As a German speaker it felt really weird reading it. Like your brain is in English mode, reads over the word, then backtracks, switches to German, reads it again and then continues with English.
I have a lot of appreciation for some specialized German words, such as Fingerspitzengefühl, Wanderlust, Zeitgeist, or Schadenfreude, but why Umwelt? It can just be translated to environment.
it is the environment _as experienced_ by an organism. Me and my dog can have the same environment, but we'll have different umwelt, because mine is primarily visual but his has a much larger scent component.
"such as Fingerspitzengefühl, Wanderlust, Zeitgeist, or Schadenfreude, but why Umwelt?"
Wanderlust, zeitgeist and schadenfreude are all English borrow words. Fingerspitzengefühl isn't (too complicated) and umwelt might well have just started to wriggle its way in!
I love a good Germanic compound word as much as the next anglophone but it needs to be mostly pronounceable on sight to stand a chance of being co-opted. That's one reason why the delightful sounding gewerbegebiet won't replace industrial zone.
Umwelt is suitably short and subtly different from environment. I suggest we nick it.
Okay I agree then on nicking Umwelt since it has a different meaning.
Since we’re discussing language and HN is a place to discuss, are you sure Fingerspitzengefühl is too difficult? The "ei" and "tz" sounds in Zeitgeist also make it a difficult word.
Yes I am sure! Zeitgeist: many (some) anglophones know that the German Zeit is "time" and geist looks similar to ghost and that riffs with spirit and off we trot. Besides it is generally pronounced (the spirit of the time) as something like "zyt'gyst". I lived in West Germany for a few years as a child so I go in with the tz sound on the initial Z. I have never heard anyone get the geist bit wrong. We are well used to weird diphthongs.
Fingerspitzengefühl suffers from being a bit much for us. We like it verbose but there is a threshold.
We have a word: floccinausillihillipillification (I may have misspelt it) which means something daft and was dreamed up by a Victorian gent. Can't be bothered to look it up. It was a bit silly (hilly etc) and was probably a response to a conversation like this 8)
OK lets have a go: finger (must be finger) ... spitz (I know that means point or peak - I've skied on a few - but most anglophones don't) ... engefühl (no idea). I'll guess at "fidget spinner"
... search ... how wrong can I be! - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerspitzengef%C3%BChl and also that article is talking complete and utter bollocks when it states that word as an English borrow word. We love to pinch other languages words and concepts but Fingerspitzengefühl is too long, even for me.
At 20 letters it's a suitably 'difficult' word even if it were actually an English one with familiar pronunciation. It being a German compound word makes it's usefulness to the general English speaking population highly questionable.
I would bet money that 2/3 or more of the people I know, keeping in mind that my technical acquaintances are only a small fraction, don't know Zeitgeist enough to pronounce it properly or even give a definition for it if asked.
I believe loan words only happen when the word makes some level of sense to speakers of the new language. Like, wander lust is almost understandable as English.
Fingerspitzengefühl is complex enough that I'd assume people who never studied German can't even split it into the words it comes from, to guess how to pronounce it.
In Dutch probably the most frequently used German loan-word is "uberhaupt"; it's probably used in the same connotation as "anyway" is in English, as in, "I wouldn't want to do that anyway".
> Made famous by zoologist Jakob von Uexkull in 1909, the term Umwelt refers to the perceptual world experienced by each animal, a highly specific kind of "sensory bubble." When we walk our dog and she stops to smell every other bush or car tire, she's taking in through her acutely sensitive nose smells that we take in faintly or not at all. That's because humans and dogs have two different sensory bubbles, or Umwelten.
