this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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[–] emizeko@hexbear.net 38 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Chinese is incredible for this

airplane is flying machine, your cell phone is your hand machine, assassin is kill hand, computer is electric brain

[–] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

German has "hand shoes" (gloves) and "shield toads" (turtles)

[–] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

"Sick car" (ambulance)

KRANKENWAGEN

[–] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 3 points 1 year ago

hell yes I knew this one and forgot michael-laugh

[–] emizeko@hexbear.net 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

the Japanese word for socks is "undershoes"

[–] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago

Makes sense, English has underpants and undershirts

[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 11 points 1 year ago

And "flying thing" for plane.

[–] Rom@hexbear.net 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Japanese has "kubi" (neck), "tekubi" (wrist, literally "hand neck"), "ashikubi" (ankle, literally "leg neck") and "chikubi" (nipple, literally "breast neck")

[–] huf@hexbear.net 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

hungarian calls the foot the leg-head...

[–] SkingradGuard@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago

Think on your feet!

[–] Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Electric brain sounds rad as fuck.

To be fair I guess to compute something (hence the name computer) is brain related, not as bad ass tho

[–] 2Password2Remember@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

also movies are literally called electric shadows in mandarin, which goes hard

Death to America

[–] janNatan@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Germans calling gloves "hand-shoes" will never not be funny to me. Similarly, they have so many literal names for things. Suicide is self-muder, airplane is fly-thing, gums are tooth-meat.

German's my second language, and just the other day I heard a new term while playing a game that was so literal I didn't need a dictionary. I wish I could remember what it was.

[–] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 11 points 1 year ago

Oh I don't like tooth meat at all kombucha-disgust

[–] piccolo@hexbear.net 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why isn't it called a teethbrush?

[–] HexBroke@hexbear.net 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In English the singular is used when modifying another noun like that. For example, a trainer of dogs is a dog trainer, opener of cans is a can opener, a podiatrist a foot doctor, a ball you kick with your feet is a football, etc.

The real question is why does english persist with so many different ways to make plural words

[–] keepcarrot@hexbear.net 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you have multiple toothbrush you have teethbrush, like lieutenants-general

[–] Lerios@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

you don't have a seperate brush for each tooth? fucking commies smh

[–] SkingradGuard@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago

Stalin ate all of the teethbrushes himself so now we're left with toothbrushes (which we have to share because communism)

[–] Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] kristina@hexbear.net 6 points 1 year ago

Booby, Cocks-of-the-Rock, Secretarybird... hmm

[–] huf@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago

animal and plant names are terrible in any language, but it's soooo much worse when you're trying to remember them in two languages at once...

i kinda know what a pocok is, but what the fuck is that in english? what's a stoat in hungarian? what about a beech? i probably know its name in hungarian, but i cant connect it to the english names...

I love how owls do nothing but owl

[–] Spongebobsquarejuche@hexbear.net 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They call em fingers but I've never seen em fing.

[–] Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net 9 points 1 year ago

They call them digits but I never seen them count

[–] keepcarrot@hexbear.net 8 points 1 year ago

Butchers are sometimes butch.

[–] keepcarrot@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

German is pretty famous for this, but we do it a lot in English too. We just don't concatenate our words and have lots of loan words

I wish maths had this for names. I don't want to remember mathematicians names.

Just gotta remember euler and that's like 90% of stuff 👍

[–] jaywalker@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago

Literally everything should be like this, fuck naming stuff after a person. Most of the time it's just the first white dude who wrote about the thing anyway. Animals, theories, buildings, rename all of it

[–] sloth@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[–] Angel@hexbear.net 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That show was wild

[–] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

[–] niph@hexbear.net 5 points 1 year ago

I like how Brits and North American Anglos both find each other’s version of washing-up liquid/dish soap hilariously literal

[–] imogen_underscore@hexbear.net 5 points 1 year ago

pain killers is a funny one to me