r/NonPoliticalTwitter 9h ago

Funny Learning Japanese

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u/dboti9k 9h ago

It's the same with German. I had a German friend and every time I wanted to learn and use a cool new German word with him, it was the same word in English.

u/novae_ampholyt 9h ago

Well we also have plenty of german only anglicisms. Like "handy" for phone

u/makochi 9h ago

german trying to get a new phone, unaware he's about to be charged with sexual harassment of the best buy employee: "yeah how much does a handy cost"

u/makochi 9h ago

fuck it should have been "ja how much does a handy cost"

u/zeothia 8h ago

+2 good joke workshop, NL would be proud

u/TemporalAcapella 7m ago

You still watch that guy? I heard he’s bald.

u/TheMooseOnTheLeft 4m ago

Wait he went bald?!!

u/LuphineHowler 6h ago

You know man. I ain't gay but fifzy euros is fifzy euros.

u/Rommel727 3h ago

"also ja how much costs your Handy?"

u/Yeez25 9h ago

What a fella gotta do to get a handy around here

u/UltimatePickpocket 8h ago

And then the Best Buy employee surprises everyone when they respond

"For you, it's free."

u/AstuteSalamander 8h ago

Starting a new job, "so do you provide handies here or do I need to that care of that myself"

u/GodofsomeWorld 8h ago

I would like to get your finest handy for my child here who has just come of age

u/emotionallystarved 3h ago

Inversely, I was a bit startled when a coworker asked for my handy when trying to ask for my phone number.

u/Tetraoxidane 2h ago

Germans do understand smartphone though. At least everyone under the age of 70.

u/newfromgaloob 9h ago

u/Adze95 6h ago

I was going to post this, haha! Love Stephen Fry.

u/GalaxyPowderedCat 9h ago

Bro, I love German for that. I was learning a bit of it for college and German is sometimes like that.

It's not an abomination, even if there are hard compound words. It's a nightmare to pronounce but I live for Handy.

u/ApertureLabradories 42m ago

I loved learning German in late middle school (7th-9th grade) turns out we had re-started the curriculum every time we got a new teacher, which was five times. Last teacher comes in, we are borderline illiterate and haven't even started on proper pronoun grammar. I did not continue German in high school.

u/Dredgeon 9h ago

Please tell me there is some phrasing for calling someone that directly translates to "give them a handy"

u/Ghost3603 9h ago

As a german speaker, sadly no but I understand how that would be hilarious.

u/Rommel727 3h ago

No, but I'll give you something fun regardless

In Vienna, the tram lines are all just said as numbers, except one, the D tram. This tram goes from north to south, and in the north it goes to Nußdorf, which you could translate as Nut Town.

So Vienna is the only place in the world where you can ride the D to Nut Town

u/EkobasherX4Z 7h ago

Handy in new zealand is how you ask someone to jerk you off

u/Pretend-Marsupial258 7h ago

Same in the US.

u/rips_n_chel 3h ago

Pretty sure that's the same everywhere English is spoken lol

u/berlinbaer 7h ago

"home office"

u/Nalha_Saldana 6h ago

Nothing beats Japanese for TV, they say Terebi as in Terebision

u/Backupusername 5h ago

Does German have a term for this? In Japanese, it's called 和製英語, Japanese-made English.

u/zachy000 5h ago

Denglisch

u/Lubinski64 5h ago

The weirder part is that Germans often pronounce English borrowings with English pronunciation.

u/PrincessTitan 4h ago

English is literally Germanic LMAO

u/bendytendie 3h ago

My Dad trying to buy a „loader“ for his „handy“ in texas on our first US trip will never not be funny

u/LiftingRecipient420 1h ago

Are Germans generally aware of what a "handy" is outside of Germany?

u/kettenkarussell 1h ago

My american roommate got really concerned for a second when my buddy ranted about how annoying organizing trips with his churchs youth group had become because, „nowadays you have to check that everyone got a handy before we leave with the bus“

u/yuhmchenAd 10m ago

handy isn't an anglicism, it's a pseudoanglicism at best. germans not beating the allegations.

u/Bakedalaska1 9h ago

My favorite is "antibabypillen"

u/moku46 9h ago

I had to look it up and holy shit it's real.

Funnier yet, people and doctors just call it "die pille."

u/Spider40k 9h ago

We call it "the pill" too, tbf. German's articles are just funny that way

u/senseithenahual 8h ago

Yeah a classic case The Bart, the.

u/Specky013 4h ago

I only now realized why that's funny to english speakers. It just reads normal to german speakers but I guess for english speakers it would be something like "Kill Pill"

u/Boobsmcfuckup 8h ago

Ik it looks the same but in German die is pronounced dee, not dye. Most words with ie use e, and ei use i.

u/CHEMO_ALIEN 8h ago

The bart the 

u/Your_Vixen_ 5h ago

Librarian, one of your books got out.

u/IAmLexica 44m ago

I love the T-spin pfp.

u/Commercial-Royal-988 7h ago

mine is "Handschuh" because you know which article of clothing they named first.

u/hieronymous-cowherd 4h ago

OMG "fingerhandschuh" also exists.

u/Isburough 3h ago

yeah but that's uncommon. only when you really need to specify it's not mittens.

u/dboti9k 8h ago

See, this is why I wanted to learn German words.

u/Rowenstin 3h ago

Then you try to pronounce matchbox, and stop wanting to learn German.

u/ywh_666 58m ago

You mean a schtrchchholzschchtlchechen?

u/black-winter- 9h ago

“That thing you just said? Us Germans have a word for that, it’s called Thatthingyoujustsaiden”

u/Ooficus 5h ago

I misread the last part and thought “what did i say???”

