German expressions that don’t exist in English | Hacker News Reader

German expressions that don’t exist in English

leowid.com

158 pointsLeonW178 comments

No, these expressions exist in English, they just have a slightly different meaning. And in the case of “Entwicklung”, the English pendant “Development” even has the exact same origin: to unwrap or unfold (the opposite of envelope). There certainly are German expressions that do not exist in English, but this list does not do a good job at collecting them.

My personal impression is that German makes it easier to express abstract impersonal goals and needs. For example, consider the word “Sachzwang” which translates to “intrinsic necessity” - i.e. something that must be a certain way to satisfy the naturally given constraints. This can for example be used in the wonderful expression: sachzwangreduzierte Ehrlichkeit. (Reduced honesty due to inherent constraints.)

Often, English has very elegant and short ways to express something similar, in that case it could simply be “spin”, as in giving an article a political spin. However, while “spin” is something done intentionally by someone (the spin doctor, another nice expression), the German variant is passive and implies that “die Sache” (roughly “the mission”) dictate the doctoring with the truth. This again illustrates what I mean by German tending to more abstract, impersonal goals.

Right, English often does the same thing but disguises it with Latin. This first struck me with "unmittelbar", which is exactly the same as "immediate" except it feels more literal because all the components are German.

And quite often it's not even a coincidence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque

Funny thing, I see a lot of software development job listings in German that use 'Entwicklung' as a synonym for 'Developer'.

'Entwickler' (someone or something that does Entwicklung) is the direct translation of 'developer'.

Entwickler = developer; Entwicklung = development

I dislike when people say “this cannot be translated correctly into your language” as it logically doesn’t make sense. perhaps they mean word for word?

I’m sure any language can conjure up a similar feeling and combination of words. Maybe not a literal translation, but by virtue of being a human construct, any language can be crafted and molded into anything.

Some languages are inherently less expressive than others. English is not very expressive and therefore a large number of words phrases and idioms don't have an analogue that makes sense in english. Trying to reduce them to something that makes sense is like trying to explain a joke. It defeats the purpose.

Anyone who speaks >1 languages is aware of this.

> Some languages are inherently less expressive than others. English is not very expressive...

I call bullshit. Do you have any justification for this claim?

Do you have any justification for calling bullshit on him?

I’m not the OP, but the fact that out of the thousands of professional academic linguists, none has ever seriously proposed and defined an “expressiveness scale” suggests that we would need extraordinary evidence to accept an HN comment claiming to have done so.

I have never heard of any objective measure of "expressiveness" of human languages.

The fact that information density across languages was measured and there was no significant difference[0]. How can a language be more expressive yet contain just as much information.

[0]: https://www.science20.com/content/information_density_all_la...

Yeah I speak 3 languages and all 3 have mutually exclusive constructs that can't be translated while carrying over the 'true meaning'. English is by far the least expressive of the 3.

A common example is slavic мат. A repertoire of profanities that simply have no English translation, no equivalent, not even a meaningful loose translation/explanation. The best you can do is find the nearest approximate meaningful English construct, but it's a bit like projecting 3d space onto a 2d plane. You fundamentally lose information.

I'm not sure what you're calling bullshit on. The fact that not all languages 1:1 map to each other especially when some classes of languages have fundamentally different constructs like gendered variants of every word, or the fact that some languages are more or less expressive, or the fact that English falls to the side of the less expressive scale. All 3 of these statements are trivial to verify with a couple google searches without even being a multilingual speaker.

I'm calling bullshit on the claim that languages can be placed on a scale of expressiveness. You will first have to define expressiveness and then how to measure it.

This is an entirely subjective judgment on your part that you are advancing as though it were a matter of fact. Have you considered the possibility that you know English least well of your three languages, and that you are therefore better able to express yourself in the other two? Also, please provide a source for your "fact" that some languages are inherently more "expressive" than others (whatever that means).

I provided a trivial and concrete example: мат. English is inherently incapable of expressing мат.

And English being my strongest language, I'd say no, I don't think it's because I know it least well of the three.

Perhaps this is just something that doesn't make sense to people who only know one language, but it self-evident to multilinguals.

If you want a source, click TFA - a list of German expressions that don't exist in English. The discussion here on whether or not it's a great list, but no one disagrees there are phrases that don't exist in English.

Seems to me like мат is just "yo mama".

But that goes both ways. If we accept that "urspung" does not translate directly to "origin", then obviously "origin" does not translate directly to "ursprung" either. So I don't see how this proves one language is more expressive than another?

Unless you can somehow prove that any English word or phrase have a direct German translation but not vice-versa.

Introspection has long ceased to be a valid methodology in linguistics. Lack of a 1:1 mapping between languages clearly does not imply that you "fundamentally lose information". Just because it takes a language two words to express a concept that another language can express using a single word obviously does not mean that the first language is somehow unable to fully express the meaning of the concept.

This reminds me of liget, the feeling of wanting to behead someone. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/06/01/5298768...

In like with what the sibling commenter wrote, some languages appear to be more expressive than others. The English translator of the book The Last Temptation of Christ wrote about how difficult translating it from its original Greek was, due to the Greek language’s inherent multiple layers of meaning. He gave at least one example, which IIRC took him a few paragraphs to describe all the meaning wrapped up in one sentence, and said that most sentences in the book contained the same richness.

So, perhaps “cannot be translated correctly” is better understood to mean that you may have to read pages of footnotes to understand the full meaning of a small phrase. Some cultural constructs that its language relies on are even more deeply rooted, and nothing but a period of immersion in the culture itself will help you to understand it. “Cannot be translated correctly” seems like an adequate shorthand.

While you can translate the immediate meaning, either word-for-word or with a description, this will not give the full collection of meaning and concepts the word has to the culture it's from. An example in the reverse direction is "accuracy" and "precision", which have different, well established meanings in English, but translate to the same thing in German, "Genauigkeit".

Weltschmerz and Schadenfreude are examples where Germans have a wider net of associated concepts around it. To capture all of that, you would have to do more than translate it. For example, there is a commonly understood limit of what Schaden you can have Freude about, and what modifies that limit.

I find it fascinating how the existence or non-existence of certain concepts in a language influence our approaches at problem solving.

