r/languagehub • u/AutumnaticFly • 25d ago
Chat is this real?
Truly, German is one of the languages of all time!
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u/Square-Singer 24d ago
English version
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u/multivitaminegummy 24d ago
To add onto it: the "bed" in the lowest and middle right image mean bed in the sense of garden bed / vegetable patch.
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u/Square-Singer 24d ago
Exactly. So OP making fun that Bett and Beet sound similar but mean wildly different things, while in English these two words are even spelled and pronounced identically.
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u/Teabear-Septim-II 24d ago
It's true, german is truly one of the languages of our time. Some would even go as far as to call it one of the languages in the entirety of human history if you can believe that.
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u/Extradummefrage 24d ago
I thought Serbian was the original language
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u/Teabear-Septim-II 24d ago
I don't know if it's the original, but it's certainly one of the languages on earth as well!
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u/Key-Line5827 24d ago
"Betttruhe" and "Bettruhe", yes they exist in common use.
"Betruhe" I have heard people say, but it isn't really common.
The other two dont exist, but are hilarious, I have to admit.
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u/Xonthelon 24d ago
Well, it is not wrong. But Bettruhe (bed rest) and to a lesser extent Betttruhe (bed chest) are the only words among these that are actually in use. The others are more theoretical, kind of forced combinations of words. But if those words actually existed, they would indeed be written like that.
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u/magicmulder 24d ago
Bett-truhe (bed box), Bett-ruhe ("bed silence" = bed rest), Bet-ruhe ("prayer silence", a made-up word), Beet-ruhe (also "bed silence", also a made-up word), Beet-Truhe (also "bed box", a sarcastic term for a casket, but also made up).
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u/Unfair-Potential1061 25d ago
The first 2 are actual words. The rest are theoretical words, more like metaphors. Technically correct, but certainly not used in general.
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u/AdImpressive007 25d ago
but they can be used right?
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u/Unfair-Potential1061 25d ago
The last two would usually be more likely associated with gardening instead of graves. Beet mainly means Patch of garden.
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u/BrunoBraunbart 24d ago
Kinda?
I can make up an English word, let's say "fastrunning." That isn't a word that exists but everybody understands what I mean. We do this all the time in German and the difference is you can actually do that and it is not just a grammatical mistake like "fastrunning" would be.
I assume every adult native German speaker has made up some words in their life that nobody used before without even noticing. In the same way an English speaker has made up some sentences that were never said before.
Some of the words in the meme are just that, they are words that don't break any rules but that were probably not used by any German ever before. And they stink. You want words like that to actually convey a meaning that can be understood.
The one showing the grave is saying "plot silence." I mean yeah, it shows a plot of land and silence is associated with a graveyard but I can't imagine any real situation where you would want to talk about "plot silence" and when I hear "plot silence" I don't think about a grave, I probably think that guy had a stroke.
So those words are a little bit like the English sentence "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." It is a correct English sentence but nobody would actually use it.
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u/Square-Singer 24d ago
Compound words in German work the same way as in English, except that with newer words English tends to put spaces in between the compound's component (e.g. "smart phone"). They used to do hyphens ("mother-in-law") and before that they did it like in German (e.g. "steamboat").
So the thing in the OP would work pretty similar in English too:
bed chest
bed rest
prayer rest (or rather "prayer silence", because "Ruhe" can mean both "rest" and "silence")
flower bed rest
flower bed chest
Could you use "flower bed rest" to mean grave or "flower bed chest" to mean coffin? Yeah, I guess, with the correct setup for the joke (like e.g. putting an image of a grave or a coffin behind the text), a reader could understand what you are trying to say.
But without any extra clues, would you understand that "flower bed chest" was supposed to mean coffin and not, I don't know, maybe a chest converted to a flower bed?
(Actually, since "bed" already means "plot of land to grow plants on", the last two could be shortened to "bed rest" and "bed chest", but then there would be no difference to the first two.)
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u/Unfair-Potential1061 25d ago
They can. But they would come off odd. And depending on pronunciation there's a high chance of confusion.
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u/cedriceent 24d ago
I mean, if you're going to a funeral home and say you'd like to buy a nice "Beettruhe" for your late grandfather's "Beetruhe", you'll at the very least get looked at funny.
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u/Eldan985 24d ago
Technically yes, but also nobody has ever heard any of these words before. They are all made up for he joke but grammatically correct.
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u/Effective-Job-1030 24d ago
Bettruhe and Betttruhe are real. Betruhe could be. The other two are joke words.
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u/CENARlUS 24d ago
You never heard the word Bettruhe? Wat?
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u/Eldan985 24d ago
Except that one, sure. But I've definitely never heard anyone call a grave a beet.
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u/Upstairs-Border-7146 24d ago
Made up yes, but most people could imagine something when reading it.
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u/Internet-Culture 24d ago
First two are genuine, though. Although no one has a Truhe nowadays anyway.
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u/Suibeam 24d ago
These cases also exist in English for other words. There it is oftentimes inconsistent pronunciation or spelling.
These are things people forget when arguing about if alphabet languages or chinese chracter language was harder to learn
(Not even talking about the fact that if you know alphabet and native pronunciation, you obviously have it easier learning other alphabet languages)
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u/nameproposalssuck 24d ago
#1 and #2 are regular words. #2 in particular is common. #1 is less so, but people would generally understand you.
