*Which of these false cognates surprised you the most?? 🤔Can you think of more words that fall under this category?* shrsl.com/47ppj 👉Overcome language barriers with the Timekettle WT2 Edge/W3 Real-time Translator Earbuds and use my code FELIGERMANY for 10% off! Or shop on Amazon▸amzn.to/3THTVJk
Feli you were correct about the name for these similar words! - at first. 😁 They are indeed 'false friends.' 'False cognates' are similar words with similar meanings across 2 (usually related) languages, but come from completely different roots. These are rare, but a good example pair of false cognates would be English 'day' and Spanish 'día.' Another is English 'bad' and Persian 'بد,' said identically to 'bad' as pronounced in most American accents. By comparison, English "gift" & German "Gift' share the same ultimate linguistic root despite their very different meanings. They are thus 'false friends' but still cognate words. P.S. My hunch is that the German meaning arose from what was initially sarcasm. My dad had a tendency to fart on the way out of enclosed rooms, then immediately say to me, "I left you a Gift."
And my American colleague specifically chose the Hotel Hell in the ski resort in nothern Italy, so that he can say, that he is in hell now :D (hell=bright)
An American colleague of mine here in Germany, who can't pronounce the CH in, for example, "J.S.Bach" but instead makes a K-sound, wrote a note advising the flat/apartment he was moving out of stating that the bathroom was "voll gekackelt" 🙈 ("Kacke" is a word for shit...)
In accounting: I received a message from a German supplier "your VAT ID is not guilty". (From the context it was obvious, that the author had "gültig"/valid in mind).Replied: "This is absolutely true, out VAT ID is innocent, but had to be changed".
I actually overheard a conversation at a car rental in Germany when the lady behind the counter tried to tell the customer that his driving license was not "guilty"... 😆
It's kind of interesting this one. I'm no language scientist, but I really like to know where this word originates from. In German there is also the word "Mitgift", which means "dowry". So also a connection to marriage and "giving someone something" here.
I remember a conversation of my German colleague talking to the Irish colleague about a purchase of a product with which he was not really satisfied. So the German guy started in english: Yesterday I bought a coffin ... (my German colleage was at that time 35 years old and his parents were doing fine). The Irish Lady instantly interrupted him: WHAT did you buy ?!!? ... German guy continued as if the Irish lady just did not understand acustically: Yes, a coffin, and ... Irish Lady: WAIT a moment ... you did not really buy a coffin, did you? My German colleague just took the word coffin as the english word for the german word "Koffer" (english: suitcase). The misunderstanding was quickly resolved, and I was lying on the floor laighing.
I once told a group of German soldiers “Ich bin warm” when asking to open the window because the room was stuffy. After a great deal of laughter, they helpfully explained that I had just declared that I was gay and that I should have said “Mir ist warm” and that I should be very careful in describing the weather. I was just starting my German studies at the time and learned that several other weather related expressions can have alternate, sexual meanings when not used with the right case in German. I’ve never forgotten that lesson! 🇩🇪
We were taught that you don't say things like "Ich bin kalt" or "Ich bin heiss" as they refer more to sexual feelings. Didn't hear about warm, though. Of course, being high schoolers, we used that to our advantage.
@@flowingafterglow629 I think, it was back in the 80s when "Warmer Bruder" (warm brother) was slang for a gay dude
8 หลายเดือนก่อน +7
Da fällt mir mein Vater ein (hatte in seiner Schulzeit nie Englisch gehabt und es so ein bisschen "lernte" - im Leben halt), der einen GI fragte (der zitterte vor Kälte): "Are you frozen?". Der Blick des jungen Mannes - unbezahlbar. 😳😂
And the difference between being something and having something isn't just with temperature. A lot of it obviously depends on the language in question, but for example there are languages where you don't say that you "are x years", but "have x years" when referring to your age.
Feli, "Gift" hieß früher auch in (Mittelhoch)-Deutsch Geschenk bzw. Gabe. In dem Wort "Mitgift" wird es heute noch in dieser Bedeutung verwendet. Da die "Gabe" aber gerne mal in einer Dosis einer tödlichen Substanz (Erbschaftspulver) bestand, wandelte sich die Bedeutung des Wortes von "Gabe" zu "Gift. eine bizarre Geschichte, aber wahr. Feli, "Gift" used to mean present or gift in (Middle High) German. In the word “Mitgift" (dowry) it is still used in this meaning today. Since the "gift" often consisted of a dose of a deadly substance (inheritance powder), the meaning of the word changed from "gift" to "poison". A bizarre story, but true.
A bizarre story that is also completle untrue, a fabrication from some 20th century layman who wanted a shocking medieval fun fact. The modern word gift didn't evolve from Mitgift because people would poison wedding presents (if that were the case, what do you think people called poison in German in the middle ages before the term allegedly evolved from Mitgift?!). The truth is simply that Gift is an old form of "Gabe", something that is "given", and poison has to be "given" to someone to be ingested or injected to have an effect.
Great :) Such - at first sight shocking - meaning shifts are all around the place. The English adjective "silly" (variant, mostly obsolete, form: "sely") used to mean (in Old English) 'happy, lucky, fortunate', hence 'blessed'. The meaning then shifted to 'pious, innocent' to 'simple, unsophisticated' to 'naive', then to 'foolish'. These stages of the meaning shift can be traced back for a millennium. Needless to say, the English word is cognate with German "selig", i.e. 'happy, joyful, tranquil, blessed, beatified'.
7:48 Engaged can definitely mean very interested in or occupied by something - like "She's very engaged in what she's doing" or "She's finding that very engaging".
You could even say, "She's engaged in school activities." I'll admit, the way she says it in the video does make me think of marriage initially, but I think an anglophone would figure it out pretty quickly and you barely need to change the wording for the word 'engage' to be proper.
If you know Dutch, English and German it gets even more confusing. Wo = where = waar. Wer = who = wie. Wie = how = hoe. With the German first, English second and Dutch third in all cases.
Damals als Ich Exchange student war in Louisiana, hab ich auf deutsch Tagebuch geschrieben neben einem meiner amerikanischen Mitschüler. Ich schrieb sowas wie „Die Mrs. Mueller hatte…“ Der Schüler neben mir war völlig entsetzt, weil er dachte ich wünschte der Lehrerin den Tod 😢 bis ich ihm erklärt hab, dass die in englisch und die in Deutsch was ganz anderes ist… 🙈
Just had the discussion about actual and current at work. Took me soo long to convince my colleague that it is not a good idea to present a lot of numbers and then leading into the next section with the phrase: And now I give you the actual numbers....
I have always been impressed with your native-sounding English. You don't seem to have a German accent at all. I was even more impressed when you were able to do a "German" accent in English in the skits. You sounded like a non-native speaker of English. You must have a very good ear.
Ich habe große Angst, dich zu sehen. afraid, fear. I would say " Ich freue mich dich zu sehen." If you keep it simple you are better off and you will make fewer mistakes.
I always thought “Hell” = “Bright/Light” was a fun example because some German lite beer cans have “HELL” written very large on them. Meanwhile, Hell in English is usually described as being very dark and not a fun place to be…😂
My wife and I were stationed in Munich 1979/81. We had a great chuckle during this video, because we have forgotten so much. Interesting, informative and entertaining.
English 'gift' and German 'Gift' are not false cognates, they are true cognates, but false friends. The basic meaning of both words is "something given", which is still apparent in English, but in German it shifted to something meaning "dose, dosage" and then to "lethal dosage" then "poison". Same with 'become' and 'bekommen', they are true cognates. The original sense in Proto-West Germanic was "to come close to, come near to" which in English morphed into meaning "to come to, come to be" and in German "to come by, obtain". You can still say in English "How did you *come by* that?" and mean what in German is "Wie hast du das *bekommen* ?"
An der Nordseeküste gibt es bis heute "Giftbuden", das sind Imbissbuden oder Kioske. Da wird man nicht vergiftet, da "gift es wat", da gibt es etwas. 😊
It's because Feli isn't a linguist and fell for a "false friend" herself when she initially stated that "false friends" were internationally more commonly referred to as "false cognates". She basically thought "false cognates" was just a less colloquial technical term for "false friends". Actually, those two terms of course aren't the same, "false friends" are words in different languages that look and/or sound alike without meaning the same whereas false cognates would be words that look/sound as if they were etymologically related when they actually aren't. The vast majority of "false friends" between English and German would actually be true cognates that share a common origin but drifted apart in meaning.
"How did you come by that? = "Wie sind Sie darauf gekommen? "Wie kommen Sie darauf?" Woher wissen Sie das? ; become = werden ; bekommen = get, obtain, receive ; gift = Geschenk;
I mean, engaged does also mean to be involved in English as well, although it is more often used in the context of marriage. But yes, you can be engaged in studies, or have another engagement (to be busy).
I'm a Midwestern American and that example Feli used made perfect sense to me. It's not a common use of the word, but if someone used engaged in that manner I think most people would understand it without confusion.
Yeah, "engage" can mean a number of things in English. I've often heard or read that a book or film is "very engaging," meaning it captures and keeps your interest. One can also be quitting one job to move on to a different work engagement, and if one designs gears and cams and such, one might also optimize how well one gear engages another gear. All similar concepts. In fact, I'd say that the "getting married" context is most often determined by context, in English. If I were to say "I currently have an engagement, so I must decline your job offer," you'd know I meant something different than if I walked in with a girlfriend and announced that we just got engaged. Also, since "engaged" can mean "meshed" or "interlocked," in English you can always have the joke of a ship's Captain walking in on a couple of his crew having sex in a broom closet, have them say "It's OK, Captain, we're engaged!" To which the Captain could respond "Well, disengage and get back to your posts!"
In that sentence "she is engaged at school" sort of thing - there is no way a native English speaker would think it is related to marriage! Perhaps the USA is different, but in English, engaged would be more often used in the sense of being engaged in an activity or similar, yes it means "engaged to be married" but only in the context where it would be obvious it relates to marriage. Engaged merely means "to be involved in" so it could be engaged in a subject; engaged in crime; engaged in/to be...... whatever.
I used to live in the UK, as a German, and I had 2 instances where I used one of these "false friends". 1) The English "decent" and German "dezent" sound very similar. But the English version means "anständig" and the German means "plain, discereet, unobstrusive". I knew the word "decent" existed, but in the context that I heard this word being used, I thought it meant the same as in German. Now I like to wear very coulourful clothes - anything but "dezent" in German, quite the opposite. And when I wanted to tell this my English frinds I said "I love to wear indecent clothes!" 🤣 2) "to undertake" in English and "unternehmen" in German are not just a literal translation, but also mean the same. I knew that. But in German, the noun for that "Unternehmer" means somebody who untertakes things, in other words a businessman. When I was studying in the UK, a friend of my Mum, who was a "Unternehmer" said, that I may be able to work for him after I finished my studies. When I told that my supervisor in the UK, I said: "A friend of my Mum's, who is an undertaker, may have a job for me." My supervisor gave me a strange look. So I looked up "undertaker" - as I had seen that word, and since "to undertake" was the same as "unternehmen", I assumed that "undertaker" was also the same as "Unternehmer". Well, in a way, an undertaker is also a businessman, but he does only one business... to bury the dead. No, I didn't end up working for an undertaker. 🤣🤣🤣
Oh, and by the way, in British English "boot" also means the trunk of a car. ("Kofferrraum" in German). And "car boot sales" are fea markets (Flohmärkte).
I know the reference 🙂 I do think though that people would be better actually learning other languages otherwise they miss all the cultural inferences.
