memes

10309 readers

1807 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civil

No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politics

This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]

3. No recent reposts

Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No bots

No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/Ads

No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.

Sister communities

[email protected] : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
[email protected] : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
[email protected] : Linux themed memes
[email protected] : for those who love comic stories.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

752

Pter (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

56 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (3 children)

The german word for aeroplane is similar, "Flugzeug" directly translates to "flying thing". Helicopter is also fun, "Hubschrauber" translates to "lifting screwer".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Now I am curious as to what the Chinese characters in their word for helicopter mean, since panda is "bear cat," owl is "cat headed eagle," and peacock is "thunder chicken," IIRC.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I don't think it means "thing", but rather "Gerät" as in 2 c):

https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Zeug

It evolved from a word for "pulling"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

I guess for "Flugzeug", 'device' works better but I don't think I have ever thought about it in that way. From my experience usage usually goes more like this: "Pack dein Zeug zusammen wir gehen weiter." which I think best translates to 'Stuff' or 'things'. Zeug is an interesting word though. It is also used for the harness of a draft animal ("sich ins Zeug legen"), it's bridle ("Zaumzeug"), bed linen ("Bettzeug"), work tools ("Werkzeug") , or as a word for nonsense ("red kein dummes Zeug"). I would say it started, as you said, as a word for device but became a slightly negative word for 'Stuff'.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Not to be confused with Hubschraubär.