Four months after throwing my toys out of the pram and emigrating to Berlin, I am finding the German language confounding and frustrating, but as often wonderful and hilarious.
Confounding and frustrating because...well, where to start?:
- the rearranging of sentences when a modal (auxiliary) verb is used in conjunction with a normal verb;
- some verbs just straight up splitting in two, with one half bogging off to the end of a sentence without warning;
- making nouns male, female or neutral (so, Germany, when you can tell me why a table has a gender – tisch: male – but a young girl doesn't – mädchen: neutral, then I will tell you why we don't pronounce the b in thumb),
- using half a dozen different words for go, depending on to where one is going (a person's house, a bakery, some mountains...)...
And as for dative, genitive, accusative and nominative cases and when to use them, they can just get right in the sea!
'Just follow the rules' they say. But, of course, there are as many exceptions to any one rule as there are adherents.
The problem is that, by even the natives' admission, German grammar is so vast and unwieldy. My old German language teacher (old as in, a few months ago) compared English and German as two triangles, one normal, and one inverted. The English language is constructed like the latter: a small amount of grammar to learn, but hung on that is a ponderous and voluminous level of vocabulary.
German, on the other hand, is the base-heavy triangle: a buttload of basic grammar to learn, and then a more limited amount of vocab on top.
In Mark Twain's brilliant and witty lament The Awful German Language, he decries the density of German, and lambasts the labyrinthine complexity of its grammar:
My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.
And what is most fascinating is that there is such a dialectic gulf across Germany that someone speaking Bavarian German would struggle to make him or herself understood in Berlin, so vast is the country. Germany is made up of lots of previously independent regions; the unified German state, more or less that we know today, has only been in existence for some 200 years or so, which accounts for the wildly varying dialects.
But I digress.
It's clear that me and German grammar aren't getting along terribly well.
But German vocabulary, on the other hand, is outstanding.
But German vocabulary, on the other hand, is outstanding.
English
& German – 1500 years of separation
English is a Germanic language at its root. In about the 5th Century, after the Romans sodded off, the British Isles were colonised by settlers and invaders from what is now north west Germany and Holland, bringing with them what would become the Old English language and dialect (of Beowulf fame).
In the 6th Century, Christianity arrived on our shores, infusing the fledgling Anglo-Saxon with latin flourishes, and not long after that, the Vikings arrived from Scandinavia all raping and a-pillaging. They, too, added to the burgeoning new language.
However, the second most profound effect on the English language came, 500
years after the arrival of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, from our old friends from France: 1066 and all that. William the Conqueror brought with
him French and England became a dual-language
country; the common-or-garden proles continued to speak in the
same Germanic (and viking) dialect, while royalty, the aristocracy and the inbred now spoke
the new fashionable French and Latin language.
Even
after the French were finally seen off from Albion after the 100 years war in the 14th (and 15th) Century, the Latin and French influences in English remained and happily jumped into bed with the
Germanic dialect to eventually become the one glorious language, and it's been growing and evolving ever since.
I think it is this mongrel DNA that allows the English to absorb so many other cultures and languages along the way, and also its flexibility lends itself to being co-opted by other distant lands and people for their own uses (76 different global varieties of English, at the last count!).
I think it is this mongrel DNA that allows the English to absorb so many other cultures and languages along the way, and also its flexibility lends itself to being co-opted by other distant lands and people for their own uses (76 different global varieties of English, at the last count!).
Consequently,
one of the many curiosities of having these odd bedfellows in the
language is that we have ended up with two words or phrases – one
Germanic: straightforward, logical and to the point, and one Latin:
usually just one word summing up the Germanic phrase – for much the
same thing.
My
favourite examples:
A
book that you hold in your hand that gives instructions
Germanic:
handbook
Latin:
manual
To
leave home for a holiday
Germanic:
go abroad/take a trip
Latin:
travel
To
help
Germanic:
give a hand
Latin:
assist
To
eat
Germanic:
break bread
Latin:
dine
And
now, here in Berlin, with an unbridled etymologic joy that is only
bettered by the next discovery, in learning German I am discovering
the same searing, unshakeable Germanic logic that built the sturdy
foundations of English.
Here's
what I mean:
The
wardrobe: der Kleiderschrank.
