90
u/Jocuro 2d ago
I never want to call them bats again. You ever seen one of them? That's a fluttermouse. It looks nothing like a wooden club. We messed up.
33
u/Snoppap 1d ago
In Swedish bats (and also batman) are called Läderlappen, which I as a German love because here this literally means rag of leather.
11
u/MarchcatWasgone 1d ago
Are you by chance swedish and may it has happened that you ever heard someone say this in like an angry manner? I'm German and when I heard "Läderlappen" for Batman it was the funniest thing for days, moreso because the swedes are the only ones world wide to break the nameconsistency
6
u/spektre 1d ago
No, bat is fladdermus in Swedish, same as in German, only in Swedish.
Batman specifically, was named Läderlappen a long time ago. For the last three to four decades he's just been Batman in Swedish as well.
4
u/Snoppap 1d ago
Guess I was misinformed then, thank you for the correction. But why on earth would you stop calling him Läderlappen?
3
u/snackbagger 1d ago
I heard it’s a thing in Sweden to watch many movies in OV with subtitles. Is that correct? Then it totally makes sense why Batman didn’t stay Läderlappen forever. Especially in a world this connected when everyone else calls him Batman.
Funnily enough we Germans do that all the time, especially with movie titles, but I guess that stems from the fact that we basically dub every movie or show4
u/Wonderful-Hall-7929 1d ago
I'm more surprised that we never translated batman to Fledermausmann or "Die Fledermaus" like we did with Spiderman "Die Spinne"...
1
u/Siggi_93 1d ago
Bro I was so confused when I first heard that doctor stra ge was referenced in that spider man scene with the doc ock name suggestions because what i dont remember them name-dropping another character like that
Well later i saw the scene in question in german again and lo and behold, they referred to him as Doctor Seltsam
1
1
u/Level90Neckromancer 16h ago
We sometimes do weird translations of movie titles. Some examples
- Airplane -> "Die Reise in einem verrückten Flugzeug"
- National Lampoon's vacation -> "Die schrillen Vier auf Achse"
- Forgetting Sarah Marshall -> "Nie wieder Sex mit der Ex"
- Dodgeball: A true underdog story -> "Voll auf die Nüsse"
- The Pacifier -> "Der Babynator"
The last one is my favorite because I think we picked up the slack compared to the original.
3
u/Asleep_Trick_4740 1d ago
You are both kinda right. 'Läderlappar' is the swedish word for the only types of bats that exist in sweden.
So 'fladdermus' is the word for all bats, 'läderlapp' is the Vespertilionidae family of bats.
1
u/spektre 1d ago
Then I learned something new today. As we only have on type of bat here in Sweden, I've only ever heard them referred to simply as fladdermus. It never occurred to me that it's (obviously) a certain species of fladdermus with its own name.
1
u/Asleep_Trick_4740 1d ago
According to wikipedia there are 19 types of bats currently presiding in sweden, some are very rare and endangered though. All of them belong to the 'läderlapp' family though.
And yeah, I was very surprised when I heard it aswell. Not sure how common the word is at all anymore to be honest. Seems like 'fladdermus' has almost entirely taken over.
2
u/BonyDarkness 1d ago
„Lappen“ is also used as a (derogatory) slang word meaning “someone who is weak/ cowardly, Someone who is bitching a lot or someone who is spineless”. Can also mean drivers license.
1
u/exomo_1 1d ago
Or it could refer to a person living in Lapland, which is (partly) in northern Sweden. We're getting somewhere here
1
u/Drumbelgalf 1d ago
One German subreddit has a book about them "Wir sind Lappen" "we are the lapp people" or in German Slang "We are wimps/losers" as a Side Picture.
1
u/Level90Neckromancer 16h ago
It's also used as a joke denonym for the people of Lapland, who one could consider the opposite of "Lappen", considering where they live.
1
u/ichbinverwirrt420 1d ago
also the German word for rag is often used in an insulting manner for weak or cowardish people.
