Germany was once known as the land of poets and thinkers and our language can be very beautiful. Spoken by a Hollywood actor who wants to paint the picture of a villain........well .......you can butcher every language I guess.
Naja wenn ich gut gelaunt freundliche Gespräche über schöne Dinge mit Deutschen auf deutsch führe, fragen meine Freunde in Spanien sehr oft nach ob denn alles ok ist, ob es ein Problem gibt oder wir streiten. Wirklich ganz lieb gemeint, weil sie beim zuhörenzu dem Ergebnis kommen, ihre Gäste sind verärgert... Also es klingt wirklich harsch, da brauchen wir uns nichts schönreden 😂
At this point german being harsh is such a well established stereotype that it has pretty much become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We could see it in the opening clips. Whenever something is supposed to sound german in US media it is shouted and yelled and usually sounds anything but german to anyone who actually knows the language. If all the english you ever heard was spoken by a drill sergeant, you'd think english is a harsh language. But yeah, believe it or not, we don't usually speak like drill sergeants. 🤷♂️
i like to think of the german language like a finely tuned machine. in the hands of an idiot that doesnt understand it, it sounds harsh, uneven and rigid. but in the hands of someone that understands it and uses it precisely, it can be one of the most beautifull languages out there. reading older german poetry, with some understanding of the language, can genuinely be enlightening.
I've lived in northern Germany for a long time. High German, spoken around Hanover, is a very nice language. When natives speak it naturally, it flows and has a lot of character. I actually love it.
Interesting. I would have said that the standard version of the standard dialect of the High German language would probably be one of the ones that fits the stereotype the most. That and Berliner Schnauze. And Ruhrdeutsch. Although in general, yeah, colloquially spoken German flows a lot more than the stereotypical standard that few people ever speak.
@MellonVegan Absolutely not. The "stereotype" is some kind of angry Austrian dialect mixed with Bavarian and blended with a strange idea about how Germans are always shouty little guys with a complex. Hochdeutsch (Hanover region) is by FAR the best German.
It IS a bit of propaganda still left from WW2. Makes sense to show your enemy and their language as harsh and it just has propagated since then. Not even blaming anyone, we can say some fun things about english also :)
My favourite word is “Geborgenheit.” It describes that deep feeling of being safe, accepted, and held, without fear of judgment or abandonment. A quiet knowing inside: “This is where I belong. Just as I am.”
@schluko1378 "Heit" is not the same as "ness", you cannot compare german to english. "Heit" like in "Hoheit", "hochhalten" bzw. "hochsteigen". So, more like the rescue that builds up inside you and you feel comfortable and safe.
@SmaragdaKalfopoulosme, too. If you never listened to a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke or read something by Herrmann Hesse you don't have the slightest idea of German.
Feli from Germany (How Hitler ruined the reputation of the german language) also made a video about this and her point is that Hitler is responsible for the bad image of the german language, because he spoke in an overpronunciated way that was common for actors of that time because the quality of sound submission was so bad at that time. If you put some more emphasis into your speech like Hitler liked to do, you have an overpronunciated, overemphasized version of german that sounds angry and harsh. This has little to do with a language Goethe, Schiller, Kafka or Mann wrote in.
If I remember history class correctly, Hitler did take oratory lessons and thus used many rhetorical instruments that were considered normal back in the day, like the characteristic rolling "r". Just listen to a contemporary recording of the "Moritat von Mackie Messer" and you will instantly recognize it.
Über allen Gipfeln Ist Ruh', In allen Wipfeln Spürest Du Kaum einen Hauch; Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde. Warte nur! Balde Ruhest du auch. J.W. v. Goethe
@remypascal4872 Lang lieb ich dich schon Möchte dich, mir zur Lust, Mutter nennen Und dir schenken ein kunstlos Lied Du, der Vaterlandsstädte Ländlich schönste Soweit ich sah..... Etc etc Pure Beauty and Soul in German ears....
As a German, I've only ever perceived our language as aggressive, loud, and unpleasant during the Nazi era, through TV documentaries that showed old film footage. To classify modern, normal German as aggressive seems like an exaggeration. Nobody talks like that here unless they're an idiot. Sure, German isn't exactly easy, but thankfully that loud, arrogant croaking is a thing of the past.
The clips in the first minutes of this video were not even in German (Except for Trevor Noah, who speaks 7 languages, including Afrikaans and German). Everything else was just gibberish. Besides, we Germans don't constantly shout at each other.
Sarah Chalke from Scrubs has a german mother and learned the language in school and when visiting her family in germany. She has a rough accent but the sentence in the scene is clearly german.
@MetalBoozie yeah, her sentence got the right gramatic but no german would speak like that, it got no flow. But well she wantet to mimik an evil housewife (or that is what I think she said bevor the german)
@MetalBoozieshe speak German, yes. But nobody talks like that in Germany and she knows that. I assume she does it to please the mostly American narrative about German and for comedic reasons.
Fun fact, I once watched Trevor Noah telling he prefers to learn languages from movies in that language. For German he watched a lot of WWII movies / documentaries with propaganda since he hadn't have access to other sources for some reason. (I guess, this was pre-internet era.) When he visited a German family member he proudly wanted to show off his language skills and ordered a coffee and breakfast in a bakery. People looked shocked at him and the family member kindly advised him to rather not speak German at all in Germany. He was surprised and devastated and asked why. The answer was: "Because you sound like Hitler." Imagine, you're in a bakery enjoying your morning coffee and out of the blue you hear Hitler speaking. And when you turn around shocked it's a young black man.
