• FundMECFSResearch
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    3 months ago

    Lol. For those wondering, bürger in german means civilian. It comes from Burg which means town, hence the city Hamburg, after which hamburgers are named.

    So Bürgerkrieg is Civil(ian) war.

    • norimee@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Excuse me, but Burg is a castle build for defence. People of the area could get behind their walls in a case of attack, so many settled in close proximity for safety. The resulting town was often called Burg in the middle ages, but thats not true for today.

      In todays language Burg does not mean town anymore. It is only used for a kind of castle. You can’t ask “In welcher Burg wohnst du?”

      Unless you still live in the middle ages of course.

      • FundMECFSResearch
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        3 months ago

        Thanks for the clarification.

        For anyone wondering, the story is a little more muddy:

        Old Frisian burich “castle, city,” Old Norse borg “wall, castle,” Old High German burg, buruc “fortified place, citadel,” German Burg “castle,” Gothic baurgs “city”), which Watkins derives from from PIE root *bhergh- (2) “high,” with derivatives referring to hills, hill forts, and fortified elevations.

        In German and Old Norse, chiefly as “fortress, castle;” in Gothic, “town, civic community.”

        https://www.etymonline.com/word/burg

  • Flipper@feddit.org
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    3 months ago

    Quick question, Answer of the top of your head: When was the last state sanctioned slave freed in America?

    Answer

    Alfred Irving was released 1942.

    • Got_Bent@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I’ve never heard of this so did a little digging. I’m not sure this fits the bill of state sanctioned since the “owners” were pretty much immediately prosecuted via joint efforts of the local sheriff and the FBI then convicted of violating federal law.

      While looking through this, I learned of peonage where Mae Louise Miller was released escaped from slavery in 1961. I don’t see any legal repercussions for her “owners”.

      I wouldn’t say state sanctioned in her case either. Maybe state turning a blind eye.

      Nonetheless, whether or not state sanctioned applies in either situation, it doesn’t diminish the horrible reality that people were being kept as chattel well into the twentieth century.

      Thanks for informing me of this. I really had no idea it existed.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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    3 months ago

    Burger is short for Hamburger or Hamburg Steak a patty made of ground beef.

    Hamburg, I think, means town like a burgh, an autonomous municipal corporation. so a bürgermeister is the chairman of the town council. A mayor.

    Bürgerkrieg Bürgerkrieg is a town conflict. A war between towns.

    The best of times. The worst of times.

  • RachelRodent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 months ago

    I actually did learn world history in german, due to my third world origin and studying aboard aspirations. Like I have written essays on “amerikanishe bürgerkrieg” 💀

  • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Every True American after learning slaves had no burger: “40 ACRES AND A COW”

  • weeeeum@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    To any Germans out there, how funny is this to German speakers? Did you find it funny as soon as you first heard it?

    • kwomp2@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Imagine the letter H and G would look similar. Now imagine there was a language that didn’t have the letter H. People who spoke that language would post: “Hot Dog” and then go like “aaaahahaha imagine God Dog, like a god thats a dog”.

      Now add the fact that germans know and use the word burger regularly and do posess knowledge of the existence of different languages and that “burger” is an english word, thus pronunciation differs.

      So I’d say no, not funny.

      Then again I have laughed about and made jokes that made use of the similarity of burger and Bürger. But I guess the “rofl different languages”-element needs to be combined with smth more to qualify as a joke.

      Yours, german giving german answers

    • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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      3 months ago

      Not really, the words are pronounced differently

      Although I’ve seen the email address burger@[domain] and wondered why anyone would have an address named after a food - until realising the sender was a Mr. Burger (pronounced like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/De-Burg.ogg + er).

      Also, the food burger is pronounced almost like the Americans do because we took the English pronunciation and modified it slightly to fit existing German sounds.

      The “ü” in Bürger however is pronounced like the “ue” in the French word rue, which is a sound that doesn’t exist in English.