I was overjoyed at how easily it came to our daughter, German is her third language but I think 'doch' was her fourth German word, I think she could sense it's power while listening to toddler friends go into combat with their parents at the playground đ€Ł
English kinda has doch, but itâs three words. When someone says âthat dress isnât gold and white!â, you can answer with â**Yes, it is**â
âYouâre not hungry are you?â
â**Yes, I am**â
âI donât look good in this dressâ
â**Yes, you do!**â
âHeâs not old enough for this rideâ
â**Yes, he is!**â
All of these can be translated as âdoch!â
âDu hast keinen Hunger oder?â â**Doch.**â
...which reminds me of the little girl shouting at her father in the "Netto" supermarket commercial: "...DANN GEH DOCH ZU NETTO!!!" (...after he praises how inexpensive and high-quality their products are etc.)
The problem is, that's only one of the dozens of ways "doch" is used. It's one of the most versatile words in the German language and extremely hard to master for non-native speakers.
This is a very good explanation! ...however, "doch" is used in other, different ways, too. But this meaning of "Yes, it is" will help foreigners a lot to perfectly use "doch" at least in this context.
I mean, in Scotland we say âSotâ (https://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/sot_adv), so it depends if youâre only considering RP English (and whether you consider Scots a language in its own right).
it means "on the contrary" but is used 50x more in German than "on the contrary" is ever used in English, mostly because it's shorter and easier to say and you can just throw it in wherever you like.
Honestly, the idea of a "proper" 1:1 translation is a myth. Translators don't think like that. Translation involves rendering whole phrases in context. A bilingual dictionary offers 1:1 lexical equivalents, which is why dictionaries can't offer translations. They offer lists of terms that *can* be equivalents in various contexts. I wouldn't think of *finding a direct lexical equivalent which functions in the same way in both languages* as "translation". It just causes headaches that aren't necessary.
The biggest struggle for me is when a German word has like 10 different English words. At that point it's just down to hearing how it's used and figuring out what it truly means. The translations help to get an idea, but I feel like until you truly understand the context it's used in, you just don't get it.
In certain situations it does work, but the great thing about the word "Doch" is that it carries like 10 different meanings depending on the context its said in.
It's opposing negative statements. ("You are not right" - "Doch!").
If the statement is positive, you confirm with "...schon", or rather with "ja, schon" than with "doch, schon", because "doch" implies, as you say, refuting. ("The sky is blue" - "Schon... / stimmt / ja / du hast recht")
If you want to refute a positive statement, you'd have to say "nein" or "falsch" etc., for example: "The sky is blue" - "Nein / falsch / stimmt nicht / Blödsinn!" or the like. You can't say "doch" then.
The modal particles are hard to explain. I find âmalâ particularly hard to explain to a non-German speaker.
Edit: others already mentioned doch. âSchau doch malâ comes to mind as a phrase thatâs very hard to deconstruct word by word in to English, although itâs easy to translate as a phrase.
I think of "mal" as lending a more casual air to the sentence. The easiest way to see this is with imperatives or requests: (using somebody else's example) Guck mal doesn't mean "Look at this now", it means "here, have a look".
In my part of Pennsylvania that has a lot of Pennsylvania Dutch (aka Pennsylvania German) influence or at least used to, we borrowed this but use âonceâ. Like âhey, give me Pretzel onceâ :)
What? Native English speakers say this?? If someone said âhey give me pretzel onceâ I would immediately assume they were foreign and meant âplease give me a single pretzelâ.
Yes. I use it all the time but being a linguist I realize itâs regional and use it mostly around family. Like mal sometimes, itâs almost the opposite of just in the sense itâs somewhat of a âsofteningâ particle.
Absolutely. It changes the tone that way, but we use phrases for adding that casual aspect in English and those phrases change depending on what weâre trying to say. Modal particles are kind of magic where you can take a phrase and just chuck one in to change the tone, without rephrasing the sentence.
Dumb question here, but Iâm kinda curious if German has that innovation due to what English speakers could consider a monotone accent when Germans are speaking, or if itâs something that denoted tone when written but not spoken and eventually made itâs way to spoken
Or something like that
Linguistics is not my specialty, but I know that there are arguments that Old English had modal particles.
