The German Language 

Hi everyone! If you're currently learning German, visit GermanPod101 ►( bit.ly/Germanpod101 )◄ - one of the best ways to learn German. I'm an active member on several Pod101 sites, and I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I do! For 33 other languages check out my review! ► langfocus.com/pod101 ◄. (Full disclosure: if you sign up for a premium account, Langfocus receives a small referral fee. But if I didn't like it, I wouldn't recommend it, and the free account is pretty good on its own!)

Fun fact: in German television, when a person speaks Swiss German they use subtitles.

Welcome to Germany, where "umfahren" is the opposite of "umfahren".

I work in a hotel in Austria. Where people speak German. 'I don't speak Dutch' is a sentence I hear from American tourists on a regular basis and now I finally understand why.

fun-fact about "Dachsprache" - DACH is often used as a common term for the three biggest German speaking countries (German, Austria and Switzerland). It comes from each country's shorthand letter on EU car plates. D for Deutschland, A for Austria and CH for Switzerland. But "Dach" is also a German word that means "Roof", which fits as this is where all German countries fit under one roof :D

Our language is very efficient: we mean: "Entschuldigung, ich habe das nicht richtig verstanden, könnten sie es bitte erklären?" but we say: "Hä?"

I was told by a north German that he preferred for me to speak English , because my swiss accent was so horrible he couldn't bare to listen to it .

Ich bin Italienerin und ich finde Deutsch sehr schwierig zu lernen, aber ich liebe es! Deutsch sieht so ordentlich und logisch aus :)

Fun Fact: All Nouns in German are capitalized If English had this Rule, this is what it would look like: German is a Language that is a commonly taught in Schools and Educations around the World. People also learn German via the Internet, Books and more.

Why am I watching this? I'm a native German speaker..

English:Hello? Turkish:Allo? Spanish:Hola? German: *JÜRGEN AM APPARAT*

"dem Tische" is archaic. The -e ending in the masculine and neuter dative is retained generally in fixed expressions such as "zu Hause" and "nach Hause." But in colloquial speech the -e ending is often dropped.

Love this channel. English is my native language since I was born in the U.S. However, since my mother is from Hannover, Germany, German is my second language. I learned hochdeutsch as a child. I have studied Spanish in college since I live in California. In addition, I have been studying French, Hebrew, Greek and Japanese on my own.

You forgot Mallorca. The 17th Bundesland. Everyone speaks german there xd

I loved the quote “all challenges become adventures when you become fascinated“. As a German teacher in the US I was often asked “which language is easiest to learn?” I replied “the one you want to learn”. That seemed to encourage them

One think you might want to add: German has a lot of compound words or is THE language of compound words. This makes it unique because you can easily "invent" new words which are automatically correct. For example: Badewannenstöpseldeckel --> it is one word but it consists of several nouns --> Badewanne (n), Stöpsel, Deckel

I live in Texas and have been studying standard German for a year. Irecently learned that Central Texas has its own German dialect, which began to split off from standard following German settlements in Texas in the 1830s and 40s. Some of the pronunciation has shifted to be more similar to southern American English, and there are a lot of loan words.

‪Ich bin Japaner und lerne Deutsch. das ist wirklich schwer für mich, aber ich werde weiter studieren‬ ‪Wir sind der Jäger!‬

Ich komme aus Südkorea. Ich lerne etwas Deutsch aber mein Deutsch ist nicht gut als mein English. Ich denke Diese Sprache ist sehr schön.

1 ago I've decided to make German my third language. (I'm a portuguese native and studied english since a teenager). It have been really challenging but the more I learn, more fascinated I get.

I am learning Deutsch.Its such a sweet language.Grüße aus Bangladesch🇧🇩😌

In german we say: Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache.

I am Brazilian but my mother tongue is German. I am grateful to my parents and grandparents that they taught me such a useful and fascinating language. I love German literature by the way.

