Comprehensive Guide for
“The German Language”
About The German Language
German is the official language of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It belongs to the West German Group of the Indo-European language family. The history of Germanic languages began in the first century BC due to contact between its speakers and the Romans. Initially, there was mainly a "Germanic" language. In the sixth century, the German Language, started to develop as a separate language. The German uses four nominal, prosecutor, public, original grammatical matters and has three genders: men, female and neutral. With more than 90 million native speakers, it is one of the most spoken languages in the world and is usually learned as a foreign language. High German is an official written form that originates from the highlands in southern Germany. Written German is similar in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. German is well-known for its long words, with the longest measuring 79 letters, formed by combination of multiple nouns. The German alphabet includes 26 Latin letters along with three unique umlauts (ä, ö, and ü) and the eszett (ß).
Alphabets & Writing System
As per history examples of imprinted German Language dated from 8th century AD. Consisting from the fragments of the epic poem: “The Song of Hildebrand.” More examples found in the enchanted charms and German interprets in Latin manuscripts. Every texts were penned in Latin alphabets and is still on use in German Language today also.
German is always recognisable from other texts within in Latin Language through the numbers used in umlauts. Till 1700s German was the only language that used all nouns capitalised, which was a common practice in Northern European Languages. Due course the practice still continuous throughout the history of German making it standout with a unique grammatical rule.
Once you know the spelling rules, speaking German and reading written text clearly becomes relaxed. The derivation process of every pronunciation can be processed in an ease from the writing system. Yet the real process is slight hectic due to the change in writing order of a word which does not match with the pronunciation. The most recent example is the addition of áş to replace “ss” in German language spelling, which became official in 2017.
What makes the Language challenging?
A language seems difficult due to its grammar. Often people find grammar challenging in due course while learning a new language, and same goes for German as well. If we focus on understanding grammar, we can express German fluently in a short span of time. German owns six tenses: Prasens, Präteritum, Perfekt, Plusquamperfekt, Futur I and Futur II.
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Präsens relates to the Present tense in English,
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Präteritum relates to Perfect tenses,
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Plusquamperfekt relates to Past Perfect,
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Futur I relates to the Future tense,
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Futur II relates to the Future perfect plus “will” and “have”.
The above is not completely precise, but it will help us to analyse it in an easy form to understand the tenses in German grammar, which have four cases (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive). The trickiest factor in German is that many people mention often: the 16 forms that “the” of English takes on German in different cases and gender. German has three noun prepositions for each respective gender: die (for feminine nouns), der (for masculine nouns), and das (for neutral gender). Every new word that we learn in the German language, we must also find out what preposition needs to come in front of it. It may confuse us at first because sometimes a biological gender may not match its grammatical gender. Though, there are some rules defining which noun gets attracted by an exact article with exceptions. Although we have to memorize all of them routinely, a vast grammar fundamental will soon start making more sense to us.
German Grammar: Composition, Phonetics, and Vocabulary Creation
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Words that only exist in German?
Terms that only exist in German Language. Like the word fremdschämen, which means feeling a sense of shame for something somebody else did. And Fernweh is the opposite of homesickness: it describes a longing for long-distance travel and adventure. Other words such as Kindergarten have been adopted from English.
The German vocabulary
German language consists of approximately 5.3 million words with an escalating drift. One third of those words was adjoined in the last 100 years ago. This means, the German language comprises eight times as many words as in the English language. In everyday conversation, we use less words: only 12.000 -16.000 words counting about 3.500 foreign words. The “Duden”, a popular reference book for grammar and orthography of the German language, lists 135.000 (One lakh Thirty five thousand) words. Because of the prospect of creating words by joining single words together to make one word, the German language is considered as a particularly rich language. For example: Wehrdienstverweigerer” (EN: conscientious objector) or “Weltmeisterschaftseröffnungsspiel” (EN: world championship opening game).
False Friends
German and English have more in common, than you might think. Words like “Kindergarten” or “Strudel” for example, mean the same in English and German. But there are words that are a bit complex. Those words are called false friends: words that are alike in the German and English language, but mean something different. Here are some examples:
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The word: Gift
English meaning: a present
German meaning: poison
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The word: Rat
English meaning: a rodent
German meaning: advice, council
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The word: Bald
English meaning: without hair
German meaning: soon
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The word: chef
English meaning: cook
German meaning: Boss
In order, not to create any confusions with the person you are communicating leading to a wrong direction, beware of “false friends”.
“Standard German”
Students query us what the term “standard German” really means. The answer is quite modest, because in fact, Standard German is just another word for High German and that is what we teach at the German4Germany. High German or Standard German is a blend of Middle German and Upper German and maximum of the Austrian dialects are based on it. Many Austrians insist on speaking their own language, the differences between the “Austrian” and the “German” German are nearly nonexistent.