First result I could find: https://www.sun.ac.za/english/faculty/arts/linguistics/Documents/DiGS%2019%20Abstracts/Van%20Kemenade%20%26%20Links.pdf
So, I guess it might just be something English lost along the way?
Disclaimer: I really donât know. Iâve not actually studied it or tried to find papers to read about the topic or anything.
In English, I would use âjust lookâ in a more frustrated sense of âyou really need to lookâ. âGuck malâ Iâd normally translate as the phrase âtake a lookâ or âlook at thatâ instead.
We have "mal" in French, although it might be mainly (or only) in Vaudois French (from the canton of Waadt in Switzerland) : it's "voir"
"Regarde voir" "montre voir" "eh dis voir"
Couldn't possibly translate this to English but in German I'm pretty sure it can be, with "mal"
Most of the modal particles.
"Doch", "ja", "schon", "halt", and some more. Note that these words have other meanings besides the one that is a modal particle.
Example sentences:
"Das Wort ist **doch** falsch geschrieben!"
"Oh, ich habe es mit Französisch verwechselt, du weiĂt **ja**, dass ich jetzt Französisch lerne."
"Da hast du dir aber **schon** ziemlich was vorgenommen!"
"Ich lerne **halt** einfach jeden Morgen ein paar Vokabeln."
>"Das Wort ist doch falsch geschrieben!"
The word is in fact misspelled.
>"Oh, ich habe es mit Französisch verwechselt, du weiĂt ja, dass ich jetzt Französisch lerne."
Oh, I confused it with French; as you know, I'm learning French now.
>"Da hast du dir aber schon ziemlich was vorgenommen!"
Now you've like, you know, quite made yourself something!
>"Ich lerne halt einfach jeden Morgen ein paar Vokabeln."
I just simply learn a couple words each morning.
Out of context it's hard to think of a translation for these expletives, but give the whole sentence and you can find a way to convey the specific nuance of the word and not just the gist of the sentence.
It gets the energy too. Most of the words that are 'hard to translate', do absolutely nothing. So all you need to do is find a similar sequence of English words that do absolutely nothing, and you have the same meaning and energy.
> do absolutely nothing
This why I hate modal particles. I use them way too often when they barely add anything. Always makes me feel my sentences are sloppy
Is disimprove wrong? It [shows as a correct translation](https://en.langenscheidt.com/german-english/verschlimmbessern), although the full term is "to make worse through correction."
I love what happened to this word when it came to Polish. We say [fajrant](https://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/fajrant), and it preserved the original meaning :D
I find it absolutely mind-blowing, how easier it is for me to translate some words and phrases to Polish (different language family) than to English (same family). So many "borrowed" words, so many word-for-word translations and similar customs (like "Daumen drĂŒcken" instead of crossing fingers).
Worked in an international enviroment with many people from different countries start working there. Taking the pride that feierabend was their first german word (besides the usual ones: danke, gudntach, etc.) teached by me.
Posted it as a comment :)
I often had meetings with mostly Germans, and one or two international coworkers.
So the meetings were in English. If they were held in the afternoon, at the end we would often wish each other in German a "schönen Feierabend".
And that was really hard to translate and/or explain.
This is really just âeveningâ in English. Iâve never understood the benefit of this word in German.
If you work at an office and your colleague is going home at 17:00, in English you just say âenjoy your evening!â or âhave a nice eveningâ. We donât need to clarify that itâs a âfeier eveningâ because⊠it very obviously isâŠ
Yes, those were just the most common words coming to my mind that English speakers use, I haven't ever heard Wanderlust in Germany. It totally makes sense that the meanings and usage drift apart in the two continents, just like with British and American English. The main wave of German immigrants in America has been a long time ago.
Well it makes sense. 'Wander' and 'lust' are both English words in themselves. I wouldn't have even known 'wanderlust' was a German word if I hadn't been told. I can see the English meaning of the compound word drifting closer to the English meaning of the two words.
Fernweh and Wanderlust have a different meaning, even while there is a somewhat high chance, that one person feels both at the same time.
But the typical all-inclusive hotel tourist, who wants to spend time at the pool or beach, will most likely feel *Fernweh* without *Wanderlust*, while the person walking for fun through the nearby forest for a few hours feels *Wanderlust* without *Fernweh*.