One common example for the harshness of German is that RUclips short that compares the words for butterfly 🦋 in several languages, with the German "Schmetterling" shouted aggressively with strongly pronounced "tt" and rolled "r". You can do the exact same thing with "butterfly" if you want it to sound harsh. 😊
There's a hilarious short on RUclips that features people saying the same word in different languages (French, English, Spanish, Italian, etc.) Those speakers all sound very pleasant, but then an angry German guy barks out the same word, and it sounds very harsh and intimidating. 😂🇨🇵🇬🇧🇪🇦🇮🇹🇩🇪
German is a beautiful language! First of all you really have to think in advance what you want to say. Second German language can describe in detail since we have for everything a word and if we don't have one we can just create a new one.
Same in Swedish or Scandinavian, we create words on the spot! But we don't really have to think in advance, as if you were writing a poem or something. We can be spontaneous, because our syntax is even simpler than the English in most ways. So learning högtyska (hochdeutsch) in school is actually really hard for us, despite many similarities.
Whenever I came across English speaking people and said I am German, I am very often confronted about why German always sounds loud and aggressive, when that’s not true at all. Friends from overseas have heard me speak German in calls to other people and they were surprised how calm many speak
Very true I am German and speak Japanese fluently. Japanese is based on the a, i , u, e, o sounds which sound exactly like the German alphabet. So Germans with a certain talent for foreign languages speak pretty good Japanese and vice a versa.
i live 5 years in peru and they dont like spanish from spain, because it sounds so hard for them... specially in movie translations... they like much more mexican translations, because thats are more softly for them... so that to sounds hard...
easy explanation of the long German compound words: Germans don't say "document of declaration of independence" they would use "independencedeclarationdocument" as consequently as you say "candlelight" or "daydream".
@VisitGermany-2025 Actually it isnt. That why you can't simply smush any 2 nomes together in english. Or would you call ' Streetlighttestingfactorysupervision ' and english word ? Becouse if just add the same words together in german, it is an actual correct word. Same goes for something simple like 'cat food' you still split the words couse you can't compound words in english , if you say catfood it is wrong.
"Wie schimmerne Tränen sind die Sterne durch die Nacht gesprengt. Es muss ein groß' Trauer in dem Aug' sein, von dem sie abträufelten." That's a beautiful sentence I remember from the piece "Dantons Tod" by Georg Büchner.
Try listening the german Song " nein, meine Söhne geb ich nicht" You will be surprise what can be told with this hard language!! Song is from Reinhardt May und Freunde ...
I 'd like you to try more German pronunciation! What I heard so far from you in other videos was very understandable and I appreciate you not yelling when speaking German.
I agree. It‘s annoying that many content creators try to make it sound ugly by overdoing it on purpose. But everybody loves Beethovens „Ode an die Freude“.
I think the long words aren't bad, because of this infinite words you can mix them up together and describe your feelings perfectly and say what you'd like to say with only one word. I think it's some kind of freedom that you can make this
the funny thing is, if you read texts from the 19th century or early 20th century, you might even be amazed at how poetic and beautiful it might sound ... a friend sent me a letter written in German from her ancestors and it had so much warmth in it and it was in in the form of a poem, expressing the love for the recipient of the letter ... bear in mind, it was only to a friend
That wasn't from Downfall, it was from Inglorious Basterds. Downfall has the legendary bunker rant, performed marvellously by the eternal Bruno Ganz, may he rest in peace.
Swede here. Harsh german is pretty easy for us to pronounce, but soft german (which seems to be more commonly spoken) is hard -especially trying to soften the Rs and Ach-sounds. It took a long time to learn "ü" though. :)
Jaja, Ich habe gesagt!!! This is sentence from one old movie from period before WWII started. It's comedy and it's still sooo good 😂 Of course in that time it wasn't at cinemas very long, because we were "visited" by Mr. Hitler and "politaly" asked to join Germany (former Czechoslovakia) 😂 But now everything is OK and many people from Czechia (and Slovakia too) speaks Germany very well. And because of our own language, which has very sharp R, letter CH (btw it sounds like volal cord illnes 😂), the pronounciation is quite easy for us. Maybe better than english - our accent is really weird. But for me - most important is to speak and listen to each other. Because speaking and listening solves most of problems. Between people, nations, countries.... So it's not important how you sound but what you say.
just listen to german music and then you know how great this language is. I am half german half american and when I was a kid I loved speaking englisch but now that I am a grown up i prefer my german
At 3:42 the thing he was referring to as overdoing it was the amount of pause he was taking before each word. In regular speech people would tend to mumble all of these out quicker tobmask the effect if the quadruple vowel start there. He clearly separates them.
What I love about the German language is that it is so special. Compound words make learning the language easy and logical. If you know the words ‘Haus’ and “Tier”, you immediately understand the word ‘Haustier’. In English, you would have to learn many more words: ‘house’, ‘animal’ and “pet”. Compound words also allow you to be poetic and creative. You can invent new words by combining existing ones, which can be very poetic. For example, ‘Der Frühlingswind ließ Blütenschnee herunterrieseln’ (The spring wind caused a shower of blossoms to fall). The word ‘blossom snow’ does not officially exist, but you immediately know what is meant and it creates a direct image in your mind. Many words in German are also very picturesque and, when spoken aloud, sound like what the word expresses. For example, ‘fauchen’ (to hiss): the CH imitates the sound or “Sahne” (whipped cream): is spoken very softly or ‘hüpfen’ (to hop): the voice goes up to the p, short pause, the voice goes down again
Deutsch ist eine wundervolle und ausdrucksstarke Sprache. Nirgendwo anders kann man so sehr seinem Gefühl Ausdruck verleihen, wie mit der deutschen Sprache. Es heißt nicht umsonst, ein Land der Dichter und Denker. Wir sind weder aggressiv noch schlecht, wir sind freundlich, gebildet, aufgeschlossen und hilfsbereit.
