Need help from those who know German. One of my pet peeves with English is our lack of

[raccoon]

words for "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" when you're talking about people way past the age of maturity.

Does German have some words? With their penchant for compound words, they might...

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. They just designate the word for "friend" by gender.

Boyfriend = Freund; girlfriend = Freundin. The Norwegians have a better idea - they use a gender-neutral word, kjæreste, to designate a significant other.

[DFW]

3. And "Kjaereste" just means "dearest."

Interesting that the Norwegians use that where the Swedes next door still use pojkvän and flickvän (boyfriend and girlfriend).

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. It may have something to do with the relatively recent "invention"

Last edited Mon May 1, 2017, 07:51 PM - Edit history (1)

of Bokmål, which rejected Swedish influences and stuck more to Danish, which was used for official purposes - and which also uses kjæreste to mean both boyfriend and girlfriend. Norwegian is written a lot like Danish but is pronounced more like Swedish; Danes sort of swallow a lot of consonants.

[DFW]

6. Danes swallow EVERYTHING

I studied Swedish intensively in college, can fool Swedes into thinking I'm one of them for at least a short time. They say the three Scandinavian languages are mutually intelligible. I can make out maybe 75% of Norwegian, depending on which version is being spoken. But Danish? Ugh. A ton of glottal stops with a token vowel thrown in a gesture of good will. I can read it, but don't ask me to follow a conversation!

[Orrex]

2. The German word for "adult boyfriend" has 73 letters.

[DFW]

4. It isn't used much in daily conversation

"Freund" and "Freundin" are the terms most commonly used in speech.