I’ve been living in the US for about 30 years (born and raised in Kiel, Germany) and I’m a fluent English speaker, but “rent” and “Rente” still gets me sometimes, especially when I speak German to friends and family. I may say “Die Rente für die Wohnung ist sehr hoch.” 😂
Hold on now I'm a American I don't understand what you're saying. 🤣🤣Rente I feel like you're talking shit about us 🤣🤣 and I don't like it someone that speaks German please fill me in 🤣🤣
@@scottbivins4758 the German word “Rente” means pension or retirement in English. The English word “rent” is “Miete” in German, so native German speakers often use the wrong word in either language since “rent” and “Rente” are so similar, but actually have totally different meanings. Watch Feli’s first video on the same topic and you’ll understand 😂
@@sachakorell 🤣🤣🤣 I just feel like when people speak in a different language than me I just feel like they talking trash or something and I know I definitely can't be the only one that feels that way appreciate ya letting me know that wont going down 🤣🤣 i can count on you
Exactly, even the seemingly very different meanings actually are related. Ordinary / ordinär come from Latin 'ordinarius' meaning 'common' or 'normal'. The 'vulgar' meaning in German derives from commoners speaking vulgar in comparison to the upper class. The German adjective 'dick' also has an English cognate: 'thick'. The etymological rule here is that German uses a 'd' where English uses a 'th'. The most obivous example being the articles like 'der, die, das' and 'the'.
@@Skyfighter94 Exactly. The "Great Consonant Shift" that took place in English. "d" at the beginning changed to "th" and "b" at the end changed to "f". A fun example is German "Dieb" to English "thief". "will" and "wollen" are also closely related. I would even argue that the "will" in "Will you marry me?" is a throwback to this original meaning and is correctly translated as "Willst du mich heiraten?" and not "Wirst du mich heiraten?" But who would know that? My favorite cognates are "horse" and "Ross". You would never think of that until you learn the Old English was "hross" and the "r" has simply moved (something that happens rather frequently). A comment attributed to Voltaire (don't know if correct): "Linguistics is the science in which consonants count for very little and vowels for nothing." 😆
@@Skyfighter94 Interestingly enough, in English, "common" can also be used in the meaning of "vulgar". I think this goes back to how the nobility felt about the "common folk". And this also works in German with "gewöhnlich" (the German word corresponding to "common").
My French studies helped with the will, want, wish, need verbs that are similar . Espère will/wish A Besoin want/need Peut will/want There is more to it but I have become less fluent
@@michaelmedlinger6399 Isn't it the English consonants that are older, and the German ones that are the product of a shift? You can see that in the th (or ð or þ) being present in those same words in Old English and Old Norse and modern Icelandic, with that sound having fallen out of German and become a D somewhere along the way.
When we lived in Germany there was a house that had an ad on it. It was a family named Fucker advertising rooms to rent. Very big sign. Americans loved taking pictures of it.
There's a small hotel near Cologne that is named after it's former owners "Fuck" - actually that name has made a long way to get there. You may have heard of the famous merchand family "Fugger" - in the late middle ages their name was spelled "Fucker", but that changed over times passing. However, in post-medieval Cologne, “Fuck” was a derogatory term for someone who worked for the mega-rich Fucker/Fugger family - which was not that well regarded.
The word "will" in English, in phrases like "free will" or "the will to live", still has the context of wanting to do something. Like "free will" is the freedom to do what you want and "the will to live" is the wanting to live
As an American I would definitely understand the “engaged” in context as being involved if it’s between a person and something abstract. Using engaged in terms of a pre-marriage relationship would generally only be interpreted if it’s referred to between two people. The context also helps in that the pre-marriage version would typically be “engaged to” while the involved version would be “engaged with”. As an American learning German, so far the most annoying example of these false conjugates has been “will” and the similarity of the German “wo” and “wer” to the English “who” and “where” has also been confusing at times.
When I started learning English, my worst false friends were "where = wo", "who = wer", "bekommen = to get", "werden = to become". 🙈 In my English book, there was a very memorable sentence: "There is a train in my room. If I don't become another ceiling, I will undress." 😂 (correct: There is a draught in my room. If I don't get another blanket I will move out.)
"Das Boot" was a fantastic series, shown on British television in German with English subtitles back in about 1982. Normally I can't be bothered to read subtitles, but this was done so well, I was hooked from the first few minutes. I was in the Royal Navy at the time and the feel and atmosphere of a conventional submarine was so familiar and acurate it was incredible. Great story - highly recommended. In the Royal Navy a 'boat' is a submarine and a surface vessel is a 'ship'. I think it must be the same in the German Navy - Das Boot = Unterseeboot.... I love the way German words are constructed like that - Under Sea Boat (Submarine).
( U.S. Army kid here -- in West Germany for K, 1st, 3rd, 4th + college Christmas 1988 & Summer '89 -- got into East Berlin + French Officers Club -- had a steak from Limousin... )
Nik, how about that "good old English" word, "flak" -- as in "I caught a lot of flak from my boss because of my screw up." FLAK -- from Fliegerabwehrkanone -- flier (or flyer) -- or Flugzeug- [aircraft]) defense cannon. That's the thing I love about English -- when we find a good word or phrase (zut alors! a bon mot!!) lying about, we'll quickly snap it up and claim it as our own, unlike French, which will try to give non-native words the old heave ho, tout suite (or if they're feeling particularly pedantic, tout de suite, or if not toot sweet), n'est-ce pas, mon ami? Jawohl!! You betcha! That's why English has become the lingua franca for much of the world. The English language is sort of like a linguistic Venus fly trap -- any interesting foreign words can get caught and absorbed into English. Oh? As for the French, oy vey! Uff da! Mann, Mann, Mann! Maybe one day our Froggy Friends will chill out and stop kvetching about foreign language intrusion into their pure Francophone tongue and enjoy a little linguistic spicy seasoning.
gave the Wife + Daughter Polish-made chocolate bunnies, and to my Mom a Polish-made chocolate lamb -- very similar to the German ones I got as a Cold War era U.S. Army kid in West Germany (got Rugenfisch brand herring + mackeral (ex-East Germany factory on the Baltic from the same "Polish Deli" in Seattle ;-)
Isn't that more a military thing? Like, they also use " actual" in radio communications to mean "the team lead is talking". I'd guess that those two are related.
There is a story in my family, where my great grandmother was in Germany at a restaurant and she wanted to speak to the owner. In Danish owner is called "ejer" ... Which pronunciation wise sounds like the German "Eier" (Egg). My great grandmother asked the waiter in German: "Darf Ich mit der Eier sprechen?" (Can I talk to the Egg?). We are playing around a lot with words in my family ... Being in Danish, English, German (or in my case) also Finnish and Russian! My niece and nephews is CONSTANTLY asking my sister whether or not this phrase or word is something OTHER people use or if it is a family heirloom! ^^ And don't get me started on my grandmother on my father's side ... Once she was at a plant nursery (Looking at plants) and had brought along my (then) teenager cousin (F). And to my cousin's great horror my grandmother walked around and said "WOW look these nice clitoris'" while pointing out Clematis flowers! And Oh, yeah! She KNEW the difference! That was SO intentional! I don'r think my cousin could be more red in the face from embarrassment! (BTW ... My cousin is now 66, so it's a year or two ago) ... ^^
I AM THE EGGMAN ...Also, dialectical English in Britain, once upon a time, used to have this same word "eyre" for an egg, but somehow it got standardized to egg everywhere and nobody calls them eyren any more.
This one requires the German to be somewhat Bavarian/Austrian, though: "In English, I [ee/ich] means I (aye), Ei means egg, Eck means corner and koaner means nobody." (With the fun being of course that English I pronounces as German Ei, etc.)
As a Polish person I find this video exceptionally interesting. Whenever there is a Polish word similar to those English-German false cognates, it ALWAYS has the same meaning as the German word. I'm actually quite fluent in all those three languages, and it always keeps surprising me, how - in a way - Polish is much more similar to German than to English. If I translate something literally from one language to another, it works way better when it's Polish to German than Polish to English. But at the end of the day, Poland is geographically closer to Germany than to England, so I think, da liegt der Hund begraben - tu jest pies pogrzebany (that’s where the dog lies buried - that makes no sense. Meaning: that's the clue, that's what explains it all). Personally, it keeps confusing me what the word "eventually" means. In Polish we have a word "ewentualnie", and it has pretty much the same meaning as German "eventuell" = "possibly", "alternatively", "exceptionally".
Yeah, that's hardly surprising - the same in Hungarian. Such international words typically entered Central European languages via German, or even if not, their meaning might have been influenced by their German meaning. As for German, many such words (while ultimately of Latin origin) came from French - "aktuell" is a nice example, check the "e" in the last syllable. Polish "aktualnie" is closer to Latin, Hungarian "aktuális" (Adjective) is strikingly like Latin "actualis", but it translates as "aktuell" into German.
Yeah, it's the same in Denmark! So imagine my surprise, that number 10, ordinary in English and in Danish ordinær, has a totally different meaning in German! I mean, it even sounds the same in Danish and German!
@@OleVanman The meaning is not totally different. The meaning shifted from normal towards rude. But you can still use it in the old way. An "ordinäre Stubenfliege" would be a "common housefly". Ein "ordinärer Bürger" is an "ordinary citizen". Like the word "vulgar" in English can mean normal or rude.
Unsurprising given Poland's proximity to German speaking countries and, although English is classed as a Germanic language, a great many of its words are derived from particularly French but also other areas colonised by Britain, such as India.
That sponsor was amazing. Probably one of the most interesting I've seen. I wonder if people would get lazy and just use a translator and never learn another language
My mother has a story she tells of my grandfather during the second great war. He served as a Private First Class in Unit 199C. The story goes that when they were training the men were taught how to say, "Halt oder ich schieße!" During the time spent overseas, my grandfather was behind enemy lines and heard some German soldiers approaching. He jumped out and totally forgot what to say and shouted, "Halt, oder ich Scheisse!" They had a great laugh after that.
My grandpa once combined two of these false friends, when he went abroad and visited a restaurant with my grandma. When the waiter approached their table and asked for their order he apparently replied, and I quote "I will become a steak." 😂
meine Eltern waren mal im Urlaub (Busreise) im Ausland und kurz vor dem Rückflug sagte der Reiseleiter (keine Ahnung, ob in deutsch oder englisch) "bitte denk am Flughafen an eure Tablets und packt die in seprat zum Röntgen" ... eine ältere Dame, mit der sich meine Eltern während der Reise angefreundet hatten, verstand dass sie ihre Tabletten einzeln auspacken müsse
Kind of similar is using an archaïc word since the vocabulary we're taught in German class can be more than a century old; textbooks tend to be researched from older textbooks instead of from the current state of the language. So when I needed a pen I asked for a Feder, which is what I had always been taught for "pen", but the store clerk didn't understand why I would ask for a quill. That is when I learned the word, "Kugelschreiber".
But the cartridge pen is still called a Füllfederhalter as the long official name. The shorter more common name is just Füller. And the case for pens and that stuff is still called a Federtasche or Federmäppchen. So the guy could have guessed it by the context. 🤓 Greetings from Berlin 😎
@@Mario71f30 ballpen/biro is a Kugelschreiber, yes. But a "pen" with the ink cartridge is called a Füllfederhalter. Literally "fill(able)-quill-holder".
Me as well. This was the first time EVER that I actually ordered something from an in-video ad because I have a lot of use for this for my parents and their nurses who assist them in their old age. These may be a godsend for all involved.
Haha thought the same 😆 if you bought them, let me know if they really work that good! That would be amazing! Then i could finally understand my Brazilian parents in law until i am finally able to be at that level of language learning myself.
I was going to say the same. This video is the prime example of where the advertisements fit very well into the video as a whole. You are almost missing part of the video if you skip the ads
Tolles Video Feli! Funny Story When I was first dating my hubby I was in nursing school. Doing homework I asked him for a “rubber”. His response “now?” 😂 we were taught Oxford English so an eraser was a rubber which is also lustig in Deutsch - Gummi (Kondom) oder Radiergummi
I learned German 60 years ago because it is the only thing my grandparents spoke in their house when I was young. I still to this day mess up "wo" and "wer"...