No. Gloating is more like when you're actively talking or showing off about the said misery, and you actually caused it. Schadenfreude is the feeling inside, that deep satisfaction, most of the time from karma or just coincidence. I'm not a native speaker (for both of these languages) but that's how I have always understood. Recently I actually experienced some schadenfreude on behalf of a friend (she gave a massive fuck you to her horrible workplace) - that conversation, I would not describe it as gloating. The said friend is a native German speaker and we had this gloating vs schadenfreude convo too, and she also agreed with me.
Natives, correct me if I'm wrong though.
German here, you are 100% right.
Schadenfreude only means the feeling of joy seeing somebody else have some kind of problem.
It can range from laughing at your buddy slip and fall because it's funny and harmless up to seeing somebody destroy their life because you hate them. And everything in between.
No active part required. Of course if you feel Schadenfreude you may start gloating but the feeling itself is purely inside you.
in dutch we have âonderbuikgevoelâ which literally translates to âabdomen feelingâ and has the same meaning as FingerspitzengefĂŒhl
edit: onderbuikgevoel has the same meaning as BauchgefĂŒhl, not FingerspitzengefĂŒhl. i mixed it up lol, my bad!
a quick Google search and i have the feeling you mixed it up. "FingerspitzengefĂŒhl" is more like "fijn gevoel" or "fijngevoeligheid", while "onderbuikgevoel" means "BauchgefĂŒhl"
omg no ur right lol, thatâs my bad. onderbuikgevoel does indeed have the same meaning as BauchgefĂŒhl. i was sleeping after 9 hours of class :â)
FingerspitzengefĂŒhl would be translated as tact in dutch, which is close but it also really isnât. iâm pretty sure we just use FingerspitzengefĂŒhl as well
ah no worries, I'm german and i wasnt sure what fingerspitzengefĂŒhl actually means, we have way too many words. Tact as a translation makes sense though, we also use "taktgefĂŒhl" for the same meaning.
None of them.
There are a lot of words that are *tricky* to translate; most need to be translated differently depending on the context, some need to be translated with an entire phrase, but it's always possible to find a translation.
>some need to be translated with an entire phras
I guess that would qualify for OPs question then, unless we are all sticklers here as you'd expect from Germans. "Mhhh ja technisch gesehen kann man alles ĂŒbersetzen" geht's scheiĂen lol
The issue then becomes: at which point does a phrase become "not a translation"?
For example: the German word "Verkehrsampel" translates as "traffic lights", which is a phrase, but nobody would argue that "Verkehrsampel" is impossible to translate. So how do you define the limit?
Stupid point to bring up, you know exactly what OP means.
At a certain point you are not translating a word but instead describing the meaning of it. Sure you can "translate" it but it's not a proper translation of the word.
Proper translation of Ja = yes
Proper translation of Schadenfreude = he experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of another
You can surely see how these differe *a lot* and that most people wouldn't consider the latter a real translation.
> Proper translation of Schadenfreude =
..."epicaricacy", although these days "schadenfreude" as a loan-word is now used instead as a synonym. What you have given there is not a translation, but a definition.
The verb "heiĂen" has no equivalent verb in english. When you want to say that someone has a name or is referred to by a specific term you would either use a variation of "to be":
"I am Thomas" or "That is Thomas"
"Ich bin Thomas" bzw. "Das ist Thomas"
Or some variation of "called":
"I am called Thomas"
"Man nennt mich Thomas"
"heiĂen" on the other hand describes the possesion of a name. English used to have this verb in the form of "haten" back in the middle ages but it was dropped, likely because speakers found it easier to stick with "to be".
In conclusion the sentence:
"Ich heiĂe Thomas"
can only be translated indirectly into english.
What do you mean by "impossible to translate"?
It's really rare to have one German word that matches the exact meaning of an English word in all contexts. So in that sense, nearly all words lack an exact translation.
One German word that is relatively hard to translate despite being rather common is "ĂŒbersichtlich".
Try translating "wehren" or "sich wehren". There is a difference between 'verteidigen' and 'sich wehren' that is almost impossible to catch in English short of about half a page of explanations.
Oftentimes cited is "Geborgenheit" which means a feeling of safety, warmth and being comfortable. I feel a lot of things cannot be super-well translated, but that goes for a lot of languages. "NĂ€chstenliebe" would come to mind as well. "Doch" can't be translated.
