Are German nipples the worst?

[Crackerofdoom]

I just learned the word for nipples in German is Brustwarzen

The literal translation is "breast warts"

Is this the worst direct translation or are there more out there?

entrüsten works, but it lacks the comic undertone.

The Dutch and Frisian courses on Futurel Learn are great.
And there is a three part course for Norwegian getting you to A2.

DGR is a man.

What about our insults like a man being a big girl's blouse? Is that mostly regional - i.e mostly northern and does a similar expression appear in other languages.

Halfway through the thread, so apologies if I'm being repetitive.
I lived in Venezuela for a couple of years in my early teens. When the film "Grease" came to town it was called "Vaselina".

@peregrina

In German you have Warmduscher as a pp said. I like Frauenversteher - woman understander, like a creepy nice guy. Not a real man who drinks beer in tents and sings loudly and doesn't know how to talk to girls. It's a bit sexist but it still makes me laugh.

Weich Ei - soft egg - wimp

I just asked DH for the wimpy man insults from Holland and he just said "this kind of man does not exist in Holland, we dont have these words".

In chinese the word for transvestite is people monster hahahaha

The Finnish month names are good too, for instance November is death-moon, October is mud/sludge-moon, July is hay-moon, December is Christmas-moon

Oh goodness me, that's shocking @agentstarling. Poor Chinese transvestites!

There must be a German word for that situation ? Accidentally insulting someone whose reaction makes you wish you'd done it deliberately grin And if not, I'm sure we can make one ...

I hope someone does come up with one.

Made me think (although the meaning is different) of "l'ésprit de l'éscalier": "spirit of the staircase".
Or the retort you wish you'd thought of but didn't until you were going downstairs/leaving.

Danish has some words for wimpy (or henpecked) men:

• tøffelhelt = slipper hero (similar to the German expression back on one of the first pages)
• vatnisse = cotton-wool stuffed elf (vat is cotton wool, Santa's helpers are 'nisse') - soft toys stuffed with cotton wool, 'vatnisse', are used as decorations at Christmas, ---> a man who is as tough as a stuffed toy which leads to...
• vatpik = a man whose appendage that is only as stiff as cotton wool

I like their word for a sniffer dog, though.,
At an airport in Oz an elderly German lady (who evidently thought I was German) once asked me what the police dogs were for.

After I’d summoned up enough of my rusty A level German to try to explain, she said, ‘Ah! Ein Schnuffelhund!’

(At least I suppose that’s how you spell it.)

Google translate tells me sniffer is 'Schnüffler' but sniffer dog is Spürhund

Which back translates to spoor hound, which makes perfect sense.

@LaMarschallin

Halfway through the thread, so apologies if I'm being repetitive.
I lived in Venezuela for a couple of years in my early teens. When the film "Grease" came to town it was called "Vaselina".

You are definitely not being repetitive and that is a brilliant translation!

My dachshund is definitely going to get called a Schnüffler though.

For those looking to learn another language, there is Duolingo, FutureLearn and others online. The BBC website has some language courses, and on YouTube you can even find courses such as Parliamo Glasgow >

Another way to get acquainted with everyday language is to livestream radio stations - e.g. for German try Antenne Bayern or Antenne Salzburg or NDR or ORF; for Danish try Classic FM Kolding (not the UK Classic FM) and so on. Not only is the language colloquial rather than academic, but as these are music stations, you get to hear a different selection of music to the British playlists

The Welsh for underhand "dan din" translates literally as under arse.

Schnüffelhund => Spürhund

Schnuffelhund => soft toy dog to cuddle

Brilliant OP

Also interesting is the fact that in German and Finnish, Wednesday is mid-week: Mittwoch and Keskivikko. I think it may be the case in some other languages too.

If we are talking about languages that have single words that other languages just can't translate, then may I propose the English "weekend". You can say "fin de semain" in French, but it's not the same.

Also it's fascinating how English words for days are taken from the Norse unlike the Romance tongues of French and Italian.

So many basic words in English come from Anglo-Saxon/Norse roots, though.

I read once that in Churchill’s famous ‘We shall fight them on the beaches...’ speech, only one word was of Norman-French origin, and that was, (‘We shall never) surrender.’

The author of the piece where I read it (an academic) said that when he wanted to appeal to hearts and minds, then whether by instinct or by design, the old man knew which words were best to use.

Another way to get acquainted with everyday language is to livestream radio stations - e.g. for German try Antenne Bayern or Antenne Salzburg or NDR or ORF; for Danish try Classic FM Kolding (not the UK Classic FM) and so on. Not only is the language colloquial rather than academic, but as these are music stations, you get to hear a different selection of music to the British playlists

Netflix and Viki have been brilliant for watching TV in other languages. I watched a fair bit of Spanish, German and Scandinavian TV on Netflix before branching out into Korean and Mandarin shows. I was surprised by how many English and French loan words there are in Korean. Apparently there are quite a lot of German loan words in Korean due to trade links (mining/industry), but I don’t know much German so don’t spot them. Also, once I started watching Mandarin I started to spot the Mandarin loan words in Korean, as I recognised them from the Korean shows. I’d say plundering other languages is more or less universal, particularly in countries that have historic trade links or have been colonised/occupied. It’s not an English thing. The main benefit of watching TV in other languages is that after a while you ‘get your ear in’ and start noticing common phrases etc, rather than being overwhelmed by how strange and unfamiliar it sounds to your untrained ear.

Saturn-day, Sun-day, Moon-day and Jupiter's-Day are Roman. Wodin's-Day, Thor's-Day and Freya's-Day are Norse.

An aptly mished-mash.

My favourite is Baumwolle - cotton, the direct translation is tree wool.

It’s likely to do with the development of language as English steals a lot from other languages rather than make new words and how drastically English has changed in comparison to German. If you read Schiller in original and a contemporary piece for the last few years and if you read Austen in original and then a contemporary piece. (They were around approx same time-ish) the German versions don’t show that much difference where as Austen and even the later Bronte are quite difficult to read and don’t flow in comparison to today’s English. You also will find similarly literal translations in other mostly Northern European countries.

And Wagen In Leichenwagen translates as wagon or cart, not car, that’s auto.

In Sinhala, they have two words for 'to burn', one means just 'to burn', the other 'to burn something on purpose', maybe like arson, but they have a word for that... Also, two words for 'to lie' (as in not tell the truth), one 'to lie', the other 'to lie (on purpose)'.