Germany is known for many things. For starters, you have the infamous Oktoberfest, delicious Pretzels, love for football, and its innovative automobile industry. But one area where Germany stands tall is its unique language and culture. In this post, we shine our beam on this regional behemoth and other interesting facts of the German language.
Germany Overview
Germany is a nation with Europe’s second-largest population (only behind Russia), with the continent’s largest economy and the world’s fourth in terms of GDP ($4.319 trillion). Its population combined with its economic size makes it a strategic region for brands with global expansion plans. And unlocking the language barriers clearly present in German society places businesses ahead of other competitors. With that said, here are some interesting facts about the German language
Fascinating facts about the German language
German spreads wide across Europe
German is spoken across most regions of Europe. The language is, in fact, has the most speakers among the EU nations, with over 100 million speakers, which accounts for 16% of the EU’s population. It is the only official language in Germany and Austria and is among the several official languages of Luxembourg, Switzerland, Belgium, and Liechtenstein.
German is also spoken in other continents like Africa, North and South America, and Antarctica.
Note: (The EU should not be mistaken with Europe as the two differ from the political point of view, Russia still remains the most spoken language in the whole of Europe)
Influence on the English Language
Just like with other notable world languages, German has also left its mark on the English language. Several common words like; kindergarten, doppelgänger, glitch, etc., that are found in the English vocabulary all have German origins. The reverse is also the case as the phenomenon referred to as Denglish, where several English words and phrases have also made their way into the German Vocabulary.
German language has 3 genders
Although the German language has some loan words from English and vice-versa, both languages differ significantly with respect to grammatical gender. While the English language is genderless, German adopts three forms of gender for all its nouns.
The three genders in the German language — masculine, feminine, and neuter, vary depending on the object in question and would require speakers to memorize them because no clear-cut pattern exists to classify which object (noun) is attached to what gender. For example, die Gabel, which means fork in English, is feminine, while der Löffel (Spoon) is masculine and Knife (das Messer) is neuter.
Untranslatable words
The German vocabulary contains several untranslatable words, which have no direct translation to English or other popular languages, but rather, are used to describe peculiar scenarios or occurrences. For instance, schadenfreude, which describes the happiness one feels due to another person’s suffering. Or waldeinsamkert, representing the feeling of being alone in the woods and being in harmony with nature. Other examples of these untranslatable german words include; weltschmerz, schwarmerei, flak, etc.
The language exists in various dialects.
The German language has several distinct dialects that offer some disparities such that various speakers find it tasking to understand one another. But in general, German dialects are classified broadly into two; High German (Hochdeutsch), which represents the standard German we all know, and then we have the Low German dialect (Plattdeutch). Other dialects of German exists due to geographical differences like Swiss German (Schwiizerdütsch), Austrian German (Österreichisches Deutsch), Pennsylvania German (Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch), and a few others.
It has Complex words and tongue twisters.
With the German unique alphabet that comprises of diacritics and other special characters, it is not surprising to find lots of tongue twisters and hard to pronounce words just like Polish. It is also a common practice in the German vocabulary to combine several simple words to form more complex words. For example, the 79 letter word Rinderkennzeichnungsfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungs-gesetz, is used to describe legislation for cattle marking and beef labelling supervision.
From these few facts, it should be clear for all to see that the German language despite its large number of speakers in Europe and beyond, has several attributes that make it distinct. Therefore brands looking to reach German-speaking audiences must carefully navigate this cultural and linguistic quagmire in order to achieve success in these regions. And they can only do so by utilizing effective translation and localization services offered by professional language service providers like Translationsinlondon.
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