So I have a funny Story I and my family are from bavaria and we speak bavarian My dad had a meeting with persons from Dortmund in North Rhine Westphalia and they talk and then the person from Dortmund asked Can we please speak in English because I do not understand you So English is sometimes easier for germans than German;)

guten tag meine deutscher fruenden, schöne grüsse aus schweden!

As a French native who learned german in high school, I think the most interesting feature in german is the verb going at the end of the phrase. Therefore, when argumenting, each one is obliged to wait for the other to end the phrase, to have the correct verb. German are known for their skill in discussing and finding a general agreement.

When you're a city but you drank too much last night *HANNOVER*

I want to learn German so I can understand what Rammstein is singing about. Hello from Siberia. Еще бы английский знать, вообще бы ништяк было

9:28 That is also one of the nightmares for (simultaneous) interpreters because they have to wait until the entire sentence is finished. Sometimes the deciding verb is at the end of a long, complex sentence.

I'm German and I really tried hard to find a mistake you made in that video, and I nitpickingly found one: The Dativ singular of "der Tisch" is not "dem Tische" anymore, that is soooooo 19th century. In modern German, in the Dativ, we drop the e. So it's "dem Tisch", in written AND spoken German. As a language buff myself and as I just stumbled across your videos, I couldn't help but subscribe and must watch them all. Great job you're doing here, thanks for all the work you put into it!

Ich komme aus China. Englisch ist meine erste Fremdsprache , danach habe ich Deutsch ungefähr 3 Jahre gelernt. Am Anfang finde ich Deutsch ziemlich schwierig ,weil zu viel unterschiedliche Artikel man auswendiglernen muss. Nach 1 Jahr finde ich Deutsch ist einfacher als Englisch, weil die Grammatik der Deutsch ähnlich wie Chinesisch ist. Außerdem sind viel deutsche Wörter Zusammensetzungen von einfachen Wörter , wie z.B "krank" bedeutet "sick or ill", "Krankschwester" bedeutet "nurse(sick sister)" und "Krankhaus" bedeutet "hospital(sick home)", "Krankwagen" bedeutet "Ambulance (sick truck )".Deswegen gefällt Deutsch mich.

As a norwegian I can read german and get an idea of what the text is about. But it often ends with the question about the conclution. At times I can understand the whole thing, or nothing at all as well.

One thing that is difficult for many non-native German speakers is the way we say our numbers. While many languages read them from the left to the right - for example twenty-one - we say "einundzwanzig", literally "one-and-twenty". This can get tricky when you have to write down a column of numbers fast. (Sometimes it also bugs me as a native speaker. ^^) Here in Saxony the special thing about our local dialect is that we have no hard consonants. So the German word "Konsonanten" gets in Saxon dialect a lot softer, like "Gonnsonand'n". That is not funny if you have a name with hard consonants in it, believe me! 😅

As a swede, I’m always thrilled of our languages similarities. ”Sprachraum” for example made so much sense as it would be ”språkrum” in swedish. War (were, was) is basically var in swedish and we also use intressant, köpa (kaufen), bok (Buch) and so on.

As a half German, i find the language to be very precise sometimes. For example, there are many ways in German to say the same verb in English, depending on the situation. For example, "senden" (to send). You can say versenden, absenden, zusenden, nachsenden, depending on the context. I love compound words as well. For example, Neugier means curiosity. Neugier ist made of "Neu" (new) and "Gier" (desire, craving). So, neugier would be desire for that wich is new. Words like that are often so very weill established that, a German saying Neugier wouldn't be thinking about those two words and what they mean separately, but rather he would simply be meaning to say, well, curiosity.

When I was a young child, my father used to speak Hamburger Platt to me. Even as a four year old I could understand him. My father was a bricklayer and Hamburger Platt was often spoken on the building site. At the age of four we migrated to Australia and I never heard the language again. Many years later, an old work mate of my father visited us in Australia. I would have been in my late 20s/early 30s. My father and his friend were having a chat over a beer, speaking Hamburger Platt. I was picking up bits and pieces of their conversation. My father's friend asked me a question in Hamburger Platt and I replied in Hamburger Platt. I was astounded after all those years I kept some of the language. Klei mi an Mors..

