2. German (Deutsch) is aWest Germanic language that is mainly
spoken in Central Europe.
3. Germancanbefound
all overthe world
According toWikipedia,
German is the 11th most
widely spoken language in the
world, with about 1.4% of the
population being German-
speaking. Chinese takes first
place and English comes in
third.
4. English and
German are
sister
languages
Like English and Dutch, German forms part of theWest Germanic
languages.When English speakers learn German, they will have the
consolation of finding a lot of words that are similar in both languages.
Be careful though, there are some sneaky words that look and sound
the same but have totally different meanings.The German word ‘gift’
for example, means poison, nothing like the present or blessing it is
used to describe in English.
5. German has
some bizarre
and hilarious
proverbs
Alles hat ein Ende, nur dieWurst hat zwei (everything has an end, only
sausage has two),
Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof (I only understand train station) whose
English counterpart would be ‘It’s all Greek to me’ and the most
delightful saying,
Das ist nicht dein Bier! (that is not your beer!) which means ‘none of
your business!’
6. All nouns are
capitalised
If you ever pick up a German newspaper, you might be confused to
see large bodies of texts permeated by long words written in
capital letters.That’s because all nouns in German are written with
capital letters and no, it’s not optional.
7. Germanisthe‘languageofthewritersand
thinkers’
German has often been referred to as the
language of the Dichter und Denker or the
writers and thinkers. For example, the
great Johann Wolfgang von Goethe –
author of the epic Faust – is considered
one of Germany’s greatest national
treasures. Other notableTeutonic thinkers
are Kant, Marx, Humboldt and Nietzsche.
8. German boasts
words that
simply don’t
exist in English
One of the best features of the German language is its knack for
creating new, hyper-specific words that express life more perfectly
than any English word ever could. For example, Schadenfreude
describes the happiness derived from somebody else’s misfortune,
injury or pain.Torschlusspanik perfectly sums up the fear which
creeps in with age and a realisation that time is slipping away,
evoking a sense of urgency to achieve or do something before it’s
too late.
9. German lovescompound
nouns
If you see a long scary German
word don’t panic because it
can probably be broken down
into smaller, common nouns.
German has a habit of building
new words from existing
words for example the word
hand, which is the same word
in English, is joined to the
German word Schuhe (shoes)
to form the noun Handschuhe,
meaning ‘hand shoes’ or
gloves in English.
10. It’s official,
not just in
Germany
Besides Germany, German is the official language of both Austria and Liechtenstein
and one of the official languages in Switzerland and Luxembourg, making it the most
spoken native language in the European Union.
11. Dialect changes drastically
depending on where you are
Wherever you go in Germany, you’ll be
faced with a specific dialect that your high
school German class probably hasn’t
prepared you for.The Bavarian accent and
dialect for example, has even been joked
about as the ‘German that even Germany
doesn’t understand’.
12. Every noun has
a gender
There are three genders for German nouns; masculine, feminine
and neutral.Although at first glance, gender in German doesn’t
seem to follow much logic because it doesn’t necessarily comply
with the gender of the object it is naming, so it’s purely
grammatical. MarkTwain famously said of the German language:
‘In German, a young lady has no sex, but a turnip does’.
13. The longest
word in the
world
To continue with the previous point, the German language once had
the 63-letter word
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
in its arsenal. However, this word, meaning ‘the law concerning the
delegation of duties for the supervision of cattle marking and the
labelling of beef’ was considered too much of a mouthful even for
German bureaucrats, and the word is now obsolete.
14. Right up until the middle of 20th century, the German language
was written using the Fraktur script of the Latin alphabet.This
gothic calligraphy was introduced in 16th century until the end of
the SecondWorldWar