> This cannot be translated correctly into your language

You must also take in account culture and other adjacent factors. I born in Colombia, and you don't imagine how HARD is to try to translate tech terms to Spanish.

Even where a "oficial" translation exist, use it could convey so much wrong ideas that I must use the spanglish version of it most of time (except if the translation is of COMMON use).

And the oposite. Is very funny when a foreigner come here and discover that not only need to know spanish, but also the "Colombian" variety and the "my city" variety too.

One funny? My brother (know english and work as mandarin translator) list to a foreign friend how many ways we say "hello!". Are DOZENS of it in use here! Several of them are INSULTS! You say an insult to other and we know when is a HELLO!

Nuts!

You can write an essay to describe the concept but that is quite different from translating.

What your are arguing is like jumping from "assembly is Turing complete, of course you can implement tail recursion" to "assembly is basically lisp" and that claiming otherwise "logically doesn't make sense". Sure, with lots of effort you can express anything in any language, but there are concepts which are much more easily and naturally expressed in any given language than another.

I don't know about "correctly", but it can definitely be difficult to translate a really good phrase from one language to another in a way that retains both the power and the meaning.

For example, Shakespeare is somewhat famously difficult to translate into French. Much of what's great about his writing is in the level of density he was able to achieve by playing with certain parts of English grammar's plasticity, and the strong rhythm he gets by playing with sounds. In French, it's easy enough to translate the meaning, but stricter rules about the use of articles and some characteristics of the language's word morphology make it really hard to achieve the same density, and differences in the phonology make it harder to achieve the same drumming rhythm.

Double meanings are also tricky. Different languages offer different opportunities for play with ambiguity, because they generally don't have the same patterns of polysemy.

Sure, you can translate what it approximately means, but it's nearly impossible to carry the same connotation, rhythm and meaning in a reasonable amount of text.

For example the saying in Estonian: "Keelan, käsen, poon ja lasen!" It's often used in the context of someone having too much power, but the tone of the saying is not formal compared to when people start to talk about the separation of the three powers. I suspect the joking/informal tone comes from the fact that the saying rhymes and has a nice rhythm. Direct translation of it, "I forbid, order, hang and shoot!" just doesn't pack the same punch or carry the same meaning because it's not just words that have to be translated. I think that's what people mean by saying "this cannot be translated correctly into your language".

I'm sorry but I must disagree: "sachzwangreduzierte Ehrlichkeit" is absolutely horrible. If you like this kind of talk, you'd make a good politician (or consultant).

The only time I could imagine hearing such a thing if somebody is making fun of politicans or consultants.

The article didn't mention Schadenfreude. There's "epicaricacy" in English, but I've never heard anyone use that word. Any other attempt to explain it is several English words.

Schadenfreude’s been an English word for a long time now.

As an Italian living in Germany, and as a lover of the German language, I think this is not a good list. It reads like it was put together to fit the author's approach to coaching. Entwicklung, indeed, is the best example of this. It is exactly the same in English.

What's really fun about German: as a non native you can get to a point where you create involuntary neologisms by putting together words you already know. Surprisingly, Germans find it mostly funny and tend to understand well what you mean, suggesting that there's an underlying plasticity to this language, if you're mutig enough to play with it and its admittedly strict Grenzen. I just cant's wrap my head around the rule of writing every substantive with a capital letter though, which I interpret as an annoying need to always circumstantiate a purported objectivity of the perceived reality.

With some friends we started coming up with these neologisms on purpose. My favorite one is "Sonnenschuld" or "Wetterschuld", which is that feeling you get in Berlin when you have to work during the summer while the sun is shining outside. You know you're doing the right thing, but at the same time you know you're wasting a precious opportunity to enjoy a rather seldom occurrence.

Interesting that you find beautiful days to be a rare occurrence in Berlin. Perhaps because you're coming from Italy? I have the opposite attitude -- summer days are easier to spend inside in Berlin, as the weather is generally very good and there's always another beautiful day coming!

The winter months in Berlin can be a bit grim.

What you describe is making Sonnenschuld worse, because you know you have to take in as much sunny days as possible in the summer, preparing for the depressing gray days of winter!

> I just cant's wrap my head around the rule of writing every substantive with a capital letter though, which I interpret as an annoying need to always circumstantiate a purported objectivity of the perceived reality.

I think this rule actually exists to make reading german texts easier.

IMO reading german without capitalized nouns is a lot harder, because you don’t recognize nouns on first sight.

In English and other languages this works quite well without capitalizing each end every noun. (Only "proper" nouns)

I don't know if it would hurt readability aside from habit of we'd capitalize only Eigennnamen as well.

Oh my, Sonnenschuld!!!! I feel you, I have felt this so often and talked about it too, but me and my colleagues didn't come up with this neologism :D Can we use it, can we, can we, bitte?!

Of course you can!

Sonnenschuld is a beautiful word! Thank you!

Glad you like it :D

Doesn’t every language have such a thing? What makes German more exceptional than English? Or Chinese more exceptional than English? I’m certain there are expressions that don’t exist in every language, and even if you translated them, they might not translate well due to cultural or linguistic issues (try translating Monty Python to Chinese while keeping British wit and hoping your average Chinese viewer understands the context of the humor).

This might sound overgeneralized but I think every language has its own qualities. Most languages have evolved out of cultural needs (consider words like “Internet,” “email,” and “texting”).

For example, Chinese has a word distinguishing language (e.g 英文, literally English culture) and the language itself (英語, literally English language). Most people in normal parlance would say 英文 over 英語 for English, because the culture is inseparable from the language. That’s why Chinese speakers use -文 for languages over -語, such as 中文、英文、日文、西班牙文.

For the example of Entschuldigen or “apologize,” Chinese uses several expressions such as 對不起、抱歉. In the case of 對不起 it literally means the speaker cannot face the recipient, as in loss of face. Or another expression is 「不好意思」; this literally means “poor meaning or intentions.” Its English equivalent is approximately “excuse me.”

I’m not trying to put down the value of the article. It’s highly intriguing. I just find the exceptionalism a little off-putting when languages like Japanese have similar constructs.

I guess what makes German more exceptional than English is the common wisdom about the languages (common wisdom used here as something not necessarily wise or even insightful but just a commonly understood thing that is maybe not even enunciated very often).

