mindless mutterings

Wait a minute... is "house shoes" a common American/English synonym for slippers, or not?

Do I only think it is, because it's the common German term, and it's pronounced basically the same in German (Hausschuhe) and English, and because my German mom may have used the term with me when I was growing up?

(Similarly, I used to think "short-armed" and "long-armed" (shirts) was a normal thing to say, until I learned that the correct English term was "short-sleeved" and "long-sleeved".)

..

For some reason, today the German word "Schiess-stoff" came to mind. I thought it was the word for gunpowder, but there's another word, Schiesspulver for the latter. Stoff means material.

https://www.spektrum.de/lexikon/chemie/schiessstoffe/8229
That page says that Shiess-stoff is a general term for both gunpowder and rocket fuel.

Anyway, I was thinking about how hard that word would be for an American to pronounce.
Sh - ee - ss - sht - off

Sort of like the "She sells seashells" phrase, except the middle of the work is an S sound followed immediately by a SH sound, and then a T sound.

("St" at the beginning of a word is pronounced "sht" in German. And since Schiess-stoff is a compound word, it is pronounced that way in there too.)

You can click the "listen" icon on the Google translate page to hear it:
https://translate.google.com/?hl=en#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=schiessstoff

Hum. "Strumpf" and "Strumpfhosen" must also be hard for Americans to pronounce.
Sh-t-r and m-p-f-h
https://translate.google.com/?hl=en#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=strumpfhosen
But the English word triumph is similar.