D-A-CH - Sprache: -D-eutschland (Germany) -A-ustria -CH- -C-onfederation -H-elvetia (swizerland)

I was keen to learn German from early childhood, having been impressed by the sound of it in the early post-war war films I watched on TV. I ended up studying it at college along with French and Spanish, but found the grammar so devilishly complicated that I knew I would fail my degree unless I did something about it. It was like trying to speak algebra. So, aged 20, I went to live and work in Germany for 10 months before my final year - total immersion - and came back speaking it pretty fluently. And that, I believe, is the only way a speaker of a non-inflected language could ever truly master the German language. Incidentally, a few years ago I did a 5 week trip around Italy, the object being to improve my self-taught Italian. However, the only Italian I spoke was to waiters and bartenders - but I had many lengthy and interesting conversations with Germans sitting at the next table in bars and restaurants, or staying on the same campsite as me. So, if you want to practise your German, go to Italy!

Als Deutscher finde ich dieses Video außerordentlich Informativ. Vielen Dank!

I studied German for 1 month then try to watch a German movie without subtitles, I was humbled and quickly reminded to go back to studying 😅

To all the german learners out there: Rindfleisch­etikettierungs­überwachungs­aufgaben­übertragungs­gesetz

high Germanic sound shift is a cool name for a band.

German is an official Language in Namibia too

As a mexican spanish speaker, I didn't had any idea that the german language has a lot of dialects and different ways to say things, I want to make German as my third language but with this much of variety I get overwhelmed, but I love how German sounds so I'm gonna keep with the practice! Greetings from Mexico

German is a beautiful language!😉I'm from Barcelona, Spain, and I'm learning german at the moment, it's funny that you have some words that are exactly the same in german and in catalan, the language that some people speak in north eastern Spain. Words like: Blau or Lila, blue and purple, are written exactly the same in catalan or Ja, Klar! Yes, of course, it also means the same! One a germanic based and the other a latin based language! What a coincidence right?😜 It probably happens in several languages thought! By the way, I like your videos very much😀 Thanks for spreading all the cultural diversity that the world has and I hope that we can mantain that diversity for a long time✊

German is so hard - it took me almost a year before I could speak the first word ("Mamma") and it took me almost six years more before I could read and write it.

In my town we speak a very unusual form of German. It's like we took Dutch and then just dumped a bunch of French and Latin on it and called it English.

I love studying languages (as, I guess, most people on this channel). I speak German, English and Japanese and am studying French and Russian right now. I like watching videos about any language though, especially yours! It made me quite sad to read in the comments how many people dislike German or think it sounds ugly, cause of all the bad history. I find any language beautiful in its own way!

