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My favorite German word

Jill

schnurrbart

Schnurrbart. It means “mustache.” According to my German teacher, it actually translates into something like “cat beard.” How fantastic is that?

(I learned it because one of my professors has a rad schnurrbart).

What’s your favorite non-English word?

74 thoughts on My favorite German word

  2. I love those beard/moustache competition guys they have in Germany. “Catbeard” is cool. I thought it was “nosebeard.”

    My favorite non-English word is the Russian word for “Russia.”

    Россия, pronounced ‘ross-ee-ya,’ with a slightly rolled ‘r.’ It just sounds like a nice, lyrical, kind of fairy-tale sort of place.

  3. Oh, that’s easy: humu­humu­nuku­nuku­āpua`a. State fish of Hawai’i. Tiny fish. Really big word.

    Though it’s not actually the longest name for a fish in Hawaiian. That honor goes to the noble lauwiliwilinukunukuʻoiʻoi.

  5. it’s not one word in particular, but Norwegian has something like 8 words all of which mean different varieties of cozy. you can really tell what’s important to norwegians (cuddling, hugs, comfy couches, fireplaces in the winter, a nice family dinner, an oversized sweater) when they have that many ways to describe the coze.

  6. Norwegian has something like 8 words all of which mean different varieties of cozy.

    Oooh, I want to move to Norway right now. Any place with 8 words for comfy has got to be good.

    Re: Schnurrbart, I don’t want to contradict an actual German on the language, but, I had the impression that “schnurren” was what a happy cat did, not the word for “cat” itself. That is, a Schnurrbart would be a purr-beard. I think.

  7. Yeah, Dianne, I think you’re right about “purr-beard.” It’s still pretty cool, but I like “cat-beard” better. My professor has a fabulous cat-beard.

  8. I’m going to put in a vote for two Hindi words:
    puggaree, meaning turban (killjoys will spell it pagri)
    petersilly, meaning parsley

    one Afrikaans one:
    papiervampier, meaning stapler (= paper vampire)

    and one Dutch one:
    slagroom, meaning whipped cream

  9. I love that the Japanese have a word for ‘hello’ that they use only when answering the telephone. the fact that it is moshi moshi is just icing on the cake.

  10. Popty-ping. Meaning ‘microwave’ in welsh, it directly translates as ‘oven that goes ping’. Can also be used as a verb: f’rinstance, ‘team x popty-pinged team y with a score of 8-0.’.

  11. Geeking out: In the STNG episode where Picard relives his youth, the Nossicans (who wanted to play a billiards-like game for serious money) tell him “you talk and you talk, but you have no grambah“.

  12. There’s a german word that means “someone who deserves a punch in the face” but I can’t remember it off-hand. I’ll have to go look it up.

    As for me, I get my blogging name from the Latin perfect form of “tango,” to touch, which is “tetigi.” My first Latin prof told me that you could use an emphatic form of “you” and say “tete tetigi,” “I totally touched you!”

  15. piripi. spanish for tipsy. “i’m feeling piripi” (while making one sound like a bit of a pompous ass for using other languages) just fits, somehow. piripi encapsulates all the fun of tipsiness without any of the implications of hangovers. plus, it’s a fun word to say when intoxicated!

  16. There’s a german word that means “someone who deserves a punch in the face” but I can’t remember it off-hand. I’ll have to go look it up.

    “A face that cries out for a fist in it” — backpfeifengesicht.

    My favorites, both German:
    Staubsauger (vacuum cleaner)
    Spulmaschine (dishwasher)

    They might not look that impressive, but man, when they’re being said….

  17. Hmm, I like the Japanese tekitou, which means appropriate, because it’s fun to say. And oppai, which is the Japanese word for boobs.

  18. backpfeifengesicht

    Thank you thank you, annejumps! My old roommate and I used to shout that at each other, and I was totally blanking on it. Now I have to call him and shout it at him.

    My other favorite German word is “auspuff” which means “muffler.” It’s so descriptive.

  20. I wonder if your German teacher is joking with you. It’s true that the German verb “schnurren” means “purr.” However, the German word for “mustache” is “Schnurbart,” spelled with only one “r.”

    The word “Schnur” means “line,” “string,” or “cord”; it has nothing to do with cats. So a “Schnurbart” is a “line beard,” a more-or-less literal description of what a simple mustache looks like.

  22. Impayable. It’s French for “pricelessly amusing,” and there’s something ineffably Gallic about the sheer snarkiness you can express with it.

  24. Chinese has good words that translate awesome. My favorite are electrical things. Electric: dian

    Television: dian shi (electric vision)
    movies: dian ying (electric shadow)
    computer: dian nao (electric brain)

    Tai hao le!

  25. Azundris:

    Mia culpa, you are right about the spelling. I don’t trust Wikipedia very much, but I looked up the word in several German-English dictionaries, and the double “r” is there.

    Apparently, my German friends who years ago explained to me that the word translates into “line mustache” were joking with me (or perhaps they were less than perfect spellers of their native language).

  26. i really like Xhosa (sometimes written in english as !hosa, which is even better). The ! is a click, it’s the name of a South African Language.

