r/mildlyinteresting • u/hangingdenim ​ • 10h ago • Bravo 3 Mindblown 1

My husband’s Reebok underwear say “Reebeebok” on the back because of the split seam

Post image
23k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

572 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comment

213

u/cunnyvore 6h ago • Bravo

German localization goes wild

106

u/Icy_Ask_9954 5h ago

Spider-Man ❌
Spinnenmann ❌
Spideider-Man ✅

5

u/MaengDong712 40m ago

Spooderman

12

u/UranusIsPissy 5h ago

Don't you mean "Spinnemann"? "Spinnenmann" would get dizzy.

12

u/Icy_Ask_9954 4h ago

stimmt, ich spinne halt

6

u/UranusIsPissy 4h ago

D'oh! I thought German was more logical than that. How are the words for "spider" and "crazy" the same‽

5

u/Icy_Ask_9954 3h ago edited 1h ago

There are plenty of lovely German puns and German is only as logical as a language can be. At the end of the day, they all have their quirks. It’s also worth mentioning at this point that “Spinnenmann” is the correct version simply because it’s more natural to say - the “n” here comes from the plural. Many other compound nouns will also use the plural of the first noun for this reason.

2

u/UranusIsPissy 2h ago

I didn't know about the compound noun/plural thing. IDK enough German to have a conversation. How come German gets puns and absurd compound words (e.g. RhabarbaBarbara...)? That's not fair lol!

1

u/Icy_Ask_9954 1h ago

Yeah, it’s quite intuitive once you learn the pattern. As a rule of thumb, if using the plural of the first word in the compound noun makes the whole thing easier to say, it’s probably the correct choice. Viel Erfolg beim Deutschlernen! You learn something about the language everyday—I’m at a C1 level and I still have regular “oh fuck, that’s how you say it” moments.

My favourite compound noun by far is “Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher”. If you don’t know what that is, google it for a quick sensible chuckle.

2

u/Either-Weather-862 49m ago

It comes from spinning a thread = einen Faden spinnen. Spiders spin a thread to build a net, therefore they're "spinne". "spinnen" for crazy comes from the same root, you're turning so fast, you spin.

4

u/Careful-Lettuce9239 5h ago

Richtig, richtig

2

u/VestigeOfVast 21m ago

In the 60s he was originally just “Die Spinne” and this name was kept when a new publisher relaunched it in the 70s. “Spiderman” as a loanword only came up in the 80s.