Translations and Other Language Solutions in German Language

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT THE GERMAN LANGUAGE AND GERMANY

German belongs to the Indo-European family’s West Germanic language group. Its origins date back to shortly before the 1st century BC, when Germanic tribes arrived in central Europe from the south. Later the Germanic language base split into three regional forms: North Germanic, East Germanic, and West Germanic. Over the centuries West Germanic developed into the contemporary German, Dutch, Frisian, Luxembourgish, Afrikaans, Scottish, and English languages.

The history of contemporary German can be divided into three periods: 1. Old German (750–1050 AD) 2. Middle German (1050–1500) 3. Modern German (1500 to the present day).

It is the native language of around 108 million people, ranking German 10th worldwide. But German is the most widespread native language in the European Union.

German is the official state language in several European countries: Austria, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Germany. Other German speaking communities live elsewhere – in eastern Belgium, southern Denmark, France (Alsace region) and northern Italy.

According to the Latvian translator and philologist Valdis Bisenieks, the German language is special in that it did not develop naturally like other languages which were based on one dialect, but was created artificially, starting with Luther and ending with Theodor Sieb’s Bühnendeutsch (German stage pronunciation), which was so popular in Germany that it became the universal model of pronunciation. Luther took different words from different German dialects, making it kind of artificial, yet somehow natural, and where there are word variants, all different meanings emerge.

German was the language of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Brecht, Einstein, Freud, Goethe, Grass Hegel, Kafka, Kant, Mann, Mozart, Nietzsche, Schubert, Wagner, Weber and hundreds of other world-famous philosophers, composers, artists, scientists, and writers!

68% of Japanese students study German.

Mark Twain, in regard to German and the Germans’ love for compounds, said that they are not words, but ‘grammatical walks that majestically stride across the page.’ German compounds surely annoy any learners of German but excite those to whom languages are exciting.

In German all nouns are capitalised and preceded by articles which indicate the gender of the word. Feminine nouns are preceded by the article ‘die’, masculine nouns are preceded by ‘der’, and nouns of neuter gender are preceded by ‘das’.

‘Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz’ is the longest compound in German, containing 63 letters. It means ‘Acting on the delegation of responsibilities for the supervision of the labelling of cattle and beef’, and was created in 1999 during the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) crisis. It was abbreviated to ‘RkReÜAÜG’, which itself was unpronounceable.

There are at least 35 dialects in Germany, and people from various regions might have trouble understanding each other. That’s why regional films are subtitled.

Germans are protective of their language and most foreign films are dubbed by local German actors before premiering. Due to this, dubbing became a hundred-million-euro industry. German confectionery manufacturer Haribo launched a project where local children can exchange acorns for sweets. The collected acorns were later sent to nature reserves to feed the animals.

Every year 800 million curry sausages are eaten in Germany. The snack is so popular in the country that there is even a museum for it in Berlin.

More can be said about Germany as it as a country with a long history, culture, and traditions. It has produced world-renowned geniuses in culture, education, science, political science, and many other fields.

But the most important thing is that German is a language that opens the way for all of us to get to know a beautiful country, a beautiful culture, and the sometimes amusing German customs.

THE GERMAN ALPHABET

HOW COMPLEX IS THE GERMAN LANGUAGE?

‘A gifted person should learn English in 30 hours, French in 30 days and German in 30 years.’ –Mark Twain

German is not one of the most difficult languages to learn. Around 45% of the words are similar to English words, making it easier to learn for English speakers. Much more attention needs to be paid to the use of the three German articles. Practising the language and memorisation will be the solution. The grammatical structure of sentences is unusual. If there are two verbs in a sentence, or if a compound tense is used, the second verb is placed at the end of the sentence. This grammatical feature is rare compared to other languages. Therefore, only patience, time, and desire to learn the language are the essential parts to learning not only German, but other languages as well.

The time to learn the language varies – some might need years, while others – just a year. It is accepted that to learn German up to conversational level one needs 30 weeks, or 750 hours of learning.

There are roughly 185 million German speakers in the world, of which 105 million are native speakers. 80 million people use German as a second language or as a foreign language in their daily lives. German is mainly spoken in Germany (more than 95% of the country’s population are native speakers), 89% in Austria and 64% in Switzerland. German is native to a lot of residents in Liechtenstein and Luxembourg. In terms of the rest of Europe, a lot a German speakers live in northern Italy, eastern Belgium, and in the Alsace region in France. Smaller German speaking communities live in Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Romania as well as Russia and Kazakhstan, where Germans were deported during the Second World War. Some of them came back to their homeland in the 1980s and 1990s.

Very small German speaking communities live in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Italy, Morocco, the Netherlands, Portugal, etc. Outside of Europe, most German speakers live in the USA, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina. German is the official language in Germany, Belgium, Austria, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Switzerland. German is also one of the official working languages of the European Union