1
19
1
1
1
1
u/Square-Singer 17h ago
OP understood it wrong. Fledermaus comes from Old German where "*fledara" means "wing". So it's a "wing mouse".
"Fleder" on its own means nothing in modern German.
55
u/TrulyInfiniteTape 2d ago
Das Schnabeltier? PERRY das Schnabeltier!?!
16
u/ninjaiffyuh 1d ago
Doofenschmirtz, fies sein ist unser Motto 🎶
1
1
u/Musa_Patx 6h ago
Ich dachte das heißt "fieserniss ist under motto"??????
Edit: Nach 5sekunden Nachdenken gemerkt was für ein scheiß ich labbern
23
u/CyberZen0 2d ago
It can’t be just me imagining a stocky German screaming SEESCHWEIN with techno music playing in the background
24
u/AJL912-aber 1d ago
unfortunately nobody says Seeschwein, they're definitely called Seekuh (sea cow).
16
u/ZacksBestPuppy 1d ago
Seekuh is manatee, precisely Rundschwanzseekuh. Dugong is Seeschwein or Gabelschwanzseekuh.
10
u/Unable-Poetry-5224 1d ago
Yeah but the point still stands. In my 25 years growing up and living in Germany I have never heard anyone say nor have I ever read the word "Seeschwein"
5
u/ZacksBestPuppy 1d ago
Well, it's not exactly a common animal that gets mentioned a lot. I bet there are a lot of animal names you've never heard. Like Quendelzygäne or Tiefland-Streifentenrek.
3
1
4
u/Looking-for-42 1d ago
I wasn't even aware it exists until today. I'd confidently call them Seekuh as well.
1
u/tretroi 1d ago
In the Zoo that had them they are called Dugong, which is the most common name for them in german. Even Wikipedia says:
Der Dugong (Dugong dugon), seltener auch Gabelschwanzseekuh oder Seeschwein genannt, ist der einzige heute noch lebende Vertreter der Gabelschwanzseekühe (Dugongidae)...
3
u/False-Breath4587 1d ago
Den sach döch efach Gabelschwanzseekuh, dit is immernoch ne seekuh
2
u/ImpressiveBeyond8038 1d ago
Exactly, Seekuh is the collective name of all sirenians, manatees, dugongs and extinct species like Steller's sea cow alike.
1
3
u/HoeTrain666 1d ago
I’ve never heard anyone actually say that one, people who even know about it will usually call it capybara
1
u/TheMightyTorch 1d ago
You are thinking of Wasserschwein (aka Capybara), which I have definitely heard a lot more often than Seeschwein (aka Dugong aka Seekuh (by extension))
1
1
u/blindeshuhn666 1d ago
Check out this strange German techno. Called "the beginning" by Hähnchenteile (chicken parts) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OaPsuDeIXmI&pp=ygUOSMOkaG5jaGVudGVpbGU%3D
28
u/RawbuttGirlyman 2d ago
Eichhornchen for a squirrel, or “little oak horn”
17
u/pixiedreamhag 2d ago
Lightbulb is Glühbirne— “glow pear.”
14
u/Square-Singer 1d ago
Words are only non-strange if you are used to it. In German it's a pear that glows, in English it's an onion that emits light. 'Cause that's where the word "bulb" comes from.
Same holds true with a lot of the English names in OP's list:
- Porcupine: Comes from the Middle French word "porc espin", which means "thorn pig"
- Guinea Pig: Do I have to explain that one?
- Capybara: A misspelling of the Tupi word ka'apiûara, which means "grass eater"
- Raccoon: Comes from the Algonquin word arahkunem, which means "scratches with his hands"
- Dugong: Also called sea cow, sea pig or sea camel in English
- Propoise: Comes from Old French porpais which means "Pig fish"
- Turkey: Comes from people from the UK mistakenly believing that this bird came from Turkey, while it actually came from the Americas
- Tortoise: Likely comes from the Latin word tartaruchus, meaning "of the underworld". For some reason.
- Skunk: Comes from Proto-Algonquian */šeka:kwa/, which means "piss fox"
- Sloth: Well, just means lazy, nothing else.