u/MaxzxaM 4h ago

It's a bit shorter than that actually We say: "wortwörtlich"

u/Key-Performance-9021 14m ago

Tatsächlich!

u/Math_PB 1h ago

Literally : 9 letters

Wortwörtlich : 12 letters

It's not shorter. Never beating the "most inefficient efficient language" allegations (and I say that as a german speaker).

u/MaxzxaM 1h ago

I meant much shorter in relation to "Thatthingyoujustsaiden"

u/yuhmchenAd 15m ago

it's literal in german, which is 7 letters. efficient as alaways

u/what-are-you-a-cop 8h ago

My hack for when I couldn't remember a verb, was to just stick "-ieren" on the end of an English verb and then conjugate that as normal. It worked like... 75% of the time.

u/slothfuldrake 3h ago

Fun fact: those words have root in French.

u/Specific_Pear_665 8h ago

Antibabypillen

u/lana_silver 3h ago

As a German native speaker, until now I never realized how funny "antibabypille" actually is.

u/_nwwm_ 7h ago

i mean this makes more sense since both languages are Germanic

u/Ok_You_5448 9h ago

Butterfly is schmetterling. I think that one's pretty cool.

u/mooinginpublic 7h ago

Same for french. Here in Quebec we made up a lot of words to use instead but in French they don't have a word for weekend or parking or shopping, they just say "weekend" and "parking" and "shopping" lol...

u/TemporaryElk5202 7h ago

Listening to turkish as someone who doesnt speak turkish, there's either english, german, or french every 6th word

u/Maymunooo 3h ago

French words written in Turkish is my favourite

Saucisse -> Sosis

Mayonnaise -> Mayonez

Petit Beurre -> Petibör

u/JeanDusapin 3h ago

Don't pretend you guys in Québec don't use a shit ton of anglicisms lol more than in europe, just different. And a lot of your anglicism are also hidden because you translate literally in french so it sounds off to us like "ça fait sens" being a translatio of "it makes sense" instead of "ça a du sens". And also just straight up english words in half the sentence lol

u/ccltjnpr 3h ago

weekend is "fin de semaine" and shopping is "achats", but the loanwords are also used often.

u/BextoMooseYT 7h ago

Well to be fair at least english is a germanic language lol. Tbf I don't know if it really makes a difference, cuz I feel like there's a pretty good chance they're just straight loanwords, rather than evolving alongside each other or stemming from the same base or anything

u/ifuckedyourmilkshake 7h ago

Started learning German because I was watching Dark and I was like "I swear I can almost understand this" and it turns out a lot of German is just Spicy English.

u/ChuckCarmichael 2h ago

Well, technically English is just diluted German.

u/Key-Performance-9021 13m ago

French German

u/Paradoxmoose 7h ago

One fun thing I learned when I went to Gamescom was Germans say "That's what she said" in English rather than German. Translating it to German was deemed "weird"

u/Electrical-Review180 2h ago

"dieses ist, was sie gesagt hat"

Does not roll off the tongue as well

u/Key-Performance-9021 12m ago

We would say something like "Das sagt meine Frau auch immer" - "That's what my wife always says"

u/DrawGamesPlayFurries 11m ago

We English speakers say "¿Por que no los dos?" without switching to Spanish either.

u/Slumunistmanifisto 8h ago

Cuddle bear in German is fun to get lodged into your brain 

u/Merouxsis 7h ago

What is cuddle bear? Koala?

u/Raysson1 7h ago

They probably mean cuddle animal which is plushy/stuffed animal

u/Mikrowelle 6h ago

If they mean what I think they mean then its a word for a person that... likes to cuddle. It's moreso used for men in my experience. "Kuschelbär" is the german word.

u/Menacek 6h ago

German and English at least have some common roots, they diverged only around 1500 years. So most of the similarities aren't loan worst but instead stem from the shared roots.

Very different from japanese and english which share no common ancestry

u/funkaria 5h ago

My highschool English teacher didn't know German and would sometimes ask us what something is called in German. I had to say "it's the same in German" so many times that it kind of became my catchphrase in that class.

u/Cymen90 5h ago

It's the same with German.

I reject this analysis. There are Anglicisms but there is a German word for the vast majority. You spoke with someone with a limited Wortschatz

u/KaleidoscopeSalt3972 4h ago

.... They are germanic languages... Maybe its because of that. English and German are germanic languages...

u/Titariia 3h ago

I sometimes think to myself that bavarian word actually looks like the english word pronounced german.

And then we have my dutch friend that speaks perfect english and learns german. When I can't decide wether she's speaking german or english, most of the time it's dutch

u/Maymunooo 3h ago

I once had a german friend insist that "Beamer" was actually an english word lmaoo

u/zUkUu 2h ago

I mean the word origin is from the English beam. So it's partway true. Just like smoke -> smoker, just that it isn't used in English.

u/MrHazard1 2h ago

My wife: "honey, what's 'ocean' in German?"

u/CaptainDildobrain 2h ago

I once got a cold sore while in Germany and needed to buy some cold sore cream. I looked up the German word for it, which unfortunately is "herpescreme". So I visited a pharmacist and asked to buy some herpescreme and they just looked at me completely puzzled. I pointed to the cold sore on my lip and they said in perfect English, "Oh! You want some Zovirax!"

u/Tetraoxidane 2h ago

Hoody being Pullover (one word pronounced as german as possible) in german is something that was weird to figure out. Used pullover all my life and then figured out that it's "pull over" probably because it doesn't have a zipper.

u/kdlt 2h ago

To be fair.. German and English are at least quite close in terms of language.