The common wisdom has that English is a language that imports new concepts from other languages as needed (which implies that these concepts somehow are not English for having been imported), and the common wisdom of German is that they have a word for that slightly messed up concept you just came up with in it, also the habit of German of creating compounds gives the impression of a language in which every concept can be found because there is a word compounded of other words to describe it.

Both of these are illustrated by the importation of the word schadenfreude.

Have you ever studied German? It has an absolutely dizzying number of French and/or Latin loanwords.

yes (although I can't remember any of it now whenever I am there for about a week I start being able to communicate when shopping I suppose if I spent a month I might be doing better but I'm never there for more than a week at a time), but anyway I'm talking about the popular conception of German from the American/English perception and the self-perception of the English language from the perception of English speakers. Which I thought was obvious?

Sorry, you are right. I misinterpreted your comment.

>Doesn’t every language have such a thing?

Not in the same degree.

>What makes German more exceptional than English?

Different syntax, more abstract terms, and easier to combine terms and create new meanings.

>Or Chinese more exceptional than English?

Totally different writing system, syntax and sensibility, and a couple of millennia or more of added history.

I will dispute that it is "easier to combine terms and create new meanings" in German than in English. You can combine words to create new words in either language.

The fact that "you can" doesn't mean that

(1) people often do,

(2) the language encourages it,

(3) the terms are accepted as valid (e.g. when seen in an article or spoken),

(4) there are as many compound words in English as in German,

(5) it's as historically customary to create compound words

and several other things besides.

So I don't think one can dispute that it's easier in German.

But do you have data for any of those points? People combine terms in both languages all the time. It just looks different because English more often use compounds with space between the terms, e.g. "light bulb" rather than "lightbulb".

I’d replace compound words with gerunding in English.

英文 means English language, not English culture. This meaning of 文 as language is attested to in plenty of ancient Chinese sources. 文 and 語 are often interchangeable. There are sometimes circumstances where 文 has connotations of writing and 語 has connotations of referring to the language holistically, but it's not a hard and fast rule. For example 你能說英語嗎？and 你能說英文嗎？are both idiomatic and both mean "Can you speak English?" 文化 (culture) is using a different meaning of 文 where it means cultured or refined (see e.g. 文雅 "elegant").

The rules for when you are allowed to use 文 and 語 are slightly irregular. Notably the term 漢語 (the Han language, a synonym for Chinese although even more all-encompassing, e.g. encompassing its many forms through several thousand years) exists, but 漢文 does not, at least not as a modern, common term. It sounds very old-fashioned. Likewise 粵語 (the Yue language) exists. 粵文 does not, at least in the same sense (again sounds very old-fashioned/archaic or sounds like it's referring specifically to the written language). However, for smaller "scopes" of languages, e.g. dialects, neither 語 nor 文 can be used. It is 廣東話 (Cantonese) not 廣東語 nor is it 廣東文.

There are many terms in Chinese that have no direct translation into English.

There's however a rather glaring pair of words in English that have no direct translation into Chinese. "Yes" and "no" have no direct corresponding words in Chinese. The closest Chinese equivalents of words expressing affirmation or negation such as "是" and "非" cannot be used universally. 你吃過飯嗎? "Have you eaten?" cannot be responded to with "是" or "非" (at least in modern Mandarin, 非 has a more universal sense in Classical Chinese). Responding affirmatively requires repeating the verb "吃了," literally "eaten." While responding negatively doesn't require the verb ("沒有") 沒 cannot be used universally either. 沒有 is not a valid response to 你要去嗎? ("Do you want to go?").

This is true of many languages, e.g. Latin.

These are good examples of what linguists call a "Volksetymologie", meaning a usually wrong derivation of words which are no longer correctly understood or have changed meaning. A popular example is when a German newspaper did one of those stupid surveys for the "most beautiful German word", and the winner was "Habseligkeiten". The cited reason was because it combines "Haben" (to have) with "Selig" ("blessed"), the profane with the heavenly, but the real etymology is actually different.

As is already mentioned here, the "-mut" in Wehmut does not mean "courage" but is actually identical to the English "mood". I would also highly doubt his interpretation of "Einsam". The suffix "-sam" usually means simply to having something. "Liebenswürdig" is difficult, because "Liebe" means many things (from simply "friendly" to modern romantic "love"), and "-würdig" is more in terms of being adequate or appropriate. When you say "Er ist sehr liebenswürdig", this does not mean that HE is worthy of love, but simply that he is a friendly person, meaning he knows how to treat people properly. As was also already mentioned here, "Entwicklung" and "development" are literally the same, and the same goes for "Ursprung" and "origin".

There is also the simple fact that German allows for building compositions, so what would be considered an expression in English can be one word in German (like "Sinneswandel" for "change of mind"). But this does not mean that it "does not exist".

As a German, the word I'm really missing when speaking English is the simple word "doch", which more or less means "No, but yeah". If you've ever watched German kids in a "Nein! Doch!" match, you know how powerful that simple word is. I think there was actually an article here some time ago that English used to have this with "Yay" and "Nay" in addition to "Yes" and "No", but that this got lost. Of course German is not unique in having "doch", most other roman languages have it as well (the French have "Si", which in Italy is the normal "Yes").

EDIT: Found the article:

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-part-of-no-...

> As a German, the word I'm really missing when speaking English is the simple word "doch", which more or less means "No, but yeah".

As a college student I lived with a few German speakers. I felt like I had "arrived" with the language during an exchange in which I said, "Ich kann nicht Deutsch" and the native speaker said, "Doch."

Of course the nuances are a bit more complex than that, and English (it feels to me) uses intonation and inflection more than particles to communicate meaning.

Agree about the intonation vs particles. Sometimes a word like wohl would be most naturally translated into English by italics.

> Of course German is not unique in having "doch", most other roman languages ...

Slightly off topic but from a historical linguistics perspective, German is not a Romance language.

True but I read it as an error in writing not in understanding. It should read something like “it is true in other languages including romance languages.” Or something similar but a bit more elegant

Me: Moved to Hamburg this year, has 320 days on Duolingo and finished an actual beginner's German course so far.

I can only partially agree to the statements made in this thread about the quality of this list but I've been fascinated with German words that have no English counterparts, at least not completely. My favorite one so far is "Waldeinsamkeit"--literally "forest soltitude" but the translation does not capture the "calm, contemplative atmosphere amidst a beautiful setting"[1]. Before moving to Hamburg I used to camp a handful of times a year for stargazing and I _feel_ that I understand this concept somehow.

