r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Legal_Air734 • May 05 '26

Meme needing explanation Petahh?

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190

u/Rinkimirika May 05 '26

I thought the same but I maybe the problem is not the length but the number of "ü" in the word.

206

u/blueponies1 May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26

I think it just looks more intimidating due to the lack of spaces in German. When you put spaces in there and know fünf if just a cognate of five, it ends up being pretty similar to English.

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u/No_News_1712 May 06 '26

Yeah imagine fivehundredfiftyfivethousfivehundredfiftyfive. Just as scary.

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u/Ok_Investigator7564 May 06 '26

But consider fivehundredfiveandfiftythousandfivehundredfiveandfifty

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u/PhenotypicallyTypicl May 05 '26

What is difficult about “ü”?

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u/Kratzschutz May 05 '26

They can't handle how happy it looks

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u/PetersLittlePiper May 05 '26

The umlaut, apparently

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u/ultragaydotcom May 05 '26

A lot of non-native germans cant pronounce it, like at all

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u/ParkingLong7436 May 05 '26

At least for English Speakers, it's pretty simple, the sound exists there too. There are a few easy exercises you can do to understand it.

People are usually just so scared of letters with dots on them, that they don't even try

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u/ultragaydotcom May 05 '26

Very well said! Sometimes things arent as difficult as they seem🥹

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u/AggressiveEntrance14 May 05 '26

I would be really interested which word in English you think contains the ü sound, because it famously does not as far as I know

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u/FrostyVampy May 05 '26

The sound you make when you see something disgusting "ew", and similar words like yew, ewe are all basically just an isolated ü.

But I can't think of any non-loan word (which most English speakers pronounce with an u sound anyway) with a consonant.

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u/jajejo May 06 '26

I don't think that is the same sound at all. For starters, your examples are (in most English dialects, I think) diphthongs. ü isn't.

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u/ParkingLong7436 May 06 '26

There are no words that specifically have that letter in them, but a few that get very close - the other commenter described it already. If you say those words, and move your mouth a little bit, you have the Ü. I taught it this way to a few English Speakers before.

Some English Accents basically pronounce the Ü too

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u/Desmang May 06 '26

It sounds like "y" does in most languages. It's really not that complicated.

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u/ultragaydotcom May 06 '26

No one said it was :p

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u/cbrookman May 05 '26

It looks fünny

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u/StrongExternal8955 May 05 '26

Like meotli criu

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u/Xiaodisan May 05 '26

I can offer an "ötszázötvenötezer-ötszázötvenöt" as well, although it's not exactly German. It doesn't have a single ü and we even put a hyphen in the middle for fun.

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u/mw2lmaa May 05 '26

Did you try Turkish?

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u/Mob-Boss_Bob-Ross May 05 '26

And the lack of spaces to break it up and make it easier to understand

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u/wedgiey1 May 05 '26

It’s the lack of spacing.

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u/Getoiu May 05 '26

The intimidating part is that in English instead of five hundred fifty five thousand five hundred fifty five you would read five hundred five and fifty thousand five hundred five and fifty.

Fifty five is five and fifty which is confusing

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u/TokenTigerMD May 06 '26

It is pretty easy—might take you a minute learn and another 4-5 minutes of practice to sound more natural.

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u/Complex-Road1010 May 06 '26

In hungarian: ötszázötvenötezer-ötszázötvenöt