German Language

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/wiki/German Languagework

Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache. —German saying

"I speak Spanish to God, French to men, Italian to women, and German to my horse." —Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, apocryphally.

A West Germanic language, German is the language of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg as well as parts of Belgium, France and Italy. It is specifically the chief representative of the High German branch of the family (the minor one being Yiddish); this is as opposed to Dutch, which is Low Franconian or Low German (depending on whom one asks), and English, which is Anglo-Frisian with a lot of French admixture. In the European Union, German is the most spoken mother tongue and the second most used language after English. See also German Literature.

German has many different dialects; see German Dialects for more details. Aside from that, the article refers to Standard German unless otherwise noted.

Noun:

Unlike most of the other modern Germanic languages, German comparatively still uses more inflection, which also allows a freer syntax. German retains four of the original eight Indo-European cases: nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. Compared to English, this usually results in less Ambiguous Syntax and more narrowly definable meaning.

German has three different grammatical genders: masculine, feminine and neuter, with appropriate forms of (definite&indefinite) articles and pronouns etc. (der, die, das / ein, eine) to go with them. Grammatical gender does usually not have to conform to biological sex. So there are objects which are gendered male or female, and beings which have a grammatical gender not conforming to their biological sex. E.g. "der Tisch" ('the table') is male, while "das Mädchen" ('the girl') is a neuter. Which Mark Twain found very strange if not disturbing.

This is actually a regular thing, because Mädchen is the diminutive of "die Magd" (literally "maid", meaning "maidservant"). It has the ending -chen and regularly all diminutives are of neuter gender (hence "das Mädchen"). "Mädel" with the diminutive ending -el is a synonym for Mädchen and also of neuter grammatical gender. Nowadays the meaning of "Magd" is restricted to the worker, while "Mädchen" and "Mädel" are general terms for girl.

Every Noun in German is capitalised. Since Danish abolished the practice in 1948, German is the only major language in the world that still has this rule.

German, like most other non-English languages, distingushes several versions of the 2nd person ("you") according to number and formality (English indeed used to have it itself and still does in the southern US):

• "Du" (2nd Person Singular), "Ihr" (2nd Person Plural) - the informal forms. "Du" is directly cognate to (i.e. from the same root as) "thou," which (people seem to forget) was the informal in Early Modern English.
• "Sie" (3rd Person Plural "they") - the polite form, both for adressing one person or a group. Cognate to "she."

In the past, there were even more forms of address:

• "Ihr" (2nd Person Plural) - a very polite form directed at one person of higher rank, especially ruling monarchs. In fiction, this is used liberally to indicate historical settings.
• "Er" (3rd Person Singular male) / "Sie" (3rd Person Singular female) - for talking with people of lower ranks. Typical example: The Imperial Prussian officer asking some guy "Hat Er gedient?" ("Did he serve?" - in the army, that is.) The officer from Woyzeck also does this to the protagonist. Note: This form of speech is extremely condescending and should not be used in modern times. It is equivalent to saying "I'm not even talking to you, I'm talking about you and I happen to know that you can hear me."

Verb:

The rules for the conjugation of verbs change the word according to the person, like in English an S has to be added in the third person singular (he sings):

• ich (I) singe
• du (you) singst
• er/sie/es (he/she/it) singt
• wir (we) singen
• ihr (you all) singt
• sie (they) singen
• Sie (formal you) singen

However, many verbs do not conform to this general rule.

Other than English, formal German lacks the progressive forms for verbs. Imagine that you had to say "I wait now" instead of "I'm waiting". In more colloquial language, you can say "Ich bin am Warten" (lit. "I'm at the waiting"), but making this distinction between progressive and simple tense is never required.

Another feature is that a multiple-word predicate can be scattered, putting the first half early and the second part at the end of the sentence. Many of those who learned German as a foreign language can be recognized when talking German because (for example) they don't put the verb at the end of the sentence when the rule says so. And interpreters sometimes get in trouble when translating into a language that asks for the verb to be deployed way earlier (which is mostly the case), because they have to wait for the sentence to be finished before starting to talk.