Years later but what the heck, here‘s my answer: I come from Swabia (south-west of Germany), but I studied further north, so I had to shed my dialect as initially, nobody understood me, even when I thought I was speaking high German, the accent was apparently too thick. Now you can barely tell where I’m from. However, on the flip side, I’m well equipped to understand pretty much every dialect, except for Low German (Plattdeutsch) but as was mentioned here, Low German basically isn’t used anymore, instead Northeners speak High German with a thick accent which is perfectly understandable. Swiss German is a border case though. Depending on how strong the speaker speaks in their dialect, it can take some getting used to and extra effort for me to understand them, though in the end I usually can. Everything else is no problem at all. My wife on the other hand comes from near Hanover and she often doesn’t understand my family when we visit. She has no chance of understanding Swiss German and also Austrian can be a challenge. Now for some interesting facts on the Swabian dialect: In Swabian, it is common to put ”le“ at the end of a noun. It is equivalent to the High German ”lein“ which basically means that something is small, e.g. a table in German is ”Tisch“, a ”Tischlein“ would hence be a small table. In High German this isn’t very common and you’d only do it if you wanted to focus attention on the fact that you’re dealing with a particularly small table. In Swabian, it’s very common, in fact you’ll always use it unless it’s a particularly large table. The consequence is that with this trick, every noun becomes grammatically neuter (not male, female). Another curiosity is that Swabian has seven vowels whereas High German only has five. Also Swabian has way more diphthongs so that you can clearly tell the difference between words with different etymological origins that sound the same in High German (like ”Leib“ (body) and ”Laib“ (loaf)). This is also an easy way to spot people from Swabia, as this is the last thing they shed when trying to speak High German. Another example would be ”Taube“ which can either mean ”dove“ or ”deaf people“. In Swabian it would be pronounced differently depending on what you are talking about. Also, Swabian has lots of nasal sounds which makes it difficult for other Germans, particularly when it affects part of a diphthong. Also, Swabian has what is sometimes referred as ”light vowels“ (=Leichtvokale), short, barely pronounced a or e sounds at the end of a noun. Non-Swabians can’t differentiate them which can cause problems as they indicate whether a noun is plural or singular. E.g. ”Mädle“ (girl) and ”Mädla“ (girls) sound indistinguishable to non-Swabian German speakers. And because we usually put ”le“ at the end of nouns (see above) this effect is omnipresent. Another peculiarity is that there are no hard consonants in Swabian. K is pronounced as G, T as D, P as B. Most notable about Swabian is probably the sh-sound (as in ship). Whenever you have the letters sp or st, it‘s pronounced as shp or sht. In High German this is only true at the beginning of a word, in Swabian we do it everywhere. There is tons more, but given that this is an ancient video and also way too nerdy, I better end it here. Cheers everyone.

I'm a native Austrian Speaker, I can understand people from Germany, but when it comes to Switzerland, I get so confused.

I speak fluent German, but when I went for the first time in Austria for business purpose, I was surprised to hear so many variations in the German language. I needed some time to get used to it but the thing I found really surprising (or maybe not as far as History is concerned) was the amount of Hungarian loanwords used in this part of the country (I was in upper Austria, close to the Czech border). For example the word for "pancake" in German is "Pfannkuchen", but in Upper Austria, they would rather use the word "Palatschinke", which comes form the Hungarian word "Palascinta". And the examples are numerous...

Dieser Moment wenn ich als deutscher in einem Englischem Video über Deutsch mehr lerne als im Unterricht..... BESTE LEBEN

I come from Germany and studied in Switzerland for 4 years: it took me month to comprehend Swiss (At a point of exhaustion I switched to English). In Germany we pride in speaking a clear standard German - espeically in the northern parts this means you are educated. But in Switzerland its more like eat my dialekt or die - a true Swiss uses the dialect. In Baden-Württemberg the have often stickers on their cars "we are able to do everything apart from standard German". - I am glad about what Luther did for my language. - Thanks for the video

9:24 The text says: Ich werde *dieses* Buch heute kaufen The Speaker says: Ich werde *das* Buch heute kaufen

Well, in Austria if you live in a village, maybe if you just go to another village which is 10 miles away, there can be problems in understanding other people 😂.

"all challenges become adventures" also applies to Germans when they read authority language (Behördensprache). Fahrtrichtungsanzeiger -> Blinker Wechsellichtzeichen -> Ampel Personenvereinzelungsanlage -> Drekreuz Spontanvegetation -> Unkraut raumübergreifendes Großgrün -> Baum

If you want to show the relatedness, you could translate "I buy books often" as "Ich kaufe oft Bücher" instead of "häufig". ;-)

When I was living in Germany and the Netherlands back in the 1980s due to my military service, I became acquainted with a Dutch woman who could speak Dutch, English, German and her own regional Dutch dialect (in this case it was the dialect spoken in Limburg (Limburgish). She told me that she regularly visited the farmer's market in the German city of Aachen to buy produce for her canteen, and found that her Limburgish was largely mutually intelligible with the many farmers who used their regional Low German dialect (Öcher Platt) to communicate with each other.

great video man. It's amazing how much you know. I like how specific you were when you showed the different stages in pronunciation. Mind you if I ask where did you get the material or if you have some book titles to recommend me.