Having studied English, Swedish and German the best example of a false cognate I can think of is the word spelled "fast" it's present in all 3 but means totally different things
Without speaking a lick or German I kind of guessed "after" correctly (sort of ) as I guessed "behind" since I was thinking "aft" which is a nautical term for the rear of a ship.
Hello Feli!! I enjoy your channel very much!! I have a cousin in Zellingen and I was talking to her about her son. She had sent some pictures of him being silly (or goofy, funny). I had said as much and she thought I had called her son stupid. To say I was embarrassed is an understatement! We sorted it out after she did not speak to me for a few days!!!!! Keep up the good work!!
Willen/wollen as a verb of want, desire, intent is a very interesting case. It exists in a lot of languages like German, English, Danish, Dutch and more. It's always in a similar corridor of meaning, but German and English are on opposite ends of the corridor, where German only uses it for desires and English almost only uses it in a very grammatical formulaic way as a modal verb for future (note that English, just like German and most germanic languages, doesn't actually HAVE a real future tense. Instead, we all use the base form verb and a modal that indicates future). Danish actually uses it for both.
A classic that Germans mess up all the time is "sympathisch", that is very often translated to "sympathetic". For the German fellows, "sympathetic" means "mitfühlend" or "verständnisvoll". The correct translation for "sympathisch" is "likeable".
Hi Feli,. I was once sent to Switzerland on business during February of 1987. I had an overnight stop in Munich. I'm from California so while I did have an adequate coat, I did not have any gloves. I went to a department store in Munich and I searched in the men's department, I searched the accessories but I found no gloves. I finally found an employee who spoke English (not hard as most did) and asked. They told me that gloves were in the shoe department as the word for gloves in German is Handschuhe or hand shoes in english. In September of 1986 I was at October Fest and had no problems as most of the people I came across spoke at least enough english to sell me what I wanted. I love Munich.
Ouch! These False Cognates can make international travel dangerous. Locals and tourists need to give one another a lot of grace when speaking. As the two of you did, always ask clarifying questions. Well done video.
When it comes to engaged, it would also be worth mentioning that in British English it also means tgat the phone number you're calling is busy. Not sure if that's the same in the U.S.
Interesting! I didn't even know that. Probably because I came to the US when landlines weren't really a thing anymore 😅 And nowadays, cellphones usually just redirect you to voicemail if the person you're calling is in another phone call. In German, this is called "besetzt", by the way.
@@FelifromGermany thanks for the response! The word engaged also means eingerastet or eingelegt, for instance when driving a shift-stick car or changing into reverse gear.
Nice. In the US, the phone was "busy," and you would get the busy signal, meaning they're on a call already. Engaged and busy mean the same thing, really, but that's what we used here.
learned the phone-related 'engaged' while listening to BBC 4 radiodramas on TH-cam...among other British (or Scottish) phrasings / word usages Ironicaly, Linguists tell us the American form is older, preserving the 18th C. usages
(saw a landline phone -- maybe a "Princess" phone in a Stained Glass Window today !! near my Mom's house in Yakima -- St. Timothy's Episcopal Church !!!!)
I struggle a lot with self-conscious vs selbstbewusst. It's not really that category, but with conscious and bewusst meaning the same, but these words being practically opposites, it always throws me off.
@@elmercy4968 Are you sure about that? Then please explain both in other words to me, I wanna know which of these means something completely different to you than it does to me?
@@stechuskaktus8318 Quite sure. Self-conscious means self-awareness. What in German is "Ich-Bewusstsein". "Selbst-Bewusstsein" means I am aware of my positive features not just of my features in generell. It's a difference but not the opposite.
@@elmercy4968 Interesting. We seem to disagree on both selbstbewusst and self-conscious. In my world, selbstbewust would better be translated to self-confident. You're selbstbewusst if you're pretty sure of yourself and convinced you got this. People who say they feel self-conscious however are anything but that, they feel unsure, awkward, question themselves etc. Certainly not confident. Self-awareness is yet another matter. Saying selbstbewusst and self-conscious mean the same because both are somewhat related to self-aware is quite the stretch.
You could argue that "beraten" (to consult) often involves parts where you (figuratively) have to berate your customer for all his faults or the stupid things he did. In a nice way of course ;-)
My Aunt lives in the USA, many years ago she and her family visited her parents here in Bavaria/Germany. She once gave an order "wash your hands and face" to the kids before eating, and my granny just wondered: "warum miassn se de jetzad dHend und bFiass waschn?" (that's Bavarian and translates to: "why do they have to wash their hands and feet?") 😅
"Willst du mich verheiraten?" Good to know. My difficulties now are more on when to use mich/mir, and dich/dir. Ich habe für siebenhundertzweiunddrißig tagen gerade Deutsch lernen. Sprachen sind einfach für mich und Deutsch ist echt einfach, aber danke schön Fili für das sponsoring. zurück zu Englisch denn mein Deutsch ist nicht super. I was unaware that the devices that diplomats use in meetings were available for civilians to purchase.
1:25 Oh man Feli, I did the same thing in reverse when I lived in Germany! One of the maxims when I was learning German was "if you don't know what the word is, say the English word in a German way." My first roommates were both native Saarländers, and at one point when I was explaining what I was doing in my NLP class, I didn't know how to say "predict," so I made up the word "prädiktieren" instead of "vorhersagen." My roommate was very confused but he went with it, I apparently said the word with enough confidence that he assumed it was just a word he didn't know. 😅 Also I always loved how much more common the word "Stoff" is in comparison to the word "stuff" in English. I suppose it's probably due to the Norman conquest like so much else, relegating the word "stuff" to a lower register. As for the wollen/will thing, they actually ARE cognates! It's just that English over time has turned "will" into the helper verb that indicates future tense for us. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the German proposal/marriage words date back to before the Saxons and Angles left for the British isles as well, meaning they just carried over, and we English speakers changed the meaning of the words around them.
English's "stuff" is a double register word. It can either be extremely low register ("that's some good stuff", "where'd all my stuff go bro!?") OR high register and poetic ("the stuff that dreams are made of", "the stuff of legends", "of sterner stuff than...")
A funny false cognate in Spanish is "embarazado" which curiously looks like "embarrassed" but actually means "pregnant." The other weird one is "Tuna" which is not a fish but the fruit from a Paddle cactus. Tuna the fish is "Atun."
Embarazada/embarrassed is a false friend and a true cognate. Both come from word roots that mean "to have weight put onto you" but in English it's more metaphorical.
The use of the word billion has a fascinating story! Until the early 1970s, England also used the "long scale," which meant that American and British speakers would miscommunicate when using the word billion. As American English became more influential (especially in the business world!), the British finally gave in and switched the short scale in 1974. You can still find some elderly British people who use the old meaning for billion. The reason for this is because at some point in the past (19th century I believe), France decided to switch to the short scale. At the time the US was more influenced by France (Britian was not our friend in those days), and so the US copied the French and adopted the short scale. France switched back to the long scale in the late 1940s, but the US remained on the short scale.
Almost 60, uk citizen, and although I use the short form, I do recall as a kid that I was taught that a million was a thousand thousand and a billion was a million million.
to be frank, short scale is really dumb. not because thousand is an inherently worse base than a million, but shifting it by one makes it not even be a proper system.
@@MusikCassetteactually it does makes sense because you add 1 after every 3 0s, the "bi" in "billion" is from the prefix "bi" which means2, same for "trillion" which has "tri" at the start, then "quad"rillion "quint"illion "sext"illion etc, every 3 0s you add 1 illion, i guess the dumb part is that it starts at 1 million and not at 1.thousand but oh well 🤷♂️
@@jlewwis1995 "i guess the dumb part is that it starts at 1 million and not at 1.thousand but oh well " exactly, that is the dump part. as I said. it is not 1000^x but 1000^(x+1).
The book 'Eine Billion Dollar' by Andreas Eschbach has an abstract about how one billion is different to Eine Billion. Der After is just the body part that comes after the body.
I have to thank the Rammstein song Dicke Titten for having an idea what Dick means in this context. As usual they are very clear what they are referring to 😄
I follow a lot of Bundesliga teams on Twitter, which means I see a lot of the same German expressions over and over. I would see "Dicke Chance" constantly.
If it helps: The German word "díck" is cognate with English "thick". When the "th" vanished from continental West Germanic languages, it was typically replaced with a "d" or sometimes also a "t".
Another example is the word "herb", which in German is used either for deodorants or for bitter defeats, i.e. "ein herber Rückschlag", or "das ist echt herb!", whereas in English we're just referring to plants used in cooking.
Hallo, Ich bin ein deutscher Student, der noch Weile zu lernen hat, aber ich werde immer besser darin und spreche inzwischen recht gut. Ich habe es etwa 3 Jahre lang gelernt und muss inshesamt 5 Jahre machen. Ich spreche inzwischen so fließend Deutsch, dass meine Deutschlehrerin, die in Frankfürt geboren wurde, mich für einen in Deutschland geborenen Menschen hielt. Ich sagte: "Nein, ich bin eigentlich Engländerin, aber ich passe nur auf meinem Sprachunterricht auf". Wer Angst vor langen Wörtern hat, sollte nicht Deutsch lernen!🤣
Hey, your post is really good (with a few pecularities of course). Though better say "Ich studiere schon eine Weile die deutsche Sprache..." because what you said is "I'm a german student" instead of ""I'm a student of (the) german (language)".
@@America1776. :D No need to be sorry, one of the (dis)advantages of germans is, to love to correct people. Which is very helpful if you want to learn a language, but can be a tad much in many other cases. ;)
As AleaumeAnders already said "deutscher Student" means German student and the correct term would be "Deutschstudent" even though most people wouldn't use this word and say "Ich studiere Deutsch". Another mistake you made is: "ich passe nur auf meinem Sprachunterricht auf" which translates to "I watch out for my language course" instead of "ich passe nur *in* meinem Sprachunterricht auf" (I pay attention to...). "auf etwas aufpassen" and "bei/in etwas aufpassen" have a different meaning.
Grew up in Cincinnati, and our family is going to Germany this summer. Your videos have helped a lot planning what to expect and tips and ticks we picked up watching! Go Bengals!
As a translation graduate, this brings back a lot of fond memories. Thank you Feli! (As everyone usually asks 🙂: Most of my classes were French English, but I also studied German and Russian. I really enjoyed German.)
Mappe can also mean map in some German dialects. Confusing are also many Denglisch words that are used in Germany. Handy=mobile phone/cell phone , Beamer = projector, Mailbox=voicemail etc. .🙃
When I was a child over 50 years ago, in the UK a billion was 10^12, not 10^9. The meaning drifted from the British definition of a billion (similar to the German one) to the American definition some time in the 1970s.
An expat friend of mine was pulled over by an Austrian policeman for speeding. The policeman told my friend in English “I become 100 Euros.” Fortunately, my friend knew about the false cognate, and suppressed his laughter.
Eine der besten Karikaturen in einem Reiseführer für Amerika in der Rubrik: Don't say that ... Bestellung im Restaurant: I become a bloody beefsteak (should mean I'd like to have a steak, rare)
“I become 100 Euros.” become = werden . Es werden 100 Euro fuer sie sein. Or Es wird sie 100 Euro kosten. In English "I get 100 euro from you for this speeding..
Fun-fact about "actual"/"aktuell": I am a software developer and during my career I encountered a method that was called "actualize". It turned out that it was written by a German colleague. The method updated something. "to update" translates to "aktualisieren" in German. For some reason the colleague did not notice that we Germans made the verb "to update" to our own "updaten" in these cases 😀
I mean, "d" and "th" are pretty similar sounds, so it makes sense. I also remember from the Tongue Twister video that Dickicht means thicket, so it also makes sense based on that.
