This week, let's take a look at one of the most well-known Germanisms in the English language: schadenfreude, commonly defined as "pleasure at the misfortune of others." This is the original German meaning. Apparently, the English language now even boasts an invented inversion of schadenfreude: freudenschade. It is supposed to mean "sorrow at another person's success" (see the English-language Wikipedia entry on schadenfreude.) This word hasn't made it back into the German vocabulary (and I suppose it never will, since it does not make much sense to a German speaker.)

The image is from www.cambridge.org.

This week, an example from France. The large WWII bunkers that dot the French coast (part of the Nazi's famous Atlantic Wall) are know as blockhaus in French. In German military terminology, a Blockhaus is a defensive strong point, a blockhouse. However, a layperson will usually call these buildings Bunker, and think of a house made of squared logs when they hear the term Blockhaus. So, when I came across the blockhaus (in French, this is also the plural) in Brittany, I was at a loss as to why the French were calling these huge bunkers blockhaus. One lives and learns. 

My thanks go to my former colleague Dora Strinkau for reminding me of this term.

The image is from www.militaria.collector.free.fr.

This week's term is courtesy of my colleague Alexander Drechsel, who thankfully even provided me with the picture to go with it. What you see here is the 2007 "barcode building" in St. Petersburg, Russia, by Vitruvius and Sons Studio. In Russian, it's called штрих код (usually spelled штрих-код or штрихкод, "shtrikh-kod"), which is the Russian version of the German Strichcode. Funny enough, while the Russians use a word of German origin, more and more Germans seem to prefer Barcode to Strichcode.

The image is from http://io9.com/buildings-designed-to-look-like-barcodes-569396673/all. 

A while ago we had vorspiel, now let's take a look at nachspiel. Both are interesting cases because what they are used for in Norwegian differs considerably from their original meaning. The most common meaning of Nachspiel in German is "unpleasant consequences." The Norwegians, however, use it for something potentially very enjoyable - "after-party". And so the three founders of moods of Norway apparently developed their international brand from an idea they conceived over a few glasses of pricey Norwegian alcohol - at least that's what they claim above. 

The image is from www.slideshare.net.