In Alsace and a part of Lorraine, kinds of German are the native languages : Alemanic in Alsace, different kinds of Franconians in Alsace (North), Lorraine (North-East), but the native languages are not recognized as official languages by the French Republic. Viele Leute sprechen noch elsässisch oder fränkisch im Alltagsleben, vor allem ältere Menschen.

I like the fact that you can just infinitely keep putting more words on the end of a different word and it'll technically still be grammatically correct.

Ich als Deutscher finde es dezent witzig, wenn manche Menschen an unserer Sprache verzweifeln

Love your videos and showing them to my class they are incredibly informing!

your program is always interesting! As a speaker of swiss and hochdeutsch (besides english, spanish portuguese, italiano and french) I want to cite an interesting fact about low-german (plautdietsch): it has been loosing speakers for a long time, BUT in all the Americas there are many mennonite and amish communities that still speak it as their first language. I have found myself in the middle of nowhere in the paraguayan Chaco, the argentine southern pampas, or eastern Bolivia, listening to people speaking plattdeutsch as the most common thing to do... then we also changed to hochdeutsch and spanish. And the same could happen in Chihuahua Mexico, Blue Creek Belice, Manitoba Canada, Vichada in Colombia, etc.

dutch sounds like underwater English mixed w german to me

Ich schaue ein englisches Video über die deutsche Sprache. 😂🤦🏼‍♂️

❤️ Is there already a video with a comparison between German and Spanish? I'm keen on all info I can get. As a teacher for German as L2, I'm so happy about all of Paul's input! ❤️

Difficult to learn, not always pleasing your ears, but once you master it, perhaps the most advanced language there is. It does give you levels to articulate yourself, no other language can do. I‘m aware that most languages have unique abilities that others might lack. Still, German (i should say Hochdeutsch or standard German) enables you to communicate as precisely as it possibly can get.

The German language is also spoken in southern Chile, in South América, by immigrant descendants that populated the Region in Nineteenth Century. I don't include myself in that group, however, while leaving there I got to learn little German, and I think it is a beautiful language.

Me : Sprechen sie Englisch? MacDonalds worker in Berlin : What? Me : Do you speak English? MacDonalds worker in Berlin : Uhh.. yeah.. This is my German holiday highlight

I tried to learn German when I was 15 years old in my country (El Salvador) in 1987. But I gave up after 3 months because there was nobody to speak it to or to practice with, in 1987 there was no internet and no RU-vid. But I still remember that "Donnerstag" is Thursday and Sunstag "Sunday". And I still remember "Sie Spechen Deutsch?". I came too early to the party.

I really like your videos! Very interesting to learn all this stuff.

I'm in a relationship with an Austrian (from Stryia) and her family speak very strong Steierisch. I've already learnt "i wass nett" and "i lieb di" instead of "ich weiß nicht" and "ich liebe dich". Wünch mir Glück 🙏

0:42 In Luxembourg the German is clearly a majority language since everybody understands and can speak perfectly German.

great and accurate overview for the time you have, no compliants. I spoke Rheinisch Platt and could with minimum training understand dutch radio with little training, as both have common frankish roots, getting into bavarian took a lot longer. My austrian friends have the reverse problem.

As a native German speaker, I’d like to add, that the word position isn’t that strict in German. Instead of “Ich kaufe häufig Bücher.“, you could also say: “Häufig kaufe ich Bücher.“ (Here the frequency of this act is pointed out) or “Bücher kaufe ich häufig.“ is also possible. For the second sentence the following ways are possible: Ich werde diese Buch heute kaufen. Dieses Buch werde ich heute kaufen. Heute werde ich dieses Buch kaufen. Kaufen werde ich dieses Buch heute. Depending on which way you choose you change the meaning a little bit.

