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Cake day: November 12th, 2023

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  • I’m sure you can find a lot of parallels in Europe since English shares a lot with Germanic and Latin languages but what I mean is any language could easily have a single dedicated word for it and these would relatively sound funny.

    for example you could imagine a language having “extinguisher” as a job title, which makes sense, but then you’d say “in English they call extinguishers ‘people who fight fire’ like they’re fucking boxing isn’t that funny”

    but also I don’t know maybe it’s because I’m fascinated by language I don’t actually think it’s funny. I think sick people house makes a lot of sense. much more than hospital to be honest, which means guest house, which is more appropriate for a hotel, which shares etymology with hospital!



  • the thing about compound words is that they become a new word and people usually don’t think about them by breaking them up so they don’t sound ridiculous. if another language has a dedicated word for it, comparing them with the direct translation of the broken up compound word makes a funny comparison.

    if you’d like to break up some English compound words to see how they might sound weird or basic in other languages here are some examples:

    • arm chair
    • arm pit
    • blue print
    • cup cake
    • dead line
    • eye lash
    • fire fighter
    • fire man
    • fire works
    • home sick
    • horse shoe
    • lip stick
    • make up
    • news paper
    • pass word
    • pine apple
    • pot hole
    • work place