Incidents of In My Language, That Sounds Like... specifically involving German.
- Certain American beer labels named after their (usually) 19th-century German founders tend to cause a lot of hilarity in Germany.
- Pabst, for one, shares its name with a slang (German student fraternity slang, to be precise) term for "vomitorium," which is (obviously) very popular with the same.
- Schlitz, in German, means "slit," and by obvious extension, is a slang term for "vagina." Of course, in English, it sounds an awful lot like "shits," so this is just icing on the cake.
'70s Commercial Slogan: Taste My Schlitz! - The German word for "thick"/"fat" is "dick".
- "Manko" means "flaw" or "defect". It sounds like many words in other languages: the Polish word for "fraud", the Portuguese word for "lame man" (in the sense of "unable to walk normally"), the Japanese word for "pussy", the Spanish word for "someone without an arm"...
- The German "Ass" and Polish "As", both referring to the card and The Ace.
- In German, word "Kunde" stands for customer. In Czech however...
- Modern German has the same origins as modern English, leading to some similar-sounding words: "Wer?" means "who?". "Wo?" means "where?". "Wenn" actually means "if" (or "when", see below), but "wen?" means "whom?".
- The word "wenn" means "when" or "if" in subordinate clauses ("Wir treffen uns, wenn die Uhr 12 schlägt" — "We meet when the clock strikes 12"), but the interrogative "when?" is "wann?" in German. Similarly, German "will" means "want" (as in the more formal / old-fashioned English sense of "thy will be done" and "last will and testament"), rather than "going to" (for example, "Ich will gehen" doesn't mean "I will go" but "I want to go").
- Gets more confusing when Dutch gets involved. 'Wie' (pronounced like English 'we') in Dutch is 'who', while in German it translates to 'how'. 'Hoe' (pronounced like 'who') translates to 'how' (German 'wie'). 'Waar' is Dutch for 'where', 'war' is German for 'was,' both are pronounced like the word that denotes a violent and potentially deadly conflict in English. 'Was' (German for 'what') translates to either 'wash', the first person singular past of 'to be', or 'wax' in Dutch.
- In English "still" can "not moving" ("still as a statue") or "continually" ("I'm still here"), but the German word "still" means "quiet". The English word did originally mean that as well, which is why you might occasionally encounter it used in that sense in old-fashioned texts.
- "(emotionally) sensitive" is "sensibel" in German, while "sensible" translates to "vernünftig". Although "sensible" used to have the same meaning in English, hence Sense and Sensibility.
- "Gift" means poison in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and German (Modern German usage derives from the word 'gift'-as-in-present being used as euphemism for poison in the Middle Ages).
- Signs reading "ausfahrt" (from aus, "out", and fahren, "to drive") are a common sight on German roads.
- Another non-dirty example involves a German pastor giving a Christmas guest sermon in South Africa. He made a valiant attempt at Afrikaans, too; unfortunately, this led to him saying that the shepherds were watching over their flocks by night, "en toe word die hele hemel hel" (and then all of Heaven turned into Hell). What he meant to say was, "en toe word die hele hemel helder" (and then the sky became bright). The confusion occurred because "hell" is German for "bright".
- The name "Jude" means "Jew" in German, turning the Beatles song title into "Hey Jew".
- In English countries "Jude" is typically understood as someone who practices Judaism, and does not directly refer to a Jew (this being because it is possible for someone of another faith to convert). However, given Germany's history...
- The word for "Emergency" in German is "Not". Emergency exits are thus labelled Notausgang.
- German tourists in Egypt occasionally got in trouble for saying the word Kuss — in German, it means a kiss, but in Arabic, it means, well, Country Matters.
- In Hungarian "kuss" (pronounced more like "kush") means "Shut up!". Austria and Hungary have a lot of history, so have fun imagining the confusion that must have followed a Hungarian telling an Austrian to shut up...
- In German, "Depp" means "idiot", usually of the rural variety, as in "Dorfdepp" ("village idiot"). Germans laugh more at Johnny Depp acting like a fool as Captain Jack. Reportedly, Johnny Depp has found it hilarious.
- English "pawpaw" [ˈpɔːˌpɔː], a fruit similar to a papaya (also a nickname for "Grandfather" in some parts of the US), sounds like German "Popo", "butt".
- "Fit" in Swiss German translates to something like 'awake' or 'mentally present'.
- The word written sein means "his" or "to be" in German and "breast" in French.
- Czech/Slovak/Polish/German "fakt" and Russian "факт" (all meaning "fact") are pronounced [fäkt] with open central vowel, like "fucked" in Australian English.