German is also an official language in Namibia (Southwest Africa), which was a former German colony. It is also spoken in areas of Brazil and Argentina, and in the United States it is the main language of the Amisch and the Mennonites, as well as the Texas Germans.

At 12:18 there is a mistake. It says: "An example of cases in German (for "the book")" but aktually you use the word "the table".

We love you Germany, never change. Greetings from America.🇺🇸🇩🇪

Excellent presentation. Thank you.

I've been studying German for about 4 or 5 months now and I had a co-worker from Stuttgart who insisted on speaking the Schwabien dialect even though it's completely incomprehensible from the Standard German I'm learning. Her reasoning is that she thought it was the most beautiful dialect of German. I told her to stop trying to confuse me.

"All challenges become adventures when you become fascinated." Thanks for this!

Wunderschöne Video wie immer!! Danke vielmals! Ich bin aus Italien aber ich liebe Deutsch lernen und andere Sprachen in general.

A great video! I missed the lost German dialects in Eastern Prussia though, as well as the Saxon German dialects spoken in Romania.

Deutsch ist der Hammer, Schöne Grüße aus Bosnien 👍💪👌

Apart from the language in speaking and writing on itself, there is the attitude of Germans to express themselves very precise in their German language. As a Dutch native I did not like learning German at school but later in my young adult live I loved to learn it because of the excellent books I could lay hands on for electronics and computer programming engineering. There must be a reason that in engineering German is a language of high importance.

2:45 of course there is a connection with english. The "Anglo saxonians" came from germanic territory tribes "Angeln" and "Sachsen" and also some tribes like Friesen and Jüten. They settled in "Britain " and fought and mixed with the kelts since the 5th century

Great video - thanks! Greetings from Bavaria.

Ich bin soooo froh gebürtig deutsch zu sprechen, weil ich mir vorstellen kann, wie scheiße schwer das für anderssprachige zu lernen ist. Hut ab an alle die es versuchen und schaffen 🤙

German; Too many books in the language, Too many chapters in the books, Too many paragraphs in the books, Too many sentences in the paragraphs, Too many words in the sentences, Too many letters in the words, And too much ink in the letters.

I am sorry I found this Langfocus channel. Now I'll be up all night watching it. Endlessly fascinating.

But remember: "The burger was very tasty" translates to "Vallah der Burger hat nicht geschmeckt"

"dem Tische" (dative singular) is no longer (only rarely) used, it is simplified to "dem Tisch" using the nominative form of the noun. This is also true for many other dative singluar forms.

"DACH" is dervied from D - Deutschland (Germany) A - Austria (Austria) CH - Schweiz (Switzerland) and does not stand for umbrella.

9:34 hey, Paul! ''ich werde DIESES Buch heute kaufen'' actually means ''I will buy THIS book today''

In order to satisfy the requirements for my bachelor of science in chemistry 40 years ago I had to take one of 4 foreign languages. German was the most popular, and also the foreign language I studied in grammar school. I still love to sing in German, but never got conversationally proficient. I didn't test well for foreign language aptitude. I guess we're all different.

I am Chinese and live in Germany for several years, and i think the people from the North speak more standard German than the people from the South. That means, the standard German called high German (Hochdeutsch), but the people from lowland ( like Hamburg and Hanover ) speak themore standard than the people from highland(like Bavaria). In fact, they are just as standard as they are from textbooks.

The funny thing about German is that they use so many of these "placeholder" words that don't really mean anything, but that without using them you won't ever sound like a native. I mean words like "doch", "mal", "halt" and so on.

thank you! that was very thorough

Es gefällt mir sehr, Deutsch zu lernen. Vielen Dank für das interessante Video.