Yes, in Proto-Germanic - the ancestor of all Germanic tongues - there was a consonant that sounded just like English "th" in "thick", remaining unchanged (sometimes becoming voiced as in "brother") in English. In German - and also Dutch - it turned into "d", compare the E/G cognate pairs "three/drei, think/denken, thin/dünn, thou(OldE thu)/du, then/denn (also than/dann, with a different vowel and altered meanings), this/dies, path/Pfad, both/beide, bath/Bad, thank/Dank, brother/Bruder, and lots of others. Some other Germanic languages (such as Swedish) turned Proto-Gmc "th" into "to". Icelandic, like English, still has the Proto-Gmc "th". (Often, you get "t" in German corresponding to English "th", as in weather/Wetter, mother/Mutter, thousand/Tausend, or archaic E forms like "hath, saith, loveth" = G "hat, sagt, liebt", etc., but there're multiple reasons, so it's a complex issue.
Sorry guys, I discovered a typo: Some other Germanic languages (such as Swedish) turned Proto-Gmc "th" into "to" should be: Some other Germanic languages (such as Swedish) turned Proto-Gmc "th" into "t". My apologies.
That's weird. When I was learning german, I was taught to call a menu a Speisekarte, not just a Karte. Guessing it's just weirdly formal to say Speisekarte?
English billion, German Milliarde , billions = Milliarden. English 2,000.00 , German 2.000,00. I have no idea how it is written in US English. I live in Australia and we follow more the UK English format.
@@TonyZoster except, that is not English. It is short scale. the English language has the words milliard, billiard, trilliard and so on. And some English speaker still use long scale.
A Spanish teacher of mine told us if a problem with false cognates she had as a foreign exchange student. She'd been living with the host family and did something mild like dropping or misplacing something. She said, "yo soy muy embarazada" thinking she was saying something like, "I'm so embarrassed" when in reality this means *I'm so pregnant.*
1:43 These two terms mean different things. “False friends” refers to words that look similar but mean radically different things. Whether the words are etymologically related doesn’t matter. An example is the Spanish word that means “annoy.” It is a false friend with a certain English word, but not a false cognate, as the two genuinely are etymologically related. “False cognates” refers to words that look etymologically related but actually aren’t. What the words mean is irrelevant. Examples are English “have” and Latin “habeō” (both meaning “have”), which are not etymologically related to each other.
nach dem Besuch des Oktoberfests zu viert im Auto, Fahrer (Us Amerikaner) hatte sich geröstete Nüsse gekauft und die Tüte aufs Armaturenbrett gelegt. Bei der ersten Kurve rutsche die Tüte und er versuchte diese festzuhalten. deutsche Berifahrerin: keep your hands on the wheel - i take care for your nuts...
Exactly! That was the original meaning common to both languages but it has diverged with time. Now Germans and the English use different words to mean the same thing but Germans are closer to the original sense of Karte 😊
All these words descend from Latin "carta", which is also where the word "carton", and by extension "card(board)" come from. So yeah, it's just certain meanings falling out of use, or one meaning becoming dominant.
I was thinking, "Isn't 'la carte' the word for 'map' in French?" I looked it up and the French word "la carte" seems to have a similar set of uses as the German word "karte". I'm an English speaker who knows a little French (and perhaps a couple dozen words in German). It's interesting to notice that there's a lot of overlap between every pairing of these 3 languages. Some of these German words were familiar to me from French, not English.
I lived in Germany for 4 1/2 years. It took me a while to separate the English meaning from the German meaning of some of the words you showed. I found German easy to learn, but I don't use it a lot now that I'm back in the USA. I enjoy speaking German at the few German restaurants in my area. It is so much fun. Could you keep up the content?
I see that ordinary / ordinär have the same roots. Take a look from a noble's or city person's perspective in past ages. The common folk so to speak surely sweared a lot, while the nobles didn't. That's why the German "ordinär" in today's day and age is often used as "vulgar", but pretty sure you can also say "Der ordinäre Bürger" = "the ordinary citizen", which basically just means the same in English = "common".
In Polish we have a word "ordynarny" - "vulgar" and "ordynaryjny" - "regular" (but it's very archaic). It's really funny how those two meanings are related to - pretty much - a one word.
In fact, that also seems to be the explanation for both German "gemein" - the word actually means "common" - and the English word it is translated to when referring to behavior (of children for instance), viz. "mean": .. which also seems litterally to be speaking about something right in the middle of the spectrum, judged from a rather self-proclaimedly superior standpoint.
In China when I taught English I learned that many words came from other languages. As many Chinese might sometimes say “ I ate cow, pig and a chicken for lunch “! Indeed I realized that English has many similar origins to German, French and other languages. As I remember English need a word for “fish” , but in French the word that meant the same , but, doesn’t look like the word and sound the same is “ Poisson”! So, they couldn’t say “ I ate poisson for lunch today “! 😂 Post Script: I now speak Chinese and my students are speaking English. 😊
That one is specific to English, using the Germanic terms for the animal but the French loanwords for the meats. Most languages just don't do that, and even English doesn't for "fish" for example.
15:39 "Will" in English did indeed originally mean "want", and "a will" (a document specifying how a person wants their belongings to be disposed of when they die) takes its name from the former meaning. There are shades of it left in the English of England, where both "will" and "shall" serve as future auxiliaries, but with a slight whiff of "wollen" and "sollen" to them, respectively. There's a joke about an American (or a Scotsman) who drowned in an English lake after mistakenly screaming "I will drown!!! No one shall help me!!!". In American English (and I think most of the English speaking world outside of England itself), only "will" is used in everyday speech, and it is used purely as a future auxiliary with not even a hint of "wollen" to it. "Shall" shows up in law, and in certain set/traditional phrases ("shall we dance", "thou shalt not") with more or less the English meaning, but most people over here don't understand when to use it and when not to (thus the fate of the poor drowning American).
They bleeped both his first and last name on Family Guy, which I thought was pretty funny. Also, I don't think I'm the only wise ass to refer to him as "Penis van Lesbian".
A host is someone supposed to be friendly, so I once used the term 'hostility' instead of 'hospitality'. Very embarrassing. "Thank you for your hostility" 🙈
*Which of these false cognates surprised you the most?? 🤔Can you think of more words that fall under this category?*
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Frohe Ostern
Seeing Brits/Americans cringe while they have to pronounce Fuchs is always funny.
@@sandmehlig Eichhörnchen
@@sandmehlig We think the German fart is
Feli you were correct about the name for these similar words! - at first. 😁 They are indeed 'false friends.'
'False cognates' are similar words with similar meanings across 2 (usually related) languages, but come from completely different roots. These are rare, but a good example pair of false cognates would be English 'day' and Spanish 'día.' Another is English 'bad' and Persian 'بد,' said identically to 'bad' as pronounced in most American accents.
By comparison, English "gift" & German "Gift' share the same ultimate linguistic root despite their very different meanings. They are thus 'false friends' but still cognate words.
P.S. My hunch is that the German meaning arose from what was initially sarcasm. My dad had a tendency to fart on the way out of enclosed rooms, then immediately say to me, "I left you a Gift."
As an American looking for apartments in Germany, I have learned my wohnung needs to be hell and gross.
And my American colleague specifically chose the Hotel Hell in the ski resort in nothern Italy, so that he can say, that he is in hell now :D (hell=bright)
😂😂
An American colleague of mine here in Germany, who can't pronounce the CH in, for example, "J.S.Bach" but instead makes a K-sound, wrote a note advising the flat/apartment he was moving out of stating that the bathroom was "voll gekackelt" 🙈 ("Kacke" is a word for shit...)
That's how its gotta be!
that's a good one =D
In accounting: I received a message from a German supplier "your VAT ID is not guilty". (From the context it was obvious, that the author had "gültig"/valid in mind).Replied: "This is absolutely true, out VAT ID is innocent, but had to be changed".
I actually overheard a conversation at a car rental in Germany when the lady behind the counter tried to tell the customer that his driving license was not "guilty"... 😆
😂😂😂 👍👍👍
We don't have VAT!
@@garycamara9955 it exists. In Germany it's called Mehrwertsteuer-Identifikationsnummer or just Umsatzsteuer-Identifikationsnummer
@@garycamara9955Mehrwertsteuer
Fun fact about the word "gift", it is also used in Swedish for either poison or, hilariously, being married.
It's kind of interesting this one. I'm no language scientist, but I really like to know where this word originates from.
In German there is also the word "Mitgift", which means "dowry". So also a connection to marriage and "giving someone something" here.
Well, for some it's a gift at gifta sig, for others it turns out to be a slowly killing Gift. ;)
Reminds being of being "committed" which either means being in a serious relationship or being put in an insane asylum.
reminds mem of french lesson at school: Fische ohnr etwas zu Trinken sind Gift
Gift komt von Gabe
I remember a conversation of my German colleague talking to the Irish colleague about a purchase of a product with which he was not really satisfied. So the German guy started in english: Yesterday I bought a coffin ... (my German colleage was at that time 35 years old and his parents were doing fine). The Irish Lady instantly interrupted him: WHAT did you buy ?!!? ... German guy continued as if the Irish lady just did not understand acustically: Yes, a coffin, and ... Irish Lady: WAIT a moment ... you did not really buy a coffin, did you? My German colleague just took the word coffin as the english word for the german word "Koffer" (english: suitcase). The misunderstanding was quickly resolved, and I was lying on the floor laighing.
I once told a group of German soldiers “Ich bin warm” when asking to open the window because the room was stuffy. After a great deal of laughter, they helpfully explained that I had just declared that I was gay and that I should have said “Mir ist warm” and that I should be very careful in describing the weather. I was just starting my German studies at the time and learned that several other weather related expressions can have alternate, sexual meanings when not used with the right case in German. I’ve never forgotten that lesson! 🇩🇪
We were taught that you don't say things like "Ich bin kalt" or "Ich bin heiss" as they refer more to sexual feelings. Didn't hear about warm, though.
Of course, being high schoolers, we used that to our advantage.
@@flowingafterglow629 I think, it was back in the 80s when "Warmer Bruder" (warm brother) was slang for a gay dude
Da fällt mir mein Vater ein (hatte in seiner Schulzeit nie Englisch gehabt und es so ein bisschen "lernte" - im Leben halt), der einen GI fragte (der zitterte vor Kälte): "Are you frozen?". Der Blick des jungen Mannes - unbezahlbar. 😳😂
And the difference between being something and having something isn't just with temperature. A lot of it obviously depends on the language in question, but for example there are languages where you don't say that you "are x years", but "have x years" when referring to your age.
Spending is not donating. He is speaking english.
Feli, "Gift" hieß früher auch in (Mittelhoch)-Deutsch Geschenk bzw. Gabe. In dem Wort "Mitgift" wird es heute noch in dieser Bedeutung verwendet. Da die "Gabe" aber gerne mal in einer Dosis einer tödlichen Substanz (Erbschaftspulver) bestand, wandelte sich die Bedeutung des Wortes von "Gabe" zu "Gift. eine bizarre Geschichte, aber wahr.
Feli, "Gift" used to mean present or gift in (Middle High) German. In the word “Mitgift" (dowry) it is still used in this meaning today. Since the "gift" often consisted of a dose of a deadly substance (inheritance powder), the meaning of the word changed from "gift" to "poison". A bizarre story, but true.
In the Middle Ages, the meaning was common. The meaning changed later to what it is today, poison! That’s why gift is unwanted in Geman! 😊
Fascinating.
Faszinierend.
A bizarre story that is also completle untrue, a fabrication from some 20th century layman who wanted a shocking medieval fun fact. The modern word gift didn't evolve from Mitgift because people would poison wedding presents (if that were the case, what do you think people called poison in German in the middle ages before the term allegedly evolved from Mitgift?!). The truth is simply that Gift is an old form of "Gabe", something that is "given", and poison has to be "given" to someone to be ingested or injected to have an effect.