Possessive adjectives:

As remarked on the Headscratchers for the French Language, in English the possessive adjective follows the possessor, while in French it's the possessee instead. In German? Both apply - the possessor for the word, the possessee for the ending. Like this:

his son - son fils (à lui) - sein Sohn

her son - son fils (à elle) - ihr Sohn

his daughter - sa fille (à lui) - seine Tochter

her daughter - sa fille (à elle) - ihre Tochter

Writing & Pronunciation:

German generally uses (and needs) a lot more punctuation than English; a side effect is that Germans sometimes use excessive-seeming punctuation when writing foreign languages.

(Standard) German spelling vs pronunciation is in general more consistent that in English, and is generally of the What You See Is What You Get variety. (People have been lobbying for an English spelling reform for over a century for a reason; on the other hand, German got a recent 'reform' that was unneeded, totally redundant, and didn't really change anything except confuse people and muddle things up.) German vowels all have their own 'clean'/'Latin' value, and letters and letter combinations have a consistent pronunciation instead of the nowadays seemingly random pronunciation of English which is often a matter of learning it by heart beforehand. Note that the pronunciation of consonants and vowels is also dependent on their position in a morpheme. Very few letters always have the same pronunciation. Always consider the morpheme as a whole. (For example: "ch" has two pronunciations, depending on the antecedent consonant or vowel and the morpheme as a whole ("ch" is a voiceless palatal fricative (in standard german!) in the diminutive suffix "chen", if it is an initial sound (unless it is pronounced as "K"), in an ablaut ("-ig") and after e, i,ü,ö and ä, and a voiceless velar fricative after a,o,u); "s" can be voiced and unvoiced; and so on. See consonants below)

German has four special characters, ä, ö, ü and ß (a ligature of ss or sz). The last one was subject to a German spelling reform in 1996, appearing less often in words nowadays, but not everyone has adopted the new spelling method. It is only used when not categorised anyway. Despite this, the ß is far from extinct. In fact recently a capitalized version has been introduced (none had existed because it was never used at the beginning of a word. But the increasingly frequent practice of writing in ALL CAPS led to a perceived need for a capitalized form of the ligature). Because of the restrictions of some keyboards and character encodings, these special letters are rendered ae, oe, ue and ss or sz if the correct characters aren't available.

Vowels

All vowels exist in a long and a short version. If a vowel is duplicated, or there's an H behind it (or the special case of IE), it is (very likely) long. If there's more than one consonant behind it (except for the aforementioned H), is it probably a short one.

• A: The short version sounds similar as the English U in "butler", but more open. The long version sounds as in "bar".
• E: Short version - as in "ten". Long version - as in "play" (American pronunciation). And then there's the almost invisible kind, as the E in "vowel".
• I: The short version is pronounced like an English I in "is". The long version sounds more like EE, as in "eel".
• O: The long version is relatively similar to the English O, as in "holes". Except that you don't pronounce it the English way. The short version is just like the O in American English dog, at least for most speakers.
• U: Long version: As the English OO in "tool". Short version: Also like OO, but as in "good".

Umlauts

• Ä: The short one, like the short E above. The long one, more like A in "bare".
• Ö: Most similar to the U in "burn". Strictly speaking, like the French œil or feu. Except that the short German Ö is shorter and the long one, well, longer.
• Ü: Doesn't seem to exist in English. Pronounced like the French U in "fumer".

Double vowels

• AU: Pronounced like "Ow!", which coincidentally is the German meaning of "Au!"
• EI / AI: Pronounced like in "guy". It's Heil, not Hiel.
• EU / ÄU: Pronounced like "Oy". For example in the word "Fräulein" (which many Germans rather pronounced like "Frollein", when it was still widely used). It's Schadenfreude, not -fruede, or "Teufel", not Tuefel.
• IE: Pronounced like a long German I, see above. It's Krieg, Siegfried, not Kreig, Seigfreid.

