Last week I was teaching a group of German army officers and one of them said that he had cooked ‘mirror eggs’ for breakfast. German is a very precise and technical language and so we have lots of expressions and term such as ‘Spiegeleier’ which translates as ‘mirror eggs’. It refers to fried eggs that look a bit like small mirrors (Spiegel). I told the officers that in English we just say ‘fried eggs’ and they said that was too simply and asked me to share the German equivalent of ‘fried eggs’ with the world so they can start using the term ‘mirror eggs’ thereby making the world a bit better. So, I hope I’ve accomplished my mission ;-).
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Are mirror eggs fried on both sides so that one does not see a yolk? If not cooked on both sides, would the fried egg look like a mirror?
If so then they are called “Fried eggs over easy” in the US, if they are fried on both sides and cooked only enough to harden the white not the yolk and over hard if they are flipped and cooked to the point where the yolk inside is hard.
But maybe Germans think that sunny side up (fried on one side) eggs look like mirrors.
In any event it would seem that English has the more precise language for describing friend eggs, even to the point of describing their hardness, perhaps.
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Wow, I’m impressed by the thoroughness and creativity of our American friends when it comes to frying eggs :-). The German “mirror eggs” are probably what you would call “sunny side up” since they are fried on one side only to make the upper side look like a mirror.
Hi, Torsten.
Since you’re pretty good at Russian you must know russian equivalent of ‘mirror eggs’. It’s ‘глазунья’ which can roughly be interpreted as something with eyes. So when Germans break mirrors Russians cut out eyes 
Здравствуйте Канол, да я знаю что mirror eggs и Spiegelei глазунья по-русски and it’s very interesting to compare how different languages express the same concept, isn’t?
Sure. As I’ve been recently told, one Korean doctor horrified his russian patient when simply tried to ask her in Russian to lie down on a couch because there’s one Korean word for Russian ‘ложиться’ and ‘умирать’.
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So instead of "please lie down’ (ложитесь пожалуйста), he said ‘please die’, (умирайте пожалуйста’)?
Yes, that’s right
How or where did he find the word “умирать”, in a dictionary?
No idea. We’ve never been acquainted. Moreover I didn’t try to examine the matter, just loughed.
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loughed ⇒laughed
This reminds me how there is absolutely no sense to English spelling. Gohti could be pronounced “fish.”
Here is another unverified story relative to spelling
Once upon a time French, Chinese and Russian linguists gathered and decided to write one another’s names in their own languages.
My name is [Ge], said French.
There are two hierograms [ge] but neither of them fits, said Chinese.
Why?
Because one means ‘wheel’ and another – the sound of jackass’ bladder burst.
But what’s wrong with the wheel?
Man’s name can’t be circular. For your name we’ll take the [she] hierogram that means ‘keyboard’, ‘root-crop’, ‘page’, ‘snowless’ and complement it with [ngu] meaning ‘male’. In the end I’ll wright [mo] – ‘virgin’.
But that’s not perfectly…
Nobody’s going to consider you virgin. It’s just that without [mo] hierograms [she]-[ngu] mean ‘shaving mother’s mustache’.
Ok, now let me wright your name.
My name is [Go]
Excellent. I’ll begin with the ‘G’ character.
What does the ‘G’ character mean?
In European languages, characters themselves mean nothing but to express respect I’ll put ‘H’ before ‘G’. It’s not sounded anyway.
Fine! Now ‘O’?
No, to indicate that ‘G’ sounds as [g] not [h] we must put ‘U’ after ‘G’ and also ‘H’ to indicate that ‘U’ isn’t sounded but just indicates how to read ‘G’ and ‘EY’ indicating that the word is going to end soon.
Hguhey… Now ‘O’?
No, in French ‘O’ is pronounced as [a] or [Ə] depending on the neighboring characters, stress and time of year. Your pure [o] is written as ‘AUGHT’ but a word can’t close with ‘T’ so I have to add unsounded ending ‘NGER’. Voila!
Russian linguist put his jar on the table, took a piece of paper and wrote ‘Ге’ and ‘Го’.
It’s all?
Yes.
Mmm… And what’s your name?
Щекочихин-Крестовоздвиженский.
Let’s just drink, said Chinese. Russian nodded, French sighed with relief and raised a toast for sibilant diphthongs.
In Italian that’s called “uovo all’occhio di bue” (“ox’s eye egg”).
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They are in English “fried eggs sunny side up,” since the yolk is thought to resemble the sun. But usually they are fried separately rather than together, https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/images/2017/07/20170728-sunny-side-up-eggs-vicky-wasik.jpg