No, these expressions exist in English, they just have a slightly different meaning. And in the case of “Entwicklung”, the English pendant “Development” even has the exact same origin: to unwrap or unfold (the opposite of envelope). There certainly are German expressions that do not exist in English, but this list does not do a good job at collecting them.<p>My personal impression is that German makes it easier to express abstract impersonal goals and needs. For example, consider the word “Sachzwang” which translates to “intrinsic necessity” - i.e. something that must be a certain way to satisfy the naturally given constraints. This can for example be used in the wonderful expression: sachzwangreduzierte Ehrlichkeit. (Reduced honesty due to inherent constraints.)<p>Often, English has very elegant and short ways to express something similar, in that case it could simply be “spin”, as in giving an article a political spin. However, while “spin” is something done intentionally by someone (the spin doctor, another nice expression), the German variant is passive and implies that “die Sache” (roughly “the mission”) dictate the doctoring with the truth. This again illustrates what I mean by German tending to more abstract, impersonal goals.
As an Italian living in Germany, and as a lover of the German language, I think this is not a good list. It reads like it was put together to fit the author's approach to coaching. Entwicklung, indeed, is the best example of this. It is exactly the same in English.<p>What's really fun about German: as a non native you can get to a point where you create involuntary neologisms by putting together words you already know. Surprisingly, Germans find it mostly funny and tend to understand well what you mean, suggesting that there's an underlying plasticity to this language, if you're <i></i>mutig<i></i> enough to play with it and its admittedly strict Grenzen. I just cant's wrap my head around the rule of writing every substantive with a capital letter though, which I interpret as an annoying need to always circumstantiate a purported objectivity of the perceived reality.<p>With some friends we started coming up with these neologisms on purpose. My favorite one is "Sonnenschuld" or "Wetterschuld", which is that feeling you get in Berlin when you have to work during the summer while the sun is shining outside. You know you're doing the right thing, but at the same time you know you're wasting a precious opportunity to enjoy a rather seldom occurrence.
Doesn’t every language have such a thing? What makes German more exceptional than English? Or Chinese more exceptional than English? I’m certain there are expressions that don’t exist in every language, and even if you translated them, they might not translate well due to cultural or linguistic issues (try translating Monty Python to Chinese while keeping British wit and hoping your average Chinese viewer understands the context of the humor).<p>This might sound overgeneralized but I think every language has its own qualities. Most languages have evolved out of cultural needs (consider words like “Internet,” “email,” and “texting”).<p>For example, Chinese has a word distinguishing language (e.g 英文, literally English culture) and the language itself (英語, literally English language). Most people in normal parlance would say 英文 over 英語 for English, because the culture is inseparable from the language. That’s why Chinese speakers use -文 for languages over -語, such as 中文、英文、日文、西班牙文.<p>For the example of Entschuldigen or “apologize,” Chinese uses several expressions such as 對不起、抱歉. In the case of 對不起 it literally means the speaker cannot face the recipient, as in loss of face. Or another expression is 「不好意思」; this literally means “poor meaning or intentions.” Its English equivalent is approximately “excuse me.”<p>I’m not trying to put down the value of the article. It’s highly intriguing. I just find the exceptionalism a little off-putting when languages like Japanese have similar constructs.
