Some of my Aussie and British coworkers are learning German too, on Duolingo and Busuu. At lunch, one of them said “Ich habe meine Brillen vergessen”, and when I said “meine Brille”, singular, he refused. “There are two lenses, mate.”

“Die Hose” made it worse, since in German he’s wearing one trouser. He didn’t take it well either.

“Brille” comes from “Beryll”, the stone early lenses were made of. Dutch keeps bril and broek singular, while Polish makes okulary and spodnie plural like English, so my head runs both systems at once. Praktika doesn’t always catch me saying “meine Hosen”.

Are there other German words like this that trip up English speakers, or are these the main ones?