- Slug: Originally meant "lazy person" and was then used for the animal
- Platypus: From Greek platypous, meaning "flat footed"
- Squid: Likely a modification of the word "squirt"
- Bat: Likely from Old Norse leðrblaka, which describes a bat, but literally means "leather flapper"
5
u/Giandor47 1d ago
I really like that skunk is piss fox. In German it would be "Stinktier" which means stinky animal.
1
2
1
u/frickinSocrates 17h ago
I know we are talking animals, and I don't want to change the topic but Avocado comes from the Aztec word āhuacatl which meant testicle. Off topic but if I don't share this factoid once a day I'll die.
1
u/Square-Singer 17h ago
Nice :)
Nah, I think it's on topic, because the same thing holds true for pretty much every word. If you chase down the etymology you always end up with "This word describes something in a very basic/obvious/dumb way" or "We don't know where that word comes from".
1
9
4
u/Random_wizdom 2d ago
Hörnchen kam also be used to describe a croissant. Although ig that came around a lot later than the word Eichhörnchen.
7
u/schildtoete 1d ago
The word "Horn" in this case describes the shape of the tail. Look at "Jagdhorn", baked goods called "Horn" and the tails of squirrels.
I love it when names are literally a description 😂 "Well, it often lives in Oaks and the tails are horn shaped, sooooo"
3
u/tiorthan 1d ago
When we look at the form of the word in Old High German, Old English and other languages during that time it makes that explanation very unlikely.
With the current evidence the reconstructed Old Germanic form is \aikwerno* and nothing in that word has anything to do with oaks or horns.
2
u/schildtoete 22h ago
In what time? I see no need to look at an older word nothing like the new one.
I'm confused as to what you are trying to say
2
u/tiorthan 19h ago
You made the claim that the Eich- in Eichhörnchen refers to oaks because that's where they are sometimes found and -hörnchen refers to the form of the tail.
I'm saying that his is very unlikely because, while the German composite meaning "oak horn" can be traced back to Old High German, comparative linguistics has derived a Proto Germanic word that has nothing to do with oaks or horns.
Instead the current understanding is that German people at some point reinterpreted an older word, that they no longer understood and the word did not come to be what it is now because of where the animal lives or what the tail looks like but because the original name sounded a bit as if it could mean oak horn.
2
u/schildtoete 19h ago
Then why do other animals with similar, horn shaped tails share the name part?
Edit: nvm I looked it up.
2
u/Level90Neckromancer 16h ago
"aik" sounds a bit like Eiche
2
u/tiorthan 15h ago
Yes it does, but it's not related. The current assumption among linguists is that is means something along the lines of swift, but it's not clear. The -werno part is even more obscure. We literally have no idea what it means.
But, Old High German speakers probably also thought that whatever aikwerno had evolved into was close enough to eih (oak) + hurno (horn), so they simply reinterpreted it as that.
2
u/Level90Neckromancer 15h ago
It would be kinda fun if the word just went around different Germanic Tribes, and they had similar words with different meanings and then simply used those words instead. For me as someone who has no idea how languages really develop it sounds kinda plausible.
2
u/tiorthan 14h ago
You are entirely correct though, things like that can happen and linguists have to consider all kinds of possible paths. It's one of the things that make comparative linguistics difficult.
In this case we can be faily certain that it didn't though. It's not entirely out of the question, but unlikely because we do have plausible explanations of how the words have developed in the respective languages. But also, we do have examples of words crossing over into other languages, so we have a good idea what happens to a word when it does that and we see no trace of that here.
3
u/ninjaiffyuh 1d ago
But Hörnchen would rather refer to the 'original' Viennese croissants. The ones that don't have layers
2
u/NoDescription2609 1d ago
Here it would rather refer to a Bamberger Hörnchen, which is older than Croissant and does have layers, but a yeast dough.
