But not all the Wesen names are artificial.
#Define hexenbiest series
The quick answer to this question is that most of the German names for Wesen used in the TV series "Grimm" are indeed made up, using roughly the same principle of shoving concepts together to make a portmanteau word as German psychologists used at the time of Jung and Freud, who excelled in this semantic pastime. The whole Grimm series is now on Netflix, and you can expect new people like myself to come bounding in with new enthusiasm. I don't think Jadzeli (see comment below) has any reason to apologise for his/her remarks (note the PC!) nor is there any need to delete them. But you see that's about how creative Grimm's German is!! You see, I am a little concerned because of my English, since I am German, born an bread. So, and now, I hope I didn't make a fool of myself with his post. The text is available on the internet titled "The Awful German Language"! Have fun! If you really want to know something about German, you might find pretty hilarious what Mark Twain wrote when trying to learn German. The language is nothing but comic relief. And as much as I enjoy listening to Scottish or Northern British accents, I think that this fake, or let us say, creative German, makes Grimm special. If it is "Germanish", there is often a different meaning to what they're saying, in spoken German. Of course, hardly any of it is proper German, neither contemporary nor mediaeval nor of any other times. I keep rolling over my carpet laughing, really!! These word creations they are using finally made me stay. When I started watching it I was not hooked from the start. Well, I know it's been a long time since anyone posted here but, I came across this show only recently. The only explanation I have for this is that they looked up "queen" in a translation dictionary but read one definition too far and hit the translation for "queer". But they call the leader of the hive Mellischwuler which is like, honey gay - as in homosexual. Mellifera is the Latin species name for honeybees. Blutbaden is more like "to bathe in blood" or "bloodbathing", although I don't think it's really a word.Ī few, like Jägerbär, are "correct" but don't appear in the original tales at all. Some like Blutbaden are more subtle - Blutbad is the correct term for bloodbath in German, but the plural is Blutbäder, not Blutbaden. I think they word they wanted would be Schnitter but in a later episode it's been changed to Vernichter, "destroyer". This is German for "Reapers of Grimms", but as you might guess from the maschinen it means an automated harvesting machine. They're based neither on myth nor history, but are very loosely based on German.įor example, the first time a Reaper of Grimms appears his scythe says Erntemaschinen der Grimms.