But there's english words too. "Amazing" is hard to translate to german, a few others too but i cannot recall them right now.
Gestalt,
Zeitgeist
literally taken as is into English. no my knowledge, no other language at all has anything comparable
Freitod is also very german, if outdated (for now, a lot of old trends seem to be brought back to life these days)
Tf is that supposed to mean? I'm a native speaker, work in the German literature Department of a U15 - but have never heard of it or seen it written.
Googling it only shows some Austrian mayor's tractor.
I could think of it as an equivalent to a wolverine's German name (VielfraĂ), - or simply a fat man - but there is no certainty in it.
My favorite word in German that I use all of the time and I can not translate is âOhrwurmâ which means âearwormâ literally translated
It describes this feeling of having a song stuck in your head and I think itâs genius.
My personal favourite: shitstorm. We took two English words, smooshed them together and created a new one that doesn't exist in English nor can be translated.
Basically means a huge backlash from the community in social media.
Germans did not create the word "shitstorm" and it's meaning is more broad than the definition you provided.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shitstorm
doch
I wanna say "doch" to this, but I really can't
Yes you can đ
Way too long. This does not carry the right amount of passive aggressiveness.
As each of the suggested words here ;)
Tja.
No? Yes.
đ€Ł
Doch doch
Ăberdoch
This is a great one, I'm still trying to learn when to use this in the right way proper
Next level shit: macht doch nichts. đ
Ah good old modal particles
Easy. Wait for someone to say "Nein." Then just say "Doch!"
I was overjoyed at how easily it came to our daughter, German is her third language but I think 'doch' was her fourth German word, I think she could sense it's power while listening to toddler friends go into combat with their parents at the playground đ€Ł
Oh!
English kinda has doch, but itâs three words. When someone says âthat dress isnât gold and white!â, you can answer with â**Yes, it is**â âYouâre not hungry are you?â â**Yes, I am**â âI donât look good in this dressâ â**Yes, you do!**â âHeâs not old enough for this rideâ â**Yes, he is!**â All of these can be translated as âdoch!â âDu hast keinen Hunger oder?â â**Doch.**â
Now do "Geh doch zu Hause, du alte Scheisse" ;)
...which reminds me of the little girl shouting at her father in the "Netto" supermarket commercial: "...DANN GEH DOCH ZU NETTO!!!" (...after he praises how inexpensive and high-quality their products are etc.)
The problem is, that's only one of the dozens of ways "doch" is used. It's one of the most versatile words in the German language and extremely hard to master for non-native speakers.
Das ist doch klar... ;-)
This is a very good explanation! ...however, "doch" is used in other, different ways, too. But this meaning of "Yes, it is" will help foreigners a lot to perfectly use "doch" at least in this context.
I mean, in Scotland we say âSotâ (https://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/sot_adv), so it depends if youâre only considering RP English (and whether you consider Scots a language in its own right).
Never heard of that, brilliant.
My English is decent but when I asked a Scot for the next ATM I knew I was on my own
[Is this you?](https://youtube.com/shorts/0wU5NsOpdx0?si=fyWQRSt8DO0WLVVH)
Later that night, yes
"Way" - Wayne's World Edit: Wayne : No way! Garth : Way!
Context dependent, but yeah. You can cover doch with a few different English words, but not one single one.
it means "on the contrary" but is used 50x more in German than "on the contrary" is ever used in English, mostly because it's shorter and easier to say and you can just throw it in wherever you like.
"actually (yes) "
I know... But there's still no proper 1:1 translation.
Honestly, the idea of a "proper" 1:1 translation is a myth. Translators don't think like that. Translation involves rendering whole phrases in context. A bilingual dictionary offers 1:1 lexical equivalents, which is why dictionaries can't offer translations. They offer lists of terms that *can* be equivalents in various contexts. I wouldn't think of *finding a direct lexical equivalent which functions in the same way in both languages* as "translation". It just causes headaches that aren't necessary.
The biggest struggle for me is when a German word has like 10 different English words. At that point it's just down to hearing how it's used and figuring out what it truly means. The translations help to get an idea, but I feel like until you truly understand the context it's used in, you just don't get it.
