To English speakers, the German language has a reputation. An angry reputation.
But there’s so much more to German than its (mostly undeserved) reputation for making everyone who speaks it sound enraged. Here are seven important facts about the German language that you may have overlooked:
The German language has the 11th-highest number of native speakers in the world.
There’s no doubt that German is one of the most important world languages for businesses, especially businesses that serve the European market.
German is the 11th-most-spoken language in the world. And with 95 million native speakers, it’s the most widely spoken native language in the European Union. German is also one of three “procedural languages” of the European Commission.
Additionally, it’s an official language in Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and four cantons of Switzerland.
German is not just a European language.
People speak German all over the world. There are German-speaking communities in Namibia and South Africa. There are German-speaking communities in Australia. In South America, Brazil has 1.5 million German speakers and its own German dialects like Brazilian German and Riograndenser Hunsrückisch.
Once upon a time, more people spoke German in the US than any other language aside from English. In fact, the first newspaper to report on the Declaration of Independence was a German-language newspaper, Der Pennsylvanische Staatsbote.
However, English-speaking Americans became suspicious of the large German-speaking community during World War I, and many German families stopped passing the language on to their children.
But, some pockets of German speakers still remain in the US. For example, the Hutterites, Amish, Mennonites and certain other religious groups with German roots speak German dialects. And it’s still the most common non-English home language in North Dakota and South Dakota.
Google+ Facebook LinkedIn Twitter Instagram
Standard German varies significantly from colloquial German, and spoken German dialects differ a great deal from each other.
Linguists break spoken German dialects into two or three main groups. There’s Low German, which is spoken in the low-lying northern part of the country. And there’s High German, spoken in the more elevated south. Some linguists also put the dialects in the middle in their own category, called Middle German.
These groups form a dialect continuum. That means that people who speak neighboring dialects can generally understand each other. But the further away they are on the map, the less likely they are to be able to understand each other without switching to the Standard German taught in schools.
In fact, some linguists classify Low German as its own language, called Low Saxon.
Standard German is German as it’s taught in schools. It was originally developed as a written language, but today it can be written or spoken. To make things even more interesting, Standard German varies in small but significant ways depending on whether you’re in Germany, Austria or Switzerland.
German is known for long words.
In German, nouns can be strung together, without spaces, to form long compound words. In fact, Mark Twain once complained, “Some German words are so long that they have a perspective.”
This feature is especially notable when it comes to laws and regulations. For example, until 2013, the longest German word in existence was “rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz”, which means “the law for the delegation of monitoring beef labeling.”
Meanwhile, the longest German word in everyday use is “Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften,” which means “insurance companies providing legal protection.”
Obviously, this tendency can cause layout and formatting issues when it comes time to translate content from English into German, or vice versa.
To make things even more difficult, English text translated into German usually expands in size, growing anywhere from 5-20%.
If you plan to translate a document to or from German, we recommend keeping your text layout as flexible as possible!
German has three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter.
There’s no good way to guess the gender of a noun, either. To quote Mark Twain, “In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl.”
Why yes, as a matter of fact, Twain did have a beef with the German language.
The German alphabet has 26 letters and four special characters.
German uses the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, plus 4 special characters: Ä, Ö, Ü, and ß. Those little dots are “umlauts”, and they are not optional! Vowels with umlauts are separate letters that change the pronunciation and meaning of words they appear in.
German is full of awesome words with no direct English equivalent.
For example, consider “Torschlusspanik”, the fear that time is running out to achieve your goals and dreams. It’s sparked many a midlife crisis, but there’s no word in English with this precise meaning. Or “weltschmerz”, which is “despair caused by the state of the world.”
To make sure your content looks great and carries the same meaning in German as it does in English, choose a language services provider that uses experienced native-speaking translators. At VIA, we go a step beyond, with translators that are also subject matter experts to handle specialized subjects like legal translation.
Want to learn more about our expert translators and award-winning translation services? Contact us today at 1-800-737-8481!
