Helmut

This is not a good photo but I needed Helmut to add to the series of recent wild bird visitors. My husband won't help me to understand how to change the camera from "Auto" so that I can change speed & shutter on these gloomy, grey days.

 Helmut is a Kohlmeise to me, Great tit to you.
Meise is the German zoological word for tit.
Kohl is the German word for cabbage and the surname of one of our ex-Chancellors - a big man, some may say even great.

Kohlmeise isn't a cabbage tit - it derives from the adjective "kohlschwarz" which comes from Kohle (coal) schwarz (black). It has nothing to do with "Kohlenschwarz" the noun for carbon black.

“Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache” (“German language, hard language”) you may think. You just need to know how to work around it. So you are at liberty to call Helmut by another name:
Brandmeise
Schwarzmeise
Große Kohlmeise
Großmeise
Große Waldmeise
Große schwarze Meise
Finkmeise
Meisenfink
Pinkmeise
Speckmeise
Schinkenmeise
Talgmeise
Talgmöske
Talghacker
Pickmeise
Spiegelmeise
Grasmeise
and even
Linné
Mésange charbonnière

Easy, gell? Or should we stick with Latin - "Parus major".

Perhaps we need to work on introducing "Esperanto" throughout the EU!

Did you know there are more "first language" German (97mill.), French (66mill.) and Italian (65mill.) speakers than English (60mill.)?