On a more "Auslander" observation: when I moved in to Hamburg I was struck by how early the city sleeps, how dark the streets are at night. Sure there are streetlights[2] but for the second largest city in a European hub such as Germany, they might as well be lighting a residential village! For my connotation of a metropolitan area, Hamburg at night just ain't cutting it.

Until, I learned about "Waldeinsamkeit". Again this is probably just the Auslander talking but I have since thought that Waldeinsamkeit is the philosophy behind Hamburg's urban design. They may have urbanized for 20th century living but, if I may be poetic, they still want that beautiful serenity of darkness.

[1] https://blogs.transparent.com/german/untranslatable-german-w... [2] though there are nooks and crannies in Hamburg that are notably really dark, sometimes only lighted by the apartments along the street.

Hamburg has a Lichtkonzept: https://www.hamburg.de/contentblob/3486350/1bb71bada5b286281...

My German is not at this level yet but this is fascinating to learn. Thanks for linking this!

Fellow Hamburg immigrant here. I admire your optimism and the will to perceive an intention behind the darkness (which was also one of my first impressions of Hamburg). Unfortunately, I don't see it that way, but more as general unfriendliness of the city towards a random individual. Other things in the same vain that I noticed (coming from the Balkans, if important) are: very few overhangs that the buildings offer as means of shade from the rain - often there is no place for a pedestrian to shelter from the rain, which is absurd with amount of wet days Hamburg has. Another thing that irks me is the lack of public water taps. Such a basic and affordable civilization achievement - and yet not a single one in a 2M city.

Of course, I adore and enjoy the city, these are just few things that I can't really understand.

Interesting. I didn’t even know public water tap is a common thing in other countries.

There is the concept of light pollution, Lichtverschmutzung. If a city is too bright, you won't see the stars, animals would have difficulty to sleep, etc... The city has areas which are lighted, but in other areas it's darker. See the link to the Lichtkonzept I've put in another comment.

> public water taps

That's an interesting question. A few decades ago this was more common, but it has been removed over the years. I think there is a fear of pollution and also costs involved. There are only a few in the city:

https://www.hamburgwasser.de/privatkunden/themen/trinkwasser...

The Aussenalster is a popular jogging training track and it has public water there.

Currently there are plans of the local government to install hundred public water taps in the city in the coming years and two hundred in schools. That's already a movement in various other cities, too: Blue Communities.

Pffft. Zuckerpüppchen! Go get some Gore-Tex or something like that. "Es gibt kein schlechtes Wetter! Nur schlechte Kleidung." :-)

That water thing is not entirely true:

[1] https://www.hamburgwasser.de/privatkunden/themen/trinkwasser...

[2] https://www.trinkwasser-unterwegs.de/startseite/

[3] https://refill-deutschland.de/

There a few, as you can see, and locations marked with a sticker where you can ask for a free refill of your bottle as described in [3].

Personally i wouldn't trust public water springs for hygienic reasons. Maybe a cultural thing, i'm not used to them. I can't really remember of having seen them anywhere in Germany since my childhood. They are a 'new thing' to us.

Hamburg is more of a place to work than a place to live.

This highly influences traffic (patterns), structure of neighborhoods in the residential areas and so on.

Maybe this explains why the city sleeps so early - the working population is off to their homes in the suburbs.

Funny. When i came to HH in 2004 it was the city where there were no real dark places. Depends on where you are i guess. The lack of 'night life' apart from a few (touristy) clusters is true, visually. You have to know the places, they are not obvious from the outside. You could also look into "Protestantische Arbeitsethik", which may explain that (culturally).

As the night owl that i am, i should know.

How do you percieve the traffic lights/Ampeln? (There! Another thing, Ampel!) For me they are way too bright during darkness. Its like a cone of colored light painting the houses up to a few hundred meters away, even irritating when i'm bicyling a little faster (because empty streets!), and don't have them in direct line of sight, only overlapping hazes of red and green, with maybe flashes of orange around some corner, curve, ridge.

Btw. Stargazing. I miss that. The 'seeing' here is pathetic most times. Can't be helped really, except by going into the outskirts. Though i have no telescope nor binoc anymore, i sometimes cycle to the

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbekreuzung_2

and depending on the weather and tide enjoy an 'unearthly' atmosphere ...err Stimmung. Because when you go down from the dike you stand in wafting fog up to your hips, while small waves splash in the reeds, and all that sometimes tinted red from the 'Flugwarnbefeuerung' high above on the masts.

Added bonus: some large ship floating by with deep rumbling engine, illuminated only by navigation lights and the ghostly sheen of screens on the bridge.

And some birds.

Anyways, i'm sure there are other interesting places, but this one i know, and thought i should share ;-)

The traffic lights don't really bother me but then I take the bus so I don't interact with them directly. The closest thing I can comment is I'm relieved the street crossing signals are bright enough even for summer days when the sun is high and you are viewing them at very tight angles.

I gotta try going to the Elbekreuzung too then! I notice it is acceptably dark around Bahrenfeld. I got to take this last summer, during my first month here: https://flic.kr/p/2i7ML2V . Not ideal for a photo--there's way too much ambient light pollution from the nearby apartments--but at least you could make out the stars, which is more than what I can say for other urban settings. (Maybe I should retry this shot with a narrower focal length, i.e., not fisheye.)

Incidentally, the handful "nooks and crannies" I've been referring to as having almost no streetlight are all around Bahrenfeld.

When you are located in Bahrenfeld, then there is another nice place to be, not so far away. I noticed that by chance one summer night, walking down the Baron-Vogt-Straße from the S-Bahn Station Klein-Flottbek (Botanischer Garten). I could see many stars and even some meteors, while walking down to the Elbe, and then thought why not enter the park here?

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenischpark

It has downsloped open spaces, and the glare from Airbus Industries and parts of the harbour on the other side of the Elbe are visible, but the field of view from straight up to maybe 50° above horizon is ok. It's better than Altonaer Volkspark or Lise-Meitner-Park in my experience.

I've been struggling to find an equivalent for 'overengineered' in German - there's verschlimmbessern, a portmanteu verb of 'verbessern' (improve) and 'schlimm' (bad), it's what you use when you want to improve something but the end-product is worse.

