"You son of a prostitute" Most European thing I've heard today
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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Fun fact: The German original uses "Dirne" which is a very archaic word, could probably be translated as something like "harlot"
So a Dirndl is a slutty dress??
I mean - nowadays it sorta is, it's been heavily relegated to sexually fetishised contexts.
But the reason a "Dirndl" is called that is, because "Dirne" is a word that used to mean just "woman" but went through a linguistic evolution to mean "prostitute" quite a while ago. Off the top of my head, I don't know of an example that happened similiarly in English, but I'd guess there's bound to be something like that there, too
"Courtesan" is an example in English, originally meaning 'noblewoman'.
There's also "minx", which originally just meant 'person'. (It's a cousin of "mensch".)
Saving that one for trivia nights
Wow, people translate Zangendeutsch into English
I’m a native English speaker with very good German married to a native German speaker and every few weeks I come across something that I just don’t get. My husband has now developed a Pavlovian response to me saying “so you remember Zangendeutsch?”
I'm curious: is it intuitive for you once you know or confusing or funny or all of the above?
Winzig-weich took way too long for the payoff, but generally I chuckle a little. I do absolutely worry that I’m internalizing bad English linguistic interference though