  27. Other fun German words:

    Essen. Not in itself, but in the third person singular, it becomes “isst”, which is pronounced just like “ist”, which means is. So one can say, “Isst man Abendessen oder ist man Abendessen?” An appropriate question for a species that is a midlevel predator.

    Also “Geldautomat” (ATM). Tends to make english speaking men wince the first time they hear it. And we won’t even get into what Mariahimmeslsfahrt sounds like to an english speaker.

  28. Second on the pamplemousse. That never fails to crack me up. Also a fan of funeste, which sorta means disastrous, or something causing unhappiness and loss. Also, the Russian word for the soft symbol, miyakiy znak. In the instrumental case (I think), that becomes miyakim znakem, which is pretty much endlessly amusing.

  29. i live in Tejas, so Spanish is my favorite foreign language, despite my feeble and inneffective atttempts to actually learn it. so my favorite words are those i hear from the SAP during NBA games (which i use to avoid hearing the convicted-rapist announcer who broadcasts the games in English). my favorite is when a player hits a 3 pointer and the announcer says “Cataboom!” which is not actually a word, probably, but a sound effect. still, it sounds great with a Spanish accent.

    so my favorite actual word is the Spanish word for “thunderstorms”, it’s fantastic: “tormentas.” sounds really dire!

  30. I always loved cacahuates, which is spanish for peanuts. My nick here is japanese for the color, which I love not just because it’s my favorite color, but also because it’s made up entirely of vowels. :o)

  32. Yea, it’s Schnurrbart. What always cracks me up is Oliba, short for Oberlippenbart, a beard only on the upper lip. I hate the look but I love the word.

  33. pamplemousse exists in German as Pampelmuse. And yes, “Muse” is the same as in English, so it makes you wonder what kind of art Pampeling is, anyway. Maybe, they meant Pümpelmuse?

  35. Well, it’s “El Paso” in American Sign Language. But since I can’t explain it, I’ll go with “schmutz” which is Yiddish for dirt. Just because it sounds dirtier and…schmutzier…in Yiddish.

  36. Lala = Mandarin slang for lesbian (la1 by itself is like “pull”. one “la”s the violin, for instance. it just makes me think…ow?”)

    My girlfriend and I find this much more amusing that the actual term for homosexual!

  37. “Shloonak?”
    It’s Arabic (used in Iraq) for “How are you?” though a literal translation of it is something like “What’s your color today?”

  38. Schmutz is also used in German, just schmutzier would be schmutziger.

    If this goes on at this pace Jill won’t need her German teacher much longer 😉

  39. …I am so bookmarking this.

    Sadly, all my favorite foreign words are in dead languages. I’m not sure that quite fits the topic.

    papiervampier, meaning stapler (= paper vampire)

    Oh, that’s fantastic. I think I’ll teach that to any impressionable youngsters I come across.

  40. lala = Mandarin slang for lesbian

    Great, now I’ve got that playing in my head, La- la- lesbienne rather than, Ra- Ra- Rasputine (Russia’s greatest love machine). Thanks ever so bloody much! =^_^=

    “Shloonak?” … “How are you?” [but literally] “What’s your color today?”

    Totally awesome! 🙂 Noted for later use! 🙂

  41. Hehe, a friend just told me that the thing to remove the bent metal straps (Klammern) from a papiervampier is called Klammervampir.

  42. Everyone’s already contributed most of my favourite words from my other languages, so I’ll contribute some of my favourite Hebrew words:

    shemesh — sunshine (this only has three letters in Hebrew and two of them are the same ש )
    pitzutz — explosion… piku’im (terrorist attacks) often involve lots of pitzutzim
    pagashti — I met (someone). For extra mouth-rolling goodness, say “Pagashti et Vashti,” or “I met Vashti.” Actually, almost all those first-person past tense verbs in that pattern are pretty good — halakhti (I walked), shalakhti (I sent), lamadti (I learnt)…
    Misken(ah) — Poor, unfortunate (in either the masculine or feminine grammatical gender)

    My favourite Japanese word of all time is probably “Sai’te!” which, since it means “It sucks!” is probably also the most useful Japanese word of all time.

  44. For extra mouth-rolling goodness — Interrobang

    I dunno what kinda Jew I am — my mouth simply cannot handle the mouth-rolling goodness of Hebrew … you should hear me stumble over Torah readings, etc.

    I guess it’s a genetic thing — to look at me, you wouldn’t think I’d have a shred of Semitic background. I guess most of my family must have been Germans, Vikings, Balts, Sky Turks, Celts, Slavs or what have you that converted to Judaism way, way back when. I guess along with my light skin, freckles and red hair comes an inability to pronounce Hebrew (even on prayers I read over and over, so I’ve trained my mouth to pronounce them, I end up sounding like a Yeshiva Bocher straight out of the Pale)?

    I usually would have tons of Yiddish words to add to a conversation like this, but somehow I am at a loss (my brain is fried from too much paper writing at work?). So I’ll give my dad’s favorite German word: auspuff — exhaust. It sounds onomatopoeic even though I reckon it isn’t.

