| Birte Priebe |
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 This week's term I only stumbled upon a few days ago. And it's a pretty straightforward pick, unlike the Japanese "medical patient" we looked at last time. The Russians use the German Vorposten (picket, forward post) in the form of форпост ("forpost"), without any change in meaning.
The image is from www.vimeo.com.
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 This week's pick really makes me wonder about the differences between traditional Japanese and Western medicine. Apparently, the Japanese didn't have their own word for somebody who is ill - der/die Kranke in German. Otherwise, why would they have had to adopt the German word and turn it into クランケ (kuranke)? Admittedly, this seems to mean "(medical) patient" in Japanese, so it probably has a more specific meaning than the German original. But even considering this I'm still no wiser when it comes to how the Japanese view illness.
The image is from www.ecareer.ne.jp. 
This week something we can probably all relate to: time pressure, the feeling of running out of time. The Russians use a German term for this that originally came from chess - цейтнот (pronounced approximately "tseytnoot"). The German is Zeitnot. The illustration above is an ad for "How to leave time pressure and procrastination behind".
The image is from www.mariyaleontieva.com. 
The dachshund is a German breed originally destined to flush out badgers (Dachse) or foxes from their burrows. Hund is the German for dog. In Germany, however, these dogs are more commonly known as Dackel or, to hunters, as Teckel. The English plural is dachshunds, another one of those plurals that sound so wrong to German ears (the plural of the German Hund is Hunde). There is no standard pronunciation of dachshund in English - varieties abound.
As soon as you start digging a little deeper into the dachshund issue, a whole new world of terminology opens up, and there is even some more German to be found: There are three sizes of dachshund, one of which is called kaninchen in English - the German for "rabbit". The image is from www.enchantedlearning.com. |
AboutThis is a blog about the traces German (my mother tongue) has left in other languages. Contributions from your language(s) are more than welcome! Mail me at b.priebe@aiic.net. Archives
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