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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