Prejudices are probably the biggest reason why the German language is branded as ugly. Of course, everyone hears the language and can judge for themselves whether they like it or not. But stereotypes like “endlessly long words” or “always shouting” simply don’t apply to German. Yes, there are compound words, but Germans don’t speak only in compounds. And by the way, English has them too: breakthrough, toothbrush, aircraftcarrier...
@darkbum1510 you write most compounds as separate words. That makes it easier to read, but they're still compounds. By the way "aircraft" is a compound, too. Air + craft. Basically the same as German Flugzeug (Flug + Zeug). People make fun of this because they don't know the old German meaning of "Zeug" which can be something like "device" (in modern German it usually means "stuff")
Because the german language has the opportunity to develop words by connecting them, it is always accurate and can grow with your thoughts. For that it is necessary to have little breaks in between those connected words to understand the full new meaning. Once you understand this, german might be the easiest language to learn, by having a huge vocabulary to express yourself and also problems and solutions. Examples: "Gedankenspiel", means to let your thoughts play around to find new solutions by using "thoughts" and "game" put together.
German language has a depth no any other language can match and is rooted way back in history when there wasn't even a Germany as we know it today, only the longing for one. It's possible to express things based on their true inner meaning not only by their outer impression, something that most probably no other language is capable of. The last three examples are only a small glimps of that.
Rhabarbermarmelade was once called the most beautiful german word. Don't know the english word for Rhabarber but marmalade - jam is clear I think. And the most people forget, that we have so many dialects sounding differently. U drive one hour and the people talking and sounding different. Look Berlin, there they say dit or ditte instead of dies, here we say dis. The sentence "what is this?" - "was ist denn das/dies?" becomes "wattn ditte?" So we are always talking about "standard" german, but our dialects bring real live to it. And than u have the Schlauberger, who always say that we do not write in dialects... But u can and there are dictionaries for it. Thanks to the company Langenscheid.
German tongue twister - "Wenn Schnecken an Schnecken schlecken, merken sie zu ihrem Schrecken, dass Schnecken nicht schmecken." "Der Cottbuser Postkutscher putzt den Cottbusser Postkutschkasten." "Herr von Hagen darf ich's wagen, sie zu fragen, welchen Kragen sie getragen, als sie lagen krank am Magen in der Stadt zu Kopenhagen." 😊
English has some kind of "memory" of umlauts: Most of the irregular plurals use an umlaut in their German counterparts (mouse/mice - Maus/Mäuse, foot/feet - Fuß/Füße, goose/geese - Gans/Gänse, tooth/teeth - Zahn/Zähne, brother/brethren - Bruder/Brüder, man/men - Mann/Männer)
As a German I can fully agree. Another fantastic example from another language is an interview with Mila Kunis (I don't remember which Late Night Show) where she explains that Russian - while for many people sounds like Klingon - to her it sounds like love and passion, because she grew up with it 😊 EDIT: Found it ruclips.net/user/shortsbqbNb8kgRyo?si=aedHRZldOceatyy9
at 3:20 it pretty much depends on the german dialect. ripuarian from nrw is a very flowy, partially tonal dialect without the mass of glottal stops, so we naturally weave through high german without using them so much. if you wanna say ö or ü, form an o, then say the english a. same for u to ü.
Moin ut Noorddüütschland ( low Saxony northern Germany) vun de waterkant Cuxhaven 😁 What is being commented on in this video is High German, only about 200 years old. Previously, German was spoken in many Germanic dialects and languages. So that all Germans in Germany could understand each other better and it would be easier to write texts for everyone, High German was introduced and taught in schools from then on. Of course, the older dialects and various German languages, such as Frisian and Low German, are also spoken in everyday life in Northern and Central Germany. Here is an example of what is normally spoken in Northern Germany/Low Saxony and Central Germany. It also varies somewhat from region to region. Here a text of low German: Een Text op Plattdüütsch. Mien Naam is Onke Onken un ik kaam ut Noorddüütsland vun de Waterkant Cuxhoben Dat Land is flach un wi hebbt veel Water üm uns. Diek, Schaap un gode Luft hebbt wir. De Spraak warrt op dat Land noch veel snackt. De Kinner lehrt dat vondaag noch in de School. So dat weers för di op platt 😊 Allerbest un hool di wuchtig mien Keerl 👍
@Samergslim I'm English and got the drift of that. My name is Onke Onken and lives in the area of Cuxhaven, the land has lots of water and is flat. Something I couldn't quite work out other than taught in school. How did I do?
Thank you sooo much for that!! I‘m from South West Germany and I speak Alemannish which sounds totally different to High German, too. People who speak Platt and me won’t understand each other and people who speak High German don’t understand us both. This is Badish Alemannish: I bin üssm Schwarzwald un I schwätz ke Hochditsch, I kaan des nid un wer nid in’d Schüel gangenisch vrschdooods kai weng. Do hogsch no ani un leerschs. YES, that is German. So when somebody talks about how German sounds he precisely should say „High German“.
It was Martin Luther who created modern standard German with his translation of the Bible. As for Plattdeutsch, it looks more like Dutch than modern standard German, or "Hochdeutsch."