These are good examples of what linguists call a "Volksetymologie", meaning a usually wrong derivation of words which are no longer correctly understood or have changed meaning. A popular example is when a German newspaper did one of those stupid surveys for the "most beautiful German word", and the winner was "Habseligkeiten". The cited reason was because it combines "Haben" (to have) with "Selig" ("blessed"), the profane with the heavenly, but the real etymology is actually different.<p>As is already mentioned here, the "-mut" in Wehmut does not mean "courage" but is actually identical to the English "mood". I would also highly doubt his interpretation of "Einsam". The suffix "-sam" usually means simply to having something. "Liebenswürdig" is difficult, because "Liebe" means many things (from simply "friendly" to modern romantic "love"), and "-würdig" is more in terms of being adequate or appropriate. When you say "Er ist sehr liebenswürdig", this does not mean that HE is worthy of love, but simply that he is a friendly person, meaning he knows how to treat people properly. As was also already mentioned here, "Entwicklung" and "development" are literally the same, and the same goes for "Ursprung" and "origin".<p>There is also the simple fact that German allows for building compositions, so what would be considered an expression in English can be one word in German (like "Sinneswandel" for "change of mind"). But this does not mean that it "does not exist".<p>As a German, the word I'm <i>really</i> missing when speaking English is the simple word "doch", which more or less means "No, but yeah". If you've ever watched German kids in a "Nein! Doch!" match, you know how powerful that simple word is. I think there was actually an article here some time ago that English used to have this with "Yay" and "Nay" in addition to "Yes" and "No", but that this got lost. Of course German is not unique in having "doch", most other roman languages have it as well (the French have "Si", which in Italy is the normal "Yes").<p>EDIT: Found the article:<p><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-part-of-no-totally-dont-you-understand?verso=true" rel="nofollow">https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-part-of-no-...</a>
Me: Moved to Hamburg this year, has 320 days on Duolingo and finished an actual beginner's German course so far.<p>I can only partially agree to the statements made in this thread about the quality of this list but I've been fascinated with German words that have no English counterparts, at least not completely. My favorite one so far is "Waldeinsamkeit"--literally "forest soltitude" but the translation does not capture the "calm, contemplative atmosphere amidst a beautiful setting"[1]. Before moving to Hamburg I used to camp a handful of times a year for stargazing and I _feel_ that I understand this concept somehow.<p>On a more "Auslander" observation: when I moved in to Hamburg I was struck by how early the city sleeps, how dark the streets are at night. Sure there are streetlights[2] but for the second largest city in a European hub such as Germany, they might as well be lighting a residential village! For my connotation of a metropolitan area, Hamburg at night just ain't cutting it.<p>Until, I learned about "Waldeinsamkeit". Again this is probably just the Auslander talking but I have since thought that Waldeinsamkeit is the philosophy behind Hamburg's urban design. They may have urbanized for 20th century living but, if I may be poetic, they still want that beautiful serenity of darkness.<p>[1] <a href="https://blogs.transparent.com/german/untranslatable-german-words-waldeinsamkeit/" rel="nofollow">https://blogs.transparent.com/german/untranslatable-german-w...</a>
[2] though there are nooks and crannies in Hamburg that are notably really dark, sometimes only lighted by the apartments along the street.
I've been struggling to find an equivalent for 'overengineered' in German - there's verschlimmbessern, a portmanteu verb of 'verbessern' (improve) and 'schlimm' (bad), it's what you use when you want to improve something but the end-product is worse.<p>However, German tech (to me!) has a overengineering problem, not a verschlimmbessern problem, there's nothing being improved. Just look at modern German cars, impossible to fix yourself, very expensive to have serviced, for no real gain, pure overengineering. Is there a word?<p>(edit: there's an opposite for OP's 'Lebensmut' -
'Lebensmüdigkeit', literally 'tired of being alive', i.e. suicidal)
Most of these have close English equivalents, but as a second language learner, the author does not have a large enough vocabulary to summon them easily.<p>Learning a second language is not the same experience as being a native speaker.<p>Having grown up without German in my life, I will never have the eloquence or depth of vocabulary in German that I do in English. That's OK. It is the nature of the human animal.<p>Knowing my limitations, I would be reluctant to write an article about "English expressions that do not exist in German"
Interestingly enough the words exists in Swedish as well, spelling is a bit different but the meaning is more or less the same:<p>German -> Swedish<p>Wehmot -> vemod<p>Entwicklung -> utveckling<p>Einsam -> ensam<p>Stimmung -> stämmning<p>Entschuldigen -> ursäkta<p>Aufrichtigkeit -> uppriktighet<p>Lebensmut -> livsmod<p>Ursprung -> ursprung<p>Liebenswürdig -> älskvärd<p>Note that Sinneswandel is missing not sure if there is a direct translation in Swedish
Although German language is full of great words, the expressions from the post exist in other languages, even in my native tongue Turkish, which belongs to a completely different language family.<p>However in Germany these expressions are regularly used on TV,press and literature. They have become and are powerful building blocks of a German speakers thoughts, giving them an advantage to think better.
While we're proposing useful words, may I humbly suggest two useful adverbs:<p>"fei" (Bavarian): in contrast to what I think you're assuming. "Des is fei da letzte" -- "This is the last one, and I think you thought there would be more".<p>"als" (Allemannic/Suabian): something like "in the default case, which is also frequent".
"Entschuldigen" is a pretty fascinating verb, but not for the author's reasons.
It literally means to remove guilt from someone (not specifically from oneself as the author states) and is kind of equivalent to "forgive".
