• Seth Taylor@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Hamburger is someone from the city of Hamburg

    [ slowly puts half-eaten hamburger down in stunned horror ]

    • SpongyAneurysm@feddit.org
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      3 months ago

      I deliberately chose that example for the shits and giggles.

      But now that I think of it, I guess I should explain some more. It doesn’t have to be a person to work that way.

      Usually it works like this: you have place names like: Wien (Vienna)
      Frankfurt
      Nürnberg (Nuremberg)
      Thüringen (Thuringia)
      Krakau (Krakow)

      by making them end in -er you can turn them into adjectives. (Keeping the capitalization, because they are names, although adjectives are usually lower-case):

      Frankfurter Würstchen
      Wiener Würstchen
      Nürnberger Würstchen
      Thüringer Würstchen
      Krakauer Wurst

      Those are all some kind of sausages (Wurst, pl. Würste, diminutive: Würstchen), by the way. And because they are well recognized and when the context is clearly about food, you can drop the noun entirely and the former adjective turns into a Noun, which can stand on its own. (But mostly distinguished by their article/genus)

      Frankfurter
      Wiener
      Nürnberger
      Thüringer
      Krakauer

      Though for some reason, “Pariser” is a slang word for condoms.