The sounds of Ä, Ö and Ü can be easily heard in English (Am). Here are examples: SAD / BAD / MAD = the sound of the A in these words is the same as Ä, so if you would ask a Finn to write the words as it sounds to them, they would write “sääd” / “bääd” / ”määd”. HEARD (i.e. ”I heard a noise”) = the sound of the pronunciation of EA is (almost) the same as Ö or WORD = where the pronunciation of O also sounds (almost) like Ö, so a Finn would write ”hörd” and ”wörd”. FEW / VIEW = the sound at the end of EW in both words is basically what would be closest to the sound of Ü (Ü is the same sound as Y in Finnish and Estonian), so a Finn would write ”fjyy” / ”vjyy” (the J is not a mistake since Finns pronounce J like the the letter Y in YOU). So these sounds do exist in a similar way in English (Am.), ofc they are not exactly the same sounds but English also has different accents. E.g. the word WATER is pronounced differently in British English than American English (and yes there MANY different variations of British English). So again if you would ask a Finn to write what the word sounds like spoken in each accent, this would be the result: VUAADER (Am. English) VUATHER (Br. English) Finnish is one of the languages where the words are spoken exactly as they are written. So a double O (i.e. OO) is a long O and a double S (i.e. SS) is a long S or a pause in between the two consonants, KAS-SI (kassi = bag). Which means that if you can pronounce the letters in the Finnish way, you can basically read Finnish even if you have no idea what it means. I’ve done this with friends from the US, Germany, Spain, etc.
Caution: The _Finnish_ Ä is like the vowel sound in English sad/bad, but the _German_ Ä isn't; it's like the one in get/pet. In addition, German Ö and Ü have two sounds each - a "long" one and a "short" one - which aren't interchangeable.
Few and view are absolutely not the same sound as the German ü. Neither are heard and word the same sound as ö in German (it might be in Finnish, I don't know!).
ä, ö and u are old shorthand for ae, oe and ue. Scribes started putting a little "e" on top of the a, o and u to shorten the ligatures. And then later on, starting in the 16th century, they were all writing in Kurrent script, where an "e" looks almost like two dashes. And so you had two dashes that turned into dots (at least in print, I still learned to put dashes on top of a, o and u in handwriting) You can still replace ä, ö and ü with ae, oe and ue in German when you don't have access to special characters, or when you suspect that others might be having problems with those characters. For example if you ordered something from China and you live in München or Köln, I'd always write "Muenchen" or "Koeln" because otherwise there's 90% chance it will come out as "M?nchen" and "K°+ln" on the label 😄
I belong in the minority who thinks that German sounds beautiful whilst French sounds ugly. I thought so even as a 12-year-old kid trying to choose my second foreign language (after English). I love how German sounds when spoken! I loved learning it and I still love speaking it. Curiously... the exact opposite happens when it comes to music. I'd rather listen to french lyrics than in german. Fascinating how the human brain responds to sounds!
To me as a German a lot of the French language also sounds harsh and the flow aggressive as well. But when a French person speaks German with a French accent, it might just be my favorite of all the accents. All of a sudden very charming and somehow "cute". That applies - to my ears at least - also to the French accent in English. So to sum up, if the French want to sound nice and adorable, they should just ditch French and speak neighboring languages with their accent 😀
In my comment I used selected music to show how gentle german music in dialect can be. But German music is very versatile. I sometimes also like french music, so it is not competition - just some suggestions, maybe you find something interesting. What do you think about Herbert Grönemeyer - Der Weg? ruclips.net/video/_9CnnYhFQHY/video.html If you like some drama... Faber - Lass mich nicht los ruclips.net/video/ucf0ntIRetI/video.html For everybody who have been a child - Sarah Lesch - Testament: ruclips.net/video/97ZBHAJmmho/video.htmlsi=F5uNYdR6rGyX1dtZ&t=210 Always kind of fun: Revolverhelden - Gekommen um zu bleiben: ruclips.net/video/eVkC47zKQWc/video.html Olli Schulz - Dann schlägt Dein Herz - ruclips.net/video/HdUz1ZwUzvQ/video.html How about the good life? Steiner & Madlaina - Das schöne Leben: ruclips.net/video/T3tetf-dAj0/video.html A little bit strange: Mine & Edgar Wasser - Aliens: ruclips.net/video/zeT_5VvGNlM/video.html A cologne song about breathing techniques... kind of: The piano has been drinking - 16 Memme en d'r Vringmaschin Live: ruclips.net/video/__GDw5nYoPQ/video.html How about philosophy with socks? Sockosophie: ruclips.net/video/MVBeLoO1NuU/video.html One of the most beautiful love songs without using the word love: AnnenMayKantereit - 3. Stock: ruclips.net/video/keZdP9ETm4s/video.html Do you know what happens at 3? Frank Ramond "Ich zähl bis drei": ruclips.net/video/vUdEG0C1RNE/video.html Or do you like some insanity? Till Lindemann - Wach auf: ruclips.net/video/hiOjK992bPU/video.html Nothing for you? I'm sorry - Knorkator - Tut uns leid: ruclips.net/video/Nk270u6jWg8/video.html
@SaschaAtrops Thank you for your suggestions, I will give these a try! And you're right, it's not a competition. Maybe I haven't listened to the right music in german yet.
I've loved the sound of German since I was a child. I didn't like the sound of French until I was eighteen and began studying it ( I'd had three years of German by then.) French sounds very refined and elegant. But German is still my favorite foreign language. 🇩🇪🇨🇵
In Scotland we still can use fricatives such as in bocht , focht and dochter instead of bought, fought and daughter. " It's a sair fecht " means its a hard fight.
In swabian dialect t is often spoken d, p as b and k as g. So Tochter is in swabian spoken Doochder. And in current german fechten means fencing, but in old days, remaining in some ,frozen phrases', fechten meant fighting, in current german kämpfen.
I am German and I love the Scottish dialect! It is so fun to listen to. The melody of speech in Scottish Englis resembles the Swiss German melody of speech. The Swiss also loooove their ch fricatives!
@brittakriep2938 Und ich bin Neigschmeckter und bin auch noch etwas verwirrt, "Isch ebbes unglar?" Ist etwas unklar? Totally different words but somehow i managed to understand it. Hardest thing is to understand those guys in the real swabian area near Memmingen or Kempten.
