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Plant Slurs (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] 146 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Fun fact: the name for a weed in my native language is literally "angry grass" :3

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  • [–] 62 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Unkraut in German. Doesn't deserve to be called a Kraut.

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  • [–] 37 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Similar in Norwegian: Ugress. Un-grass.

    I've heard one definition of it that I like: The grass that your (grazing) animals won't eat.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Ogräs in swedish, gräs is herb and the O is like making it not-grass.

    Röka gräs is smoking weed though so suddenly it's getting the good treatment.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    Herb is ört in Swedish. Gräs is better translated as grass, so ogräs is non-grass. This also enables a funny way to insult someone's lawn -- since lawn is gräsmatta (grass carpet) -- by calling it an ogräsmatta.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    So technically all non-Germans are Unkrauts! I‘m incorporating this word.

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I know where you are coming from, but as a German calling someone „Unkraut“ has a very dehumanizing sound and was used by nazis to classify people they wanted to murder. Example: https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/6SLYFZ3ZSAWYUJX26V4EXWYGFZBI7ZFH

    „However, it would have to become the task of the Inner Mission... to clear God's field of this Unkraut“: women as victims of forced serialisation and "euthanasia" under National Socialism

    What happend next is posted daily by https://mastodon.world/@auschwitzmuseum So you might want to skip this.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I love it, what language is that?

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Lithuanian :3

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    In Swedish the prefix for bad stuff is the same as the prefix for not or un-. So a monster is a not-animal and a weed is ungrass. Which is especially interesting to me because that same prefix (o) is for better versions of things in Japanese.

    e: This got me thinking about "plant," and I realized it's literally the verb to plant. In Swedish it's a growth, or thing that grew. Japanese and Chinese: planted thing. Spanish is also the same as the verb. I feel kinda bad we mostly talk about them in terms of farming them rather than giving them a proper name. Like if they get sentient someday, plant will probably be considered a slur.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    that same prefix (o) is for better versions of things in Japanese.

    Puts on nerd glasses well ackshually it's used to elevate the status of something, such as with people, objects or other entities of social or religious significance (for example other people's family members in a polite situation). It's more honored than better.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I don't love the honor translation partially because it's been used in racist caricature, but also because it's often inaccurate. Like you might say ohana because you're in an extremely formal interaction, or because you want to sound poetic or whatever, but you're not actually saying "honorable flowers" usually. You can mean that though. I feel like it's too context-sensitive and culturally nuanced for simple translation.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Like you might say ohana because you're in an extremely formal interaction, or because you want to sound poetic or whatever, but you're not actually saying "honorable flowers" usually.

    I think the most common instance would be simply wanting to sound cute.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The French name for weed could be translated to "bad/wrong grass"

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I think this is something I might be too French-Canadian to understand, here we'd call it "pot" or perhaps "herbe", both of which don't translate to "bad grass".

    Unless overseas "herbe" translates to weed. We use it pretty interchangeably with "gazon" (which just means grass)

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