Erbschaftspulver 😂😂😂
Great :) Such - at first sight shocking - meaning shifts are all around the place. The English adjective "silly" (variant, mostly obsolete, form: "sely") used to mean (in Old English) 'happy, lucky, fortunate', hence 'blessed'. The meaning then shifted to 'pious, innocent' to 'simple, unsophisticated' to 'naive', then to 'foolish'. These stages of the meaning shift can be traced back for a millennium. Needless to say, the English word is cognate with German "selig", i.e. 'happy, joyful, tranquil, blessed, beatified'.
7:48 Engaged can definitely mean very interested in or occupied by something - like "She's very engaged in what she's doing" or "She's finding that very engaging".
You could even say, "She's engaged in school activities." I'll admit, the way she says it in the video does make me think of marriage initially, but I think an anglophone would figure it out pretty quickly and you barely need to change the wording for the word 'engage' to be proper.
Engaging the enemy
One year later they are all pregnant.
Yeah, or "Warp factor 2, Number One. Engage."
Exactly what I was thinking
"Engagement" has also become a business buzzword.
"How can we drive engagement in the new Mentorship program?"
I often get confused by "Notausgang". My first attempt at translation is usually “not an exit” before I remember it means “emergency exit”.
This actually might be tricky because the short german word is replaced by a long english word - and vice versa
Hope you'll need a "not a physician".
Notausgang represent
If you know Dutch, English and German it gets even more confusing. Wo = where = waar. Wer = who = wie. Wie = how = hoe. With the German first, English second and Dutch third in all cases.
Wie is hoe? In Germany we also say "Hää??" for "what?" or "Wie bitte?", but it also means "I've no feckin idea!" 😅
Plus all false cognates GermanDutch...
'Ik moet .... ' does not translate into 'Ich moechte ...' (or 'Ich moege...')
Damals als Ich Exchange student war in Louisiana, hab ich auf deutsch Tagebuch geschrieben neben einem meiner amerikanischen Mitschüler. Ich schrieb sowas wie „Die Mrs. Mueller hatte…“
Der Schüler neben mir war völlig entsetzt, weil er dachte ich wünschte der Lehrerin den Tod 😢 bis ich ihm erklärt hab, dass die in englisch und die in Deutsch was ganz anderes ist… 🙈
Just had the discussion about actual and current at work. Took me soo long to convince my colleague that it is not a good idea to present a lot of numbers and then leading into the next section with the phrase: And now I give you the actual numbers....
😂
Diesen Beitrag hänge ich mir an die Wand im Büro 🤣Sounds all too familiar.
Aktuell, actuel, attuale… in German, French, Italian the meaning is the same. Nur in English…
@@padmeamidala4883 Actual in spanish is the same (current)
I have always been impressed with your native-sounding English. You don't seem to have a German accent at all. I was even more impressed when you were able to do a "German" accent in English in the skits. You sounded like a non-native speaker of English. You must have a very good ear.
I just wish she could reduce the decibel level but in USA that probably sounds normal.
Zz
@@Phiyedoughno I’m in the USA and it’s way loud. Sehr laut
What decibel level?@@Phiyedough
Happened on a family meeting (british and german family). "I am very afraid to see you". He tried to pronounce "erfreut" (happy/delighted) english :D.
hahaha
Ich habe große Angst, dich zu sehen. afraid, fear. I would say " Ich freue mich dich zu sehen." If you keep it simple you are better off and you will make fewer mistakes.
@@TonyZoster They didn't make a mistake to begin with
Dont be afraid Sei kein Fred 😀
I always thought “Hell” = “Bright/Light” was a fun example because some German lite beer cans have “HELL” written very large on them. Meanwhile, Hell in English is usually described as being very dark and not a fun place to be…😂
My wife and I were stationed in Munich 1979/81. We had a great chuckle during this video, because we have forgotten so much. Interesting, informative and entertaining.
English 'gift' and German 'Gift' are not false cognates, they are true cognates, but false friends. The basic meaning of both words is "something given", which is still apparent in English, but in German it shifted to something meaning "dose, dosage" and then to "lethal dosage" then "poison". Same with 'become' and 'bekommen', they are true cognates. The original sense in Proto-West Germanic was "to come close to, come near to" which in English morphed into meaning "to come to, come to be" and in German "to come by, obtain". You can still say in English "How did you *come by* that?" and mean what in German is "Wie hast du das *bekommen* ?"
An der Nordseeküste gibt es bis heute "Giftbuden", das sind Imbissbuden oder Kioske. Da wird man nicht vergiftet, da "gift es wat", da gibt es etwas. 😊
It's because Feli isn't a linguist and fell for a "false friend" herself when she initially stated that "false friends" were internationally more commonly referred to as "false cognates". She basically thought "false cognates" was just a less colloquial technical term for "false friends". Actually, those two terms of course aren't the same, "false friends" are words in different languages that look and/or sound alike without meaning the same whereas false cognates would be words that look/sound as if they were etymologically related when they actually aren't. The vast majority of "false friends" between English and German would actually be true cognates that share a common origin but drifted apart in meaning.
@@Kristina_S-OKlingt wie in gewissen moselfränkischen Gegenden des Saarlands oder Frankreichs, also nördlich der dat/das Linie
@@chrisrudolf9839And "where/wo" and "who/wer" are indeed cognates that funnily look as though they had exchanged their vowels.
"How did you come by that? = "Wie sind Sie darauf gekommen? "Wie kommen Sie darauf?" Woher wissen Sie das? ; become = werden ; bekommen = get, obtain, receive ;
gift = Geschenk;
I mean, engaged does also mean to be involved in English as well, although it is more often used in the context of marriage. But yes, you can be engaged in studies, or have another engagement (to be busy).
I'm a Midwestern American and that example Feli used made perfect sense to me. It's not a common use of the word, but if someone used engaged in that manner I think most people would understand it without confusion.
Yeah, "engage" can mean a number of things in English. I've often heard or read that a book or film is "very engaging," meaning it captures and keeps your interest. One can also be quitting one job to move on to a different work engagement, and if one designs gears and cams and such, one might also optimize how well one gear engages another gear. All similar concepts. In fact, I'd say that the "getting married" context is most often determined by context, in English. If I were to say "I currently have an engagement, so I must decline your job offer," you'd know I meant something different than if I walked in with a girlfriend and announced that we just got engaged. Also, since "engaged" can mean "meshed" or "interlocked," in English you can always have the joke of a ship's Captain walking in on a couple of his crew having sex in a broom closet, have them say "It's OK, Captain, we're engaged!" To which the Captain could respond "Well, disengage and get back to your posts!"
In that sentence "she is engaged at school" sort of thing - there is no way a native English speaker would think it is related to marriage!
Perhaps the USA is different, but in English, engaged would be more often used in the sense of being engaged in an activity or similar, yes it means "engaged to be married" but only in the context where it would be obvious it relates to marriage.
Engaged merely means "to be involved in" so it could be engaged in a subject; engaged in crime; engaged in/to be...... whatever.
The Incredibles uses this for a play on words in the opening sequence - "I have a previous engagement."
Then there's the military version of engagement basically meaning you're in a firefight.
I used to live in the UK, as a German, and I had 2 instances where I used one of these "false friends".
1) The English "decent" and German "dezent" sound very similar. But the English version means "anständig" and the German means "plain, discereet, unobstrusive". I knew the word "decent" existed, but in the context that I heard this word being used, I thought it meant the same as in German. Now I like to wear very coulourful clothes - anything but "dezent" in German, quite the opposite. And when I wanted to tell this my English frinds I said "I love to wear indecent clothes!" 🤣
2) "to undertake" in English and "unternehmen" in German are not just a literal translation, but also mean the same. I knew that. But in German, the noun for that "Unternehmer" means somebody who untertakes things, in other words a businessman. When I was studying in the UK, a friend of my Mum, who was a "Unternehmer" said, that I may be able to work for him after I finished my studies. When I told that my supervisor in the UK, I said: "A friend of my Mum's, who is an undertaker, may have a job for me." My supervisor gave me a strange look. So I looked up "undertaker" - as I had seen that word, and since "to undertake" was the same as "unternehmen", I assumed that "undertaker" was also the same as "Unternehmer". Well, in a way, an undertaker is also a businessman, but he does only one business... to bury the dead. No, I didn't end up working for an undertaker. 🤣🤣🤣
Oh, and by the way, in British English "boot" also means the trunk of a car. ("Kofferrraum" in German). And "car boot sales" are fea markets (Flohmärkte).
@@Tinkerbe11 And Booty means something entirely different in American slang.
An entrepreneur would be the word in English for Unternehmer
Reminds me of the joke where a guy got a job working over 800 people, but the company only had 2 part-time people working at the cemetery.
As a fan of Douglas Adams, I see the TimeKettle device as something like an electronic Babel fish. Fellow fans will know what I mean.
I know the reference 🙂 I do think though that people would be better actually learning other languages otherwise they miss all the cultural inferences.
At last! A Federation Universal Translator! 🖖
Those earbuds will be lifechanging if they work as advertised!!
I’ve been living in the US for about 30 years (born and raised in Kiel, Germany) and I’m a fluent English speaker, but “rent” and “Rente” still gets me sometimes, especially when I speak German to friends and family. I may say “Die Rente für die Wohnung ist sehr hoch.” 😂
Same! I mentioned this in my first video on the topic. I say "Rente" all the time in German when I mean "Miete" 🙈
Ah yes... mietewagon isn't the butcher's van but a rental car. Very confusing to some of us
Hold on now I'm a American I don't understand what you're saying. 🤣🤣Rente I feel like you're talking shit about us 🤣🤣 and I don't like it someone that speaks German please fill me in 🤣🤣
@@scottbivins4758 the German word “Rente” means pension or retirement in English. The English word “rent” is “Miete” in German, so native German speakers often use the wrong word in either language since “rent” and “Rente” are so similar, but actually have totally different meanings. Watch Feli’s first video on the same topic and you’ll understand 😂
@@sachakorell 🤣🤣🤣 I just feel like when people speak in a different language than me I just feel like they talking trash or something and I know I definitely can't be the only one that feels that way appreciate ya letting me know that wont going down 🤣🤣 i can count on you
Most of these false cognates have shared etymologies and their meanings only diverged relatively recently.
Exactly, even the seemingly very different meanings actually are related.
Ordinary / ordinär come from Latin 'ordinarius' meaning 'common' or 'normal'. The 'vulgar' meaning in German derives from commoners speaking vulgar in comparison to the upper class.
The German adjective 'dick' also has an English cognate: 'thick'. The etymological rule here is that German uses a 'd' where English uses a 'th'. The most obivous example being the articles like 'der, die, das' and 'the'.
@@Skyfighter94 Exactly. The "Great Consonant Shift" that took place in English. "d" at the beginning changed to "th" and "b" at the end changed to "f". A fun example is German "Dieb" to English "thief".
"will" and "wollen" are also closely related. I would even argue that the "will" in "Will you marry me?" is a throwback to this original meaning and is correctly translated as "Willst du mich heiraten?" and not "Wirst du mich heiraten?" But who would know that?
My favorite cognates are "horse" and "Ross". You would never think of that until you learn the Old English was "hross" and the "r" has simply moved (something that happens rather frequently). A comment attributed to Voltaire (don't know if correct): "Linguistics is the science in which consonants count for very little and vowels for nothing."
😆
@@Skyfighter94 Interestingly enough, in English, "common" can also be used in the meaning of "vulgar". I think this goes back to how the nobility felt about the "common folk". And this also works in German with "gewöhnlich" (the German word corresponding to "common").
My French studies helped with the will, want, wish, need verbs that are similar .