Commonly it is misused in German: people say "ich entschuldige mich", literally meaning they're removing their own guilt from theirselves and thus forgiving theirselves, which is kind of impossible and not what's actually meant.
The right phrase would be "um Entschuldigung bitten" (to ask to be excused) which actually is rarely used.
Alternative title: "One language that has different close compounding rules than another language has different compound nouns than that other language".<p>Auf Deutsch: Verscheidenzusammengesetztesgebotesprachen haben verscheide zusammengesetztes Substantive.
It is interesting indeed to unwrap the literal meaning of the composite words in German.<p>I don't entirely agree on his proposition of the meaning of 'Stimmung' though. It's not just 'the voice of the situation' but rather "state of adjustment/tuning of emotions towards a situation". For instance when we [Germans] say that the "Stimmung ist getrübt" it means that most people involved have adjusted to a rather dampened mood for a particular situation. They are then not just experiencing it in a bad way, but they are also expressing their mood non-verbally.
They overlooked "hausfrauenpanzer":<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21894468" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21894468</a>
Here's a massively useful term, particularly in the case of watching the news:<p>Fremdschämen<p>See: <a href="https://www.leo.org" rel="nofollow">https://www.leo.org</a> for good discussion.
"Wehmut" literally: 'The courage in feeling pain'.<p>This is powerful. I feel like this courageous curiosity has been the primary virtue or trait that I've been exploring and aiming to cultivate more than any other during the past couple of years.<p>As a non-German speaker I'd be interested how this relates to melancholy (these to me feel like quite different emotional states).
Glück. All this talk about long compound words, when German gives the word <i>Glück</i>. It can mean luck, joy, bliss, though it is so much more than the sum of its possible translations. Hermann Hesse wrote a beautiful essay on this.<p><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7rLsb3w8ZaM" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7rLsb3w8ZaM</a>
On a lighter note, one of my favorite German words is "Warmduscher", literally "someone who takes hot showers", aka a wimp or a candy-ass.<p>Be aware that by using it you imply that you yourself only take cold showers and you may get called out on that. (Of course I take cold showers so I feel no compunction about using this word.)
It is funny to the see exoticization of the German language, even though German is so close to English.<p>I think the author confuses etymology with meaning, and then uses wrong etymologies (e.g. translating "mut" to "courage" rather then the literal "mood") to arrive at some amazing "wisdom" in German.<p>Some of the words are exactly the same meaning as the English counterpart, e.g. develop also means to unwrap. It just have a French origin rather than a Germanic.<p>I think English is really the odd language here. Because so many English words are loanwords from French or Latin, their origin or etymology is not as apparent to English speakers.<p>(And of course the article sprinkles a bit of irrelevant neurobabble.)
One key aspect of the English language is that the meaning of any word can vary slightly in interpretation from person to person.
Could breaking down complex feelings into concrete components mislead the individual into thinking that they're processing emotions in the exact same way as their neighbors? Or is it self-fulfilling, that the language shapes the emotion?<p>In any case, I think all these compound words definitely make learning German easier. It encourages one to adopt the mindset.
Another word someone brought up is "Geborgenheit", which translates to comfort or security. Briefly researching the origin it, it seems to come from the terminology around "Burg" (castle), and the feeling of safety and comfort we feel when we're inside one. In my understanding it also has a considerable amount of warmth next to the sense of safety and comfort. Overall, definitely one of my favorite words that I think belongs on this list too!
In Dutch we use more or less the same words, but for me the top word is "wetenschap" (which is probably similar in German). Literally translated it's "knowledgeship", which would be a better word for science.<p>You can believe things, and you can know things. Science is knowing things, and what better word to describe that than "knowledgeship"?
My favourite German expression which doesn't exist in English is still "Ohrwurm". It refers to a catchy song/tune stuck in someone's mind [1].<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earworm" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earworm</a>
I guess there are really better examples than this. One I've learened recently is Torschlusspanik (<a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torschlusspanik" rel="nofollow">https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torschlusspanik</a>)
Florence King once wrote that the word "Kinderfeindlichkeit" (dislike of children) could not have an English equivalent, and was one reason she'd like to live in Germany.
Aufrichtigkeit – Sincerity/Honesty.
Literally: To be in an upright posture<p>This sounds pretty similar to 'having a spine'. Its normally used for courage or sticking up for your beliefs.