Synonyms in German

The Germans love to tell Americans here that there are many more German words than English words--that we have a fewer number of words in English, but that these words can mean several different things (synonyms.) Sometimes I find this idea funny because, how does one determine the number of words a language has or does not have, by the thickness of the dictionaries? How absurd. Besides, German has its share of synonyms, and they tend to be confusing...

The word “vorstellen” for example, means “to imagine”. Ok, no problem. But, the noun for vorstellen is “Vorstellung”. Too bad, though, that it also means performance. How you say that the performance was very imaginative must be hard.

And, German, being the language and culture of some of the people who are the most obsessed about exotic cultures of the world, also happens to be one of the most culturally insensitive. The word for “dwarf” or “gnome” in German is “Zwerg.” A garden gnome, for example, is a Gartenzwerg. Well, the word for “midget” is also “Zwerg” in German. So, it doesn’t matter if a little person is a midget or a dwarf, they are a dwarf. What’s worse, they are really also “gnomes”, since the word for Gnomes is also "Zwerg."