Interesting things about your language

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Every language has interesting words, phrases, idioms, etc. Post something interesting in your language and let us meet your culture



Something about music in Polish:
Classical music is called here also serious music (muzyka poważna). If you sing f.e. in operas, you're a singer (śpiewak/śpiewaczka)* and you're an artist. But if you sing popular music (called here muzyka rozrywkowa, fun music), you're a songer (piosenkarz/piosenkarka), and you're not artist, but performer (wykonawca). Today many famous people can't sing, so it's pretty good

*genders (masculine/feminine)


About age:
In Poland I'm not 23, but I have 23 years (mam 23 lata).

One of the things a German learning person once pointed out to me was how much we Germans like to string words together. His native Language was Portugese, so I guess they don't do it that much. But this guy actually liked it because he figured that way he would often learn two new words at the same time (the two words that the compound word was made of, you see...).

We really do that a lot. For example:

Taschenmesser
(pocketknife, derived from "Tasche" and "Messer")

Wahlpflichtfach
(a subject that can, but need not be chosen, as long as another suitable subject is taken in that case. derived from "Wahlpflicht" und "Fach". "Wahlpflicht" itself is a compound word made of "Wahl" and "Pflicht".)

Wasserstoff
(hydrogen, derived from "Wasser" and "Stoff". Many other chemical elements are named likewise, For example "Sauerstoff", oxygen, from "Säure".)

Many of our compound words are used as a true unit and people do not even consider them as compounded anymore. In some cases they will not even be able to identify the original words without a bit of thinking.

Valoyossa, what a good idea for a topic, I have been thinking of languages and the difference of meaning, or even the lack of words in some languages for a long time too!

The word La culture in French, represents the general culture like in English. But Kultura in Polish represent much more and adds the behavior to the knowledge. A ja nie powiem ile mam lat

In German I like Heimweh, it can be translated in French only in a sentence: Le mal du pays. German has a lot of fantastic composed words as FluffyDog showed

Greek has a really powerful word I like: φιλοξενια meaning the "love of the stranger" as opposed to the sadly well known ξενοφοβια or Xenophobia

I have looked into constructed languages too, and a guy created a language where any confusion or misunderstanding is not possible: Ilaksh http://www.ithkuil.net/ilaksh/Ilaksh_Intro.html It would be cool for aspies if it was not so hard

A strange thing I noticed today: in German there is only one word that signifies both dusk and dawn: "Dämmerung". This word describes a time of day when the light is very dim and you cannot see as clearly as in full daylight.

If you want to say either "dusk" or "dawn" in German, you either have to rely on the context ("Der Wanderer brach in der ersten Dämmerung auf.") or you explicitely add the time of day to the word, thus speaking of either "Morgendämmerung" (dawn) or "Abenddämmerung" (dusk).

I personally like the English system better, because dusk and dawn are very different times of the day with very different moods and I think they deserve to be called by different names.

In Poland we have two words for dawn: świt (speak "shveet") and brzask (like "dusk" but with bsh instead d). For dusk/twilight we have zmierzch (you can't speak it) or zmrok (as it's written). I don't know the difference between them.

In Poland I'm not 180 cms tall, but I have meter-eighty (mam metr osiemdziesiąt).

Polish and German have almost the same pronunciation of letters.
They both have genders in nouns, but verbs have genders only in Poland.


Polish is full of hardcore consonants. The most hardcore to foreigners is Ć (something like chi).
The most hardcore to me is Polish R, alveolar trill. I can't speak this!

In Gaelic, there's a several ways to say dawn and dusk. Some intersting ones

mochthrath -- dawn; "moch" and "trath" mean early, so literally "mochthrath" translates into English as "early-early." In Gaelic, repreating the same adjective or combining two adjective of the same basic meaning is a way to emphasize it. Like saying "cù dubh dubh" means, lit, "a black, black dog" but the sense in Gaelic is more like "a really dark dog." So "mochthrath" means "really early."

gormanaich -- dawn, but a lit. translation is more like "the greying" or "the turning-to-blue." It refers to the first dim lights of day, as the light turns the sky from black to grey to blue (keep in mind how dawn looks in the far Northern Hemisphere). "Gorm" in Gaelic can mean any shade of blue, but sometimes grey, blue-grey and some shades of green! But here it refers to the changing color of the sky.

uinneagaich -- dawn, but a lit. translation is more like "the windowing." "Uinneag" means simply window, and so "unneagaich" means the first slight of light like a window through which the full daylight emerges.

beul na latha, beul na h-oidhche -- dawn and dusk, lit, "the mouth fo the day" and "the mouth of the night." "Beul" means a mouth or a mouth-like opening.

an dubh-tràth - dusk, lit. "the early blackness."

breac-sholas -- dusk, lit. "light-breaking." This actually refers to the the way white light breaks into differnt colors at sunset. "Breac" means patterns that break up colors like spotting, splotches and checkering.