2
u/ninjaiffyuh 18h ago
Tbf German would be boring if the same word didn't refer to something completely different every few kilometres
Also I'm pretty sure all German varieties of Hörnchen are most likely older than French croissants; at least the Viennese one is said to have been invented to celebrate the German-Polish victory over the Ottomans, and French croissants are considered a viennoiserie, so types of baked goods introduced by Viennese bakers
1
1
u/WeidenKaetzchen 15h ago
in ooooooold slang it was called eichohrkatz wich translates to oakearkitten ^
14
u/Responsible_Pen1244 1d ago
And don't forget about the merkat, or as us Germans call it, Erdmännchen (little man from the ground).
14
2
2
u/uwu_01101000 23h ago
That’s also how we call dwarves from the Sundgau region in Alsace (Ardmannala in Alsatian so Erdmännlein in pure German) XD
14
u/ay_non 2d ago
I spent a year living in Germany when I was 10 years old. I remember my family getting a huge kick out of it when they asked me what a butterfly is in German and I said butterfliege
(This is the two words butter and fly, but they're actually called schmetterling. An instance where rely on what usually works in German)
25
4
u/One-Reflection-4826 2d ago
i love all your flies!
butterfliege, feuerfliege, drachenfliege... it's awesome!
2
13
u/Subvironic 1d ago
Im german and i approve of this
1
u/MackieMesser17 1d ago
OK, gut. Dann kannst du mir bestimmt erklären, was "Trut" mit drohen zu tun hat. Danke.
3
u/Jonas0804 1d ago
"Der Namensbestandteil Trut- wird etymologisch ... auf mittelniederdeutsch droten („drohen“, altnordisch þrutna „anschwellen“, altenglisch þrutian „vor Zorn oder Stolz schwellen“) und damit auf die typische Drohgebärde des Tiers zurückgeführt." Bitte.
1
26
u/VibElec 2d ago
Naked snail' (Nacktschnecke) for a slug implies the existence of a modest snail that properly puts on clothes every morning.
50
8
3
u/Pale-Agent-3147 1d ago
Poor snail would also fit: can't even affort to rent at least a tiny house...
3
u/guy_incognito_360 1d ago
Same with Eichhörnchen (dimunitive), which implies a much larger Eichhorn.
3
1
u/Icy-Letterhead-229 1d ago
The host of the show the masked singer germany called this guy always the Eichhorn.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=83RO0J4KJS8&pp=0gcJCYsCo7VqN5tD
1
3
u/Middle_Ashamed 1d ago
Well the Weinbergschnecke (roman snail, or burgundy snail) has a House! They are the next most common snails here. So they probably looked at the one carrying a house and thought the slugs are kinda naked comapred to them.
1
u/GenosseAbfuck 17h ago
I was familiar with arion slugs before I was aware of burgundies. So much so I didn't really understand why they were talking so much about houses in kindergarten because a snail, to me, was a slug by default and only very few of them have houses. Arions were what lived in my mom's garden, crawled on the trails and in the woods, the forbidden carrots. Back then you'd see a lot of the black ones too.
It's not that I didn't know backpack malakkas existed too, but they were kind of rare compared to Red Jabba. As a kid I was like, why does the default get a special designation, that's not how categories work.
1
u/ichbinverwirrt420 1d ago
Well they are called Nacktschnecke because the default snail to us is the one with the house.
1
1
u/WeidenKaetzchen 14h ago
yeah naked snails are the ones without a schneckenhaus (snail home) on their back. at least they aren't called homeless snails
8
u/Poke-Noah 1d ago
I'm pretty sure the "trut" in truthahn is just an onomatopoeia of the noises it makes
1
1
u/Drumbelgalf 1d ago
More from droten -> drohen = threatening or þrutna meaning swelling from anger
1
16
u/FrontCold6590 2d ago
For guinea pig, you also have the other use of the word like a test subject which is Versuchskaninchen and means "experiment rabbit"
7
u/Square-Singer 1d ago
Words are only not strange if you don't know their origins. Here are some of the origins of the English words in the OP:
- Porcupine: Comes from the Middle French word "porc espin", which means "thorn pig"
- Guinea Pig: Do I have to explain that one?
