It makes more context to translate “Zeug” as “tool” in most compound words, it is its original meaning like in Feuerzeug, Flugzeug, Fahrzeug, Rüstzeug.
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themeatbridge@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I mean, yeah. This is an important part of the German language. They create composite words to describe a thing, and learning to break it down into its constituents is a fundamental part of reading German.
VitaminF@feddit.org 3 months ago
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 3 months ago
In English, it would be a “thingie.” Like Germans are constantly trying to remember the word “lighter” and they’re like, “you know, the whatsit, the… fire… thingie.”
wieson@feddit.org 3 months ago
No, it’s literally not. It is “tool” or “gadget”. Not just any object or dingsbums.
Zeug used to mean something different back in the day.
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Sorry, I wasn’t clear about that being a tongue in cheek remark.
Jonnynny@lemm.ee 3 months ago
It’s a good joke but I don’t think it’s too far off. The comment about it being “tools” kinda falls short of explaining things like Spielzeug=toy (play thing) and Schlagzeug=drum (beating/striking thing). I think “thing” is better. Might be somewhere in between though. Ich weiß nicht…
thedarkfly@feddit.nl 3 months ago
In which context would you use Hilfeleistungslöschgruppenfahrzeug instead of Feuerwehrfahrzeug?
sirprize@lemm.ee 3 months ago
When you’re a fireman whose job is to plan which vehicles go where or when you need to precisely specify which type of fire vehicle. Non-firemen usually say Feuerwehrfahrzeug or even Feuerwehrauto.
emhl@feddit.org 3 months ago
But they would just call it by it’s abbreviation HLF of course
Saleh@feddit.org 3 months ago
I mostly know Leiterwagen, because a lot of them have a ladder. Also makes sense because when there is an emergency you refer to the multitude of vehicles that move out and the group of people as a “Löschzug” zu an “extinguishing train” and a train has “wagons” -> Wagen
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 3 months ago
No idea, I don’t speak German. I just studied it a bit and barely remember a few basic phrases.
Siegfried@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Imagine you want to set a buildinh on fire but you dont want to risk being the first suspect. So you call 911 instead of the fire department equivalent and use the long word to lose time
Asafum@feddit.nl 3 months ago
I haven’t tried, but I feel like that concept would be easy for me to grasp because I already find myself doing it with English if I happen to know the old words, Latin or otherwise, used to construct the modern ones.
OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 3 months ago
Hahahaha German makes words like I do in conlangs except it somehow never became unique words with time
rockSlayer@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It’s also one of the most difficult parts of learning German as an adult, despite being a relatively simple syntactic rule and something we kinda-sorta emulate in English. The other part, at least for me, were false friends. Also sorry to all the lurking Germans waiting to comment, I forgot all of my German the moment I graduated college.
Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
Alles gut. Deine Vergesslichkeit hindert mich nicht daran, hier zu pfostieren.
ogeist@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Doch
LeFrog@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
As a German I can assure you that false friends are something you scare away all pupils (regardless of age). I have very intense memory of our English teacher correcting us again and again.
Regarding the composita in German: we are moving more towards the English approach by splitting these word monstrousities with hyphens. E.g. Donaudampfschifffahrtsamt may be spelled Donau-Dampfschifffahrts-Amt. Its way easier to read and write. While the hyphenated spelling is not something that is used often officially, it got more popular in the last decades.
thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world 3 months ago
oh Christ, please. it really is just the lack of spaces that make them a nightmare.
Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world 3 months ago
My biggest issue with Duolingo trying to learn German honestly. Sure I can read a compound word when presented with it, but fucking Duo is like “Cool… now spell it… bitch”
colourlessidea@sopuli.xyz 3 months ago
German is phonetic though - once you know how pronunciation maps to the alphabet (and certain compounds), it becomes easier to spell any new word. It’s actually why there’s no Spelling Bee in German.
PlexSheep@infosec.pub 3 months ago
I learnt to write after hearing in Grundschule. It doesn’t work that well.
Phen@lemmy.eco.br 3 months ago
I gave up on duolingo very quickly because it had a ton of clearly wrong stuff too. Drops and Rosetta Stone have much better content for learning German.
Siegfried@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I once talk to a guy that was learning portuguese all by himself using Langenscheidt’s portuguese course.
They are pretty neat.
Deconceptualist@lemm.ee 3 months ago
That’s your issue? Not adjective declination?
I’m nearly at the end of Duolingo’s German content and spelling has mostly been quite easy (as a native English speaker). You want a spelling challenge, try French.
Saleh@feddit.org 3 months ago
So we have this verb and the ending in third person plural is -ent but we just dont pronounce that so it pronounces the same way as third person singular…
obviouspornalt@lemmynsfw.com 3 months ago
Fucking French. ‘we’re never, ever going to say this ‘h’ character, but you still need it to spell words correctly because fuck you, that’s why.’
brbposting@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Oh I thought those were false cognates
lugal@sopuli.xyz 3 months ago
That’s something different. False cognates are words that look related even tho they are not and often have a similar meaning that makes it look even harder to be related. False friends often are related but have a very different meaning. Like the German word “eventuell” meaning “maybe” which is very bad if you use it wrong. Unlike the false cognate “emoji” meaning “picture sign” and – etymologically speaking – having nothing to do with emoticon despite its similar meaning. Which is more a linguistic fun fact than any problem for learners.
elvith@feddit.org 3 months ago
Another example of a false friend:
German: Bekommen (to get), English: Become (werden)
Hence a joke I often heard while learning English:
PlexSheep@infosec.pub 3 months ago
Tja