We Germans are somewhat obsessed with including all applicable pronouns when we don't know the sex of the person we are talking about. (Some of you may have noticed that in my own posts here on WP already. )

We write horrible sentences that have a kind of multiple pronoun part, e.g.:

Wenn jemand keine Hunde mag, sollte er/sie lieber nicht im Tierheim arbeiten.
(If somebody doesn't like dogs, they'd better not work in an animal sanctuary.)

It is especially bad when a company offers a job in a newspaper or in similar situations. Here in Germany, there are laws that explicitely forbid the use of discriminating language. Thus, a company will always include both the male and the female form of the job desciption. Thus, an offer for a "part-time job for students" is NOT a "Teilzeitstelle für Studenten", but a "Teilzeitstelle für Studenten und Studentinnen".

Of course this is an awfull hassle to write, so it will often get shortened to "Teilzeitstelle für Student/innen" or "Teilzeitstelle für StudentInnen", both of which look horrible.

Some people take it even further and try to avoid forms specific for either sex completely. Then they will write "Teilzeitstelle für Studierende", which would translate as "part-time job for studying people".

PC is a very good concept, but I do not like the kind of language it produces in German.

Another greek aspie?

Anyway, another interesting thing from the greek language is that until 1976, people used two different greek dialects: Katharevousa (puryfied) as the formal language and demotiki (popular) as their everyday language. Katharevousa was a constructed language and it was clean from foreign linguistic influence. Dimotiki on the other hand was the evolution of the medieval greek language and was influenced by foreign languages. The supporters of the two languages competed heavily over the years but the conflict ended in 1976, when a law passed that demotiki will be the official language of Greece.

I like this form and generally I like German universal -in sufix for females. We have many sufixes in Polish and it's impossible to write something like StudentInnen. The most popular sufix is -ka (student, studentka), other are -ina, -owa, -yni, etc. Sometimes female sufixed words look odd or they are hard to speak, so people call females in male form.
People write:
Oferta pracy dla studentów (job offer for students) - both genders;
Oferta pracy dla studentów i studentek - both too;
Oferta pracy dla studentek - females only.


It's hard to write neutral way in Polish, because we have genders for verbs too, but it's possible. F.e. law is written neutral, like:
Kto popełnia przestępstwo, podlega karze więzienia.
(Who commits crime, is punished in prison)

We have the same word for people and humans - ludzie. So when I say trzymam się z dala od ludzi, są bezsensowni it means I keep myself away from people/humans, they are pointless. And somebody may reply are you an alien?, then me: any doubt?

In German, we have several words that are neither asdverbs nor adjectives that can be added to other words much in the way as a regular prefix would. Many Germans are puzzled by these words themselves and I don't fully understand where these special words come from, but they seem to have been around for a very long time. Their main purpose is to emphasize a certain quality in another word.

English has at least one word with a similar function - the "arch" in words like archangel, archenemy or archbishop. The direct German equivalent for this is the word "Erz", which would literally translate as "ore" into English. Thus we speak of (Erz)engel, (Erz)feind and (Erz)bischof just like the English-speaking people do.

Another German word is of this kind is "Stock" (literally "stick"). We use the combinations "Stockjude" (a Jew displaying what is considered very typical Jewish behaviour) or "stockschwul" (for somebody who displays a very obviously gay behaviour in public and is not interested in women even the smallest little bit).

There is also a number of combinations with "Kreuz" (literally cross) like "kreuzbrav" (for a very docile person or animal that never becomes uncooperative).

All words of this category are only used in combination with certain other words. Nobody would talk about an animal being "stockbrav" or "erzbrav", for example.

In Dutch, it is possible to put as many as 7 consecutive infinitive verb forms together in one correct sentence. 'Ik zou jou hebben willen zien durven blijven staan kijken.' The most exact sort-of correct translation I can come up with is this: I would have wanted to see you dare to stay standing and watch. The literal translation is as follows: I would you to have to want to see to dare to stay to stand to watch. This is known as 'verb stacking', and Dutch is notorious for it as it is the only West Germanic language where this is possible.

