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I Brake Together

When HN users recommended it

1 HN user recommended this in 2025, in one comment.

20072026

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What HN users said

sandreas linked amazon.de View on HN

This is so cool. A little context:

In germany we sometimes try to be funny (in a nice way - not making fun of native speakers but more of ourselves not being able to translate something), when we translate german phrases to english word-by-word ignoring english grammar resulting in total nonsense. The closest comparable native speaker thing to do I can think of is "I can has cheezburger"[1]

For example: A german artist / comedian named Helge Schneider took the german phrase

  ich brech' zusammen 
which would really translate in

  I collapse 
but word by word it goes

  I break together      I        => ich   break    => brechen   together => zusammen 
which must be total nonsense to native speakers. He even took it a little further and replaced break (brechen) with brake (bremsen) to make it even more nonsense - probably only germans can really understand what's really meant [2].

Your phrase is pretty similar for german people (but more understandable to native speakers) - "das Internet geht kaputt" => "the internet will break", but word by word it is:

  the interwebs all go kaput    the interwebs => das Internet   goes          => geht   kaput         => kaputt  
Thank you for responding, I did not know that this was a thing - probably interesting for linguists how this came back to native speakers.

1: https://icanhas.cheezburger.com/

2: https://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000KLRUNY/

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