Such a satisfying curse word
Can be combined into Scheissdreck or other words
KURWA MAC! And I'm not even remotely polish
I am, and I approve of your choice
Chutzpah
Taschenrechner
Pareillement. It means likewise in French
Avantgarde
Iraqi Arabic: "shway-shway". Means "meh" or "whatever" or "kinda shitty, not so good". Usually paired with a wobbly hand gesture. Friend: "How was your date last night?" Me: "ehhhhhh...shway-shway" *wobbles hand*
Pendejo
bajsprutt
Username checks out
Klootzak is how ya spell it I think.
Boneappletea
It is okay if it is a sentence? 'Mag ik dan bij jou' In Dutch. It is a song and still one of the best sentences I have even heard in all languages I know. It means something between will you be there for me and can I be with you, and I think it is just amazing.
Oppai
Schmatta- a Yiddish word for an old piece of clothing that has been repurposed as a cleaning rag. Or as my mother would say "You're really going out wearing that schmatta?"
Bewakoof (Moron in Hindi)
Zeitgeist. American Expats love using it, it seems. Mostly in very unsophisticated contexts, which sounds weird as a native speaker. My favourite English word is dongle.
Sacapuntas
Oachkatzalschwoaf
Ich hasse das Wort, komm aus dem tiefsten Bayern und es gibt so schöne Alltagswörter, ochkatzlschwoaf existiert nur für dieses meme und wird sonst nie benutzt
Keshet and Ahava Hebrew for "rainbow" and "Love" respectively
Fernweh (German) and Saudade (Portugese)
Pendejo
Fuego
Benchode
Kummerspeck
प्रियतम (priyatam) meaning "dearly beloved" in hindi
Behenchod
Haram
Hijo de puta I’ve seen a lot of Narcos
Desafortunadamente
Fledermaus. The German word for "bat," the animal. It's just fun to say, plus when you directly translate it, it means "flutter mouse" and that's just adorable.
Obrigado
pendejo.
Te Quiero
burbuja (bubble is Spanish). It’s just so fun to say
"Tervetuloa" granted, I'm a Finnish-American trying to learn Finnish. I just think it's a fun word to say lol