Espère will/wish
A Besoin want/need
Peut will/want
There is more to it but I have become less fluent
@@michaelmedlinger6399 Isn't it the English consonants that are older, and the German ones that are the product of a shift? You can see that in the th (or ð or þ) being present in those same words in Old English and Old Norse and modern Icelandic, with that sound having fallen out of German and become a D somewhere along the way.
So, the Babel Fish from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy actually exists now.
Apparently not quite as slimy, though.
Or Professor Branestawm's device from the story "Ici One Parla die Languages".
I was wondering if anyone would bring up Babel fish (fisch).
I was thinking the same thing! 😂
Me too
When we lived in Germany there was a house that had an ad on it. It was a family named Fucker advertising rooms to rent. Very big sign. Americans loved taking pictures of it.
There's a small hotel near Cologne that is named after it's former owners "Fuck" - actually that name has made a long way to get there. You may have heard of the famous merchand family "Fugger" - in the late middle ages their name was spelled "Fucker", but that changed over times passing. However, in post-medieval Cologne, “Fuck” was a derogatory term for someone who worked for the mega-rich Fucker/Fugger family - which was not that well regarded.
@@GETOBA So nobody really liked those rich Fuckers, nor the poor Fucks working for these Fuckers at all :D
My mother told me that Fucker was a name like Smith. It was every where
The f word in English is essentially slang and no one would write it with a capital F.
@@TonyZoster - now that's Bullshit - many people do write it with a capital F
The word "will" in English, in phrases like "free will" or "the will to live", still has the context of wanting to do something. Like "free will" is the freedom to do what you want and "the will to live" is the wanting to live
Exactly. Strong willed people get what they want
The last will. Not the last want.
As an American I would definitely understand the “engaged” in context as being involved if it’s between a person and something abstract. Using engaged in terms of a pre-marriage relationship would generally only be interpreted if it’s referred to between two people. The context also helps in that the pre-marriage version would typically be “engaged to” while the involved version would be “engaged with”.
As an American learning German, so far the most annoying example of these false conjugates has been “will” and the similarity of the German “wo” and “wer” to the English “who” and “where” has also been confusing at times.
Definitely. It's common in English to speak of someone "engaging" in an activity or being "engaged" with a cause or problem or issue.
When I started learning English, my worst false friends were "where = wo", "who = wer", "bekommen = to get", "werden = to become". 🙈
In my English book, there was a very memorable sentence:
"There is a train in my room. If I don't become another ceiling, I will undress." 😂 (correct: There is a draught in my room. If I don't get another blanket I will move out.)
"Das Boot" was a fantastic series, shown on British television in German with English subtitles back in about 1982. Normally I can't be bothered to read subtitles, but this was done so well, I was hooked from the first few minutes. I was in the Royal Navy at the time and the feel and atmosphere of a conventional submarine was so familiar and acurate it was incredible. Great story - highly recommended. In the Royal Navy a 'boat' is a submarine and a surface vessel is a 'ship'. I think it must be the same in the German Navy - Das Boot = Unterseeboot.... I love the way German words are constructed like that - Under Sea Boat (Submarine).
( U.S. Army kid here -- in West Germany for K, 1st, 3rd, 4th + college Christmas 1988 & Summer '89 -- got into East Berlin + French Officers Club -- had a steak from Limousin... )
Subway Untergrundbahn/ Under the Ground Train
Nik, how about that "good old English" word, "flak" -- as in "I caught a lot of flak from my boss because of my screw up." FLAK -- from Fliegerabwehrkanone -- flier (or flyer) -- or Flugzeug- [aircraft]) defense cannon. That's the thing I love about English -- when we find a good word or phrase (zut alors! a bon mot!!) lying about, we'll quickly snap it up and claim it as our own, unlike French, which will try to give non-native words the old heave ho, tout suite (or if they're feeling particularly pedantic, tout de suite, or if not toot sweet), n'est-ce pas, mon ami? Jawohl!! You betcha! That's why English has become the lingua franca for much of the world. The English language is sort of like a linguistic Venus fly trap -- any interesting foreign words can get caught and absorbed into English. Oh? As for the French, oy vey! Uff da! Mann, Mann, Mann! Maybe one day our Froggy Friends will chill out and stop kvetching about foreign language intrusion into their pure Francophone tongue and enjoy a little linguistic spicy seasoning.
There is a new series of Das Boot made from 2020 onwards. It's a fantastic show with top acting and amazing scenes. Highly recommended.
It's a movie and got an 6 academy award nominations, hasn't won any. Maybe TV has shown it in parts, but it's a movie.
Yay, an Easter morning surprise! Happy Easter, Feli and Ben! Hope you both are doing well!
Happy Easter! 😊
@@FelifromGermanyFrohe Ostern!
There was an American NBA player named "Ostertag." I always think about him on Easter.
gave the Wife + Daughter Polish-made chocolate bunnies,
and to my Mom a Polish-made chocolate lamb -- very similar to the German ones I got as a Cold War era U.S. Army kid in West Germany
(got Rugenfisch brand herring + mackeral (ex-East Germany factory on the Baltic from the same "Polish Deli" in Seattle ;-)
I watched this channel trying to learn a German accent for a school drama assessment. A+ in the bag so thanks for all the tips!
In English, to a pilot, the "actual" is the current weather report as opposed to the forecast weather.
Isn't that more a military thing? Like, they also use " actual" in radio communications to mean "the team lead is talking". I'd guess that those two are related.
There is a story in my family, where my great grandmother was in Germany at a restaurant and she wanted to speak to the owner. In Danish owner is called "ejer" ... Which pronunciation wise sounds like the German "Eier" (Egg). My great grandmother asked the waiter in German: "Darf Ich mit der Eier sprechen?" (Can I talk to the Egg?). We are playing around a lot with words in my family ... Being in Danish, English, German (or in my case) also Finnish and Russian! My niece and nephews is CONSTANTLY asking my sister whether or not this phrase or word is something OTHER people use or if it is a family heirloom! ^^
And don't get me started on my grandmother on my father's side ... Once she was at a plant nursery (Looking at plants) and had brought along my (then) teenager cousin (F). And to my cousin's great horror my grandmother walked around and said "WOW look these nice clitoris'" while pointing out Clematis flowers! And Oh, yeah! She KNEW the difference! That was SO intentional! I don'r think my cousin could be more red in the face from embarrassment! (BTW ... My cousin is now 66, so it's a year or two ago) ... ^^
I AM THE EGGMAN
...Also, dialectical English in Britain, once upon a time, used to have this same word "eyre" for an egg, but somehow it got standardized to egg everywhere and nobody calls them eyren any more.
"Der Eigner" would be the German cognate.
Although it's not that often used as "Besitzer" anymore
And, well, the flower kind if exists actually: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clitoria
This one requires the German to be somewhat Bavarian/Austrian, though: "In English, I [ee/ich] means I (aye), Ei means egg, Eck means corner and koaner means nobody." (With the fun being of course that English I pronounces as German Ei, etc.)
"Pregnant" and "Praegnant" share the same Latin origin, but in German the meaning changed to a figurative sense, meaning "full of information".
pregnant with meaning, pregnant silence...
@@sergeyromanov5560impregnable solace 🙂
Pregnant pause
(met the Wife because she was in Latin class with a friend's Future Wife)
I never thought of concise as being figurative, it's short and to the point, no allusion about it.
As a Polish person I find this video exceptionally interesting. Whenever there is a Polish word similar to those English-German false cognates, it ALWAYS has the same meaning as the German word. I'm actually quite fluent in all those three languages, and it always keeps surprising me, how - in a way - Polish is much more similar to German than to English. If I translate something literally from one language to another, it works way better when it's Polish to German than Polish to English. But at the end of the day, Poland is geographically closer to Germany than to England, so I think, da liegt der Hund begraben - tu jest pies pogrzebany (that’s where the dog lies buried - that makes no sense. Meaning: that's the clue, that's what explains it all).
Personally, it keeps confusing me what the word "eventually" means. In Polish we have a word "ewentualnie", and it has pretty much the same meaning as German "eventuell" = "possibly", "alternatively", "exceptionally".
Yeah, that's hardly surprising - the same in Hungarian. Such international words typically entered Central European languages via German, or even if not, their meaning might have been influenced by their German meaning. As for German, many such words (while ultimately of Latin origin) came from French - "aktuell" is a nice example, check the "e" in the last syllable. Polish "aktualnie" is closer to Latin, Hungarian "aktuális" (Adjective) is strikingly like Latin "actualis", but it translates as "aktuell" into German.
Yeah, it's the same in Denmark! So imagine my surprise, that number 10, ordinary in English and in Danish ordinær, has a totally different meaning in German! I mean, it even sounds the same in Danish and German!
@@OleVanman The meaning is not totally different. The meaning shifted from normal towards rude. But you can still use it in the old way. An "ordinäre Stubenfliege" would be a "common housefly". Ein "ordinärer Bürger" is an "ordinary citizen". Like the word "vulgar" in English can mean normal or rude.
Unsurprising given Poland's proximity to German speaking countries and, although English is classed as a Germanic language, a great many of its words are derived from particularly French but also other areas colonised by Britain, such as India.
In Czechia, we also have a saying "Where the dog lies buried", it is "Kde je zakopaný pes" here
That sponsor was amazing. Probably one of the most interesting I've seen. I wonder if people would get lazy and just use a translator and never learn another language
If you eat spicy food, you get an afterburner 😂
Then you making a bombing run to the toiletten.
😆
the "ring of fire"
Blowing out the o-ring.☺
chili burns twice
My mother has a story she tells of my grandfather during the second great war. He served as a Private First Class in Unit 199C. The story goes that when they were training the men were taught how to say, "Halt oder ich schieße!" During the time spent overseas, my grandfather was behind enemy lines and heard some German soldiers approaching. He jumped out and totally forgot what to say and shouted, "Halt, oder ich Scheisse!" They had a great laugh after that.
Unintended joke warfare
I do not speak/read German - but I know what he said! I’m still laughing!
Who says Germans don’t have a sense of humor?
Hilarious. I would have laughed myself to death, as we Germans tend to say (sich totlachen)
My grandpa once combined two of these false friends, when he went abroad and visited a restaurant with my grandma.
When the waiter approached their table and asked for their order he apparently replied, and I quote "I will become a steak." 😂
meine Eltern waren mal im Urlaub (Busreise) im Ausland und kurz vor dem Rückflug sagte der Reiseleiter (keine Ahnung, ob in deutsch oder englisch) "bitte denk am Flughafen an eure Tablets und packt die in seprat zum Röntgen"
... eine ältere Dame, mit der sich meine Eltern während der Reise angefreundet hatten, verstand dass sie ihre Tabletten einzeln auspacken müsse
Kind of similar is using an archaïc word since the vocabulary we're taught in German class can be more than a century old; textbooks tend to be researched from older textbooks instead of from the current state of the language. So when I needed a pen I asked for a Feder, which is what I had always been taught for "pen", but the store clerk didn't understand why I would ask for a quill. That is when I learned the word, "Kugelschreiber".
But the cartridge pen is still called a Füllfederhalter as the long official name. The shorter more common name is just Füller. And the case for pens and that stuff is still called a Federtasche or Federmäppchen.
So the guy could have guessed it by the context. 🤓
Greetings from Berlin 😎
I thought it is a ballpen
I had this one teacher who always ended his exams with the command "Feder weg!".
@@Mario71f30 ballpen/biro is a Kugelschreiber, yes. But a "pen" with the ink cartridge is called a Füllfederhalter. Literally "fill(able)-quill-holder".
Normally I skip ads, but holy crap, those earbuds are real? One of my childhood dreams has come true.
Me as well. This was the first time EVER that I actually ordered something from an in-video ad because I have a lot of use for this for my parents and their nurses who assist them in their old age. These may be a godsend for all involved.
