• vovo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 days ago

    The term, yacht, originates from the Dutch word jacht (pl. jachten), which means “hunt”, and originally referred to light, fast sailing vessels that the Dutch Republic navy used to pursue pirates and other transgressors around and into the shallow waters of the Low Countries.

    • huppakee@feddit.nl
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      4 days ago

      We also use the word for hunting in fighter jets (jachtvliegtuig = hunt airplane, straaljager = jet hunter), imagine Dutch being as influential now as is was then; we’d have yacht airplanes.

    • d00ery@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Yes, and a Polish person tells me this is the correct way to make the Yah sound at the start of the English word, yacht.

      I imagine it’s the same for the Germans, Dutch, and Scandinavians. Though perhaps not for the French or Spanish.

      • Allemaniac@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        fun fact: the word “Yacht” derives from old german “Jagd”, which means hunt, it was used by the dutch as “Yacht” and the fast sailing boats got their names from there. But basically, all germanic, slavic and romantic languages pronounce the vowels the same way EXCEPT english, where they fuck up literally every single vowel

      • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Das Yacht sounds pleasing to you? I can understand why, given das Schiff, das Boot, etc.*, but I much prefer die Yacht, because of die Macht. Can I ask if you’re a native speaker/like native (for example if you learned German from age three in school) or a nonnative speaker?

        I ask because I’m a nonnative German teacher and there are certain geni that bother basically all nonnative speakers (das Lob should clearly be der Lob, for example) but don’t stand out to native speakers and I’m very interested in the language sense that people develop as native vs nonnative speakers.

        • die Fregatte, die Trireme, und die Galeone unter anderen sind aber auch weiblich und sind auch Fremdwörter für bestimmte Arten Schiffe.
        • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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          4 days ago

          Yeah I’m non-native. Natur is another one that triggers me, mostly because of the mother nature connotation in english

          • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            Well you’re in luck, it’s die Natur!

            Edit: that’s also a pretty like-native way to think about articles, so well done!

            • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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              4 days ago

              oh wow, I guess I only hear it referenced in dative and assumed it was masculine