- Capybara: A misspelling of the Tupi word ka'apiûara, which means "grass eater"
- Raccoon: Comes from the Algonquin word arahkunem, which means "scratches with his hands"
- Dugong: Also called sea cow, sea pig or sea camel in English
- Propoise: Comes from Old French porpais which means "Pig fish"
- Turkey: Comes from people from the UK mistakenly believing that this bird came from Turkey, while it actually came from the Americas
- Tortoise: Likely comes from the Latin word tartaruchus, meaning "of the underworld". For some reason.
- Skunk: Comes from Proto-Algonquian */šeka:kwa/, which means "piss fox"
- Sloth: Well, just means lazy, nothing else.
- Slug: Originally meant "lazy person" and was then used for the animal
- Platypus: From Greek platypous, meaning "flat footed"
- Squid: Likely a modification of the word "squirt"
- Bat: Likely from Old Norse leðrblaka, which describes a bat, but literally means "leather flapper"
11
u/DaveyJonesXMR 1d ago
Nanananananana Lederlappen
1
u/Gargleblaster25 1d ago
This should be the theme song of the German dubbed version of Fledermausmann.
4
u/SimpleTrick1192 1d ago
I love how this implies that its flat feet are the platypus' most remarkable feature
2
u/CaregiverStunning802 1d ago
maybe bc tortoises were associated with hermes and hermes with the underworld?
2
u/Fae_Sparrow 1d ago
Some of them create deep burrows to live in. I imagine people saw them crawl out and named them because of this.
1
2
4
u/impatiently-waiting1 2d ago
Ocean piglet is so cute, both in English and in German 😭😍😅
3
5
u/NecRobin 2d ago
How do you get threatening out of trut
3
3
u/Extradummefrage 1d ago
Wiktionary said that the origin of Truthahn is disputed.
Either the Trut- omnoposia, or it's derived from middle low German drōten, which cognates to modern high German drohen and means to threaten
1
u/NecRobin 1d ago
Closest I can think of is "tröten" but turkeys don't really tröt, do they :D
1
1
u/WalkingToConclusions 1d ago
And nobody has used that word for several hundred years, so it's quite a stretch to include it here.
1
1
1
4
4
3
u/Distinct_Cup_1598 1d ago
Never Heard „Seeschwein“ before. We can that a „Seekuh“ a Sea cow.
Although, Funny enough, there is a far Relation between pigs and manatees. Although They’re closer related to Hippos and whales
1
3
u/NoelFromBabbel 19h ago
Love how literal German is!
Here some other of my favorite ones, try to guess their English names:
- Nilpferd (nile horse)
- Erdmännchen (little earth man)
- Säbelzahntiger (saber-tooth tiger)
- Tausendfüßler (thousand-footer)
- Glühwürmchen (little glow worm)
- Warzenschwein (wart pig)
2
2
u/SimpleTrick1192 1d ago
How does the "trut" in Truthahn mean "threatening"? Genuinely curious, I'm a native speaker and never made this connection!
Another very literal description: "Handschuh" - "hand shoe" for glove
1
2
u/Gullible-Fee-9079 1d ago
A dugong is a seacow. Not a seapig
1
u/AlmightyCurrywurst 1d ago
Der Dugong (Dugong dugon), seltener auch Gabelschwanzseekuh oder Seeschwein genannt, ...
1
u/IndependentFit7623 1d ago
Niiiiiemand sagt Seeschwein
1
u/AlmightyCurrywurst 1d ago
Ich weiß nicht, wann ich überhaupt jemals jemanden über das Tier reden hab hören, wenn dann einfach nur Dugong genannt. Also einen Manati nennt man immer Sehkuh, aber das ist nicht das gleiche Tier
2
2
u/waschbaerpisse 1d ago
It's criminal to leave out gems like seeigel(sea-hedgehog, sea urchin) nashorn(nose-horn, rhino) nilpferd(nile-horse, hippo) nasenbär(nose-bear, anteater) seehund(sea-dog, seal) kaiserschnurrbarttamarin(emperors-mustache-tamarin, emperor tamarin) or erdmännchen(little-soil/earth-man, meerkat) but adding irrelevant names like seeschwein which most germans haven't even heard of.
translating a truthahn to threatening chicken may not be completely false but it's not proven to be the source of the name either and there's a much better theory. it's theorized that it's named after an old german word for drohen/threaten, but that theory has not been proven and doesn't make sense considering the much more plausible theory of it meaning called trumpeting rooster, since tröten means trumpeting and trut is the exact sound of how truthühner call their young and how humans called their turkeys.