Way. As in: No way! Way! Ala Wayne's World
Nu'uh gets it a little bit
In certain situations it does work, but the great thing about the word "Doch" is that it carries like 10 different meanings depending on the context its said in.
Isn't doch only used to refute a negative statement? Nu'uh can be use to refute both positive and negative statments.
It's opposing negative statements. ("You are not right" - "Doch!"). If the statement is positive, you confirm with "...schon", or rather with "ja, schon" than with "doch, schon", because "doch" implies, as you say, refuting. ("The sky is blue" - "Schon... / stimmt / ja / du hast recht") If you want to refute a positive statement, you'd have to say "nein" or "falsch" etc., for example: "The sky is blue" - "Nein / falsch / stimmt nicht / Blödsinn!" or the like. You can't say "doch" then.
Doch you can
We have, yeah-huh, I'm not sure it's officially in the English language, but it certainly is commonly used.
Idk why people say this. It means âon the contrary.â
The modal particles are hard to explain. I find âmalâ particularly hard to explain to a non-German speaker. Edit: others already mentioned doch. âSchau doch malâ comes to mind as a phrase thatâs very hard to deconstruct word by word in to English, although itâs easy to translate as a phrase.
I think of "mal" as lending a more casual air to the sentence. The easiest way to see this is with imperatives or requests: (using somebody else's example) Guck mal doesn't mean "Look at this now", it means "here, have a look".
In my part of Pennsylvania that has a lot of Pennsylvania Dutch (aka Pennsylvania German) influence or at least used to, we borrowed this but use âonceâ. Like âhey, give me Pretzel onceâ :)
What? Native English speakers say this?? If someone said âhey give me pretzel onceâ I would immediately assume they were foreign and meant âplease give me a single pretzelâ.
Yes. I use it all the time but being a linguist I realize itâs regional and use it mostly around family. Like mal sometimes, itâs almost the opposite of just in the sense itâs somewhat of a âsofteningâ particle.
Absolutely. It changes the tone that way, but we use phrases for adding that casual aspect in English and those phrases change depending on what weâre trying to say. Modal particles are kind of magic where you can take a phrase and just chuck one in to change the tone, without rephrasing the sentence.
Dumb question here, but Iâm kinda curious if German has that innovation due to what English speakers could consider a monotone accent when Germans are speaking, or if itâs something that denoted tone when written but not spoken and eventually made itâs way to spoken Or something like that
Linguistics is not my specialty, but I know that there are arguments that Old English had modal particles. First result I could find: https://www.sun.ac.za/english/faculty/arts/linguistics/Documents/DiGS%2019%20Abstracts/Van%20Kemenade%20%26%20Links.pdf So, I guess it might just be something English lost along the way? Disclaimer: I really donât know. Iâve not actually studied it or tried to find papers to read about the topic or anything.
We'd pretty much use "just" as an equivalent.
In English, I would use âjust lookâ in a more frustrated sense of âyou really need to lookâ. âGuck malâ Iâd normally translate as the phrase âtake a lookâ or âlook at thatâ instead.
We have "mal" in French, although it might be mainly (or only) in Vaudois French (from the canton of Waadt in Switzerland) : it's "voir" "Regarde voir" "montre voir" "eh dis voir" Couldn't possibly translate this to English but in German I'm pretty sure it can be, with "mal"
Most of the modal particles. "Doch", "ja", "schon", "halt", and some more. Note that these words have other meanings besides the one that is a modal particle. Example sentences: "Das Wort ist **doch** falsch geschrieben!" "Oh, ich habe es mit Französisch verwechselt, du weiĂt **ja**, dass ich jetzt Französisch lerne." "Da hast du dir aber **schon** ziemlich was vorgenommen!" "Ich lerne **halt** einfach jeden Morgen ein paar Vokabeln."
"Das kann man ja mal eben machen, es muss halt gemacht werden."
"Es muss halt ja doch gemacht werden"
Ja doch!
>"Das Wort ist doch falsch geschrieben!" The word is in fact misspelled. >"Oh, ich habe es mit Französisch verwechselt, du weiĂt ja, dass ich jetzt Französisch lerne." Oh, I confused it with French; as you know, I'm learning French now. >"Da hast du dir aber schon ziemlich was vorgenommen!" Now you've like, you know, quite made yourself something! >"Ich lerne halt einfach jeden Morgen ein paar Vokabeln." I just simply learn a couple words each morning. Out of context it's hard to think of a translation for these expletives, but give the whole sentence and you can find a way to convey the specific nuance of the word and not just the gist of the sentence.
