Two more linguistic things that tickled my fancy:
• I'm staying with a friend's family for Christmas (again, I don't actually celebrate Christmas, but apparently I celebrate "German Christmas") and today we were talking about the local Christmas market. The dad of the family mentioned that they strew straw about on the ground in the Christmas market, in and around the vendors' stalls. He reflected quite seriously, "Da hat man ein ganz anderes Gehgefühl." ("That makes for a very different feeling-of-walking.")
"Gehgefühl" – a specific way that it feels when you walk. One of my new favorite words!
• The same friend's father described his home office as "immer ganz messyhaft" – "always very messy," but by borrowing the English adjective "messy" and tacking on the German adjective ending "-haft" (something like "-ful"), so together I guess you'd say it comes out as "messyful."
!!
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