Over9000ize: l be dr Freind von dr Britta, ond be aus Aldwirddaberg. Heidzodag schwätzad de meischde Leid hauchdeidsch, ond de Kendr wird nex anders mei beibrochd. I ka da schwäbischa Dialegd no halbwägs schwätza, do felld mr afanga auf. Memminga ond Kembda send em Allgai, do gohds schau langsam mid am Alemanischa aus Voararlberg a. Nun, ich rede noch Dialekt, zumindest die Übergänge vom Schwäbischen zum Alemanischen verstehe ich recht gut, da in meiner Kindheit, bin Jahrgang 1965, auch in meiner Heimatgegend manche alten Leute ähnlich gesprochen haben.
Especially in the US the speeches of Hitler are taken as the only examples for German language. You have to know, that Hitler gave really many speeches, sometimes several a day, often without microphone. This way he ruined his voice, thus he sounded very rough, even with using microphone. There are very few recordings of his "normal" voice, even Hitler did not sound aggressive.
Little addition. He also used a specific way to pronounce in a way that is better in open areas if you don't have a microphone or so. It has a sharper pronunciation and enunciation to be more distinctive (thus more intelligible) at a higher distance from the speaker. It's called "Bühnendeutsch" (stage german).
I like how Charlie Chaplin spoke his speech in The Great Dictator when the microphones were bending down anxiously .... His speech is not real German but it is intended to sound German :-). This is how non German speakers feel the German language when it is spoken aggressively, I understood. Remarkably, the movie was done in a time Hitler reigned Germany. A brave work by Charlie. As a native German I can understand that my native language is very puzzling to you to learn. I learned English in my youth and it was complex, BUT when it came to learn french it was even more complex because of the genders which were different in my language. In French car is female, in German car is neutral. So I am with you when you have to face even 3 genders and the declinations and conjugations in the German language. For me it's easy because I was accustomed to these stumbling blocks as a child. Maybe a little hint for you concerning the typical compound words in German. The main word is at the end: Kräuterbutter is mainly butter like in English. The word before "butter" is the additional description. Kräuter means herbs. So Kräuterbutter is a butter with the addition of herbs. You maybe name it herb butter in English? Knowing this you can demystify every German noun monster. The most important word is the one at the end!!! Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän is the Kapitän (captain) of a Gesellschaft (a society) of Dampf-Schifffahrt (steam shipping) on the river Donau (Danube). It's that easy 🙂.
The main problem is that somebody who has difficulties recognizing words longer than 5 letters try to recognize the individual words that make up a word of 79 letters because they are not aware thar there are actually about 12 words there.
You definitely have to know all the words in the compound to be able to break it apart quickly. But even that can become tricky (even for Germans) when you got words like "Blumentopferde" - like what the hell are Blumento Pferde. Oh no, it's Blumen Topf Erde. But the "Pferde" part is just so familiar (means "horses") that you can really stumble over such a compound.
As a German: We loooooooooove when people just try their best to pronounce German words! ❤ Nobody expects perfection (only when we try ourselves, of course) and whenever someone asks for help, most of us will go through fire and walk barefoot over broken glass to provide any form of support. So please, keep on trying! ❤
I’m no language expert, but when I try to teach someone about Umlaute, I explain it like this: the base letter shows the shape your mouth should form, and the two dots - the umlaut - mean your tongue should make an “E” sound. So for ä, your mouth forms an “A” while your tongue makes an “E”; for ö, your mouth forms an “O,” and so on.
assembly and disassembly of old machines in a production factory, and installation of ventilation systems in new buildings, construction of bridges, houses, roofs, tiles, facades, curbs, landscaping, fences,... but not in cola mine, we are not in 1950, can you imagine that?
The fact that Americans apparently cannot get beyond the Nazi clichés that Hollywood has been perpetuating for decades and that have been instilled in the population through prejudice says much more to me about education in the US than about the German language and how it is spoken in everyday life. Certainly not like in those stupid Hollywood movies or by stupid, obnoxious, tasteless commedians... No knowledge of German culture, mentality, and the German language, along with its wonderful variety of dialects.
We had to memorize that in school: Vom Eise befreit sind Strom und Bäche, Durch des Frühlings holden, belebenden Blick, Im Tale grünet Hoffnungs-Glück; Der alte Winter, in seiner Schwäche, Zog sich in rauhe Berge zurück. Von dort her sendet er, fliehend, nur Ohnmächtige Schauer körnigen Eises In Streifen über die grünende Flur; Aber die Sonne duldet kein Weißes, Überall regt sich Bildung und Streben, Alles will sie mit Farben beleben; Doch an Blumen fehlt's im Revier, Sie nimmt geputzte Menschen dafür. Kehre dich um, von diesen Höhen Nach der Stadt zurück zu sehen. Aus dem hohlen finstern Tor Dring ein buntes Gewimmel hervor. Jeder sonnt sich heute so gern. Sie feiern die Auferstehung des Herrn, Denn sie sind selber auferstanden, Aus niedriger Häuser dumpfen Gemächern, Aus Handwerks- und Gewerbes Banden, Aus dem Druck von Giebeln und Dächern, Aus Straßen quetschender Enge, Aus der Kirchen ehrwürdiger Nacht Sind sie alle ans Licht gebracht. Sieh nur sieh! wie behend sich die Menge Durch die Gärten und Felder zerschlägt, Wie der Fluss, in Breit' und Länge, So manchen lustigen Nachen bewegt, Und, bis zum Sinken überladen Entfernt sich dieser letzte Kahn. Selbst von des Berges fernen Pfaden Blinken uns farbige Kleider an. Ich höre schon des Dorfs Getümmel, Hier ist des Volkes wahrer Himmel, Zufrieden jauchzet gross und klein: Hier bin ich Mensch, hier darf ich’s sein.
you DO have in english the ö sound like in earl or hurdle. the ü sound is the middle part in you or chew. and ä is mostly like a in man. so it is quite weird seeing an english speaker trying the ö sound and ending up with o while having it clearly in turn and burn.
