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[-] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 193 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I mean, yeah. This is an important part of the German language. They create composite words to describe a thing, and learning to break it down into its constituents is a fundamental part of reading German.

Hilfeleistungslöschgruppenfahrzeug

Hilfe - help
leistung - performance
Hilfeleistung - assistance
lösch - delete, extinguish
gruppen - group (team, department)
löschgruppen - (fire) extinguishing team or department
fahr - drive
zeug - thing
fahrzeug - vehicle

Assistance Extinguishing Team Vehicle

Now translate

Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft

[-] rockSlayer@lemmy.world 65 points 2 days ago

It's also one of the most difficult parts of learning German as an adult, despite being a relatively simple syntactic rule and something we kinda-sorta emulate in English. The other part, at least for me, were false friends. Also sorry to all the lurking Germans waiting to comment, I forgot all of my German the moment I graduated college.

[-] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 days ago
[-] lugal@sopuli.xyz 8 points 2 days ago

That's something different. False cognates are words that look related even tho they are not and often have a similar meaning that makes it look even harder to be related. False friends often are related but have a very different meaning. Like the German word "eventuell" meaning "maybe" which is very bad if you use it wrong. Unlike the false cognate "emoji" meaning "picture sign" and – etymologically speaking – having nothing to do with emoticon despite its similar meaning. Which is more a linguistic fun fact than any problem for learners.

[-] elvith@feddit.org 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Another example of a false friend:

German: Bekommen (to get), English: Become (werden)

Hence a joke I often heard while learning English:

Guest: "I become a steak."

Waiter: "Well, I do hope you won't, but I could ask the chef, if you insist..."

[-] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Whilst quite a lot of words are pretty much the same in both languages, "wie" in Dutch means "who" whilst in German it means "how".

Having learned Dutch first, I can tell you that when I was first learning German the expression "Wie geht's" tended to give me a serious mental hiccup when I was trying to talk to German people.

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this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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