However, German tech (to me!) has a overengineering problem, not a verschlimmbessern problem, there's nothing being improved. Just look at modern German cars, impossible to fix yourself, very expensive to have serviced, for no real gain, pure overengineering. Is there a word?

(edit: there's an opposite for OP's 'Lebensmut' - 'Lebensmüdigkeit', literally 'tired of being alive', i.e. suicidal)

I usually say überkompliziert.

That is missing the passive-aggressiveness of "overengineered"... which is probably fine.

I would probably use 'verkompliziert' or even 'kuenstlich verkompliziert' when emphasizing the active role of the responsible person/group. But the english term is good - short, a bit more specific. It is used as a 'Lehnwort' quite often even in german-speaking tech environments.

What about “vertüftelt”? “tüfteln” means to tinker around. The word means that you bring something into the state of being tinkered together or is complex.

Ingenieurvergnügen

That can be used as a compliment. You have this problem that seems impossible to solve, but the resident mechanic is able to magick together a solution, like this.

We don't have a word for it because we don't see it as overengineering, we see it simply as engineering ;)

On a more serious note, there is this idea that at their core systems are about accepting inefficiency in order to gain consistency and simplicity. From this perspective us Germans accept inefficiency for consistencies sake but not for simplicity.

> We don't have a word for it because we don't see it as overengineering, we see it simply as engineering ;)

Haha! Yes, totally! No German engineer "overengineers". Ever! It's called "refinement", "evolution" and "sophistication". There is no language to criticise engineers in a nation dominated by engineers (and businesspeople). ;)

There is no 'underengineer' either though, is there?

If one would really want to name the two terms in question, one might say:

* überentwickelt for overengineered (not really used)

* unterentwickelt for underdeveloped (matches the word, even)

"Unterentwickelt" is a term we do not use lightly, since it is a word we often used in elementary school to bully some kids, so that has that smell to it. (Usually you also add a howling sound to that word and give yourself a smack on your forehead ;))

When it's not 'hochwertig' und 'langlebig', dann ist es 'Schrott'.

As can be seen in the design of German ww2 Panzers Compared to say a Sherman.

Hirnschneckenhäuschenbergwerk

The german language is basically a lego-language-set, nice for construction and recombination. Unfortunatly, the gramar and rule OCD-Guardians got to it.

The trick is to never admit you invented anything, you always heard it elsewhere..

When it is consensus somewhere else, doubt kreeps into the hivemind communication watchmen.

Have fun. And get away with it. Death to the duden.

I worked once for a German company that used the German version of overengineered quite a lot, and they used 'eierlegende Wollmilchsau' for this, which is analytically not correct, but everybody understood it as overengineered. In general I think you have to give more context, to translate correctly, i.e. depending on context with 'klimbim', 'Spielerei'.

Eierlegende Wollmilchsau (egg-laying, wool-bearing, milk-giving pig) is a jack of all trades. It can mean over engineered (F35 anyone?) or simply a way to describe an unit that does not adhere to the I in SOLID.

I never heard anyone use it before, but 'überentwickelt', which is the antonym to the commonly used 'unterentwickelt', makes perfectly sense and should be understood by every german speaker.

Most of these have close English equivalents, but as a second language learner, the author does not have a large enough vocabulary to summon them easily.

Learning a second language is not the same experience as being a native speaker.

Having grown up without German in my life, I will never have the eloquence or depth of vocabulary in German that I do in English. That's OK. It is the nature of the human animal.

Knowing my limitations, I would be reluctant to write an article about "English expressions that do not exist in German"

Interestingly enough the words exists in Swedish as well, spelling is a bit different but the meaning is more or less the same:

German -> Swedish

Wehmot -> vemod

Entwicklung -> utveckling

Einsam -> ensam

Stimmung -> stämmning

Entschuldigen -> ursäkta

Aufrichtigkeit -> uppriktighet

Lebensmut -> livsmod

Ursprung -> ursprung

Liebenswürdig -> älskvärd

Note that Sinneswandel is missing not sure if there is a direct translation in Swedish

Same in Dutch! Weemoed, ontwikkeling, eenzaam, stemming, verontschuldigen, oprechtheid, oorsprong.

Some are missing, or at least from my vocabulary. Glad I learned something new today!

It's the same in Danish, and I'd imagine Norwegian too. And like Swedish, "Sinneswandel" is missing.

The Danish for "Ursprung" is »udspring«, which lit. means something more akin to 'out spring', but we do have the »ur-« prefix in Danish, meaning origin/source. So »urskov« would be the 'origin of forest', or jungle, i.e. it is the thing that it is the origin of all that.

In the same sense, you could - jokingly - making the word »urvittighed« meaning the 'original joke'. Compound nouns are extremely powerful.

I mean, technically you can do this in English as well. English is a Germanic language and compound words are fully legitimate in the language. The following don't exist in the colloquialisms or formal records of the language, but are grammatically correct:

  Wehmot -> sorecourage
  Einsam -> onepeace
  Stimmung -> innervoice
  Lebensmut -> lifegrit
  Liebenswürdig -> loveworthy

And, despite the author's claims, many do have direct equivalent words in English:

  Ursprung -> outspring
  Aufrichtigkeit -> uprightness
  Entwicklung -> unwrapping
  Entschuldigen -> unguilt

All of which could be used in the manner described in the article. As well as having accurate one-word synonyms:

  outspring: origin / original
  uprightness: compunction
  unwrapping: developing, delving, growth
  unguilt: unburden

The main difference in the languages is that modern English (especially 20th century on) has relied more on loanwords (another compound word) and hyphenations to augment. Love-worthy, for instance:

https://www.wordnik.com/words/love-worthy

It's hard to count compound words as "words that don't exist in other languages", honestly. Meanwhile, there are perfectly acceptable (compound or not) words that actually give voice to something hard to describe in other languages. Which is a far more interesting (IMHO) concept; such as "schadenfreude" or, going the other way for many languages, "irony".

I am not convinced that Wehmut translates to sorecourage. The -mut ending appears in other emotions as well, Sanftmut, Schwermut for example. I think it relates to words like "Gemüt" and corresponds to "mood".

Soremood Softmood Heavymood

I took some liberties on a couple to try and capture the meaning of the German word; "einsam" for instance would better translate into "onesome".

