Do You Speak It?

I saw two videos recently that make fun of German. These videos are pretty funny but they actually made me think about the languages they’re using. I’m fluent in English (clearly) and studied German in college.

English is the language the joke exists in. German is the butt of the joke. All the other languages used to juxtapose the difference are romance languages. The Romance part of this has more to do with the Roman Empire than how sexy the words sound. I haven’t studied a romance language since high school but the grammar and sound are completely different than Germanic languages like English and German (duh).

If you look at the structure of a French or Spanish sentence, it’s more than a little different from an English or German sentence. The grammar is what gives English it’s classification since it’s a language that ambushes other languages in dark alleys and picks their pockets for spare vocabulary.

Honestly, German nouns can be easier than other languages if you have a base vocabulary. I didn’t remember the words for ambulance or hospital but ‘Krankenwagen’ and ‘Krankenhaus’ instantly made sense. Rather than make new words, Germans like to combine existing ones. Sometimes they make sense like ‘sick car’ and ‘sick haus.

The really long word they use for sex? It combines ‘Geschelt’ which is gender and ‘Verkehr’ which is traffic. I’d had to do more homework on the common not profane vernacular since they were clearly going with the longest possible word. ‘Fick’ would also work but wouldn’t be nearly as funny.

Not all word mash-ups make perfect sense. ‘Schwein’ is a pig. ‘Hund’ is a dog. Mash them together and you get the German word for bastard. At least ‘Scheißkerl‘ gives you a good context clue combining the words for shit and guy. I don’t understand the nuances or which word is more common but I understand the gist of it. (FYI, The beta looking letter in the middle is pronounced like a double ‘S.’)

Some words aren’t combinations but make must as much sense. Wednesday translates as Mittwoch or mid-week. No language makes perfect sense but as someone who has studied it, German vocabulary really isn’t that confusing. Now if only they didn’t gender all their nouns…

Music: Ich lass dich geh'n by Johannes Oerding