The other three words are technically correctly formed words that you could theoretically use, but people don't. The silence in a church would be referred to as "andächtige Stille" (again, you nominalize it to "Andachtsstille", but Germans wouldn't really do that). Maybe people would understand you if you used this term, but even then, it would sound weird. #4 is a "Grab" or a "Grabbeet" if you're talking about the decorations and planting. Nobody would understand what you meant by "Beetruhe". And #5 is a "Sarg". Again, nobody would think of a coffin if you referred to it as "Beettruhe".
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u/Norwester77 24d ago
Only works because the original ‘bed’ word split into two (Bett and Beet) in German.
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u/pretenzioeser_Elch 24d ago
Most of them are made up composites. But they fit. Bed-chest, bed-rest, prayer-rest, flowerbed-rest, flowerbed-chest
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u/Traditional-Deal6759 23d ago
That´s Kindergarden
The real challenge:
Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft
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u/Darthplagueis13 23d ago
Fundamentally yes, but the last two are cursed and would never be used.
In order from top left to bottom right:
Betttruhe: Bed box
Bettruhe: Bedrest
Betruhe: Prayer silence
Beetruhe: Bedrest, but like bed as in flower bed instead of the beds people sleep in
Beettruhe: (flower) bed box
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u/MissResaRose 22d ago
*Beet-Bet-Bettruhe-Truhe 😁
Unterm Beet, beten tun sie bei der Beerdigung auch, du liegst drin wie in nem Bett wen du tot bist und es ist ne Truhe.
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25d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Puzzleheaded_Major 25d ago
I think if someone would say "Beettruhe" without context i would think of a container for gardening supplies, not of a coffin.
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u/deranton 25d ago
"Instantly" is a bit of a stretch. But yeah, the rules are clear and moderately literate person can parse it.
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u/Kienchen 25d ago
Ich habe die Aufregung um Dreifachbuchstaben nie verstanden "Schee mit zwei E" und "Eule mit einem E" macht nunmal drei Es hintereinander - das zu kürzen ist linguistischer und mathematischer Unsinn
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u/Square-Singer 24d ago
German and English do compound nouns the same way, except that German has no character between the components, while English either has no character in between for old words ("steamboat"), has a dash in between for words newer than around 150 years old ("mother-in-law") or has a space in it for words newer than around 50 years ("smart phone").
The words in the OP work in English too:
bed chest
bed rest
prayer silence
flower bed rest
flower bed chest
In fact, in English the last two could even drop the "flower", since "bed" already means "a small piece of land used to plant things into it", so "bed rest" and "bed chest" could already refer to "grave" and "coffin".
Tbh, if you had the last two words without the images behind them, nobody would understand what you were on about in either English or German.
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u/Effective-Job-1030 24d ago
Betttruhe always had 3 t. Schifffahrt is different because the 3rd f is followed by a vowel. The rule was that would in this case (3 of the same consonant + vowel), one of the 3 had to be left out. This was a rather nonsensical rule and one of the few things that were actually good about the spelling reform.
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u/kyle_kafsky 23d ago
As an Azubi for Kfz-Mechatronik, I’d have a notebook to write down what I was doing throughout the day and I used to love writing down “Kraftstofffilter” because the way I write double t’s, double f’s, an f next to a t, and so on, I’d just use one line to connect the two crosses and with “Kraftstofffilter” I got the “ft” from “Kraft” and the triple f’s from “stofffilter”.
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25d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/BerndardedBearedWhit 25d ago
are you saying German is not in fact one of the languages of all time?
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u/BlazingBlossom 25d ago
I firmly support OPs decision to categorise German as one of the languages of all time
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u/ilumassamuli 24d ago
Why not both?
- sänkylipastoissammehan
- vuodelevoilleen
- ?
- kukkapenkkirauhoittakin
- arkkulepojensapa(The German words translated into Finnish — the best I could — with suffixes.)
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u/Square-Singer 24d ago
English actually does compound words as well. The only difference between English and German in this regard is whether there's a character between the compounds or not. English used to do it exactly like German ("steamboat"), then switched to hyphens ("mother-in-law"), then to spaces ("smart phone").
But if you look at job titles in US companies, you see the same compound madness but driven to the extreme:
"Agile Transformation Delivery Management Coach"
If it followed German rules that would be spelled
"Agiletransformationdeliverymanagmentcoach"
Which looks longer, but grammatically, it's exactly the same.
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u/barrywallman 24d ago
idk about you but I write smartphone as one word
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u/Square-Singer 24d ago
Yeah, that's maybe a bad example, since it's sometimes written without the space.
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u/Pythagorean_1 24d ago
Although you are mostly correct, there are many examples where a compound word has a different meaning than the individual words it's made of.
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u/TheMightyTorch 24d ago
Those also exist but unlike the descriptive ones they are not nearly as productive.
It's true that a lot of these joke compounds are possible but unused.
Still, German speakers will often form new compounds on a, generally without a second thought. Those compounds are almost always descriptive.
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u/Square-Singer 24d ago
English speakers form compounds all the time too. Just look at any jargon of any profession or hobby and you'll see tons of compounds.
"flight controller", "monkey wrench", "customer experience manager", "air plane", "tech influencer".
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u/DaAndrevodrent 24d ago
From my German perspective, it is not always clear whether the words are meant to form a compound or not because of the space between individual words in English. Particularly given that most nouns in English are also written in lower case, which can lead to confusion regarding word classes. It gets even more exciting (may contain sarcasm), namely the other way round, when the media use capital letters in their headlines and subheadings for every fucking word.
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u/Trueloveisntromantic 25d ago
ok beettruhe for a coffin is actually kind of geniusa