What is the difference between german and english in speaking it? An observation I made on myself (how do I speak english and how do I speak german) is: English is very lazy. The sound forms at the back of my throat, the lower jaw is relaxed, the incisors are not aligned, as the relaxed jaw moves backward. You hardly have to move your lips, hardl must close your mouth, and are still halfway intelligible. German needs more tension. The sound forms more behind the upper incisors, the lower jaw is moved forward, so that the incisors stand in line. And for the harsh sounds, you spit them out, not down on the ground with relaxed jaw, but AT the face of the one in front of you, you push your jaw even MORE forward and your lower lip even more. As fun, you can use the word "sh**" as wonderful example. With the english relaxed jaw it is more a resignating word for yourself, when it's an angry "SH**!", then you also push the jaw forward. Most of the german sounds you find somewhere in the english language just as well, just written with different letters in other words. The "ü" is one of the few I have not found in english. E.g. the "ä" is pretty much the 'a' in "bad", for the "ü" begin with the 'u' from "purple", keep the sound and get your incisors in line. The "ß" is the 'ss' in "hiss", easy. My guess this is one of the occasions where in english you also have the germanic incisor alignment.
Depending on where you live (aka which english dialect you speak) the umlauts can be approximated quite easily in "plain" english. To pronounce ä, say "air". The result are two sounds: ä, then r. For ö, say "burn". You say "börn". For ü, purse your lips as if saying "ohh", then without moving the lips say "see". You will say "süü".
Well I remember when I (a german girl) came back from Texas, where I was living for several months, and I heard german again at the airport, I didn't wanna speak it anymore. It sounded harsh for me too.
You can Substitute the Umlaute ä, ö and ü with ae, oe and ue once you understand this it will be way easier to speak them just make the German sound for "a" then switch to the one for "e" always go back and forth between them go faster and increase the pitch you should end up pretty close something like this: "aaaeeeaaeeaeaeaeääää".
My short answer to "why GERMAN sounds so Intense" would have been: *Hollywood.*
Jep
Germany was once known as the land of poets and thinkers and our language can be very beautiful. Spoken by a Hollywood actor who wants to paint the picture of a villain........well .......you can butcher every language I guess.
German is one of the most strongest language and I ❤ it.
I love german language,english ist to soft for me😂
That happens when American movies about hitler nzi propaganda talk making people think this is reality. 😅😮
Dutchman here. Germans are very polite people. No bad feelings at all towards Germany. Except for soccer games 😊
Liebe Grüße aus 🇩🇪🙏
Alles gut. Niederländer sind gute Verlierer. 😉
Aw .. thanks 😢
Like the Dutch bluntness, agree on the last sentence in regards to your football.
🇩🇪🤝🏻🇳🇱
If you yell like an idiot, every language sounds aggressive.
Exactly 🙂
ok, ask european habitants when american tourists flood their hotspots...
Da sagst du was :)
i like that half of the world piiiSS into their pants, when you start to speak german loudly...
Naja wenn ich gut gelaunt freundliche Gespräche über schöne Dinge mit Deutschen auf deutsch führe, fragen meine Freunde in Spanien sehr oft nach ob denn alles ok ist, ob es ein Problem gibt oder wir streiten. Wirklich ganz lieb gemeint, weil sie beim zuhörenzu dem Ergebnis kommen, ihre Gäste sind verärgert...
Also es klingt wirklich harsch, da brauchen wir uns nichts schönreden 😂
At this point german being harsh is such a well established stereotype that it has pretty much become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We could see it in the opening clips. Whenever something is supposed to sound german in US media it is shouted and yelled and usually sounds anything but german to anyone who actually knows the language.
If all the english you ever heard was spoken by a drill sergeant, you'd think english is a harsh language. But yeah, believe it or not, we don't usually speak like drill sergeants. 🤷♂️
Du kennst meine Frau nicht. Bei uns heißt sie auch Feldwebel. 🤣
@anjin-san 🤣🤣🤣
That's exactly right! 👌
@anjin-san Na das ist ja noch besser als Dicke Bertha^^
Worst is the fake words like Poopenfarten or something like that. No, that's not a real word, not even close.
i like to think of the german language like a finely tuned machine. in the hands of an idiot that doesnt understand it, it sounds harsh, uneven and rigid. but in the hands of someone that understands it and uses it precisely, it can be one of the most beautifull languages out there. reading older german poetry, with some understanding of the language, can genuinely be enlightening.
German may well be a rich language, but phonetically it is very unpleasant to the ear. You cannot judge your native language.
I think German poetry sounds beautiful. 🇩🇪
So true
Everyone who calles the language of the poets ugly, hasnt really worked with that language.
Its efficient compound words to the win
what I've noticed is that people who are mock-speaking German automatically start shouting and we don't yell at each other all that much tbh 😂
Every language you shout is harsh. Hollywood in particular constantly shouts the German language, which is complete nonsense.
Hollywoodies! 🤮
Not only in Hollywood, I think also everyone knows the "Steiner rant" acted by Bruno Ganz
🇩🇪🤝🇱🇺 ...only soccer is special 🤣🤣
I've lived in northern Germany for a long time. High German, spoken around Hanover, is a very nice language. When natives speak it naturally, it flows and has a lot of character. I actually love it.
Interesting. I would have said that the standard version of the standard dialect of the High German language would probably be one of the ones that fits the stereotype the most. That and Berliner Schnauze. And Ruhrdeutsch. Although in general, yeah, colloquially spoken German flows a lot more than the stereotypical standard that few people ever speak.
