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.
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.
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.”
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.
BürgerkriegBürgerkrieg is a town conflict. A war between towns.The best of times. The worst of times.
Close enough
Burg in modern German means castle, but as part of city names I think your etymology sounds about right. Bürger, on the other hand, means citizen. So the Bürgermeister is chief citizen, and Bürgerkrieg literally is citizen war. A civil war.
the duality of the bürger
Kreig ≠ Krieg
The order of letetrs matters
fixed.
<3
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” 💀
“Hey you guys wanna go to Burgerkrieg?”
Every True American after learning slaves had no burger: “40 ACRES AND A COW”
Beeeee Kaaaaaaaaaayyyy have it your way!
To any Germans out there, how funny is this to German speakers? Did you find it funny as soon as you first heard it?
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
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.
I just realised we pronounce Burger like Böaga
If true, I’ll rue the day I made this post.
everyone’s talking about this, don’t get it