{"id":23862,"date":"2025-01-22T14:01:23","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T14:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=23862"},"modified":"2025-01-22T15:53:10","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T15:53:10","slug":"kinder-kinder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=23862","title":{"rendered":"Kinder Kinder"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a joke \/ meme that goes something like No matter how kind you are … German children are Kinder<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nfrom Imgflip Meme Generator<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This is a bilingual pun – in German Kinder<\/strong> means children<\/strong>, while in English kinder<\/strong> means nicer, more gentle, generous, affectionate, etc. These two words look alike, but are they related? Let’s find out.<\/p>\n

The German word Kind<\/strong> (child, kid, offspring) comes from Middle-High German kint<\/em> (child), from Old High German kind<\/em> (child, descendants), from Proto-West-Germanic *kind<\/em> (child), from Proto-Germanic *kind\u0105, *kin\u00fe\u0105<\/em> (child), from Pre-Germanic *\u01f5\u00e9nh\u2081tom<\/em>, from Proto-Indo-European *\u01f5enh\u2081-<\/em> (to produce, beget, give birth) [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n

Kind<\/strong> in English means such things as having a benevolent, courteous, friendly, generous, gentle, liberal, sympathetic or warm-hearted nature or disposition; affectionate, favourable, mild, gentle or forgiving. It can also mean a type, category (What kind<\/strong> of nonsense is this?); goods or services used as payment (They paid me in kind<\/strong>), or a makeshift or otherwise atypical specimen (The box served as a kind<\/strong> of table).<\/p>\n

Kind<\/strong> as in benevolent comes from Middle English kinde, kunde, kende<\/em> (kind, type, sort), while kind<\/strong> as in type comes from Middle English cunde<\/em> (kind, nature, sort) \/ kynde<\/em> (one’s inherent nature; character, natural disposition), and both come from Old English cynd<\/em> (sort, kind, type, gender, generation, race) \/ \u0121ecynd<\/em> (nature, kind, class), from Proto-West-Germanic *kundi \/ *gakundiz<\/em>, from Proto-Germanic *kin\u00feiz<\/em> (kind, race), from Proto-Indo-European *\u01f5\u00e9nh\u2081tis<\/em> (birth, production), from *\u01f5enh\u2081-<\/em> (to produce, beget, give birth) [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n

So, the German Kind<\/strong> and the English kind<\/strong> do ultimately come from the same roots. Are German Kinder<\/strong> kinder<\/strong> though, or are they the Wurst<\/strong>, and somewhat gross<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

Other words produced, beget and given birth to by the Proto-Indo-European root *\u01f5enh\u2081-<\/em> include: kind<\/strong> (child), koning<\/strong> (king, monarch) and kunne<\/strong> (gender, sex) in Dutch, cognate<\/strong>, engine(er)<\/strong>, gender<\/strong>, gene<\/strong>, general<\/strong>, genesis<\/strong>, genetic<\/strong>, genial<\/strong>, genius<\/strong>, gentle<\/strong>, kin<\/strong>, king<\/strong>, nature<\/strong>, oxygen<\/strong> and progeny<\/strong> in English, K\u00f6nig<\/strong> (king) in German, nascere<\/strong> (to be born, bud, sprout) in Italian, gentis<\/strong> (tribe, genus, family, kin) in Lithuanian, geni<\/strong> (to be born, birth) in Welsh [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n

Incidentally, the English word child<\/strong> is not related to the German word Kind<\/strong>. It comes from Middle English child<\/em> (baby, infant, toddler, child, offspring), from Old English \u010bild<\/em> (child, baby), from Proto-West Germanic *kil\u00fe, *kel\u00fe<\/em>, from Proto-Germanic *kel\u00feaz<\/em> (womb; fetus), from Proto-Indo-European *\u01f5elt-<\/em> (womb), or from Proto-Indo-European *gel-<\/em> (to ball up, amass). It is related to kuld<\/strong> (brood, litter) in Danish, and kelta<\/strong> (lap) in Icelandic though, and possibly kalt<\/strong> (cold, chilly, calm) and k\u00fchl<\/strong> (cool, calm, restrained) in German [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a joke \/ meme that goes something like No matter how kind you are … German children are Kinder. from Imgflip Meme Generator This is a bilingual pun – in German Kinder means children, while in English kinder means nicer, more gentle, generous, affectionate, etc. These two words look alike, but are they related? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,104,107,116,128,10,170,26,177,33,178,44,45,202,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dutch","category-english","category-etymology","category-german","category-italian","category-language","category-lithuanian-lietuviu-kalba","category-middle-english","category-middle-high-german","category-old-english-aenglisc","category-old-high-german","category-proto-germanic","category-proto-indo-european","category-proto-west-germanic","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23862"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23877,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23862\/revisions\/23877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}