I'm also not a native speaker, so I could be completely off.

Interestingly here, "loanword" is a calque from the German "lehnwort", which reminds me of my favourite language fact: "loanword" is a calque, and "calque" is a loanword.

>Entschuldigen -> ursäkta

That's not a direct translation as far as I can see. I'm not a native speaker but I don't think säkt does means anything, opposite to Schuld, which has a clear meaning. The direct translation would be something like avskulda, but that's not a word AFAICS.

Yes, you are correct. The direct translation is "urskulda" which is a Swedish word meaning "justify" or "excuse".

In Norwegian unskyld means i'm sorry which corresponds to german.

Many of these words just change a bit over time like geld/gjeld which is money in German and debt in Norwegian.

That sounds like "Unschuld" = innocence in German.

> Interestingly enough the words exists in Swedish as well.

And this is no surprise. Low German was a major trade language of the Baltic region and Swedish absorbed an enormous number of Low German words either as direct borrowings or calques. Then due to the prestige of High German as a literary language in Northern Europe, Swedish calqued further words on German models.

Although German language is full of great words, the expressions from the post exist in other languages, even in my native tongue Turkish, which belongs to a completely different language family.

However in Germany these expressions are regularly used on TV,press and literature. They have become and are powerful building blocks of a German speakers thoughts, giving them an advantage to think better.

So while we're in the market for "words your language doesn't have" -- any recommendations for Turkish words you haven't seen in other languages?

I don't have a list of such expression handy. But there is one specific feature of Turkish language which I find interesting and really smart.

Check these words:

At, aş, it, us, su, ev, er, te, ot, et, ar, ön, an, in, un, en,

Literally translated: horse, food, dog, intelligence, water, house, man/soldier, far, grass, meat, honor, front, moment (time), shelter/cave, flour, most/width,

Many important aspects of daily was are words as short as possible and have survived thousand years of change and part of modern Turkish language. There are also a large number of 3 letter words for further important things such as ana (mother), soy (ancestry), boy (length/race), toy (young/unexperienced), and (promise).

While we're proposing useful words, may I humbly suggest two useful adverbs:

"fei" (Bavarian): in contrast to what I think you're assuming. "Des is fei da letzte" -- "This is the last one, and I think you thought there would be more".

"als" (Allemannic/Suabian): something like "in the default case, which is also frequent".

As an American, I observe that the Brits use “isn’t it” to express something similar to “fei”. Example: “That’s the entrance, isn’t it?” seems to mean “You thought that that is the exit, did you? You’re an idiot.” The closest we Yanks have is the sarcastic “That’s an exit? Yeah, right.”

English uses the Latin pace for the first case

"Entschuldigen" is a pretty fascinating verb, but not for the author's reasons. It literally means to remove guilt from someone (not specifically from oneself as the author states) and is kind of equivalent to "forgive". Commonly it is misused in German: people say "ich entschuldige mich", literally meaning they're removing their own guilt from theirselves and thus forgiving theirselves, which is kind of impossible and not what's actually meant. The right phrase would be "um Entschuldigung bitten" (to ask to be excused) which actually is rarely used.

> The right phrase would be

The right phrase, depending on your religion, is what people use in practice (descriptivism), or what's listed in dictionary (prescriptivism). In this case, the two happen to agree: https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/entschuldigen "jemanden wegen eines falschen Verhaltens o. Ä. um Verständnis, Nachsicht, Verzeihung bitten", example: "sich förmlich, in aller Form entschuldigen"

I understand where you're coming from, but the ship has sailed. The word means what it means now, even if a literal historical reading indicates that it might have meant something else at some point.

Alternative title: "One language that has different close compounding rules than another language has different compound nouns than that other language".

Auf Deutsch: Verscheidenzusammengesetztesgebotesprachen haben verscheide zusammengesetztes Substantive.

To the non-native speakers: "Verscheidenzusammengesetztesgebotesprachen" looks long and German, but is not a German word. Maybe its parts were auto-corrected.

As that great Germanic comedian Mr Arnold Schwarzenegger might have said: "And here are the jokes ..." :-)

And I am sitting here, thinking you actually wanted to say, "verschiedene Substantivzusammensetzungsrechtschreibverordnungen" lead to "verschieden zusammengesetzte Substantive", while you were just making jokes. Silly me :-)

Yes.

>Alternative title: "One language that has different close compounding rules than another language has different compound nouns than that other language".

And different cultural and historical sensibilities expressed in those compound nouns - which is the main point of the article one would assume, not the mechanics...

From the article: "the unique wisdom of some of these words, that don't have an exact counterpart in the English language". So the claim is precisely that because English doesn't have single-word translations of these German terms, that the German words somehow encode "unique wisdom", which is obviously BS.

In most cases, close examination reveals that it's unfounded BS. "Aufrichtigkeit" (Sincerity/Honesty) has the same 'literal' meaning as the English "upstanding", as in "an upstanding citizen". "Liebenswürdig" is just "lovable", and so on and so forth.

>From the article: "the unique wisdom of some of these words, that don't have an exact counterpart in the English language". So the claim is precisely that because English doesn't have single-word translations of these German terms, that the German words somehow encode "unique wisdom", which is obviously BS.

As for the general claim, not so obviously.

For one, "wisdom" here is not meant as some expert understanding of who we are and what to do in general (the generic sense of wisdom), but as improved insight about a sentiment/situation captured in a specific word, as opposed to a language that can only describe it in many ad-hoc words.

To put it in IT terms, those words avoid an extra pointer interaction to the subject matter. Or having them is like having first class support for something that in English only can be achieved with "design patterns" and extra ceremony (of course there are English words which the German don't have too).

As for specific examples in the article, sure, they might not be the best picks to illustrate the general claim.

When discussing linguistic issues, it's best to use linguistic theory and terminology, rather than misleading analogies to software development. What you are propounding is a version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that language structure (such as lexical rules which allow free construction of compound nouns) somehow influences or constrains cognitive processes. Among the linguistics community, it is widely accepted that there is very little evidence for this relativistic view, and it has been largely rejected.

