In my German classes, we were practicing the different forms of prepositions in the dative and in the accusative.
Our teacher gave us the following sentence in German: "The snake crawls under the rock."
I
had never heard the German word for snake before so when she said it,
my eyes widened. A word that sounds similar is used in (non-polite)
American slang. I wonder if the English word is a derivative of the German word?
Another student, sitting next to me, smirked and said that she's heard the word used in the similar way in German, too.
Another student, sitting next to me, smirked and said that she's heard the word used in the similar way in German, too.
After we recovered from that moment, I did get to hear my favorite animal name so far: Eichhörnchen, or squirrel. It means "little oak tree" something. I can't remember what the "something" is, so I'll have to ask my teacher. I love German nouns sometimes*, though. They're so descriptive!
*but not the word for "snake"
Eich = oak tree; hörnchen = little horn
ReplyDeleteThank you! I just had class again and she told us that, too. We were trying to figure out how it fits with a squirrel. I don't know why, but I love the word. I think I just like most of the -chen words anyway.
ReplyDeleteWell I didn't know that too, I had to look it up. In wikipedia it says that the word Eichhörnchen comes from the indo-germanic word "aig" which means to move fierce, and in the Old- and Middle High German people said eichorn. From that today's name derived. So nothing to do with oaks and little horns. :)
ReplyDeleteHere you can read it for yourself: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B6rnchen