Haha thought the same 😆 if you bought them, let me know if they really work that good! That would be amazing! Then i could finally understand my Brazilian parents in law until i am finally able to be at that level of language learning myself.
I was going to say the same. This video is the prime example of where the advertisements fit very well into the video as a whole. You are almost missing part of the video if you skip the ads
I’ve been waiting for a universal translator like they had in Star Trek for at least 30 years. This is getting pretty close
@@zephram75EXACTLY! My little nerd soul is so happy.
Tolles Video Feli!
Funny Story
When I was first dating my hubby I was in nursing school. Doing homework I asked him for a “rubber”. His response “now?” 😂
we were taught Oxford English so an eraser was a rubber which is also lustig in Deutsch - Gummi (Kondom) oder Radiergummi
We acutllay learned that difference in english at some point.
We use rubber as the common description but on the wrapper around the rubber is Eraser which is the correct term.
I learned German 60 years ago because it is the only thing my grandparents spoke in their house when I was young. I still to this day mess up "wo" and "wer"...
Having studied English, Swedish and German the best example of a false cognate I can think of is the word spelled "fast" it's present in all 3 but means totally different things
9:12 It can also mean a stone tablet, which is probably where the meaning of an electronic tablet comes from.
"...the lord Jehovah has given unto you these fifteen *crash*! ten, ten commandments..."
This was really entertaining and the best "commercial" I've ever seen on a video. Just a perfect match!
Without speaking a lick or German I kind of guessed "after" correctly (sort of ) as I guessed "behind" since I was thinking "aft" which is a nautical term for the rear of a ship.
I love TH-camrs like Feli so easy to listen too. Your awesome! 🎉
Hello Feli!! I enjoy your channel very much!! I have a cousin in Zellingen and I was talking to her about her son. She had sent some pictures of him being silly (or goofy, funny). I had said as much and she thought I had called her son stupid. To say I was embarrassed is an understatement! We sorted it out after she did not speak to me for a few days!!!!! Keep up the good work!!
Willen/wollen as a verb of want, desire, intent is a very interesting case. It exists in a lot of languages like German, English, Danish, Dutch and more. It's always in a similar corridor of meaning, but German and English are on opposite ends of the corridor, where German only uses it for desires and English almost only uses it in a very grammatical formulaic way as a modal verb for future (note that English, just like German and most germanic languages, doesn't actually HAVE a real future tense. Instead, we all use the base form verb and a modal that indicates future). Danish actually uses it for both.
A classic that Germans mess up all the time is "sympathisch", that is very often translated to "sympathetic". For the German fellows, "sympathetic" means "mitfühlend" or "verständnisvoll". The correct translation for "sympathisch" is "likeable".
Hi Feli!
Ein Video über Sprichwörter fänd ich mega spannend! 🤗
LG Nancy
Hi Feli,. I was once sent to Switzerland on business during February of 1987. I had an overnight stop in Munich. I'm from California so while I did have an adequate coat, I did not have any gloves. I went to a department store in Munich and I searched in the men's department, I searched the accessories but I found no gloves. I finally found an employee who spoke English (not hard as most did) and asked. They told me that gloves were in the shoe department as the word for gloves in German is Handschuhe or hand shoes in english. In September of 1986 I was at October Fest and had no problems as most of the people I came across spoke at least enough english to sell me what I wanted. I love Munich.
Ouch! These False Cognates can make international travel dangerous. Locals and tourists need to give one another a lot of grace when speaking. As the two of you did, always ask clarifying questions. Well done video.
When it comes to engaged, it would also be worth mentioning that in British English it also means tgat the phone number you're calling is busy. Not sure if that's the same in the U.S.
Interesting! I didn't even know that. Probably because I came to the US when landlines weren't really a thing anymore 😅 And nowadays, cellphones usually just redirect you to voicemail if the person you're calling is in another phone call. In German, this is called "besetzt", by the way.
@@FelifromGermany thanks for the response! The word engaged also means eingerastet or eingelegt, for instance when driving a shift-stick car or changing into reverse gear.
Nice. In the US, the phone was "busy," and you would get the busy signal, meaning they're on a call already. Engaged and busy mean the same thing, really, but that's what we used here.
learned the phone-related 'engaged' while listening to BBC 4 radiodramas on TH-cam...among other British (or Scottish) phrasings / word usages
Ironicaly, Linguists tell us the American form is older, preserving the 18th C. usages
(saw a landline phone -- maybe a "Princess" phone in a Stained Glass Window today !! near my Mom's house in Yakima -- St. Timothy's Episcopal Church !!!!)
I struggle a lot with self-conscious vs selbstbewusst. It's not really that category, but with conscious and bewusst meaning the same, but these words being practically opposites, it always throws me off.
That's a very good example. I struggled with those too.
Selbstbewusst and self-conscious almost mean the same. They are not practically opposites.
@@elmercy4968 Are you sure about that? Then please explain both in other words to me, I wanna know which of these means something completely different to you than it does to me?
@@stechuskaktus8318 Quite sure. Self-conscious means self-awareness. What in German is "Ich-Bewusstsein". "Selbst-Bewusstsein" means I am aware of my positive features not just of my features in generell. It's a difference but not the opposite.
@@elmercy4968 Interesting. We seem to disagree on both selbstbewusst and self-conscious. In my world, selbstbewust would better be translated to self-confident. You're selbstbewusst if you're pretty sure of yourself and convinced you got this. People who say they feel self-conscious however are anything but that, they feel unsure, awkward, question themselves etc. Certainly not confident.
Self-awareness is yet another matter. Saying selbstbewusst and self-conscious mean the same because both are somewhat related to self-aware is quite the stretch.
i like “to berate” vs. “beraten”
Or how about besiegen vs. besiege?
@@DavidWilliams-DSW558
The English are still on their way to winning with this one
You could argue that "beraten" (to consult) often involves parts where you (figuratively) have to berate your customer for all his faults or the stupid things he did. In a nice way of course ;-)
My Aunt lives in the USA, many years ago she and her family visited her parents here in Bavaria/Germany. She once gave an order "wash your hands and face" to the kids before eating, and my granny just wondered: "warum miassn se de jetzad dHend und bFiass waschn?" (that's Bavarian and translates to: "why do they have to wash their hands and feet?") 😅
"Willst du mich verheiraten?" Good to know. My difficulties now are more on when to use mich/mir, and dich/dir. Ich habe für siebenhundertzweiunddrißig tagen gerade Deutsch lernen. Sprachen sind einfach für mich und Deutsch ist echt einfach, aber danke schön Fili für das sponsoring. zurück zu Englisch denn mein Deutsch ist nicht super. I was unaware that the devices that diplomats use in meetings were available for civilians to purchase.
1:25 Oh man Feli, I did the same thing in reverse when I lived in Germany! One of the maxims when I was learning German was "if you don't know what the word is, say the English word in a German way." My first roommates were both native Saarländers, and at one point when I was explaining what I was doing in my NLP class, I didn't know how to say "predict," so I made up the word "prädiktieren" instead of "vorhersagen." My roommate was very confused but he went with it, I apparently said the word with enough confidence that he assumed it was just a word he didn't know. 😅
Also I always loved how much more common the word "Stoff" is in comparison to the word "stuff" in English. I suppose it's probably due to the Norman conquest like so much else, relegating the word "stuff" to a lower register.
As for the wollen/will thing, they actually ARE cognates! It's just that English over time has turned "will" into the helper verb that indicates future tense for us. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the German proposal/marriage words date back to before the Saxons and Angles left for the British isles as well, meaning they just carried over, and we English speakers changed the meaning of the words around them.
English's "stuff" is a double register word. It can either be extremely low register ("that's some good stuff", "where'd all my stuff go bro!?") OR high register and poetic ("the stuff that dreams are made of", "the stuff of legends", "of sterner stuff than...")
A funny false cognate in Spanish is "embarazado" which curiously looks like "embarrassed" but actually means "pregnant." The other weird one is "Tuna" which is not a fish but the fruit from a Paddle cactus. Tuna the fish is "Atun."
Embarazada/embarrassed is a false friend and a true cognate. Both come from word roots that mean "to have weight put onto you" but in English it's more metaphorical.
The use of the word billion has a fascinating story! Until the early 1970s, England also used the "long scale," which meant that American and British speakers would miscommunicate when using the word billion. As American English became more influential (especially in the business world!), the British finally gave in and switched the short scale in 1974. You can still find some elderly British people who use the old meaning for billion.
The reason for this is because at some point in the past (19th century I believe), France decided to switch to the short scale. At the time the US was more influenced by France (Britian was not our friend in those days), and so the US copied the French and adopted the short scale. France switched back to the long scale in the late 1940s, but the US remained on the short scale.
Almost 60, uk citizen, and although I use the short form, I do recall as a kid that I was taught that a million was a thousand thousand and a billion was a million million.
Interesting history lesson!
to be frank, short scale is really dumb. not because thousand is an inherently worse base than a million, but shifting it by one makes it not even be a proper system.
@@MusikCassetteactually it does makes sense because you add 1 after every 3 0s, the "bi" in "billion" is from the prefix "bi" which means2, same for "trillion" which has "tri" at the start, then "quad"rillion "quint"illion "sext"illion etc, every 3 0s you add 1 illion, i guess the dumb part is that it starts at 1 million and not at 1.thousand but oh well 🤷♂️
@@jlewwis1995 "i guess the dumb part is that it starts at 1 million and not at 1.thousand but oh well "
exactly, that is the dump part. as I said.
it is not 1000^x but 1000^(x+1).
The book 'Eine Billion Dollar' by Andreas Eschbach has an abstract about how one billion is different to Eine Billion.
Der After is just the body part that comes after the body.
As we know from the Telekolleg Imbissbudendeutsch, in German, you become your food: "Ich bin die Currywurst, und er ist die Pommes!"
I have to thank the Rammstein song Dicke Titten for having an idea what Dick means in this context. As usual they are very clear what they are referring to 😄
I follow a lot of Bundesliga teams on Twitter, which means I see a lot of the same German expressions over and over. I would see "Dicke Chance" constantly.
If it helps: The German word "díck" is cognate with English "thick". When the "th" vanished from continental West Germanic languages, it was typically replaced with a "d" or sometimes also a "t".
Ach das klingt so ordinär!
Which reminds me of the English word for the bird we call Kohlmeise... Check on Wikipedia by searching for _parus major_ .
Another example is the word "herb", which in German is used either for deodorants or for bitter defeats, i.e. "ein herber Rückschlag", or "das ist echt herb!", whereas in English we're just referring to plants used in cooking.
Hallo, Ich bin ein deutscher Student, der noch Weile zu lernen hat, aber ich werde immer besser darin und spreche inzwischen recht gut. Ich habe es etwa 3 Jahre lang gelernt und muss inshesamt 5 Jahre machen. Ich spreche inzwischen so fließend Deutsch, dass meine Deutschlehrerin, die in Frankfürt geboren wurde, mich für einen in Deutschland geborenen Menschen hielt. Ich sagte: "Nein, ich bin eigentlich Engländerin, aber ich passe nur auf meinem Sprachunterricht auf".
Wer Angst vor langen Wörtern hat, sollte nicht Deutsch lernen!🤣
Hey, your post is really good (with a few pecularities of course). Though better say "Ich studiere schon eine Weile die deutsche Sprache..." because what you said is "I'm a german student" instead of ""I'm a student of (the) german (language)".
@@AleaumeAnders Entschuldigung, ich habe es so getippt...😅
@@America1776. :D No need to be sorry, one of the (dis)advantages of germans is, to love to correct people. Which is very helpful if you want to learn a language, but can be a tad much in many other cases. ;)
As AleaumeAnders already said "deutscher Student" means German student and the correct term would be "Deutschstudent" even though most people wouldn't use this word and say "Ich studiere Deutsch".