Literally, 'the clothes
cupboard'.
The
vacuum: der Staubsauger.
Literally, 'the
dust sucker'.
The
kettle: der Wasserkocher.
Literally, 'the water
cooker'.
The
aeroplane: das Flugzeug.
Literally, 'the flying
thing'.
The
car: das
Fahrzeug. Literally,
'the driving thing'.
The
watch:
die
Armbanduhr.
Literally, ''the
armband clock'.
The
ambulance: der
Krankenwagen. Literally,
'the sick van'.
Gloves:
– Handschuhe. Literally, 'hand shoes'.
Then
there's the wonderfully lyrical:
The
lightbulb:
die Glühbirne.
Literally, 'the
glow pear'.
The turtle: die Schildkröte. Literally, 'the shield toad'.The headlamps/lights: der Scheinwerfer. Literally, 'the shine thrower'.
And then there's:
Arsehole (as in, 'You arsehole!'). Literally, the 'the arse violin'.
But
the awesomeness doesn't stop there. I've discussed compound nouns in
a previous blog post – the practice of slamming a bunch of words
together to create one word which, more often than not, provides
concise and direct language to a familiar abstract or concept for
which an English speaker would need a paragraph to describe.
Arsehole (as in, 'You arsehole!'). Literally, the 'the arse violin'.
But
the awesomeness doesn't stop there. I've discussed compound nouns in
a previous blog post – the practice of slamming a bunch of words
together to create one word which, more often than not, provides
concise and direct language to a familiar abstract or concept for
which an English speaker would need a paragraph to describe.
For instance, the most common German compound noun that we use in English describes the concept of laughing at the glorious misfortune of others: Schadenfreude.
My
other favourites (so far):
Treppenwitz
How
many times does this happen? When you have a chance encounter with an
attractive person of the opposite sex, or get into an argument with
someone, then the best jokes, lines, and comebacks always occur to
you sometime afterwards? That’s the Treppenwitz.
It’s the joke that comes to your mind on the way down the stairs
after talking to your neighbour in the hallway two floors up.
Literal
meaning: Staircase joke
Fernweh
That
feeling of wanting to be somewhere else. It’s kind of like a
reverse homesickness; a longing for a place that isn’t where you
are right now.
Literal
meaning:
Distance
pain
Kummerspeck
When
a relationship ends or during other times of sadness, anger, or
worry, it’s common to put on a few pounds of Kummerspeck.
What it means is the excess weight put on by emotional overeating. So
when you find yourself on the couch watching “Bridget Jones’
Diary” with a tub of ice cream, you are in fact feeding your grief
bacon.
Literal
meaning: Grief bacon
Lebensmüde
This
word literally means being tired of life and was used to describe the
dramatic and soul-crushing emotional agony of young Romantic poets.
Nowadays lebensmüde is
what you call your friends when they are attempting something
especially stupid and possibly life threatening. Most people in fail
videos on YouTube suffer from latent Lebensmüdigkeit.
Literal
meaning: Life tired
Erklärungsnot
Erklärungsnot
is
a state shared by cheating spouses, lying politicians, and school
children without their homework alike. It’s what you find yourself
in when put on the spot without a sufficient explanation or excuse
for something you have done or failed to do.
Literal
meaning: Explanation poverty
(found
and taken from
http://www.fluentu.com/german/blog/weird-german-words-vocabulary/)
And,
in a language of rough edges and jagged light, here are a few of my
favourite beautiful-sounding words to soothe:
Schmetterling
- butterfly
Gummistiefeln
– rubber boots
Blumen
- flowers
Pfefferminze
– peppermint
As
a keen lover of language, every day new discoveries of German brings
so much joy and hilarity, often to the total bemusement of my German
friends.
My German language learning is coming along, then. Slowly, mind, but coming along. I've more or less given up learning straight grammar now, preferring instead to learn the language, as it were, on the shop floor, or just out and about in Berlin.
Which, honestly, is so much more enjoyable.
My German language learning is coming along, then. Slowly, mind, but coming along. I've more or less given up learning straight grammar now, preferring instead to learn the language, as it were, on the shop floor, or just out and about in Berlin.
Which, honestly, is so much more enjoyable.