- For names of integers, confusion arises based on whether a language uses the short scale or the long scale
. The short scale is now standard in all varieties of modern English, while most continental European languages still use the long scale.- In German the progression "million, billion, trillion, quadrillion" is "Million, Milliarde, Billion, Billiarde". Billiarde has nothing to do with billards.
- The German word for "turkey" (the bird) is "Pute". While not pronounced the same way, it is written exactly as the French word for "whore".
- German "geh!" (go!) sounds to Polish people like "gej" (gay).
- The German word "Mist" (literally "manure", spelled and pronounced the same way as the English) is roughly equivalent to "crap" (not "shit," there's another word for that). Cue jokes about Sierra Mist here.
- Cray used to have several of its supercomputers set up for external vendors to use when porting/testing software; they were mostly named after meteorological phenomena (for example, there was a Y-MP named "Hot"). They had one named "Mist" until the German office heard about it.
- This trope occasionally also extends to mere abbreviations: In the UK and much of the rest of the world, "RAF" stands for the Royal Air Force, who valiantly fought and gloriously beat back the Nazis in WW2. In Germany, however, it instead stands for the Red Army Faction, a 1970s Communist terrorist group responsible for dozens of bombings and assassinations and decades-long nationwide manhunts and paranoia. So naturally, their connotations of "RAF" are much worse than in the UK. To avoid confusion, the British RAF and the German RAF are almost always referred to unabbreviated in Germany and the rest of the world respectively.
- A "Gymnasium" is a type of school for students between the ages of roughly 10-18. The closest US equivalent would probably be "magnet school"; there is a type of Gymnasium with a focus on sport, but it's more common for them to concentrate on humanities (including Latin, Greek, and occasionally Ancient Hebrew) or on STEM classes.
- "Hai" means "yes," "lungs," and several other things in Japanese, but means "shark" in German and Norwegian. By extension, "Hai-Alarm" means "shark alert", even though the English dub of Hai-Alarm auf Mallorca is called Shark Attack in the Mediterranean.
- The German verb "bekommen" does not mean "to become" (that's "werden"), but "to receive". If you want to say someone's had a baby you'd use the phrase "ein Kind bekommen".
- 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant's last name resembles... something decidedly non-philosophical. English-speaking philosophers, even those usually fans of Pretentious Pronunciation, pronounce his name like in "decant"; the authentic German pronunciation is more like the vulgar term when said in an Australian Accent.
- The German and Dutch word for "yes" is "ja", causing some confusion in Japan, where "iya" means "no" or "I don't want". "Ja" or "ya" is also the Russian first-person personal pronoun (I).
- The English word "vixen" sounds like "wichsen", the German word for "to masturbate". Although this is somewhat reciprocated in the English word "fox," this word in German being "(der) Fuchs" and is pronounced similarly to the English "fucks".
- Fuchs is a German family name... and yes, "Fucks" and "Fuck" are possible spellings of it.
- "Fahrt" means "drive" or "trip" in German (Rundfahrt = round trip). The actual translation of "fart" is "Furz".
- The German word for a mobile phone is "ein Handy". In English, "handy" is an adjective meaning "useful" (of a thing) or "skilled (especially in the use of tools)" (of a person) in all dialects, and a noun meaning "a handjob" in many of not most dialects. Native German speakers seem to find it particularly easy to slip up on this one, perhaps because the word is directly borrowed from English.
- The mare of Germanic folklore is not a female horse, but a demon that brings bad dreams, hence the cognate nightmare. The Filipino analogue is the batibat, which is not to be confused with Count von Count's happy dance.
- There's a German surname (and at least one company) "Niggermann".
- In German, "Geld" means money. In English, "geld" means something else.
- The German word "scharf" means "sharp" (or, for food, hot/spicy), but looks like English "scarf". In German, "scarf" is "Schal"... which looks and sounds like English "shall (do something)", but is an actual cognate of "shawl".
- Also in German, "month" is "Monat", which to English speakers (especially art fans) looks like a misspelling of the French surname Monet.
- German "brav" looks like English "brave", but means "good" or "honest".
- Men named Todd will face problems in German-speaking countries; "der Tod" is German for "death".
- German "Ebene" ("plain" or "plane") and "eben" ("just so"), cognates to English "even", sound like Bulgarian "ебане" [ebane], "[the act of] fucking". Ditto for English "ebb".
- Germans, especially former East Germans, saying "cheers" ("Prost") should be aware that this means "uncultured/stupid [man]" in Bulgarian.
- The German for "Christian" (the noun) is "Christ", and the German for "Christ" is the Latin-derived "Christus". Since in German you don't have to say "I am a Berliner/teacher/Christian" but can just say "I am Berliner/teacher/Christian", this means the German for "I am a Christian" can be rendered as "Ich bin Christ".
