There are often words in other Germanic languages that are closely related to words in English, but which have significantly changed in meaning and usage. An example is the German word klein which means small but is related to the English clean. A less dramatic change is seen in Zeit, which means time in German but is the same word as tide in English, including endings such as Yuletide.
Often these lead to interesting compound words, usually in cases where English uses a Romance word for a given concept.
For example the German for “airport” is Flughafen which would be Flyinghaven in English.
On a TV programme I saw Blodgiving in a Norwegian hospital; = Bloodgiving.
A piglet in German is a Fleischling; a Fleshling.
Not a compund, but a German train is a Zug; a tug.
Heavily featured in the North Atlantic War was the unterwasserboot; the underwaterboat .
Belgium is a Konigsrijk; a Kingric (cf “Bishopric” in English. Also The Third Ric.)
There’s an important newspaper in Germany called the Sud Deutsch Zeitung ; the South Dutch Tidings
I think that Scandinavian shavers use Barberscum
The best I have ever seen was on a sign in Brussels warning dog-owners of fines for letting their dogs foul the streets with Hond poep (sp?); Hound poop.
The point
Does anybody know any other good compunds like these? I’d also like to find out whether there are phrases in English which sound funny when over-directly translated into other Germanic languages. Does our use of “sea” to mean “ocean” sound strange to Swiss people?
You are allowed to use words from Scots or the English dialects, as sometimes these feature Germanic words not seen in standard English (eg German rauchen to smoke is similar to the Scots reek, to smoke. Or Scots ken, to know, is closer to the German kennen than the English word is.
But remember, no words from French, Latin, Gaelic, Greek or whatever; this is a Tolkeinesque game.
Sorry if I offended anyone; I know that Dutch and German are not the same. However the words “Deutsch” and “Dutch” are cognate with each other; they share a common root, but their usages have changed over the centuries. That is the phenomenon I’m looking for here.
Oberflache and the Danish equivalent, overflade both can be literally translated into ‘over-flat’, meaning in both examples ‘surface’.
German übersetzen, Danish oversætte and Scots owerset mean the same thing - ‘translate’, but literally, ‘over-set’.
‘Reckon’ and rechnen are cognates - thus, berechnen would be something like ‘bereckon’ in English, if we didn’t use a Latinate word for that.
Tier is related to ‘deer’, which used to mean the same thing as its German equivalent - any old animal.
‘Dale’, German Tal and Norwegian dahl all mean ‘valley’.
Are ‘toy’ and Zeug related, perchance? Could Vogel and ‘fool’ be related, too - the Danish word fugl is pronounced very much like ‘fool’, and it’s a pretty common theme to equate fools with birds.
One pair of words that always confuses Germans learning English is “become” and “bekommen”=“recieve, get”. So don’t be irritated if a German tells you he wants to become a dog, he just wants to have one.
I think a piglet isn’t a “Fleischling”, but a “Frischling”, a freshling. And it is a “Unterseeboot”, not a “Unterwasserboat”.
a stranger is an aðkomumaður (at-come-man)
a captain is a skipstjóri (ship-steer)
a radio is an útvarp (out-warp)
a television is a sjónvarp (seen-warp)
to disclose is uppljóstra (up-light)
a foreigner is an útlendingur (out-lander)
Staubsauger (vacuum cleaner) literally translates as “dust sucker”, and Kohlkensaure (as in: Mineralwasser mit Kohlensaure) is “Coal acid”. I can’t think of any other really good ones right now, but this lego approach to words is what makes the German language so beautiful. Which I realise is not a generally held view.
I really like “Geschwindigkeitsbeschränkung” (speed limit) and “Vereinigten Königreich” (United Kingdom) too, but that’s just because of their sonority.
“Staubsauger” is the sort of word that gets me thinking. I always try to work out what for example “staub” might be cognate with in English. I thought about “stuff” or the Scots word for dust, “stoor”, but my Chambers dictionary says they both come from French, not German. So in this case I don’t know what the direct translation would be.
However, I think “Vereinigten Königreich” would become something like the “Fore-oned Kingric”.
My Norwegian-English dictionary has “Sneglefart” as a page heading so I run into it a lot when searching.
It means “at a snails pace” (and slow tempo in music). The “g” is virtually silent so it is presumably a cognate to our “snail”. The other word leads to all sorts of interesting speculation. It basically means “speed”. If/how it relates to our English word, I don’t know. Perhaps something about “breaking wind” and “speed” were once related.
So looking further, I find “fartsmaler” (it’s an airspeed indicator, there’s a break between the “s” and “m”).
I’ve sometimes wondered about “-fart” type words, until just now it occured to me they might be related to “fare” as in “bus fare” or “farewell”. Sure enough, my dictionary says that fare is cognate with German “fahren” (I think to drive / travel), and I guess also with Scandinavian “-fart”.
So the English for “Sneglefart” is perhaps “Snailfare”.