Consonants

• C: Either pronounced like 'K' or 'Z' (the German Z, not the English one). Unless it's in a consonant group like CH, CK or SCH, or from a loan word that kept its native pronunciation.
• CH: Exists in two flavors. The ach-Laut: after the vowels A, O, U (and the combination AU), pronounced like Scottish loch or the J in Spanish (think of Mejico). Yes, doesn't exist in English, apparently. After all other vowels (and combinations), it's a "soft" CH (ich-Laut), which also doesn't seems to exist in English (it is often rendered as "sh", as in Kennedy's "Ish bin ein Bearleener", but that doesn't seem right). At the beginning of words CH may be pronounced like "sh" or "k".
  • The "soft" CH, technically a palatal fricative, does in fact exist in English. It's the "hy" sound at the beginning of "human".
• CHS: Mostly pronounced like X, except for some dialects which pronounce it like a combination of CH and S.
• CK: For practical purposes, just like a double K. Before the reform of German orthography, rules said that you had to syllabify words with CK like "Zucker" (sugar) Zuk-ker (now, it's Zu-cker).
• DSCH: Like the English J in "jungle". Only used in loan words anyway.
• GN: Usually pronounced like two single letters as in “Wagner” (a name). In loan words (e. g. from French) often pronounced like “nj” (the German J) as in Kampagne (campaign).
• J: Most often pronounced like the English Y as in "you". Riding the fence between vowels and consonants.
• NG: Same as in English, in this combination the N is pronounced with the back part of the tongue touching the palatine as in “Ring” (ring).
• PF: Like "p" followed by "f", though many northern dialects slur it so that it sounds more like "F". Or "P", it depends on the dialect.
• QU: Rarely pronounced like “KU”, more like “KW” as in “Quark” (curd).
• R: At the beginning or in the middle of words always softly rolled, or pronounced like a French "r." (not ‘gurgled’ as in English). At the end of a word hardly spoken.
• S: At the beginning of words, always pronounced like an English Z. At the end of words, always pronounced like S. In the middle of words, both are possible.
• SCH: The common consonant grouping "sch" in German is generally identical to the English "sh" (for example, "wash" and its German equivalent, "Waschen".
• SP: At the beginning of a word or word part pronounced like the English "shp", except for some loanwords and cases where the P is the beginning of another root in a compound word, such as Arbeitsplatz (Arbeit, "work" + Platz, "place). In the middle or at the end of a word always pronounced “sp” as in “Wespe” (wasp).
• ST: At the beginning of a word or word part pronounced like the English "sht", with exceptions similar to the above. In all other cases pronounced “st” such as in “Ast” (branch), with exceptions in some dialects.
• SZ / ß: As said, a ligature of ss or sz. The difference? If 'ss', vowels before are short. If 'sz', vowels before are long. Since the orthography reforms, the former is always written as 'ss', eliminating a bit of confusion.
• TH: simply a (anspirated) 't' sound, so for example 'Apotheker' (pharmacist) ends up sounding rather like "Apo-taker". (In fact, quite a number of such words have completely lost the 'h' in their official spelling over time -- the word 'Tür' (door) was still spelled with Th as late as the early 20th century.) And it's used in the word Thron (throne), on which the kaiser insisted when German orthography was standardized the first time.
• TSCH: Pronounced like English "ch" as in "church".
• V: The letter "V" in German is both ambiguous and technically redundant, being pronounced either "F" (e.g. Vogel) or "W" (e.g. Vase). A German W, of course.
• W: The most visible, or rather audible element of German to English speakers is the fact that Germans pronounce the letter "W" as English "V". Applying this pronunciation to English has been cliché for ages, as in that immortal phrase "ve have vays of making you talk". (In German, it's "Wir haben Mittel, Dich zum Reden zu bringen"). In fact, many German speakers know about this difference and overcompensate when speaking English by pronouncing "V" as "W" ("voice" becomes "woice").
• X: Always pronounced like a combination of K and S.
• Y: Almost only used in foreign words, making it one of the Xtreme Kool Letterz in Germany. Pronounced either like Ü, J or sometimes I (the German versions).
  • The reason why "Bavaria" is spelled Bayern in German is a certain Bavarian king's love for Ancient Greece. It was originally spelled Baiern, and that spelling, together with the adjective Bairisch, is sometimes used in relation to the region of Old Bavaria, as opposed to the Free State of Bavaria as a whole.
• Z: Pronounced like "ts" as in "cats". Sometimes also used in the combination TZ, which must look terribly redundant to English speakers, but is relevant to pronunciation. Also note that on German keyboards, Z is where the Y is and vice versa.

