A Canoe Is Not a Canoe

I am baffled and amazed.

This weekend I went with a French colleague and a couple German friends of his for a bit of a wander in a patch of woods at the edge of Berlin called the Tegeler Forst (and it really is a proper bit of actual woods, where you get entirely away from all signs of urban life, yet without even living the city limits – Berlin is fantastic that way, full of massive parks and actual woods) and I learned something that stunned my language brain...

Namely, that when a German says "Kanu" (a word which you would forgive me for assuming was, you know, exactly what it sounds like, the German spelling of "canoe") they may well mean not a canoe, but a kayak.

What??

Yes, yes, said the German I was talking to. A canoe is called a "Kanadier" (as in, "Canadian"). A "Kanu" can be either a canoe or a kayak, it's kind of a general term.

Well, then what do you say for a kayak? I asked.

Oh, a kayak is a "Kayak"...well, or a "Paddelboot"... though that could be general too, for anything that's propelled with a paddle...

"Paddelboot"?? But that should be a paddleboat, you know, the kind you pedal with your feet.

By this point we were both confused, getting more and more turned around the more we tried to pin these words down. Because apparently, Germany adopts North American boat types – and then reapplies their names at random.

So here, for my own peace of mind, is a list!

Kanadier = canoe
Kayak (oder Paddelboot) = kayak
Kanu = general for both canoe and kayak
Tretboot = paddleboat


Thanks, Germany, that's not complicated or anything...


(Then, while trying to determine which German words were specific to one type of boat and which were general terms, we also had a good laugh about the word "muskelbetrieben" – literally "muscle-powered" – as a way to distinguish non-motorized boats from motorized ones. Apparently the others had been canoeing (...or Canadian-ing...?) in the Spreewald region, southeast of Berlin, and seen a sign that labeled a particular waterway as being only for "muscle-powered" craft.)


I have plenty more thoughts, actually, about English words that get adopted into German but acquire a slightly transmogrified meaning along the way, but that'll be another post...