  46. “Schnurrbart” actually means “purr beard” (and it is spelled with two r’s)–it mimicks the way cats flex their whiskers when purring (“schnurren”). Call me the German smartass here, but “Ordnung muss sein.”

    My favorite non-English (and non-German) word is, I think, the Turkish “bitti” for “done, finished, nothing left.” It’s so short, means so much, and sounds so cute. And my English “hate word” is “sugar”–can’t stand the way it sounds. Brrr ….

  47. One of my favorites is the Mandarin ke neng.

    You can use it to mean either “maybe” or “probably.” Now imagine a bunch of American students in their first year of Chinese study trying to wrap their heads around that one.

  51. I’m fond of “lavaplatos”, which is Spanish for dishwasher — it literally means “wash-plates”, and always reminds me of the word for banana, which is “platano”. In my head I always wind up with lavaplatanos, which either involves a volcano, or washes your bananas for you.

  52. “L’esprit de l’escalier” — love that word/phrase. It’s the story of my life. *sigh* Not to mention I totally can never remember it, so THANK YOU Antinome!

    Schlep — unless this is faux Yiddish, I believe it means “to lug”, as opposed to “to carry”. This is appropriate for so much of my life…

    Anything Gaelic/Irish, just because the spoken word and the written word are so mind-blowingly different. AND it sounds vaguely Norwegian when spoken, at least the recordings I’ve heard did — similar vowel sounds, and a very familiar lilt. That tickles me no end as a Minnesota Scandahouvian of Norwegian background. 😉

    Language is my favorite thing *ever*, so I have a very hard time picking out particular words that I love. Thank you for starting this thread! I’m going to have to save it somehow. 🙂

  53. Just about any word in Yiddish (which I do not speak, but I’ve picked up some words here and there, mostly from my father’s side of the family)…verklempt (overcome with emotion) springs to mind. It is such a rich, descriptive, emotive language. I could go on, but…oy! Who has the time? 😉

  55. Yeah, I definitely dig Yiddish, and have incorporated a number of words into my daily life, such as schmuck, schmutz, schmear, verklempt, fakakte (sp?), and schtupp.

    And I’m not even Jewish.

  56. The word that sticks out in my mind is tovagliolo. It is Italian for napkin. I just have a really hard time saying this word, I don’t know why.

  58. In keeping with our German theme, “narrenfreiheit.” “The jester’s freedom.” So appropriate in so many situations.

  60. I can’t believe no one’s spoken up for schadenfreude yet.

    Actually, I think that one was just considered a given on this blog. 😉 I *do* like the word, though — it has a cool sound to go along with the meaning.

  61. My favorite word in French is divertissement. It means a diversion or little amusement to pass the time.

    My favorite Yiddish word is meshugeneh, or crazy. Meshugeneh just sounds crazy.

  64. sonrisa=smile. It just sounds like a smile…

    Spanish words for gay:

    maricon (butterfly) ma’flora (lit. ‘more flowers)–these I like, but I don’t like ‘joto/jota.

  65. I remember reading in one of John Ciardi’s books that the term in some language or another for ball-bearing translates as “spherical cushion”, but can no longer remember what language that is or what the term is. Anybody?

  66. I’ve always liked the Finnish word “huvikseni”. You’d use it as an answer to the question “Why did you do [whatever]?” if you didn’t really have reason beyond “for fun” or “for the hell of it” or “just because”. I think it literally means “to amuse myself”.

  67. I so second Handschuhe. Also backpfeifengesicht.

    Some of my favorite German words are words for animals, such as Stinktier = skunk (stinky animal), and Krabbeltier = bug (creepy-crawly animal). I’ve also always been fond of Krankenschwester = nurse (sister to the sick).

  68. I also seem to remember that there is a word in German, a complicated one like schadenfreude, that describes the sadness or disappointment one feels when something could have turned out really badly, but instead turned out really well. Any takers?

    ps. Stachelschwein = porcupine (sticky pig)!

  69. My dad was stationed in Germany during the 60s-70s, and was also vastly amused by the the word for glove being “hand-shoe.” So he and his buddies would jokingly use the word “kophschuhe” (head-shoe) for “hat”, and the Germans did *not* think that was funny. At all.

  71. My american friend recommended this site to me and I’m so glad she did. Had so much fun reading all your remarks.
    I am german and my favourite word is “Sehnsucht”. “sehnen” is means “to yearn/ long for sth./sb.” and “Sucht” means “addiction”. “Being addicted to yearning”, how nice is that. I LOVE the word, it’s so beautiful.

    My favourite english word would be “procrastination”, which in german would be “Aufschieberitis” (a neologism I read somewhere).

    I also like the Irish word “craic” cos it tends to confuse those who don’t know its meaning. I guess for everybody interested in language this word is not very extravagant cos you guys probably know what it means. For those who don’t it means sth. like “fun, having a good time”. However, you can also ask sb.”What’s/ How’s (not sure which is right, sb. might help me out?!) the craic?”

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  74. @MJB

    “World weariness” should be “Weltschmerz” (lit. “world pain”) in German. Hope I’m not too late.

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