Other:

German uses compound words, which are written without spaces or either hyphenated, for example Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service), the German intelligence service. The last word in the compound is the main subject described by the earlier words. You can go to very long infinite lengths in this regard. The longest word in regular German use is Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften (insurance companies which provide legal protection). The longest German word published is Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft (Association for subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services -- a pre-WW 2 part of a shipping company, which still exists today, but in shorter form). That's 79 letters and under the spelling reform, with three "f"s in "Schifffahrt", it became 80.

• For a tongue-in-cheek look at this and vagaries of German see "The Awful German Language" by Mark Twain.

Naturally, these words are frequently contracted and some of the most notorious German things are known by their contractions:

• Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei -- secret state police)
• Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit -- Ministry for State Security and earlier Staatssicherheitsdienst- State Security Service)
• Vopos (Volkspolizei- People's Police)
• And of course, Nazi (Nationalsozialist -- national socialist, duh)
  • Interestingly, this was done by analogy with "Sozi" for "Sozialdemokrat" (Social Democrat).

Foreign language issues:

German to foreign languages

Germans are excellent English speakers but less skilled people often make the same mistakes.

• In some environments, the German word that Germans use for "that" sounds like "what". So "what" is the word what Germans use.
• Germans absolutely love the word "absolutely".
• Germans also often get confused about simple tenses vs the continuous forms, and past vs present perfect. The former distinction doesn't exist; the latter does (preterite vs present perfect), but it's less clear-cut than in English and the preterite has died out in half the dialects, anyway.
• German speakers, when faced with a two-word term that is rendered as a compound word in German, will often hyphenate the phrase in English (software-version, root-folder, etc.) or even smash it together instead of writing it as two separate words.

Let's not forget all the false cognates, of which the English and the German languages have so many, some of the most important ones being:

• "bekommen" which is very similar to "to become" but actually means "to get/receive" or "to come by"
• "aktuell" which is close to "actually", but actually means "currently" or "up to date".
• "gift": While it had the same origin and in ancient times the same meaning, the word "gift" came to be used as an euphemism for 'poison' in the Middle Ages, which is nowadays the word's only meaning; the only exception is its survival in the term "Mitgift" ('dowry'). This can result in amusing contexts, e.g. "gift shops".
• "wollen" changes to resemble "will" when conjugated in the present singular, but actually means "to want (to)." The word "werden" means either "will" or "become," although "wollen" did give rise to the English noun "will."

A considerable number of German words have entered English, for example:

• Kindergarten (children's garden)
• Zeitgeist (spirit of the times)
• Schadenfreude
• Wanderlust
• Doppelgänger
• Blitz (lightning, or also metaphorically 'speed-' when used in compounds). This is mostly used in discussing by Brits when discussing The Home Front -- especially the Nazi attempt to bomb the UK into submission. Those Wacky Nazis used Blitzkrieg (speed war) as a strategy during the Second World War and there are other examples, but the term was not used officially by the Wehrmacht.
  • There is also the term Blitzschach for speed chess.
• Volkswagen (brand name "people's car")
• Angst (though in German, this word rather means ordinary "fear")
• Ersatz- (Actually meaning "replacement" or "substitute" rather than "fake." While--for instance--calling the President of the Weimar Republic the Ersatzkaiser seems insulting to Americans, it was just an honest assessment in the minds of Germans.)
• Gedankenexperiment (thought experiment)
• Hinterland
• Poltergeist
• Rucksack (Literally meaning "backpack". Hilariously, for marketing purposes the English word "bodybag" has sometimes been spotted in advertisements for the product.)
• Bratwurst
• Strudel
• Stein ("stone"; "stoneware mug")
• Sauerkraut
• Dachshund ("Badger dog", as it's a hunting dog), commonly called Dackel for short
• Ehrgeiz
• Fräuleinwunder
• Glockenspiel
• Putsch
• Wunderkind
• Gestalt
• Weltanschauung
• Gesundheit!
• Eigen- (meaning "of one's own", as in eigenvalue, eigenvector and eigenspace.)
• Kitsch
• Schnaps, although it should be noted that the German word Schnaps refers to strong alcoholica in general (whisky, gin, etc.) and the group of fruit Brandies specially. Likör on the other hand refers to spirits with less than 18% ethanol contents (that's 36 proof in the other system) and a lot of sugar (what Americans call schnapps).

