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croes

Nitpicking

Blinkenlights isn’t a german word it’s pseudo german for Blinklicht originating from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights#:~:text=on%20the...

But the Chaos Computer Club built light installations called

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

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>The Jargon File also mentions that German hackers had in turn developed their own versions of the blinkenlights poster, in broken English:[1]

    ATTENTION
    This room is fullfilled mit special electronische equippment.
    Fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the computers is allowed for die experts only!
    So all the "lefthanders" stay away and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working intelligencies.
    Otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked anderswhere!
    Also: please keep still and only watchen astaunished the blinkenlights.

I have never been able to track down what "cnoeppkes" is supposed to mean.

Кнопки (k-nope-key) is Russian for "buttons". Maybe related.

There are so many words in our language that are very clear loan-words from German!

My guess is "Knöpfchen" (German for "little button"). The "chen" suffix is difficult to pronounce for English speakers, so it's replaced by the word "keys" (as in the buttons of a keyboard)

> The "chen" suffix is difficult to pronounce for English speakers, so it's replaced by the word "keys" (as in the buttons of a keyboard)

Not quite. The -ke ending here is just another regional variant of the diminutive. The s at the end is a colloquial plural form.

So the transformation from German to this weird german-english would be:

Knöpfe - Knöpfchen - Knöppkes - Cnoeppkes

Another detail you didn't mention: knopp or knoppe is a Low German (northern German) variant of Standard German Knopf. That's where the pf--pp alternation arises.

Knopp is actually common in southern German dialects as well, including palatinate and hessian. Using -ke for diminutives is common across Westphalia, especially the Munster region.

That's interesting because in Polish it is "ek" and my great-grand mother was part of the diaspora there before the war.

Definitely means buttons. Source: am German

Although it is not needed, the first line of this article confirms that meaning:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Knopf

And the article is interesting anyway.

Knob? https://www.etymonline.com/word/knob#etymonline_v_1916

That is funny (I do not know German but it still made me laugh) for exactly the same reason as the Blinkelights version - the similarities between German and English that make so many works almost recognisable.

I wrote "I love you" on the CCC Blinkenlights in Berlin to my then girlfriend, who has been my wife now for 20 years. The most romantic thing I ever did :)

In 1985 I made a similar panel which had 16 lights and mechanical switches and installed it in a rack in an operations center in GCHQ just to make it a bit more colorful. One day I came back from leave and the boss was really mad at me as they had been showing around some VIP, who stopped at the panel and asked the area director what it did. As all the technicians had been evacuated for the tour, nobody had a clue.

I would also use "die" instead of "das* for Blinkslights, since it's plural.

@croes I was thinking the same thing (knowing no german, but having a hunch).

And the CCC project was a whole building.

For his example, I was expecting a whole cage with some tricked out lights, maybe some smoke effects (I can see new colo signs being updated "no cardboard,no smoke machines allowed"), a sub-woofer playing some chiptunes, etc.

I saw a version of that sign a very long time ago in a government lab at my high school summer intern job, attached to a PDP-11 that came with blinkenlights.

First time I saw it was 1981 on the front of a DEC-10

PDP-10 Was awesome. There is a nice version of the console you can buy here => https://hackaday.io/project/170111-pidp-10

Also Kindergarten is German :)

obvious? that's the fun of it.

The linked article begins with "[Blinkenlights] Probably the only German word I know"

Ironically the author likely knows some actual German words like Schadenfreude and Kindergarten.

The list is quite long: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_German_ex...>

welcome to hackernews, where every article posted has something made up about it and the points don't matter

"Whose Blog Is It Anyway"

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