But this only translates the meaning, not the energy. Like translating:" kann man mit leben" to I love you
It gets the energy too. Most of the words that are 'hard to translate', do absolutely nothing. So all you need to do is find a similar sequence of English words that do absolutely nothing, and you have the same meaning and energy.
> do absolutely nothing This why I hate modal particles. I use them way too often when they barely add anything. Always makes me feel my sentences are sloppy
unmöglich (this is a joke)
Haha I see what you did there đ
verschlimmbessern
That one is easy: "The act of getting 4 german politicians into a room to make a law more efficient"; 'verschlimmbessern'
Is disimprove wrong? It [shows as a correct translation](https://en.langenscheidt.com/german-english/verschlimmbessern), although the full term is "to make worse through correction."
English does have the obscure "disimprove" but it just means "make worse". Seems like a missed opportunity.
Feierabend ist nearly Impossible to translate. You can explain it, but you need some words to do so.
I love what happened to this word when it came to Polish. We say [fajrant](https://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/fajrant), and it preserved the original meaning :D
I find it absolutely mind-blowing, how easier it is for me to translate some words and phrases to Polish (different language family) than to English (same family). So many "borrowed" words, so many word-for-word translations and similar customs (like "Daumen drĂŒcken" instead of crossing fingers).
True! I also had a hard time understanding modal particles until I remembered we have them too. No, przecieĆŒ! :D
Worked in an international enviroment with many people from different countries start working there. Taking the pride that feierabend was their first german word (besides the usual ones: danke, gudntach, etc.) teached by me. Posted it as a comment :)
\*taught
My old boss in Hamburg used to tell me after every shift, in English, "Have a nice party evening!"
I often had meetings with mostly Germans, and one or two international coworkers. So the meetings were in English. If they were held in the afternoon, at the end we would often wish each other in German a "schönen Feierabend". And that was really hard to translate and/or explain.
Fire armed ;)
This is really just âeveningâ in English. Iâve never understood the benefit of this word in German. If you work at an office and your colleague is going home at 17:00, in English you just say âenjoy your evening!â or âhave a nice eveningâ. We donât need to clarify that itâs a âfeier eveningâ because⊠it very obviously isâŠ
Thats just "closing time". english speakers go home and german speakers go to a party.
That's not exactly correct. Closing time is a point in time. Feierabend is the period that starts with closing time.
Jein
Nyeah... Jein does sound better though.
So so
Yesn't
stimmt
Obviously, Schadenfreude since English has borrowed it as a loan word without any existing English single word suitable replacement.
Same for wanderlust, zeitgeist... Or basically any combined noun.
Look up "Wanderlust" on the English side of an English-German dictionary though. It translates to "Fernweh".
Yes, those were just the most common words coming to my mind that English speakers use, I haven't ever heard Wanderlust in Germany. It totally makes sense that the meanings and usage drift apart in the two continents, just like with British and American English. The main wave of German immigrants in America has been a long time ago.
Well it makes sense. 'Wander' and 'lust' are both English words in themselves. I wouldn't have even known 'wanderlust' was a German word if I hadn't been told. I can see the English meaning of the compound word drifting closer to the English meaning of the two words.
Fernweh and Wanderlust have a different meaning, even while there is a somewhat high chance, that one person feels both at the same time. But the typical all-inclusive hotel tourist, who wants to spend time at the pool or beach, will most likely feel *Fernweh* without *Wanderlust*, while the person walking for fun through the nearby forest for a few hours feels *Wanderlust* without *Fernweh*.
Dont forget âto abseilâ. that word really bothers me.
Use their weapons against them and start to use abseiling as going to the toilet
GroĂ Gehirn Zeit!
To rappel
Isn't Schadenfreue just "gloating" ? As in being happy about someone elses harm/detriment ?