The author of the article is obviously not aware of any of this, and doesn't care. He is writing without concern for the truth status of what he is saying, his aim is only for attention. This is the very definition of bullshit according to the philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt in his essay "On Bullshit": "It is just this lack of connection to a concern with the truth - this indifference to how things really are - that I regard as of the essence of bullshit".

>When discussing linguistic issues, it's best to use linguistic theory and terminology, rather than misleading analogies to software development. What you are propounding is a version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that language structure (such as lexical rules which allow free construction of compound nouns) somehow influences or constrains cognitive processes.

No, I'm saying a much more basic, and widely accepted, undisputed even, thing: if language X has a specific term for a situation, then its speakers have captured that situation and understand it better and can refer to it more readily than people whose language lacks the term (and can only describe the notion with different ad-hoc phrases).

That's essentially what language does, even for native speakers. Captures things (nouns), sentiments, ideas, etc, to communicate them.

If a language lacks a term akin to "kawaii" then its people don't have immediate access to that notion the way Japanese have. They could say "cute" but it doesn't cut it, or they could explain it with one or more phrases. But still the person hearing it and the person expressing it would have mismatches etc. Whereas for a Japanese it's already a preset cultural notion.

I'm not saying that having such a term or having a syntax structured in such a way, makes the Japanese to thing this or that way, or affects how they think.

I'm saying that having a work for a phenomenon means you can refer to the phenomenon directly versus not having one, and people will immediately understanding what you mean.

> No, I'm saying a much more basic, and widely accepted, undisputed even, thing: if language X has a specific term for a situation, then its speakers have captured that situation and understand it better and can refer to it more readily than people whose language lacks the term (and can only describe the notion with different ad-hoc phrases).

Firstly, do you have any evidence for the claim that, if a language has a specific term for a concept, speakers of that language understand that concept better than speakers of languages that require more than one term to describe the concept? I am genuinely interested in references to the studies you have read which demonstrate this.

Secondly, you contradict yourself. The following statements are inconsistent:

1. "if language X has a specific term for a situation, then its speakers have captured that situation and understand it better"

2. "I'm not saying that having such a term or having a syntax structured in such a way, makes the Japanese to thing (sic) this or that way, or affects how they think."

Either having a specific term for a concept allows better understanding of it (which obviously "affects how they think") or not.

It is interesting indeed to unwrap the literal meaning of the composite words in German.

I don't entirely agree on his proposition of the meaning of 'Stimmung' though. It's not just 'the voice of the situation' but rather "state of adjustment/tuning of emotions towards a situation". For instance when we [Germans] say that the "Stimmung ist getrübt" it means that most people involved have adjusted to a rather dampened mood for a particular situation. They are then not just experiencing it in a bad way, but they are also expressing their mood non-verbally.

They overlooked "hausfrauenpanzer":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21894468

"Chelsea tractor" is a reasonable equivalent, I think.

Karen is the US version isn’t it?

"Chelsea" in this case refers to a wealthy area of London, not a person's name.

Here's a massively useful term, particularly in the case of watching the news:

Fremdschämen

See: https://www.leo.org for good discussion.

I think basically it means "cringe".

Oh no no no.

It's more the embarrassment one feels on behalf of some shameless piece of work who really ought to silence themselves, yet somehow natters on.

Cringe can mean exactly that in English (although it also has slightly different meanings).

"Wehmut" literally: 'The courage in feeling pain'.

This is powerful. I feel like this courageous curiosity has been the primary virtue or trait that I've been exploring and aiming to cultivate more than any other during the past couple of years.

As a non-German speaker I'd be interested how this relates to melancholy (these to me feel like quite different emotional states).

> I'd be interested how this relates to melancholy

Melancholy pertains to one’s internal state. It is a state of being, and one that accepts the circumstances as they are. (It also contains notes of inevitability.)

Wehmut is more active. The outcome is evitable. One accepts them, and the pain they will cause, but perseveres, usually towards a brighter outcome. At worst, it’s Sisyphean with an unknown ending.

This is not how Wehmut is used in German, sorry. As nice as it sounds. ;)

> As nice as it sounds

I’ll grant my (Austrian) mother that license, then!

Wouldn't this translate quite well as stoicism?

"the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint."

> Wouldn't this translate quite well as stoicism?

Stoicism accepts discomfort for its own sake, and the futility in fighting it. Wehmut is less fatalistic. It is about experiencing unavoidable pain in pursuit of a worthy goal.

As a native German speaker, I wouldn't translate "mut" in Wehmut as courage. Here it rather is the same as "mood" (and the English word has the same roots). Like in "Anmut", "Dehmut", "Unmut" etc.

So Wehmut literally would be something like "woeful mood" and you could use it more or less synonymous with melancholia (or nostalgia for example).

I don’t really think it is 100% synonymous with melancholia, but that’s probably (sadly?) the way it used today. Wehmut is a little bit of a rare and oldfashioned word which got fashionable in the romantic era through (among others) works of Goethe and got modern reuse in the fantastic Donald Duck translations of Erika Fuchs.

To my (vague) knowledge, it is an word coined in romanticism to replace the French-rooted word Nostalgie, Schwermut was coined for Melancholie. The movement was fairly nationalistic and was unhappy with the dominance of French in high culture at that time. So they went ahead and coined "German" words were ones with French (or Latin) roots were used.

But please check/correct me on that, my memory might be betraying me here. Not even sure about the source...

I think it's a mistranslation, though. The "mut" in "wehmut" does not mean courage. Looking up the etymology, the word "wehmut" seems to come from "wehmütig", which literally means something like being in a painful state of mind.

I actually would not read too much into these. The German language builds heavily composed words. To me intuitively they mean mostly just the translation presented in the post and I would rarely reflect about the origin. There might be slight changes in connotation from the English, but I doubt it says all too much about the German using them (at least I can tell that about me when using the word wehmut). Particularly the stem "mut" is much to ubiquitous and mostly meaningless to the speaker these days.

Sure it is interesting but one can also dig into the etymology of any other language...

According to Wikipedia, melancholy included the present in it's reflection. I.e. you remember how great that house you grew up in was, and how your current apartment is terrible in comparison

Wehmut on the other hand doesn't need a current reflection... Which is much harder to find an example for, which is probably also why it's basically never used irl

While the memory is kinda painful, your personal mood doesn't necessarily have to become negative from wehmut either, while it's easy to write like that... Good luck finding a situation in which this applies.

