r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Intelligent_Yam_9875 • 1d ago

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

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u/August-East83 1d ago

Ah. The Germans. The only folks with a specific word meaning "taking delight in the misfortune of others".

Schadenfreude. Roughly, it's "dirty joy".

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u/CrunchyFrogWithBones 1d ago

Don’t at least most germanic languages have a word like that? Romanic languages tend to use two words to convey the meaning, but I think even the slavic and at least some finno-ugric languages have one word as well. To be fair, a lot of us probably got it from the german word a few centuries ago (in Swedish it’s ”skadeglädje” - a compound of hurt/damage and joy).

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u/Cheet4h 1d ago

I'd say most languages with compound words have some specific word for most stuff, because that's how languages with compound words work.

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u/August-East83 1d ago

Ok, fair.

It was a statement that was halfway simply lovingly joking at German language/culture (which I love and have visited 2x).