Comment on What a gentleman

• LeFrog@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Great to see a fellow frog in the wild!

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  I am guessing this comes directly from German

  The German and English wikipedia have interesting information about the etymology of the English chair and the German Stuhl:

  Chair:

  Chair comes from the early 13th-century English word chaere, from Old French chaiere (“chair, seat, throne”), from Latin cathedra (“seat”).

  Stuhl:

  […] althochdeutsch stuol ‚Sitz, Thron‘ […]

  (Old high German stuol meaning ‘seat’ or ‘throne’

  Das Wort Stuhl […] ist mit l-Suffix zur indoeuropäischen Wurzel *stā-, *stǝ- ‚stehen, stellen‘ gebildet.

  (The word Stuhl is built from the proto-indo-european language by adding the suffix ‘l’ to the root ‘*stā’ or ‘*stǝ’ which means ‘to stand’)

  So both means seat/seating or throne but chair is more a throne-like furniture (by having arm rests and/or back rest) whereas Stuhl was more like a simple stool (a small foot rest or seating without any back rest or arm rests). In German we use “Schemel” or “Hocker” to describe such a stool. “Schemel” seems to come from “scamilla”, Latin for small bench.

  I have no idea how all this information helps us, but it’s interesting :D

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  • frog@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Yes always good to see a fellow frog!

    So this meme would only make sense in Old High German.

    That is interesting.

    Thanks for the info.

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    • LeFrog@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      So this meme would only make sense in Old High German.

      Maybe I put it wrong, but it works even better in modern Germany: “Stuhl” means chair in modern German. The joke/pun is well-known in German: “Darf ich Ihnen den Stuhl zurückschieben?” So unlike in the English version, “Stuhl” literally both means “chair” and “poop”.

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      • frog@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        It’s probably me misunderstanding. Thank you for the correction.

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  • gamer@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    whereas Stuhl was more like a simple stool (a small foot rest or seating without any back rest or arm rests). In German we use “Schemel” or “Hocker” to describe such a stool.

    So what you’re saying is that the meme doesn’t work in German either, because the furniture in the meme would be referred to as a “Schemel” rather than a “Stuhl”

    This meme is an abortion of human language smh

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    • SpongyAneurism@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      No no, if you just use Stuhl it works perfectly in German. This word has exactly the double meaning that is necessary for the pun, it’s not even a stretch. I’d have more trouble finding an appropriate verb for the translation.

      A Schemel is really a very small seat, no taller than knee-height. It’s something you sit on to milk a cow for example.

      And a Hocker is a kind of chair with usually neither arm nor foot-rest of any height. I’d say it’s pretty much a perfect match for the English stool. You could call a Schemel a kind of Hocker, but a Hocker can also be as tall as a normal chair or even taller at counter height, in which case we’d call it a Barhocker.

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    • LeFrog@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      No no, it works even better: “Stuhl” means chair in modern German. The joke/pun is well-known in German: “Darf ich Ihnen den Stuhl zurückschieben?” So unlike in the English version, “Stuhl” literally both means “chair” and “poop”.

      source