"Fast" is an interesting word in English -- it has a diverse (or is it "dyuers"?) set of meanings surrounding both "rapid", "secure" (i.e. "stand fast" or "fast asleep"), and "abstain" ("fasting").

Its relative, "quick", has some weird historical attachments as well -- it can mean both "rapid" and "alive" (as in "quicksand" or the "quick" of a nail).

> "secure" (i.e. "stand fast" or "fast asleep")

The most common example of this sense today would be "fasten".

> Its relative, "quick", has some weird historical attachments as well -- it can mean both "rapid" and "alive" (as in "quicksand" or the "quick" of a nail).

Likely also "quicksilver"?

"fast on the heels of" gives you an idea of how to connect the senses

I really enjoy finding how some of these cognates are connected, it opens up meanings and interpretations of words in English that I didn’t realize were there. It does make learning German a little frustrating though. I get this constant expectation that it should be easier because the languages are so close together, but the closeness makes a lot of things ironically harder. It seemed easier to grasp the word order in Japanese, for example, than German.

I get a perhaps similar kick out of reading proto-indo-european word lists:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_vocabulary

English "heart" is in French, "coeur", and in Greek, "kardia". Unrelated? No! In Proto-Indo-European we think it was "k̂erd"! Soften the leading k, stop voicing the final d, jiggle the vowel, and you get "heart". Lose the final d and you get "coeur". Jiggle the vowel, add a trailing vowel for streamlining, and you get "kardia".

Better yet, soften the leading k and you get "hṛd", the Sanskrit word. Add a trailing vowel, and you get "hŕday", the Hindi word in use today (or so wiktionary tells me).

This is pretty awesome, thanks for the link! Not having studied many languages, I was recently surprised to find out how many English cognates there are in languages like Persian... I had no idea it came from proto-indo-european.

Gift. (anglophones transferring to germanophone chemistry labs may think, at first, that the local industry is very generous)

In Swedish "gift" means both "poison" and "married".

Interestingly, its meaning in German once matched the meaning in English, but later shifted to a very specific kind of "giving".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gift#Etymology

Via the medicinal sense of "dose"

Nach einem gecanceltem Flug downloadete ein TV Showmaster sich eine App und trampte mit seinem Handy durch die City, stieg in einen stylischen Youngtimer und drehte sich nen Joint.

ProTip: Do not read German texts in a misguided attempt to improve your spoken German. Different beasts altogether.