The German language has a great legacy
and has the largest number of speakers
in all of Europe including countries
such as Germany, Austria, Switzerland, as well
as places such as Liechtenstein,
Luxembourg and Belgium. Because of this
and the fascinating nature of the German language,
we just couldn't resist bringing you the
Ten things you didn't know about the German language.
German is famous for its compound words which are
words are formed from a number of other
words put together into one.
German can have ridiculously long words
you could never get in English such as
which means law for the
delegation of monitoring beef labeling.
Others are
which means insurance companies
providing legal protection and
which means head district chimney sweeper and
there are many others basically as many
words as there is German imagination.
So just think of a word and you might be able to create it.
Since the wide-scale immigration of millions of Turkish
people into Germany over the last few
decades, Turkish culture and language
had become a large and important part
of Germany. Particularly interesting is
the phenomenon of Turkish German which
is a variety of German mostly spoken by
the children of Turkish immigrants.
Some of the characteristics of Turkish German
are short abbreviated sentences and
a certain type of vocabulary. Some of the
vocabulary you will frequently hear are
"Ische" which means bitch,
"Alda" which is an abbreviated form of "Alter" referring to
an old man but now means any person
the speakers referring to. Frequent use of
the word "Hure"which technically means
whore but now can refer to anyone and
the universal application of the
informal you without ever using formal you
which is to say in Turkish German
everyone is a Du. Of course this is
fairly normal as different communities
always tend to branch out and culturally
enrich the language of their host
countries and nowhere is this more true
than with Turkish German.
Classically German is distinguish between formal you and informal you
which in German is "Sie" or "Ihr" or "Du".
But in recent years there's been an interesting trend
whereby the formal you has begun to
disappear in many contexts where it
formally would have been required.
"Sie" is supposed to be used with strangers,
older people and people you just don't know too well.
Just a few decades ago formal you
was still being used by students at
university to address each other but
that is long gone and these days every
student at university is a "Du".
However the change is greater than that,
online everyone is a "Du" or will get
"geduzt" rather than "gesiezt" and even in
places such as shops and cafés people
these days have an overwhelming tendency
to use "Du" rather than "Sie".
"Sie" is still used in official places such as banks and
business meetings but it is increasingly
losing ground to "Du" just about
everywhere. There have been parallel
developments in languages such as
Swedish where the formal you simply
disappeared from the language during the
20th century so it might be that the
German language will follow suit.
While many languages in the world are
more complex than German,
as far as West European languages go,
German is still pretty difficult
particularly for English speakers.
It has a different word order,
grammatical gender and host of other
things that can drive people batty.
Take the following German sentence, for example.
Which idiomatically translates as
He informed me that he had transferred a large sum
of money to his savings account
yesterday because the bank had recently
announced higher interest rates.
But literally would be translated as the following.
He has me informed that he
yesterday because of the recently by the
bank announced interest rate raised a
large sum of money to a savings account
transfer had. This difficulty of the
German language has been alluded to by
Mark Twain wrote an essay titled
"The awful German language" in which he stated
never knew before what attorney was made for,
it is to give some of us a chance to learn German.
English is everywhere these days
and German hasn't done a good job
standing up to its influence. There are
literally hundreds and hundreds of
English words and expressions in German these days
such as "Just for fun", "Fair", "Liken",
derived from like,
"Baby", "Cash", "Checken", derived from check,
"Catering" and many more.
Sometimes this is referred to as Denglish
but these days these words
might as well be German given their
frequent use and the fact that so many employ them.
Speaking of grammatical gender,
if you're used to Spanish or French,
German might throw you off a bit
because it has three genders and
oftentimes there is no rhyme or reason
to it and it just needs to be memorized
with the word. Sure there are some
patterns such as most words ending with
"-tum" tend to be neuter or neither
masculine or feminine such as "das Heiligtum".