- In English "commode" usually means a commode chair or a toilet. In German "Kommode" means a chest of drawers. Adding to the confusion, "commode" in English can mean a chest of drawers too, but almost everyone will think of the first and more common definition.
- In German "Bildung" has nothing to do with buildings; it means "education" (bilden means "to form" and "Bildung" therefore literally means "formation", so it does come from the same root as "building"). "Bild", meanwhile, means "picture".
- A "Bildungsroman" isn't necessarily a book about Roman architecture. It's a German loanword that literally means "education novel". It also isn't necessarily a book about education, though that often is mentioned; nowadays books in the genre are more likely to be labelled "coming-of-age".
- On a similar subject, "novel" in German is "der Roman". It's related to "romance" rather than referring to the inhabitants of Rome.
- The German word "weiss/weiß" means both "white" (as in "Edelweiss") and "know" (as in the fairly common phrase "ich weiss", or "I know"). It sounds like the English word "vice" (which can mean anything from shockingly immoral behaviour to a minor character flaw).
- The German word for "hat" provides two-for-the-price-of-one potential confusion for English speakers: it's spelled "Hut", like the English word for a small house, and pronounced "hoot", like the noise owls make. This led to the German branch of Pizza Hut having a hat as its symbol; Germans kept misreading it and they just ran with that.
- To English speakers the name of the German supermarket Lidl sounds like someone with a strong accent trying to pronounce the word "little".
- "Lidl" is also pronounced extremely similar to Cantonese for "here" (呢度) note , which leads to confusion when asking for directions.
- "Toll" in English means either a fee or the noise a bell makes. "Toll" in German means "great". To add to the confusion, the German word sounds similar to the English word "tall". "Tall" in German is "groß"... which sounds like the English word "gross" ("disgusting"). Both "groß" and "gross" come from a Latin root meaning large or coarse in size, but the English word went off in its own direction, similar to "vulgar".
- "Schmuck" is both German for "jewellery" and American slang for "idiot"note (hence the trope Schmuck Bait).
- The Anglo-Scots surname Ferguson, "son of Fergus" (an old Gaelic given name meaning "angry one"), sounds like the German verb vergessen, "to forget". Better yet, Sean Ferguson sounds like "I've already forgotten" in Moselle-Franconian German as well as Yiddish.
- "Silit" is a brand of German cooking utensils... and a Javanese word for "anus."
- Mark Twain wrote an essay called "The Awful German Language" which included examples of this trope that confused and angered him, such as in a passage in which an infuriated tigress utterly ate up the unfortunate fir-forest (Tannenwald, actually a man's name in that instance), and some that delighted him, like the words "also" (a conversational spacer corresponding to "you know") and "damit" (meaning "herewith").
- In English "deck" means "the floor of a ship". In German "Decke" means "ceiling" or "blanket".
- "Stapler" is German for "forklift". As in the work safety parody film Staplerfahrer Klaus.
- The German word "beliebt" looks and sounds similar to English "believed" but actually means "popular" (literally "beloved").
- The German words "Asien", "Australien", "Italien" etc. look and sound like the English words "Asian", "Australian", "Italian" etc., but actually mean "Asia", "Australia", "Italy" etc. Some of them are also homonymous with French words like "Italien" and "Australien", which again are the demonyms, not the countries.
- In German, "prägnant" means "concise". It sounds exactly like the English word "pregnant", which in German is "schwanger".
- "weniger" sounds like "vinegar" but actually means "less". Adding to the confusion, it's often used in the context of food — someone just starting to learn German might assume "weniger Schnitzel essen" means "to eat vinegar schnitzel" (which isn't an actual dish, but presumably would be schnitzel made with a lot of vinegar) when it really means "to eat less schnitzel".
- Many German words are sort of semi-false friends, in that they do closely resemble their English counterparts (or a word with a similar meaning), but actually look or sound more like something else.
- "Frei" means "free", but sounds exactly like "fry".
- "See" doesn't mean "see", but "lake". Think "sea".
- The basis of a thousand jokes: the word for "no" is "nein", which sounds exactly like "nine" (they're even anagrams). Think "none".
- This particular overloading required changing the NATO phonetic alphabet used in aviation. "nine" was made "niner" so that German radio operators would not confuse it for "nein".
- On the other hand, German words for numbers sometimes sound more like other words in English: drei (three — sounds like "dry"), vier (four, sounds like "fear"), sechs (six, sounds like the way a German would say "sex") and elf (eleven).
- "Boot" in German has nothing to do with footwear — it means "boat". (So Das Boot is just The Boat.) And its plural, "Boote", can elicit snickers because it sounds similar to the English word "booty".
- "Feind" sounds like "find", but means "enemy". Think "fiend".