I know the definition but really struggled to find an applicable example. Maybe if you're recalling a broken leg some time ago and how hard life was with it? It still feels like we compared it to the present, honestly. We just didn't spell it out.

You say that somebody is wehmütig when he is purposefully trying to be sad and down on him or herself or everybody, so Wehmut is somewhat derogatory. If you tell somebody that they are wehmütig, it means that they are actively being dumb, basically. Melancholy is more like a wistful sadness also considered negative but connected to some tragic event or maybe when thinking about better times in the past a bit too much.

Glück. All this talk about long compound words, when German gives the word Glück. It can mean luck, joy, bliss, though it is so much more than the sum of its possible translations. Hermann Hesse wrote a beautiful essay on this.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7rLsb3w8ZaM

On a lighter note, one of my favorite German words is "Warmduscher", literally "someone who takes hot showers", aka a wimp or a candy-ass.

Be aware that by using it you imply that you yourself only take cold showers and you may get called out on that. (Of course I take cold showers so I feel no compunction about using this word.)

I hate that word. Signs of a machismo culture to imply only "real men" take "cold showers"

It is funny to the see exoticization of the German language, even though German is so close to English.

I think the author confuses etymology with meaning, and then uses wrong etymologies (e.g. translating "mut" to "courage" rather then the literal "mood") to arrive at some amazing "wisdom" in German.

Some of the words are exactly the same meaning as the English counterpart, e.g. develop also means to unwrap. It just have a French origin rather than a Germanic.

I think English is really the odd language here. Because so many English words are loanwords from French or Latin, their origin or etymology is not as apparent to English speakers.

(And of course the article sprinkles a bit of irrelevant neurobabble.)

I'm not even German, but I know this...

Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell

Awesome YouTube channel, BTW. ;)

Literally: briefly said

> Kurzgesagt

That's not actually a German word. It's two words: "kurz gesagt" which is literally "briefly said".

Correct. It's an expression that a considerable amount of Germans would write as a single word. Zusammen oder getrennt, composed or separate is one of the most tricky questions in German orthography.

I don't speak German but I use weltschmerz and reisefieber

Kindergarten is also a word, that has found its way into anglo-saxon languages.

I always forget how kindergarten is in english, then remember “kindergarten” and my brain says “nope, that’s deutsch”. Similarly for weil (while), frustrating sometimes.

One key aspect of the English language is that the meaning of any word can vary slightly in interpretation from person to person. Could breaking down complex feelings into concrete components mislead the individual into thinking that they're processing emotions in the exact same way as their neighbors? Or is it self-fulfilling, that the language shapes the emotion?

In any case, I think all these compound words definitely make learning German easier. It encourages one to adopt the mindset.

Another word someone brought up is "Geborgenheit", which translates to comfort or security. Briefly researching the origin it, it seems to come from the terminology around "Burg" (castle), and the feeling of safety and comfort we feel when we're inside one. In my understanding it also has a considerable amount of warmth next to the sense of safety and comfort. Overall, definitely one of my favorite words that I think belongs on this list too!

It comes from "bergen", meaning "in Sicherheit bringen" (to shelter), as in "ein Schiff bergen", "wir verbargen uns im Schrank". From this stem nouns like "Herberge" and also "Geborgenheit". However, it seems the word "Burg" simply comes from "Berg" (mountain).

Of course I don't know this by heart, I recommend looking this up in

  https://www.dwds.de

Careful, you can easily spend hours there...

Geborgenheit: I always think this is a how a kid feels while sleeping on a couch under a blanket along with loving parents at a warm home while it is snowing outside.

I love this, realizing that we each have our own description and meaning of the word stored in the memories we lived. Thanks for sharing!

In Dutch we use more or less the same words, but for me the top word is "wetenschap" (which is probably similar in German). Literally translated it's "knowledgeship", which would be a better word for science.

You can believe things, and you can know things. Science is knowing things, and what better word to describe that than "knowledgeship"?

It's Wissenschaft.

My favourite German expression which doesn't exist in English is still "Ohrwurm". It refers to a catchy song/tune stuck in someone's mind [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earworm

You linked to the literal English translation of it, which definitely exists?

The article also mentions it's a calque which emerged only recently.

So... 'yeah' to both of you.

The article suggests it isn't much older in German.

I guess there are really better examples than this. One I've learened recently is Torschlusspanik (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torschlusspanik)

Florence King once wrote that the word "Kinderfeindlichkeit" (dislike of children) could not have an English equivalent, and was one reason she'd like to live in Germany.

How can it not have an English equivalent, when you literally wrote the English equivalent right after it?

Schweigen, because English people did not reckon when to stop talking.

Aufrichtigkeit – Sincerity/Honesty. Literally: To be in an upright posture

This sounds pretty similar to 'having a spine'. Its normally used for courage or sticking up for your beliefs.

Having a spine = Rückgrat haben

Pretty much the same. Though I’d use it in the face of adversity, whereas “aufrichtig” is more of a muted, constant state of being. Like sincerity, with a visceral touch.

There is the expression of "Rückgrat haben" which would probably be the direct translation to "having a spine".

I would say the meaning is nearly equivalent. If someone has a spine he is someone who stands by his convictions (maybe implying the presence of external animosity).

Someone who is "aufrichtig" is "just" honest about his convictions.

We can simply use "uprightness" for exactly that meaning in English, too. Or "rectitude".

Let’s not forget schadenfreude!

Ah, but it does have an equivalent in English: it's schadenfreude.

Only because we fairly recently stole it!

Not that recently, it's been used italiced and capitalised for a century, only recently it's been properly absorbed by losing those decorations. In contrast, the French absorb foreign words almost instantly, see the verb "liker" (to like on Facebook) for example.

Interesting, when I was a boy, my mother (who was a German Teacher), always used it as an example of one of these great German words without a direct translation. Back then it didn’t seem to be used in popular culture, now I seem to hear it on a weekly basis!

I definitely saw it in the English music paper, the New Musical Express, in the late `70s (very Punk at the time), I remember having to look it up ...

You mean epicaricacy?

Wiktionary Usage notes:

The word is mentioned in some early dictionaries, but there is little or no evidence of actual usage until it was picked up by various "interesting word" websites around the turn of the twenty-first century.

Stadtneurotiker

Fahrvergnügen

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