@MellonVegan Absolutely not. The "stereotype" is some kind of angry Austrian dialect mixed with Bavarian and blended with a strange idea about how Germans are always shouty little guys with a complex. Hochdeutsch (Hanover region) is by FAR the best German.
@Prine23 i agree, the austrian was, well, austrian. not german. so what ppl actually seem to hate is the austrian accent
@UnicornsquirreI austrians are a type of german.
@Prine23what the frick
German being "harsh and aggressive" is just a stereotype created by film and television. As a Getman this really irks me.
German IS beautiful.
Have you watched the video? German is not a beautiful language . Hollywood only exaggerated how bad it sounds.
It was an Austrian who ruined the reputation with his speeches. 😂🇦🇹🇩🇪
It IS a bit of propaganda still left from WW2. Makes sense to show your enemy and their language as harsh and it just has propagated since then. Not even blaming anyone, we can say some fun things about english also :)
@rinmartell2678 Deutsch, du Arschkrampe, ist die schönste Sprache der Welt. Schleich dich einfach.
My favourite word is “Geborgenheit.” It describes that deep feeling of being safe, accepted, and held, without fear of judgment or abandonment.
A quiet knowing inside: “This is where I belong. Just as I am.”
Aaawww, so beautiful. Love it too
And now divide it into its parts and try to figure out the meaning of every single one: Ge - borgen - heit.
@schluko1378 "Heit" is not the same as "ness", you cannot compare german to english. "Heit" like in "Hoheit", "hochhalten" bzw. "hochsteigen". So, more like the rescue that builds up inside you and you feel comfortable and safe.
@schluko1378 Hoch kommen. I said that before: you cannot compare english and german directly!
@schluko1378 Everybody is entitled to do the wrong thing.
I guess, the only German the people know who perceive German as harsh is from WWII propaganda. These are military demands or hate speech.
That's what I wanted to say, too. And I am German.
@SmaragdaKalfopoulosme, too. If you never listened to a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke or read something by Herrmann Hesse you don't have the slightest idea of German.
Feli from Germany (How Hitler ruined the reputation of the german language) also made a video about this and her point is that Hitler is responsible for the bad image of the german language, because he spoke in an overpronunciated way that was common for actors of that time because the quality of sound submission was so bad at that time. If you put some more emphasis into your speech like Hitler liked to do, you have an overpronunciated, overemphasized version of german that sounds angry and harsh.
This has little to do with a language Goethe, Schiller, Kafka or Mann wrote in.
And she and her boyfriend just moved to Germany after years living in the USA.
As you can see in the video, Mark Twain also made fun of the German language, so it is not only Hitler who is to blame.
And I mean it was kind of Hitler's point to sound aggressive, obviously his rallies were aggressive...
If I remember history class correctly, Hitler did take oratory lessons and thus used many rhetorical instruments that were considered normal back in the day, like the characteristic rolling "r". Just listen to a contemporary recording of the "Moritat von Mackie Messer" and you will instantly recognize it.
😮
It's just not true. I'm not german but i speak it. Easily half of all germans speak extremely softly.
Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh',
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest Du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur! Balde
Ruhest du auch.
J.W. v. Goethe
What hard language...
@remypascal4872
Lang lieb ich dich schon
Möchte dich, mir zur Lust,
Mutter nennen
Und dir schenken ein kunstlos Lied
Du, der Vaterlandsstädte
Ländlich schönste
Soweit ich sah.....
Etc etc
Pure Beauty and Soul in German ears....
@remypascal4872German poetry can sound very beautiful. 🇩🇪
Love it😊
Danke
As a German, I've only ever perceived our language as aggressive, loud, and unpleasant during the Nazi era, through TV documentaries that showed old film footage. To classify modern, normal German as aggressive seems like an exaggeration. Nobody talks like that here unless they're an idiot. Sure, German isn't exactly easy, but thankfully that loud, arrogant croaking is a thing of the past.
The clips in the first minutes of this video were not even in German (Except for Trevor Noah, who speaks 7 languages, including Afrikaans and German). Everything else was just gibberish. Besides, we Germans don't constantly shout at each other.
Sarah Chalke from Scrubs has a german mother and learned the language in school and when visiting her family in germany. She has a rough accent but the sentence in the scene is clearly german.
@MetalBoozie Nobody in Germany speaks like that.
@MetalBoozie yeah, her sentence got the right gramatic but no german would speak like that, it got no flow. But well she wantet to mimik an evil housewife (or that is what I think she said bevor the german)
@MetalBoozieshe speak German, yes. But nobody talks like that in Germany and she knows that. I assume she does it to please the mostly American narrative about German and for comedic reasons.
Fun fact, I once watched Trevor Noah telling he prefers to learn languages from movies in that language. For German he watched a lot of WWII movies / documentaries with propaganda since he hadn't have access to other sources for some reason. (I guess, this was pre-internet era.) When he visited a German family member he proudly wanted to show off his language skills and ordered a coffee and breakfast in a bakery. People looked shocked at him and the family member kindly advised him to rather not speak German at all in Germany. He was surprised and devastated and asked why. The answer was: "Because you sound like Hitler." Imagine, you're in a bakery enjoying your morning coffee and out of the blue you hear Hitler speaking. And when you turn around shocked it's a young black man.
One common example for the harshness of German is that RUclips short that compares the words for butterfly 🦋 in several languages, with the German "Schmetterling" shouted aggressively with strongly pronounced "tt" and rolled "r". You can do the exact same thing with "butterfly" if you want it to sound harsh. 😊
There's a hilarious short on RUclips that features people saying the same word in different languages (French, English, Spanish, Italian, etc.) Those speakers all sound very pleasant, but then an angry German guy barks out the same word, and it sounds very harsh and intimidating. 😂🇨🇵🇬🇧🇪🇦🇮🇹🇩🇪
I absolutely adore that short. Theyre not perpetuating stereotypes, theyre making fun of them. 😂
I am British, live in Germany and love the German language
German is a beautiful language! First of all you really have to think in advance what you want to say. Second German language can describe in detail since we have for everything a word and if we don't have one we can just create a new one.