- "male" (pronounced with two syllables unlike in English) is German for "to paint". "malt" is also German for "to paint".note They look exactly like the English words for "opposite of female" and "ingredient in beer" respectively.
- "Chef" is German for "boss" or "chief". Made more confusing because the German equivalent of the English word "chef" is "der Küchenchef".
- "Sold" in German means "wages; pay". The equivalent of the English word "sold" is "verkauft".
- "leer" means "empty" in German and "a lascivious, unpleasant look" in English. It also means "to read" in Spanish and "doctrine, discipline" in Dutch and Afrikaans.
- In German "fast" means "almost" and "bald" means "soon". (The German equivalents of the English words are "schnell" and "glatzköpfig" respectively.)
- "Nachname" means "surname". (French meanwhile has the exact inverse: "surnom" means "nickname".note )
- "Ohrring" (German for "earring") sounds exactly like "O-ring" (a mechanical gasket).
- A "Nicker" is a style of German hunting knife. In English orthography, "knickers" sounds almost exactly the same except for always being plural, but instead it's the casual British term for women's underpants. And despite sounding like English "nick" (a small cut, or the act of making a small cut), the knife is named after a German hunting term (abnicken, the act of stabbing a wounded animal in the back of the neck).
- The word "Panzer" means literally "armor", though it also refers to armored vehicles, such as the German tanks used during World War II. It's pronounced very similar to the Spanish "panza", which means "belly".
- The phrase "Wir suchen dich!" (pronounced "veer ZU-hen deeh") means "We're looking for you!" in German, and is commonly used on hiring advertisements. English-speaking readers who try to pronounce it phonetically may assume they're talking about oral sex.
- "offen" sounds exactly like the English word "often" but actually means "open". The German word for "often" is "oft", which is also a poetic/somewhat antiquated way of saying "often" in English.
- "Benzene" in English means an aromatic cyclic hydrocarbon, whereas "Benzin" in German means gasoline, i.e. the mixture of aliphatic hydrocarbons used to fuel automobiles.
- "Spaß", meaning "fun", sounds like "spaz", an ableist slur derived from "spastic".
- German loch (hole) and Gaelic loch (lake).
- The Bavarian greeting "Grüß Gott" (shortened from "grüße dich Gott" - "may God bless/greet you") is often shortened further to "'ß Gott", sounding nigh-identical to English "Scot(t)". Combined with the Bavarian habit of greeting anyone met while hiking/wandering that way, and the popularity of the Alps internationally for that very purpose, this has supposedly led to some confusion amongst English speakers...
- "der Arm" (notice the definite article and capital letter) is a noun and means "the arm", exactly as you'd expect. But "arm" (notice the lowercase letter) is an adjective and means "poor; lacking money".
- "beißen/beissen" means "to bite". It sounds very similar to English "bison" (a large animal of the bovine family).
- "Lied" ("song") is spelt like the English word meaning "said something untrue" but pronounced "leed". "Leid" is pronounced like the English "lied" but means "sorrow; grief".
- "Oma" is German for "granny". Omagh (pronounced almost identically; the gh is silent) is a town in Northern Ireland.
- "der Knöchel" means "the knuckle", as you'd expect, but it also means "the ankle". Now imagine going to the doctor and trying to explain which joint is sore... (Though the synonyms "Fußknöchel" ("foot-ankle") and "Fingerknöchel" ("finger-ankle") can be used if there's any confusion.)
- "ups" in English is either a delivery service or a synonym for "highs" (as in the phrase "ups and downs"). "ups" in German is the equivalent of "oops". This is only confusing in writing, because the German word is pronounced "oops".
- "streng" means "strict, stern", not "strong". The German word for "strong" is "stark" — providing its own source of confusion, because "stark" in English means "completely" (most often used in the phrase "stark naked").
- "Igel" is a homophone of "eagle", but means "hedgehog".
- "Kurz" means "short". It's pronounced exactly like the Slovenian swearword "kurc", which means "dick".
- The Japanese word shinken/真剣 ("serious; earnest") sounds like the German word "Schinken" (ham).
- "los" means "loose" in German, and is often used in the phrase "Was ist los?" ("What's wrong?"). "los" in Polish means "fate; lot".
- "aktuell" means "current", not "actually" (which is "eigentlich").
- Some words that look like they're related to English words aren't, or are but not in the way you'd think. Like "Fremde"; it looks like it might mean "friend", but it actually means "strangers". (A related word, "fremd", used to exist in English, where it meant "strange; unusual". It's long since become obsolete, except in some Scottish and Northern English dialects. But "fremd" still exists in German, where it means "foreign".)
- "Wiese" (meadow) sounds like English "visa" (thing you need when travelling).
