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[Loam]

Actually it does: a long s, followed by a (regular) short s. For some reason early orthography/print used two different characters for s; while everyone else abandoned the convention, the Germans kept it around in this particular case, and eventually it became its own character.
A similar reason is behind German capitalization of nouns: it was a common print convention, even in England (old books often have plenty of randomly-capitalized nouns). Again, everyone else stopped doing this, except the Germans.
Incidentally, I think modern German is one of the most "archaic" of the modern Germanic languages (after Icelandic, which is really just Old Norse with an accent): it's preserved a lot of elements lost in its sister languages.

Gift
Noun. "Poison"
Adjective. "Married"

I'm late to the party, but this one's fairly easy to explain: "gift" is just the (old) past participle of the verb "to give" (in English as in Norwegian). When you're married, you are given to someone else; and poison is something given to you (because most people don't take it on their own).

Comparisons like this are even more fun when you look at cognates in two different languages. The English word guest and the Latin hostes "enemy" are two reflexes of the same ancient root: *ghos-ti "stranger."

[Kagus]

Well that's a fun one, because while the noun is just "gift" (or "giftstoff") the actual act/scenario of poisoning is forgiftet... So if a person's been poisoned, I guess that means they've been "forgiven".


Speaking of "stoff", that's another multi-use phrase... When used in a compound word, it just indicates "material" or indeed "stuff". Books and magazines are "lesestoff" (reading-stuff), fuel is "drivstoff" (force/will/drive-stuff), and the German-inclined among us should recognize that "surstoff" (sour-stuff) of course means breathable air.

Used on its own however, "stoff" just means textile fabrics. Or hard drugs, either or.


This has lead to the rise of the extremely clever and eternally original joke of using the word "stoffmisbruk" --meaning drug abuse-- to refer to someone ripping their clothes or washing something on the wrong setting. My ex's mom spends a great deal of time knitting, so I naturally had to call her an addict a couple times.

[dragdeler]

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[Kagus]

otherwise you can simply ss everything IIRC.

Didn't Germany try that before? I don't think it worked out so well.

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[Iduno]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[scriver]

Tough thought huh

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[Iduno]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[ChairmanPoo]

https://youtu.be/A8zWWp0akUU

[scriver]

We've been through this before. The I before E rules hold. It's about words that have the EE sound. You can't use words that doesn't have that sound to "disprove" the rule. That makes as much sense as "disproving" a rule that the TH sound is spelled with TH and listing as proof "Den, did, vernacular, and opioid".

The only word on that mug that is an example of the rule broken is Keith. Received does not count even though they left out the second part of the rule, "except after C" in the title.

[Kagus]

So there's a gal that goes to our gym who's this very slight, pale woman with a completely bald head. Obviously a cancer survivor.

"Cancer Chick" is an absolute beast, running the elliptical for about 45 minutes, hopping on the rowing machine for another half hour, and then going right over to deadlifting 120kg (which judging from looks is at least twice her bodyweight). This is a woman who fought through Hell and came back with a highscore.

Obviously, "Cancer Chick" wasn't a particularly suitable moniker for someone that badass... So last time we were there I spent my rest period trying to think of something better. Wasn't getting very far though, Atomic/Nuclear Warrior wasn't quite cutting it, and I was having a hard time getting a very tired brain to do much creative lifting.

But then my subconscious decided it would help out, and spat something into the buffer. My subconscious is a horrible person.


So, in Norwegian, the suffix "-er" can denote either the plural of an object, or that it is an actor performing the related action. 'Kopp' means cup/mug, 'kopper' means cups/mugs; 'arbeid' is labor, while 'arbeider' is laborer.

The name my mind came up with for this strong individual was "superkrefter".

So, "super" is just super, nothing strange there. "Krefter" means 'powers', so together they make "superpowers". Y'know, stuff like laser eyes and pyrokinesis and whatever. Or super strength, as the case may be.

...however, "kreft" is also the Norwegian word for cancer.  So she's a supercancer-er.

[dragdeler]

Do other languages do this? I allways kinda knew about this they're part of the german news cycle, but the wikiarticle is really fun an interesting. I think I heard this year it will be "cringe" but that might just be the Jugendsprachwort des Jahres and not the Unwort des Jahres.

[Magmacube_tr]

"Çekoslavakya'laştıradıklarımızdanmısınız?"

Turkish is the most superior.

[scriver]

I understand the first word of that word. Well, the two first I guess