memes

Krankenwagen = sick car = ambulance

Krankenhaus = sick house = hospital

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

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

Really, nobody is going to point out that "cupboard" = "cup" + "board"?

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

English is the funny north German dialect that moved to an island and went mental.

Mehrfamilienhaus = more families house / apartment

Why new words when old words good?

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

I never get why glove is handschuh rather than handsocke.

House - Haus

Animal - Tier

Pet - Haustier

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

Ah yes, the re-frigid-air-inator

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.

Norway has some of the allegedly most unhinged word constructions via "cake". It had the modern meaning of a baked sweet, but also any sorta roundish cooked thing that is not sweet, and the old meaning of "any hard lumped mass".

So we have, in order of descending sanity:

• Bløtkake - soft cake, sponge cake
• Småkake - small cake, cookie
• Kjøttkake - meat cake, ground meat patties
• Fiskekake - fish cake, ground fish meat patties
• Oljekake - oil cake, lump of mass left after pressing oil out of linseeds
• Blodkake - blood cake, lump of dried blood
• Morkake - mother cake, placenta
• Kukake - cow cake, cow poop

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

icebox is sorta similar.

Afrikaans:

Vries - Freeze Kas - Cupboard/Closet

Vrieskas -> Freezer

Ys - Ice Kas - Cupboard/Closet

Yskas -> Fridge 🤷

Troetel - Cuddle / Pet (verb) / pamper Dier - Animal

Troeteldier -> Pet animal

Duik - Dive Boot - Boat

Duikboot -> submarine

Now do Gloves = Handschuhe

Hand Shoes!

So like "icebox"?

Ich liebe diese handgedrechselten Umlaute 💖

Mandarin-Chinese:

冰 = ice
箱 = box
冰箱 = ice box (refrigerator/freezer)

or in Cantonese:

雪 = snow
櫃 = cabinet
雪櫃 = snow cabinet (refrigerator/freezer)

usually 上層 "upper level" is used to indicate the freezing part (急凍/雪藏), like where you out ice cream, for example; 下層 "lower level" is used to refer to the non-freezing part, like where you put fruits, for example. Because every fridge we had was designed like that.

Also fun fact: 電腦 means "electric" + " brain" (aka: computer)

飛機 = "flying" + "machine" (aka: airplane)

Feel free to ask questions. I'm bored and wanna see how much I know.

Sorry for the you tube link, but it's too relevant: When people speak English but with German grammar.

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.