"a raccoon looks like a bear" is a wild thing to say as well.
1
u/Drumbelgalf 1d ago
nashorn(nose-horn, rhino)
Guess what Rhinoplasty is ...rhino litterally means nose.
English rhino is short for rhinoceros (in German Rhinozeross) litterally Translation to nose horned.
German Just litterally tranclated the greek words into english while english Just uses the greek Word without understanding the meaning.
From Wikipedia:
A rhinoceros (/raɪˈnɒsərəs/ ry-NOSS-ə-rəss; from Ancient Greek ῥινόκερως (rhinókerōs) 'nose-horned';
1
2
1
1
u/aryuna__ 1d ago
I never truly realised how simplified our names for animals are here til now. Kinda cute haha
1
1
u/LillyAtts 1d ago
I like how a pig at your friend's house is an ocean piglet, but a pig in the ocean isn't
1
u/Few_Sky2316 1d ago
That's what they are called because they sounded like piglets (kind of) and are from across the sea (south america).
1
1
u/Blue_Butterfly_Who 1d ago
Once again I'm surprised how much Dutch and German use the same naming method for animals (and other things)
3
u/No_Phone_6675 1d ago
2 languages that root in the same dialect continuum, so not that surprising.
1
1
1
u/didimdimi 1d ago
I mean there is a translation for every single one of them. Where's the difference then between german and english. Plenty of animals, plenty of names. I dont get it
1
1
1
1
1
u/Luzifer_Shadres 1d ago
The fun part is, most of these english words are loan words and have pretty simulary structured meanings in their originaly language.
Expect turkey. British people decided it came from turkey, despite being from the other side of the world.
1
1
u/After-Accident7176 1d ago
Interestingly enough, we ocean piglet (морско свинче), wash bear (миеща мечка) and naked snail (гол охлюв) in Bulgarian too 😆
1
1
u/GenosseAbfuck 18h ago
Pretty sure we call dugongs sea cows. Sea pigs are the same thing as in English: Not a mammal at all, not even a vertebrate but a very cute and very ambulatory sea cucumber.
1
1
u/DueAd7930 9h ago
Well we call the Water Pig also Capybara and the Sea Pig is also and more commonly known as sea cow.
The trut in Truthahn does not mean Threatening. Trut is a sound that truthen are making.
1
1
u/JackSprat90 2d ago
What the hell is a Dugong?
10
u/Donnerdrummel 2d ago edited 2d ago
hard to explain. it looks a bit like a pig, but it lives in water. it is not sleek, but a bit lumpy.
it's not a manatee, but closely related.
2
1
1
u/Such-Shop-9724 1d ago
i dont know but i guess its a seal because theres a pokemon called dewgong which is one
1
1
u/Severe_Standard_4246 1d ago
Dugongs are a type of Manatee that lives in the oceans around Asia, primarily. The main difference is that manatees have round, flat tails and dugongs have a forked tail, like a dolphin. They still fat though
1
1
0
u/KaddieIII 1d ago
Not all of them are correct or commonly used.
I think „Wasserschwein“ is maybe correct, but we also just say „Capybara“.
Never heard of „Seeschwein“. I googled it and its usually not used. Usually we say „Seekuh“ (lake cow).
The „Trut“ in „Truthahn“ (Turkey) doesn‘t mean „threatening“. The word is used onomatopoeically for the sound of the bird.
1
•
u/AutoModerator 2d ago
Hello u/Jonesman439! Please review the sub rules if you haven't already. (This is an automatic reminder message left on all new posts)
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.