Mind-blowing Fun Facts About the German Language That Will Boost Your Learning
Pursuing German language lessons to learn German is an exciting task. Learning German language courses online introduces the peculiarities of the German language, including learning unique letters and lengthy words.
Language lovers will be fascinated by the quirky traits of the German language.
● Official Language of Multiple Nations
The German language is spoken not only in Germany but also in five other EU countries. The German language is the official and native language of Germany, as the name implies. Apart from Germany, surprisingly, it is also the official language in Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein.
● Sister languages: German & English English speakers find many similarities with the German language. However, German a1 students need to be careful while learning German because it has some sneaky words that look and sound the same as English but have different meanings. For example, “bad” in English means something harmful, while in German it means “bath”.
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Most Widely Spoken Language
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As per the statistics mentioned in Wikipedia, German is the 11th most widely spoken language in the world, having almost 1.4% of the world’s population being German speakers.
Extensive use of Compound Nouns
The German language has a tendency to form new words from existing smaller words, e.g. the English word “hand” is joined to the German word “Schuhe” (shoes) to form a new word
Handschuhe, which means gloves in English.
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Capitalized Nouns
One of the most bizarre facts about the German language is that it is the only language to capitalize all its nouns. While English capitalizes only the proper nouns, German nouns have no exceptions.
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Unique German Letter
Most European languages use the Latin alphabet and have different tonal marks and accents. Despite this, German is the only language having a Latin alphabet that has a unique letter too. The Eszett or scharfes S is the curlique B like letter “ß” which is prevalent in German words is pronounced as an “s”, unlike a “b”.
● Funny German Idioms
If you are learning German from online German teachers, then you are bound to encounter all sorts of German idioms. The idiomatic sayings in the German language reflect a dash of expression in everyday speech. However, there is an abundance of German idioms which should not be taken literally. For example, the German idiom “auf jemanden stehen” literally means in English “to stand on someone”, but it actually means having a crush on someone or being into someone.
● Longer Words –
It’s a well known fact that the German language makes use of mouthful lengthy words. For instance, “backpfeifengesicht” is one of the shorter words among the long German words, comprising of 18 letters which means “a face in need of a fist”. Another worthy
example is “Arbeiterunfallversicherungsgesetz”, which in English translates to “Worker Accident Insurance Act”.
While you might be thinking that you are getting a grip on German learning, your language bubble will get busted with new rules of exception. With the riddles and mechanisms of the German language, it might be tough to get around, these fun facts will surely be thrilling to learn and achieve expertise in German.