{"id":6382,"date":"2018-09-25T14:23:15","date_gmt":"2018-09-25T14:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.utalk.com\/news\/?p=6382"},"modified":"2026-08-25T13:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T12:15:11","slug":"keep-your-herr-on-a-beginners-guide-to-german","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/en\/news\/keep-your-herr-on-a-beginners-guide-to-german","title":{"rendered":"Keep Your Herr On: A Beginner’s Guide to German"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the five Gut and Wurst things you need to know about the language:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lots of similar words:<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Around 40% of German words are similar to English ones because they once shared the same ancestral language.\u00a0 Shared words include Hammer <\/em>(hammer),\u00a0Freund <\/em>(friend) <\/em>and\u00a0gut <\/em>(good) as well as phrases like was ist das?\u00a0<\/em>(what is that?) and ich habe\u00a0<\/em>(I have).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But watch out for words which sound similar – but aren\u2019t – like Chef<\/em> (a boss), Gift<\/em> (poison), winken<\/em> (to wave) and Kind<\/em> (child).  And the word Wurst <\/em>means a sort of sausage, not worst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happily the plural of the German word for child is a gift for bad jokes e.g. English children are kind but German children are Kinder<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tricky nouns:<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t ask us why but nouns in German have a capital letter (see above).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

German nouns can also be either masculine, feminine or neuter and there\u2019s seemingly no logic to it. The moon for instance is male, the sun female and girls are neuter.  Really?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And they take four different cases and there\u2019s different ways of making them plural. Enough said already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lots of great compound words<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This is where German gets much more fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the shorter end of the scale there\u2019s the word for glove Handschuh <\/em>(literally hand shoe), the word for fridge K\u00fchlschrank <\/em>(cool cupboard) and the word for airplane Flugzeug <\/em>(fly thing).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Longer words include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Backpfeifengesicht – a face in need of a fist (from the German words for cheek, whistle and face). <\/em><\/li>
  2. Weitschmerz<\/em> \u2013 a sensation of melancholy and world-weariness (from the words far and pain).<\/li>
  3. Kopfkino<\/em> \u2013 a vivid daydream (from Kopf<\/em> meaning head and Kino<\/em> meaning cinema).<\/li>
  4. Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften<\/em> \u2013 meaning insurance companies providing legal protection. It lays claim to being one of the longest German words in everyday use.  And possibly the dullest.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Three ways of saying \u2018you\u2019:<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    1. Sie\u00a0<\/em>is for people you don\u2019t know, people older than yourself, your work colleagues and your social superiors eg doctors.<\/li>
    2. Ihr\u00a0<\/em>is a casual plural form of address which translates simply as \u201cyou all\u201d.<\/li>
    3. Du<\/em> is commonly used to address a young child or close friend. It is also used in social situations between equals – like in a mixed naked sauna in Berlin.\u00a0 (Don\u2019t ask how we know!)<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      Verbs come second in a sentence:<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

      The verb is always the second idea in the sentence – so if you add a new bit of information to the start of a sentence, the verb stays in the same place rather than getting pushed to the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Satisfyingly the word \u201cverb\u201d is the same in both English and German and, if you\u2019ve been paying attention, you\u2019ll now know that in German it\u2019s \u201cVerb\u201d, not \u201cverb\u201d!  So that\u2019s the end of our quick beginners\u2019 guide. And, as the Germans like to say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 (Everything has an end \u2013 only the sausage has two!)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Here\u2019s the five Gut and Wurst things you need to know about the language: Lots of similar words: Around 40%…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[244],"tags":[3985],"class_list":["post-6382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learn-german","tag-general"],"acf":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":6382},"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":244,"label":"German"}],"post_tag":[{"value":3985,"label":"General"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"Richard Howeson","author_link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/en\/news\/author\/richard"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":244,"name":"German","slug":"learn-german","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":244,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":32,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":244,"category_count":32,"category_description":"","cat_name":"German","category_nicename":"learn-german","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":3985,"name":"General","slug":"general","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3985,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":135,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10503,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6382\/revisions\/10503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}