I have a daily calendar that has bits and pieces of Onion stories. Here’s the one from Monday:
What Are We Feeling That Would Be Better Expressed In German?
1. Dread of something inevitable yet benign:
Fuerchtenünabwendbarfreundlich
2. The wish to see all suffer for the crimes of one:
Schadenallemeinverbrechen
3. Laughter at something one knows in one’s soul is not funny:
Lachenaüfkomishsnichtspaßheit
4. Shame over eating last piece of Black Forest cherry cake:
Schwarzschamekirshkuchenessen
well the composite nouns they fabricated there are mostly gibberish. But I suppose a little funny
none of these words make any sense in german. someone had a little fun with babelfish, it seems.
eg, in number 4:
- "black forest cherry cake" is translated wrong (correct: schwarzwälder kirschtorte)
- shame is wrong (schame isn’t german)
- miracle of miracles: they got "eating" right (essen).
you can have fun with german composite words. this is not an example.
This studd doesn’t really make any sense, does it? I try to translate back to englisch:
1. Dreadinevitablefriendly
2. Harmallmycrime
3. Laughonweirdnotfunnieness
4. Black?????eatcherrycake
None of the initial english sentences can be expressed with a german word I think, so this isn’t really funny.
an old example of how long german composite nouns can get is "Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitänsmützenknopf", which means "button on the cap of a steamboat captain on the danube"
still not really funny, but at least correct.
Though living in northern germany and being a native german, I even had problems understanding the nouns at first glance. So people shouldn’t take these words for german at all…Especially since the spelling is horrible…