12 shining German difference we won’t find in English

1. Verabredet

Photo: DPA

Germans don’t usually determine to accommodate adult during two, and afterwards rest on their mobile phones to explain since they’re late. They make definitely clear, evident appointments. And afterwards they report themselves as “verabredet.” “You are late. We were verabredet. we am simply not bargain this.” It’s an verb that defines a whole culture.

2. Fahne

Photo: DPA

This does not usually meant flag. It’s also a special form of dwindle that flutters in your face and stings your eyes when a drunkard tells we he always desired her, we know, honestly, unequivocally desired her, notwithstanding how it looks. “Please call that Fahne somewhere else.”

3. Drachenfutter

Photo: DPA

You’ve stayed out late and we weren’t ostensible to. Your mom has put a kids to bed, done your dinner, and given it to a dog. What we need is Drachenfutter – a present that will, literally, feed a dragon, antiquated sexist interpretations of gender roles notwithstanding. “Oh no, we wish a late-night emporium is open. I’m positively off my face and we need some Drachenfutter.”

4. Kummerspeck

Photo: DPA

The English have “comfort food,” though a ever-thorough Germans have taken that judgment to a apparent biological conclusion. Kummerspeck, literally “sorrow bacon,” is a additional bulges that rise once you’ve consumed too most comfort.

“Is that Kummerspeck, or are we usually gratified to see me?”

5. Fremdschämen

Photo: DPA

This is a truly critical word, blank from English, and indeed each denunciation in a star (probably) – solely German. It means to be ashamed FOR someone else. How mostly have we wanted to demonstrate that feeling in one neat, ideal word? “Yes, we was really fremdgeschämt when Donald trump got a date of a US choosing wrong.”

6. Rabenmutter

Photo: DPA

In gripping with their 19th century picture of family roles, Germans have a special word for a bad mum. It literally means “raven mother.” Apparently baby ravens in a furious eat zero though ketchup and are authorised to play with scissors. “Look, that child has not got a shawl on and it’s next 20 degrees Celsius. What a Rabenmutter.”

7. Pechvogel/Glückspilz

Photo: DPA

In a Germans’ lopsided picture of a universe, a bird, mountainous giveaway by a sky, is an detrimental beast, though to be a fungus is a predestine compared with good fortune. It’s fun to be a fungi. “Oh no, my fungi has ceased to grow. we am such a Pechvogel.” Pech means bad fitness and Glück is good luck. See if we can work a rest out yourselves.

8. Quergebäude

Photo: DPA

Germans, it turns out, have specific names for opposite tools of a building, mostly since of a structure of blocks of flats in Germany. There’s a Vorderhaus (front bit), a Seitenflügel (side bit), a Hinterhof (back bit) and something called a Quergebäude, that is, erm, a opposite bit. Quer means across, and can also be used as in a splendidly verbatim term querlegen – to obstruct.

9. Handschuhschneeballwerfer

Photo: DPA

Everyone hates a doormat peaceful to impugn and abuse from a protected distance. The Germans proportion that chairman with a lowest of a low: a one who wears gloves when throwing snowballs. As distant as they’re concerned, a snowball quarrel is not a snowball quarrel until someone gets frostbite.

10. Treppenwitz

Photo: DPA

Another smashing German word, for a bittersweet conditions informed to everybody on a planet. The Treppenwitz, literally “stair-joke,” is a shining quip we consider of when you’re already out of a doorway and median down a stairs. “And you, sir, are a prick! Ach! If usually I’d suspicion of that during a time!”

11. Verschlimmbessern

Photo: DPA

There’s being ham-fisted, or putting your feet in it, or there’s usually plain clumsiness, though in German there’s a really specific act of verschlimmbessern, that is when we make something worse in a really act of perplexing to urge it. “Oh no, that additional square of cheesecake, distant from being nutritious, has just verschlimmbessert my digestive tract.”

12. Radfahrer

Photo: DPA

This is a deceptively elementary word that weirdly hints during German’s darkest perversion. It usually means cyclist, though in some German circles it refers to an worker who sucks adult to his superiors while treading on his inferiors, so imitating a viewpoint of a cyclist. Not literally. That would be truly horrid.