Another mistake you made is: "ich passe nur auf meinem Sprachunterricht auf" which translates to "I watch out for my language course" instead of "ich passe nur *in* meinem Sprachunterricht auf" (I pay attention to...).
"auf etwas aufpassen" and "bei/in etwas aufpassen" have a different meaning.
Who wants to be my witness to a lawsuit?! 😁
Grew up in Cincinnati, and our family is going to Germany this summer. Your videos have helped a lot planning what to expect and tips and ticks we picked up watching! Go Bengals!
As a translation graduate, this brings back a lot of fond memories. Thank you Feli!
(As everyone usually asks 🙂: Most of my classes were French English, but I also studied German and Russian. I really enjoyed German.)
You forgot the British meaning of Boot! That would be what Americans call the trunk of the automobile!
True!!
It would be better if "Das Boot" would have translated into "The Boat".
boat - Boot ( German) . car boot = Kofferraum (Der Kofferraum vom Auto) Kofferraum = sui case space (lit.)
@@TonyZoster cool thanks
Worth noting that a "boot" in UK English also refers to a car's trunk.
Or when your car is being towed, the parking enforcement puts the "boot" on your car.
One of the most apparent false cognates between German and Dutch:
Das Mehr: De zee, the sea.
Der See: het meer, the lake.
The sea in German is also spelled "Meer". The noun "Mehr" would mean "something extra or additional" (from "mehr" = "more").
"In the late Middle Ages, large lakes were called 'sea' in Low German, and so these names remain. Look "Steinhuder Meer" - a sea in lower saxony
@@vrdriver4508 ...and "das Meer" is also called "die See"
In old English 'Lake' was Mere, as in Windermere
Das Meer, der See oder die See
Mappe can also mean map in some German dialects.
Confusing are also many Denglisch words that are used in Germany.
Handy=mobile phone/cell phone , Beamer = projector, Mailbox=voicemail etc. .🙃
When I was a child over 50 years ago, in the UK a billion was 10^12, not 10^9. The meaning drifted from the British definition of a billion (similar to the German one) to the American definition some time in the 1970s.
An expat friend of mine was pulled over by an Austrian policeman for speeding. The policeman told my friend in English “I become 100 Euros.” Fortunately, my friend knew about the false cognate, and suppressed his laughter.
Eine der besten Karikaturen in einem Reiseführer für Amerika in der Rubrik: Don't say that ... Bestellung im Restaurant: I become a bloody beefsteak (should mean I'd like to have a steak, rare)
I remember a joke about false friends: the German in the English cafe: "I am here since twenty minutes - when do I become a sausage?"
“I become 100 Euros.” become = werden . Es werden 100 Euro fuer sie sein. Or Es wird sie 100 Euro kosten. In English "I get 100 euro from you for this speeding..
@@TonyZoster All ist klar!
Fun-fact about "actual"/"aktuell": I am a software developer and during my career I encountered a method that was called "actualize". It turned out that it was written by a German colleague. The method updated something. "to update" translates to "aktualisieren" in German. For some reason the colleague did not notice that we Germans made the verb "to update" to our own "updaten" in these cases 😀
If I play games in the German localization it's often hard to understand the menu, because technical terms are translated freely.
I mean, "d" and "th" are pretty similar sounds, so it makes sense. I also remember from the Tongue Twister video that Dickicht means thicket, so it also makes sense based on that.
Yes, in Proto-Germanic - the ancestor of all Germanic tongues - there was a consonant that sounded just like English "th" in "thick", remaining unchanged (sometimes becoming voiced as in "brother") in English. In German - and also Dutch - it turned into "d", compare the E/G cognate pairs "three/drei, think/denken, thin/dünn, thou(OldE thu)/du, then/denn (also than/dann, with a different vowel and altered meanings), this/dies, path/Pfad, both/beide, bath/Bad, thank/Dank, brother/Bruder, and lots of others. Some other Germanic languages (such as Swedish) turned Proto-Gmc "th" into "to". Icelandic, like English, still has the Proto-Gmc "th". (Often, you get "t" in German corresponding to English "th", as in weather/Wetter, mother/Mutter, thousand/Tausend, or archaic E forms like "hath, saith, loveth" = G "hat, sagt, liebt", etc., but there're multiple reasons, so it's a complex issue.
@@laszlokristo5383 Thank you for this, it was really interesting!
Sorry guys, I discovered a typo: Some other Germanic languages (such as Swedish) turned Proto-Gmc "th" into "to" should be: Some other Germanic languages (such as Swedish) turned Proto-Gmc "th" into "t". My apologies.
That's weird. When I was learning german, I was taught to call a menu a Speisekarte, not just a Karte. Guessing it's just weirdly formal to say Speisekarte?
Here in South Tyrol, I remember that my grandparents and other older people used the word "after" in our dialect like in English.
I always get confused with the word 'eventually' vs 'eventuell'. 😊
As late as 2011 I was taught that 10^9 was a miliard in high school. Outside of America calling 10^9 a billion is a recent phenomena.
English billion, German Milliarde , billions = Milliarden. English 2,000.00 , German 2.000,00.
I have no idea how it is written in US English. I live in Australia and we follow more the UK English format.
@@TonyZoster except, that is not English. It is short scale. the English language has the words milliard, billiard, trilliard and so on. And some English speaker still use long scale.
A Spanish teacher of mine told us if a problem with false cognates she had as a foreign exchange student. She'd been living with the host family and did something mild like dropping or misplacing something. She said, "yo soy muy embarazada" thinking she was saying something like, "I'm so embarrassed" when in reality this means *I'm so pregnant.*
I wonder if after she said that there was a pregnant pause.
Oh, very pregunta.
@@martensjd Yes, we all had questions.
Warum haben sie die Chance verstreichen lassen und die Ohrstöpsel nicht "Babelfisch" genannt? Mir völlig unverständlich...
1:43 These two terms mean different things. “False friends” refers to words that look similar but mean radically different things. Whether the words are etymologically related doesn’t matter. An example is the Spanish word that means “annoy.” It is a false friend with a certain English word, but not a false cognate, as the two genuinely are etymologically related. “False cognates” refers to words that look etymologically related but actually aren’t. What the words mean is irrelevant. Examples are English “have” and Latin “habeō” (both meaning “have”), which are not etymologically related to each other.
nach dem Besuch des Oktoberfests zu viert im Auto, Fahrer (Us Amerikaner) hatte sich geröstete Nüsse gekauft und die Tüte aufs Armaturenbrett gelegt. Bei der ersten Kurve rutsche die Tüte und er versuchte diese festzuhalten. deutsche Berifahrerin: keep your hands on the wheel - i take care for your nuts...
"ich kümmere mich um deine Nüsse" hört sich aber genauso zweideutig an 🤭🤣
😂
Feli missed "Übersehen"
And "oversee".
Complete different meanings.
Karte sounds similar to the English chart, because a map is a type of chart.
Exactly! That was the original meaning common to both languages but it has diverged with time. Now Germans and the English use different words to mean the same thing but Germans are closer to the original sense of Karte 😊
Cartography = maps
All these words descend from Latin "carta", which is also where the word "carton", and by extension "card(board)" come from. So yeah, it's just certain meanings falling out of use, or one meaning becoming dominant.
Cartography
I was thinking, "Isn't 'la carte' the word for 'map' in French?"
I looked it up and the French word "la carte" seems to have a similar set of uses as the German word "karte".
I'm an English speaker who knows a little French (and perhaps a couple dozen words in German).
It's interesting to notice that there's a lot of overlap between every pairing of these 3 languages.
Some of these German words were familiar to me from French, not English.
Was mich immer wieder verwirrt ist "eventually", weil mein Hirn es automatisch als "eventuell" übersetzt.
Das geht mir genauso! Obwohl ich den Unterschied kenne, verstehe ich eventually immer wieder falsch. 😂
I lived in Germany for 4 1/2 years. It took me a while to separate the English meaning from the German meaning of some of the words you showed. I found German easy to learn, but I don't use it a lot now that I'm back in the USA. I enjoy speaking German at the few German restaurants in my area. It is so much fun. Could you keep up the content?
I see that ordinary / ordinär have the same roots. Take a look from a noble's or city person's perspective in past ages. The common folk so to speak surely sweared a lot, while the nobles didn't. That's why the German "ordinär" in today's day and age is often used as "vulgar", but pretty sure you can also say "Der ordinäre Bürger" = "the ordinary citizen", which basically just means the same in English = "common".
Yes, like when a rich person said "Sie ist ja so gewöhnlich" ("she is so ordinary / vulgar").
Kind of like how the "Vulgar" in what's called "Vulgar Latin" actually just means "common," as in how a typical Roman citizen spoke.
In Polish we have a word "ordynarny" - "vulgar" and "ordynaryjny" - "regular" (but it's very archaic).
It's really funny how those two meanings are related to - pretty much - a one word.
In fact, that also seems to be the explanation for both German "gemein" - the word actually means "common" - and the English word it is translated to when referring to behavior (of children for instance), viz. "mean": .. which also seems litterally to be speaking about something right in the middle of the spectrum, judged from a rather self-proclaimedly superior standpoint.
@@wheeliebeast7679yup, see vulgaris in the nurseries all the time!
In China when I taught English I learned that many words came from other languages. As many Chinese might sometimes say “ I ate cow, pig and a chicken for lunch “! Indeed I realized that English has many similar origins to German, French and other languages. As I remember English need a word for “fish” , but in French the word that meant the same , but, doesn’t look like the word and sound the same is “ Poisson”! So, they couldn’t say “ I ate poisson for lunch today “! 😂 Post Script: I now speak Chinese and my students are speaking English. 😊
That one is specific to English, using the Germanic terms for the animal but the French loanwords for the meats. Most languages just don't do that, and even English doesn't for "fish" for example.
It doesn't matter which way, but imagine showing up for the wrong kind of after party... 😳Also : Babbelfish!!! Yay! 🤩
15:39 "Will" in English did indeed originally mean "want", and "a will" (a document specifying how a person wants their belongings to be disposed of when they die) takes its name from the former meaning. There are shades of it left in the English of England, where both "will" and "shall" serve as future auxiliaries, but with a slight whiff of "wollen" and "sollen" to them, respectively. There's a joke about an American (or a Scotsman) who drowned in an English lake after mistakenly screaming "I will drown!!! No one shall help me!!!". In American English (and I think most of the English speaking world outside of England itself), only "will" is used in everyday speech, and it is used purely as a future auxiliary with not even a hint of "wollen" to it. "Shall" shows up in law, and in certain set/traditional phrases ("shall we dance", "thou shalt not") with more or less the English meaning, but most people over here don't understand when to use it and when not to (thus the fate of the poor drowning American).
Or, oddly enough, "Shall I wash the car?"
9:40 They missed an opportunity -- the earbuds should be small, yellow and fish-shaped.
Dick van Dyke do I have more to say. Or in Dutch Dick van Dijk just a normal name.
They bleeped both his first and last name on Family Guy, which I thought was pretty funny.
Also, I don't think I'm the only wise ass to refer to him as "Penis van Lesbian".
technically "After" and "after" are not that far away from each other :D
since the both describe something that is "behind" LOL
You're not wrong 😂
The scatological sense is the original one but was softened in English.
I gotta tell ya, Feli, I love the background music to your videos. You should hire a theme band to follow you around playing it...
Timekettle ist ja schon sowas wie ein universal translator von Star Trek
A host is someone supposed to be friendly, so I once used the term 'hostility' instead of 'hospitality'. Very embarrassing. "Thank you for your hostility" 🙈
🤣😂🤣😂
I learned the meaning of "giftig" by listening to the Rammstein song. In particular, I learned that "du bist giftig" does NOT mean "you are gifted" 🙂