• Dasus@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Here in Finland we say “the pup of a whore”.

      Added benefit of being gender-neutral.

    • Wxnzxn@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      Fun fact: The German original uses “Dirne” which is a very archaic word, could probably be translated as something like “harlot”

        • Wxnzxn@lemmy.ml
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          6 months ago

          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

          • Malgas@beehaw.org
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            6 months ago

            “Courtesan” is an example in English, originally meaning ‘noblewoman’.

            There’s also “minx”, which originally just meant ‘person’. (It’s a cousin of “mensch”.)

    • idiomaddict@feddit.de
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      6 months ago

      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?”

      • lugal@sopuli.xyz
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        6 months ago

        I’m curious: is it intuitive for you once you know or confusing or funny or all of the above?

        • idiomaddict@feddit.de
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          6 months ago

          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

      • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        Not really! Iced tea can be done by filling a bottle with water and some leaves and putting it in the fridge overnight. You will have a litter of cold tea in the morning!