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Krankenwagen = sick car = ambulance

Krankenhaus = sick house = hospital

German (as well as most of the germanic family) does word construction really well.

It’s exactly the same in Thai:
ตู้ “dtuu” - Cupboard
เย็น “yen” - cool
ตู้เย็น “dtuu•yen” - Refrigerator

Really, nobody is going to point out that "cupboard" = "cup" + "board"?

German is wild. Sometimes its like the spacebar was never invented and you get such beauties as Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaugabenübertragungsgesetz

English is the funny north German dialect that moved to an island and went mental.

Mehrfamilienhaus = more families house / apartment

Why new words when old words good?

I never get why glove is handschuh rather than handsocke.

Undersea boat is my favorite German word. Why make a new word when you can mash shit together?

House - Haus

Animal - Tier

Pet - Haustier

I suspect every language does this to some extent. Some good examples from Japanese:

靴 = shoes 下 = under 靴下 = socks

手 = hand 紙 = paper 手紙 = letter

歯 = teeth 車 = wheel 歯車 = cog / gear

火 = fire 山 = mountain 火山 = volcano

Sadly (?) the Japanese compounds are often only compounds of the symbols, not the spoken words.

If you like this you’ll love Chinese! A language where books were printed with literal blocks of wood!

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Yes, and the language works this way too:

电 (diàn) : lightning

脑 (nǎo) : brain

电脑 : computer

Ah yes, the re-frigid-air-inator

Norway has some of the allegedly most unhinged word constructions via "cake". It had the modern meaning of a baked sweet, but also any sorta roundish cooked thing that is not sweet, and the old meaning of "any hard lumped mass".

So we have, in order of descending sanity:

• Bløtkake - soft cake, sponge cake
• Småkake - small cake, cookie
• Kjøttkake - meat cake, ground meat patties
• Fiskekake - fish cake, ground fish meat patties
• Oljekake - oil cake, lump of mass left after pressing oil out of linseeds
• Blodkake - blood cake, lump of dried blood
• Morkake - mother cake, placenta
• Kukake - cow cake, cow poop

icebox is sorta similar.

English really is the weird one in this. Constructing new words with old ones makes a lot more sense than just stealing the words from other languages and mashing them in without changing much

Afrikaans:

Vries - Freeze Kas - Cupboard/Closet

Vrieskas -> Freezer

Ys - Ice Kas - Cupboard/Closet

Yskas -> Fridge 🤷

Troetel - Cuddle / Pet (verb) / pamper Dier - Animal

Troeteldier -> Pet animal

Duik - Dive Boot - Boat

Duikboot -> submarine

Now do Gloves = Handschuhe

Hand Shoes!

So like "icebox"?

Mandarin-Chinese:

冰 = ice
箱 = box
冰箱 = ice box (refrigerator/freezer)

or in Cantonese:

雪 = snow
櫃 = cabinet
雪櫃 = snow cabinet (refrigerator/freezer)

usually 上層 "upper level" is used to indicate the freezing part (急凍/雪藏), like where you out ice cream, for example; 下層 "lower level" is used to refer to the non-freezing part, like where you put fruits, for example. Because every fridge we had was designed like that.

Also fun fact: 電腦 means "electric" + " brain" (aka: computer)

飛機 = "flying" + "machine" (aka: airplane)

Feel free to ask questions. I'm bored and wanna see how much I know.

Sorry for the you tube link, but it's too relevant: When people speak English but with German grammar.

English is so pathetic. A Cupboard is not a board and it's not just for cups. Then they add insult to injury by just failing to coin the word chillgrill.

Ich liebe diese handgedrechselten Umlaute 💖