AmericanAnDerTU

The German language is a fun thing. There are many words in this language that don’t have a very clear or exact meaning in English or words that describe entire actions or ideas that require whole sentences or phrases to accurately translate into English. Let’s have a look at a few of those…

• kiffen: in German this verb means “to smoke weed”. How cool is that? There is a special word to describe the action of smoking grass. You could translate it as toking, but that word doesn’t originally mean to smoke weed. 
• Schadenfreude: this word means to be happy about the failures of others. The lead for the school play falls down a set of stairs and now you, the understudy, get to go on stage. Schadenfreude. Beautiful.
• Freizeitstress: a noun that literally translates to “free-time stress”. That basically means the stress that is involved with planning a vacation or anything stressful in your non-working hours when you’re trying to enjoy yourself.
• Schlaraffenland: This does have an English translation, but I doubt anyone knows it even if they heard it. I know I certainly didn’t. I’ve heard this word quite often in German, though, and I think it’s funny how it’s such a common word in the German language but completely unknown in English. Perhaps in England one might hear it more often, though, but even then I doubt it.