Which refers to a sanctuary or sometimes sainthood
or "das Deutschtum" which refers to Germanness or
German culture but there are exceptions
such as "der Reichtum" and "der Irrtum".
Which both end with "-tum" but are
masculine in gender and mean wealth and error respectively.
The biggest challenge for English speakers however
is that some German words look identical but have
different genders and correspondingly
different meanings, for example, "der Laster"
is a masculine and refers to a truck but
"das Laster" is neuter and refers to vice
others are "der Kiefer" which refers to
a jaw bone and is masculine
but "die Kiefer" which
refers to a pine tree and is feminine.
"Der Ekel" which refers to disgust or
revulsion and is masculine but
"das Ekel" which is neuter and means
an obnoxious or monstrous person.
"Der Verdienst" which is masculine and refers to
financial earnings but "das Verdienst"
which is neuter and refers to achievement.
There are many others like these and
they only serve to confuse and troll the
poor learner of German.
The German language has a long philosophical
tradition embodied in such thinkers and
philosophers as Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche,
Schopenhauer and others.
Nazi party member and philosopher Martin Heidegger
was known for his descriptive claims
about the special properties of the
German language for the purposes of
philosophy as he stressed the abstract
and inscrutable nature of German for
creating philosophical concepts.
The original works of German philosophy are
often incredibly difficult to read in
the original, let alone translate.
Many German words also tend to be "mehrdeutig"
or ambiguous such as "Geist" which
can mean both spirit and mind at the
same time and do not allow for
an easy English translation.
You might be surprised to hear this
but Germans make mistakes too.
In fact the current generation of
Germans makes more mistakes than you
would probably guess.
Despite the fact that German spelling is
very simple, many Germans these days
cannot distinguish between spelling
certain words. One of the most prominent
examples of this is the word "dass"
meaning that which many Germans tend to
write as "das", also meaning that but in a different context.
But despite this anywhere you
see written German you'll see "das"
written set of "dass".
Germans also get the gender of words,
for example the identical word pair
"Der Verdienst" versus "Das Verdienst"
is misunderstood by most Germans
and they tend to say "der Verdienst"
all the time even when it means
achievement rather than financial
earnings in which case the proper form
would be "das Verdienst".
There are many other instances of this such as German
saying "einzigste" instead of "einzige"
which is incorrect, meaning only.
Or "besser wie" instead of "besser als"
which means better than.
They might have learned it all in school
but somehow it just got lost in transition.
Called the "Rechtschreibreform" in German, in 1996
all German-speaking countries agreed to
reform the German spelling system to
reduce the complexity and make it even
easier than it had been.
One e of the fundamental changes involve
changing the near-universal letter "Eszett (ß)"
which is a sharp S, to a double S or SS.
Provided the vowel that preceded was short.
An example of this would be "Fluss"
or river which used to be written as "Fluß"
with ß but because it has a short
vowel it now has a double S instead of an ß.
On the other and a word
such as "Fuß" meaning foot has retained the ß
because the vowel is long.
Generally speaking the spelling reform
has been poorly received with large numbers
of people continuing to write in the old
way and others just mixing it up quite a bit.
There have even been polls in recent years
that indicate that many people simply
wish to return to the old way but given
the tense political situation in Germany,
it is unlikely that spelling reform will
take centerpiece anytime soon.
German has a number of words that many
Germans think are English in origin but
are never used in English in the same way
despite seeming English.
Over the years they have become so anchored to
the language that few people think about
them much anymore but they are a bit
strange at least for English speakers.
Some of these words are "Handy" which
means mobile phone in German but its
original English meaning actually
translates the German "handlich".
"Mobbing" which means bullying in German that
means crowded or crowding in English.
"Public Viewing" which means watching
a football match from outside but not just
watching people walk by and "Wellness"
which generally refers to
a spa and massage parlour
rather than actual health.
There you have it, but Germans are known
for the creativity even being creative
with words from other languages.
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and thanks for learning.
Bis zum nächsten Mal. (See you next time!)