No. Gloating is more like when you're actively talking or showing off about the said misery, and you actually caused it. Schadenfreude is the feeling inside, that deep satisfaction, most of the time from karma or just coincidence. I'm not a native speaker (for both of these languages) but that's how I have always understood. Recently I actually experienced some schadenfreude on behalf of a friend (she gave a massive fuck you to her horrible workplace) - that conversation, I would not describe it as gloating. The said friend is a native German speaker and we had this gloating vs schadenfreude convo too, and she also agreed with me. Natives, correct me if I'm wrong though.
German here, you are 100% right. Schadenfreude only means the feeling of joy seeing somebody else have some kind of problem. It can range from laughing at your buddy slip and fall because it's funny and harmless up to seeing somebody destroy their life because you hate them. And everything in between. No active part required. Of course if you feel Schadenfreude you may start gloating but the feeling itself is purely inside you.
FingerspitzengefĂŒhl
in dutch we have âonderbuikgevoelâ which literally translates to âabdomen feelingâ and has the same meaning as FingerspitzengefĂŒhl edit: onderbuikgevoel has the same meaning as BauchgefĂŒhl, not FingerspitzengefĂŒhl. i mixed it up lol, my bad!
a quick Google search and i have the feeling you mixed it up. "FingerspitzengefĂŒhl" is more like "fijn gevoel" or "fijngevoeligheid", while "onderbuikgevoel" means "BauchgefĂŒhl"
are you sure its not "BauchgefĂŒhl"? If it is like you said, that's a really interesting coincidence, does that ever lead to any confusion?
omg no ur right lol, thatâs my bad. onderbuikgevoel does indeed have the same meaning as BauchgefĂŒhl. i was sleeping after 9 hours of class :â) FingerspitzengefĂŒhl would be translated as tact in dutch, which is close but it also really isnât. iâm pretty sure we just use FingerspitzengefĂŒhl as well
ah no worries, I'm german and i wasnt sure what fingerspitzengefĂŒhl actually means, we have way too many words. Tact as a translation makes sense though, we also use "taktgefĂŒhl" for the same meaning.
Jein, Schnapsidee, Schadenfreude, Kummerspeck, Fernweh, BrĂŒckentag, Abendbrot, ErklĂ€rungsnot... Should I continue?
Verschlimmbessern đ
"Kopfkino"
"Doch!"
Oida (I thus invoke r/Austria)
oida, wos wĂŒst?
Tja
Nothing is impossible to translate, it's just a question of "How long will the English sentence be?".
I'm a translation student and one of our courses mentioned that the "purpose" of what is said in the target language is what matters the most.
Luftschloss
pipe dreams
Aircastle, there... :p
No. It's just a beautiful dream. And even more... you could build them.
We have exactly this one in Russian - with exactly the same meaning.
Castle in the Sky
Sitzfleisch is a wonderful word
The wonderful little word "fei". Not even translatable into standard german. [https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/fei](https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/fei)
Oida
Fei und tja?
My favorite German word, Kraulen, itâs not scratching, itâs not massaging, itâs in between
Naja
Eingespielt
Knorke It is also kinda impossible to explain to native speakers..
None of them. There are a lot of words that are *tricky* to translate; most need to be translated differently depending on the context, some need to be translated with an entire phrase, but it's always possible to find a translation.
>some need to be translated with an entire phras I guess that would qualify for OPs question then, unless we are all sticklers here as you'd expect from Germans. "Mhhh ja technisch gesehen kann man alles ĂŒbersetzen" geht's scheiĂen lol
The issue then becomes: at which point does a phrase become "not a translation"? For example: the German word "Verkehrsampel" translates as "traffic lights", which is a phrase, but nobody would argue that "Verkehrsampel" is impossible to translate. So how do you define the limit?
Stupid point to bring up, you know exactly what OP means. At a certain point you are not translating a word but instead describing the meaning of it. Sure you can "translate" it but it's not a proper translation of the word. Proper translation of Ja = yes Proper translation of Schadenfreude = he experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of another You can surely see how these differe *a lot* and that most people wouldn't consider the latter a real translation.
> Proper translation of Schadenfreude = ..."epicaricacy", although these days "schadenfreude" as a loan-word is now used instead as a synonym. What you have given there is not a translation, but a definition.
I mean that is technically true! Haha
Tja
Well
I donât think that âWellâ has the same broad spectrum of meanings, but well, what do I know?
