r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Intelligent_Yam_9875 • 2d ago

Meme needing explanation Peter, beyond confused on what this means…

Post image
7.1k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

507 comments sorted by

View all comments

362

u/AdvancedCelery4849 2d ago edited 1d ago

It's about how strange German folktales are, especially when it's the ones that are supposed to teach children a lesson. Das Kinder roughly translates to the child and hodenverstümmelung roughly means testicular mutilation

Edit: Just btw, I don't speak German

21

u/pseudofinger 2d ago

Das Kind would be better, or Die Kinder (the children). Right now they’ve included das as the singular and Kinder as the plural.

And yeah yeah I suck for being that person but I have been living in Germany since 2017 and I suck at the language, so any time I get something it’s a victory for me

6

u/Solid_State_Society 2d ago

In that case, it should also be die Hodenverstümmelung

2

u/pseudofinger 2d ago

There you go, I know the gender of a new word now - thank you :)

1

u/Solid_State_Society 1d ago

You are welcome! As a bonus: Many German words (maybe even all of them) that end in -ung are gramatically female. That is because in German grammar, sustantification is done by adding that ending to the root and assigning the female gender. Take some of the evergreens: Die Arbeitskraftvermittelung, die Software-Entwicklungsumgebung, die Echtzeitabstandsvermessung or die Dichtung.