It should probably be noted that the french of Quebec has a few particularities that the french from France does not have. For example, unlike people from France, we say "tu" (the pronoun) as "tsu" (affrication of the dentals), and we also spell "dit" ( usually the simple past of "say") like "dzit" (the t at the end isn't pronounced ^.- ). Oh yeah, regarding the alveolar r (which comes from the little "alcove" a little above the upper teeth and uses the tongue), there is a separation in Quebec, the other side uses the uvular r ( which is typically french, and comes from the throat).

It should also be noticed that EVERYTHING (or mostly everything) MUST have a gender in french. Even our third person is usually "il(s)" which is male by default (regardless of the context).

We also have a lot of nasalized sounds in french (they're basicly sounds that you can't pronounce right if you pinch your nose), which can be a bother for other languages, like english, which has a more limited amount. :p

It should also be said that UNLIKE France's french, the french of Quebec makes a distinction with some sounds, the "en" and the "an", and the "a"s. =P For example, a Québécois saying "Canada" will use a higher voweled a at the end. :p

(and Valoyossa, regarding your age, this is probably more logical, as you have not completed your 23rd year YET. I never quite understood why other languages don't stress that, and you only find out when taking maths. -.-)

I'll join this thread and add some of the peculiarities of German.

Inversion. It's just cool. In English, you nearly always have subject – verb – object word order (SVO), e.g. "I love you." In German, word order can be changed (inverted): for example SVO/OVS/SVOV (yes, some verbs get split) in declarative sentences. Or if you want to lay special stress on something, you can often change the word order to your liking: "I don't like maths." can be Ich mag Mathe nicht. (SVO → "I like maths not.") or Mathe mag ich nicht. (OVS → "Maths like I not.")
One particularily funny thing is that declarative sentences (not questions!) can rarely begin with the verb – except in jokes.
Inversion gives you a lot of opportunity to make your writing more interesting or to stress something without relying on additional words (in writing) or intonation (in speech). It's something I like about German - when I'm writing in another language and can't use it, I really get frustrated sometimes.

Rhoticity. This term was coined to describe a phenomenon in English: Some dialects (like British Received Pronounciation) drop "r" in many instances (non-rhotic), others (like General American English) retain it (rhotic). This difference is visible (hearable ) in German, too: In English non-rhotic dialects, the "r" just disappears (as far as I know); in German ones, it often turns into a vowel. Thus, I, for example, pronounce Asperger similar to "Aspeaga".

"I love you." We have different expressions for this. Ich liebe dich. has the connotation of romantic love, while Ich habe dich lieb. (literally "I have you beloved") has the connotation of love between relatives or friends.
But the adjective lieb can also be used in many other expressions.
- If you're writing a personal letter/e-mail to someone, you often start with Liebe XY (when addressing a female) or Lieber XY (for a male): "Dear XY".
- Meine Lieben are my loved ones.
- Characterizing someone as lieb means that they're friendly and meek.

Prefixes. Many languages have them, I think. In German, they are mostly used to change the meanings of verbs and the nouns derived from them. Some common examples are be-, ver-, zu-, ab-, auf-. They are all short and mostly can't stand alone, but they can give a word a completely different meaning.
Just a few examples:
ziehen → to pull, to draw
abziehen → to detract
vorziehen → to prefer
aufziehen → to draw open
zuziehen → to draw tight, to move in
einziehen → to move in
beziehen → to draw (e.g. benefits), to put (pillowslips/sheets) on
And these are all seperate words that should not be mixed!

I have definitely heard this is in spoken German and had always assumed it was a regional thing. Is that so, or is it more wide spread than that? We used to get DW-TV here for the German troops stationed here for training (I'm in Texas) but DW-TV decided to stop providing that service for free. But when we had it, I would watch it regularly and i could here some of the people in the shows dropping the r. I was taught hochdeutsche Aussprache and so I always try to sound the r that way.



As much as I love German, this has been the one thing that drives me crazy the most often!! ! Since i don't get to speak german regualrly, it's easy for me to start getting them confused.

The R at the end of a word is usually dropped even the "official" version of our language, especially when the word is ending on -er. But in the middle of words, I think it is more of a regional thing. There is a few Germany who even roll their Rs slightly, the way it is done in certain Spanish words, only less pronounced, but those are a minority. Most Germans drop the R, but to differing amounts. Some tend to drop it in combinations with certain vowels, others tend to drop it whenever possible.
The region around Cologne, where I live, is infamous for us dropping a lot of consonants (and not just Rs) and linguists can in many cases tell where a person was raised with an accuracy of "either this village or the next one" in our region by how certain sounds or combinations of sounds are pronounced. This was even used to catch a criminal once whose voice on the phone was analyzed and then the police could pinpoint and search the village that the man was from.