These are just some of the ones that have retained their spelling. Of those which didn't, three have to be mentioned: Ubermensch (Dankeschön, Nietzsche), Gotterdammerung and Leitmotif (Danke schön, Wagner).

There also a number of phrases associated with Those Wacky Nazis -- see that entry. Once upon a time, this was considered the Black Speech.

Languages influencing German

On the other hand, Gratuitous English has bled into German through its use in the media, with the usual adaption of names and terms, but also with correct and incorrect use of English and pseudo-English used as names and in marketing, etc. Another fact is the spreading of English 'spellings' for German, which are either simply incorrect for German, or would't even be correct for English half of the time. Most jarring among this is the "idiot's apostrophe", which is used all over the place, as in German the apostrophe is only used to signify an omission of letters. Its least offensive misuse is to separate the genitive-S from a noun, which was valid in German over a hundred years ago but not in its contemporary use. Sadly, it doesn't stop there, but some people also adapt the misspellings of some native speakers to put apostrophes in every conceivable and some inconceivable place, resulting in apostrophed plural's and apo'strophe's in the middle of word's. Another feature of this is the treatment of compound words, which in German would have to be either written without spaces or with hyphens, which are now increasingly written as separate words. (Which is especially bothersome due to German grammar, because like this only half of the word is declined, and the other word half technically doesn't have its connection to the other words clarified.)

Also, the German word for a mobile phone is a "Handy," which Stephen Fry seems to find utterly hilarious.

(With thanks to The Other Wiki)

German has fewer loan words (especially from Latin and French) than English, since obviously the Norman influence was missing. Might also have to do with the fact that at several times during history, some Germans thought that the German Language was flooded with too many foreign words and invented German replacements. (The Nazis also did this, but it wasn't their idea.) Some of the more stupid ones like "Gesichtserker" for "nose" never made it (if it wasn't a Stealth Parody in the first place), but look at this list for some examples which did:

• pneumonia - Lungenentzündung
• duodenum - Zwölffingerdarm
• author - Schriftsteller (although "Autor" also is used)
• passion - Leidenschaft
• An interesting case is "realisieren", which is a perfectly fine German verb originally corresponding to English's "to realize" strictly in its "to make real" aspect but has in recent years started to also see use in the latter's sense of "to become aware". Since the one is something one actively works to accomplish and the other something that kind of just happens to a person, older native speakers can find the anglicism somewhat counterintuitive and jarring.

Tropes:

• Often used in context of Those Wacky Nazis, or as Gratuitous German. The latter is often used for Nazi-styled or evil characters, and often in Japanese Anime, where it can also appear with neutral or good characters.
• Everything Sounds Sexier in French: As a rule of thumb: the opposite. German is commonly stereotyped as harsh and/or scary. Probably influenced the fact that the 'German' non-Germans are most likely to hear are Second World War soundbites of Adolf Hitler hamming it up, movie characters trying to sound evil or creepy, or metal bands trying to cash in on the image by doing all of the above. On the other hand, there is a certain tradition among intellectuals that Everything Sounds Smarter In German: because of the massive influence of German philosophy in the 19th and early 20th centuries (particularly Friedrich Nietzsche, and his myriad disciples, such as Wacky Nazi Martin Heidegger) using German words like Weltanschauung is a fairly common practice in academia. Also physicists use more than a handful of German words, due to the large number of notable German and German-speaking scientists, like Albert Einstein or Werner Heisenberg, and the contributions they made to physics. This association is much less common today than the "menacing" stereotype, though it can still be observed.
• Xtreme Kool Letterz work the opposite in German. "Zirkus" is the modern spelling. However, many if not most circuses go with the old-timey spelling and call themselves "Circus [something]". Generally, ditching Z's and K's for C's, I's for Y's and sprinkling silent H's after consonants ("Rathhaus" instead of "Rathaus") makes something look odl-fashioned, or Kool (in a Gothick way).