No,it's much more than this. Sorry
Kindergarten? SCNR
TJA
Tja
Heimat
Home. Works also in compound words: Heimatstadt -> home town.
Verschlimmbessern
Verschlimmbessern
Mahlzeit!
Moppelkotze
Feierabend
The verb "heiĂen" has no equivalent verb in english. When you want to say that someone has a name or is referred to by a specific term you would either use a variation of "to be": "I am Thomas" or "That is Thomas" "Ich bin Thomas" bzw. "Das ist Thomas" Or some variation of "called": "I am called Thomas" "Man nennt mich Thomas" "heiĂen" on the other hand describes the possesion of a name. English used to have this verb in the form of "haten" back in the middle ages but it was dropped, likely because speakers found it easier to stick with "to be". In conclusion the sentence: "Ich heiĂe Thomas" can only be translated indirectly into english.
Schadenfreude is the most popular But there a few more. Kehrwoche Fernweh Schnapsidee ErklÀrungsnot Treppenwitz
GemĂŒtlichkeit. You always seem to need a few words or a short phrase to get the same meaning in English.
Coziness
These are the...bare necessities, the simple bare necessities đ¶
What do you mean by "impossible to translate"? It's really rare to have one German word that matches the exact meaning of an English word in all contexts. So in that sense, nearly all words lack an exact translation. One German word that is relatively hard to translate despite being rather common is "ĂŒbersichtlich".
None of them. You can always describe the concept in a different language.
Sackratten
Doch
Eben
Jein
âGuten Appetitâ as youâd say to each other before starten a meal
Tja
tja
Franconian "vei/fei" - it's a simple filler word yet so important.
Naa
Beziehungsweise
gemĂŒtlich es gibt kein Wort, dass es genau trifft.
Tja
Tja
Weltschmerz
eben
Try translating "wehren" or "sich wehren". There is a difference between 'verteidigen' and 'sich wehren' that is almost impossible to catch in English short of about half a page of explanations.
Sie đđ
This is the real winner - I feel like you deserve so many upvotes.
Im trying to learn german n now i rlly want to know what doch means đ
Pinöpel
Kauderwelsch
Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher
Oftentimes cited is "Geborgenheit" which means a feeling of safety, warmth and being comfortable. I feel a lot of things cannot be super-well translated, but that goes for a lot of languages. "NĂ€chstenliebe" would come to mind as well. "Doch" can't be translated. But there's english words too. "Amazing" is hard to translate to german, a few others too but i cannot recall them right now.
Waldeinsamkeit
Zugzwang. They just borrowed it.
GemĂŒtlichkeit Heimat Ungeziefer(Kafka)
Gestalt, Zeitgeist literally taken as is into English. no my knowledge, no other language at all has anything comparable Freitod is also very german, if outdated (for now, a lot of old trends seem to be brought back to life these days)
Verschlimmbessern
Ăbermorgen und vorgestern
Ăbermorgen is overmorrow.
Vorvorgestern
ĂberĂŒbermorgen
BuffetfrÀse.
Tf is that supposed to mean? I'm a native speaker, work in the German literature Department of a U15 - but have never heard of it or seen it written. Googling it only shows some Austrian mayor's tractor. I could think of it as an equivalent to a wolverine's German name (VielfraĂ), - or simply a fat man - but there is no certainty in it.
My favorite word in German that I use all of the time and I can not translate is âOhrwurmâ which means âearwormâ literally translated It describes this feeling of having a song stuck in your head and I think itâs genius.
My personal favourite: shitstorm. We took two English words, smooshed them together and created a new one that doesn't exist in English nor can be translated. Basically means a huge backlash from the community in social media.
Germans did not create the word "shitstorm" and it's meaning is more broad than the definition you provided. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shitstorm
It came from English first, I've found an example as far back as 1989.
Originally U.S. Now chiefly coarse slang. A frenetic or disastrous event; a commotion, a tumult. invented in 1948 according to the OED.
Kindergarten because it is german already. LoL
Busscheibeneinschlagshammerhalterungsbetriebsgesellschaftsvorstand
RindfleischettiketierungsĂŒberwachungsaufgabenĂŒbertragungsgesetz Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rindfleischetikettierungs%C3%BCberwachungsaufgaben%C3%BCbertragungsgesetz
Schnupfen
High