Hast du schön gesagt. Sehe ich auch so.
Same in Swedish or Scandinavian, we create words on the spot! But we don't really have to think in advance, as if you were writing a poem or something. We can be spontaneous, because our syntax is even simpler than the English in most ways. So learning högtyska (hochdeutsch) in school is actually really hard for us, despite many similarities.
Ist sie nicht
I just love German compound words. ❤🇩🇪
@herrbonk3635 Yes, it's really similar to how you describe it, interesting.
I think think that German sounds so soft and poetic.
Whenever I came across English speaking people and said I am German, I am very often confronted about why German always sounds loud and aggressive, when that’s not true at all. Friends from overseas have heard me speak German in calls to other people and they were surprised how calm many speak
Fun fact, German and Japanese have a similar word melody and it's easy for Germans to speak Japanese and vice versa.
Maybe that's why we keep to get along so well in wartimes. 😁
Germans and Japanese actually have a lot in common. 🇩🇪🇯🇵
@valerietaylor9615 ich liebe japaner, sie spiegeln das alte deutschland wieder, nicht das versiffte asylanten deutschland
Very true I am German and speak Japanese fluently. Japanese is based on the a, i , u, e, o sounds which sound exactly like the German alphabet. So Germans with a certain talent for foreign languages speak pretty good Japanese and vice a versa.
@solokom Ah, american, right?
I found evidence on the Interwebbs that every language sounds aggressive when being yelled.
Hear the Arabic, Moroccan & Turkish language, when they speak it always sounds like a death threat
More like a bad throat
well, bc it probably is
@annettnickol7090
i live 5 years in peru and they dont like spanish from spain, because it sounds so hard for them... specially in movie translations... they like much more mexican translations, because thats are more softly for them... so that to sounds hard...
Arabic is bad
easy explanation of the long German compound words: Germans don't say "document of declaration of independence" they would use "independencedeclarationdocument" as consequently as you say "candlelight" or "daydream".
Actually it is correct gramma in english, too. But not used rather than binding two words
@VisitGermany-2025 Actually it isnt. That why you can't simply smush any 2 nomes together in english. Or would you call ' Streetlighttestingfactorysupervision ' and english word ? Becouse if just add the same words together in german, it is an actual correct word. Same goes for something simple like 'cat food' you still split the words couse you can't compound words in english , if you say catfood it is wrong.
The Dutch guttural G is much harsher. 🤷♂️✌🏻
"Wie schimmerne Tränen sind die Sterne durch die Nacht gesprengt. Es muss ein groß' Trauer in dem Aug' sein, von dem sie abträufelten."
That's a beautiful sentence I remember from the piece "Dantons Tod" by Georg Büchner.
Ich finde unsere schöne deutsche sprache ist melodisch und extrem vielseitig ❤liebe grüße aus Deutschland
Try listening the german Song " nein, meine Söhne geb ich nicht" You will be surprise what can be told with this hard language!! Song is from Reinhardt May und Freunde ...
I 'd like you to try more German pronunciation! What I heard so far from you in other videos was very understandable and I appreciate you not yelling when speaking German.
I agree. It‘s annoying that many content creators try to make it sound ugly by overdoing it on purpose.
But everybody loves Beethovens „Ode an die Freude“.
@Sannziba Lyrics by Friedrich von Schiller ;-)
@ralfbenatzky886 I assume, most of the people would recognize the music at once, but barely anybody knows whose famous hand wrote the German lyrics 😀
😮hi, a Germen here. Thanks so much for giving our language a chance😂....
If we all only imitated USMC drill seargents, English would also always sound agressive.
I think the long words aren't bad, because of this infinite words you can mix them up together and describe your feelings perfectly and say what you'd like to say with only one word. I think it's some kind of freedom that you can make this
the funny thing is, if you read texts from the 19th century or early 20th century, you might even be amazed at how poetic and beautiful it might sound ... a friend sent me a letter written in German from her ancestors and it had so much warmth in it and it was in in the form of a poem, expressing the love for the recipient of the letter ... bear in mind, it was only to a friend
I think the reason of yelling the word nein is popular in the US might come from that meme of hitler yelling it in the movie downfall
That wasn't from Downfall, it was from Inglorious Basterds.
Downfall has the legendary bunker rant, performed marvellously by the eternal Bruno Ganz, may he rest in peace.
Swede here. Harsh german is pretty easy for us to pronounce, but soft german (which seems to be more commonly spoken) is hard -especially trying to soften the Rs and Ach-sounds.
It took a long time to learn "ü" though. :)
As a Swede? You have the Ü in Sweden. Even different ones. Just say Tysk and you have it!
@BrittaRivera-t9c Nooo, Ü sits in between U and Y. :)
Jaja, Ich habe gesagt!!! This is sentence from one old movie from period before WWII started. It's comedy and it's still sooo good 😂 Of course in that time it wasn't at cinemas very long, because we were "visited" by Mr. Hitler and "politaly" asked to join Germany (former Czechoslovakia) 😂 But now everything is OK and many people from Czechia (and Slovakia too) speaks Germany very well. And because of our own language, which has very sharp R, letter CH (btw it sounds like volal cord illnes 😂), the pronounciation is quite easy for us. Maybe better than english - our accent is really weird. But for me - most important is to speak and listen to each other. Because speaking and listening solves most of problems. Between people, nations, countries.... So it's not important how you sound but what you say.
The description of Weltschmerz just gives me goosebumps!! 🥰
When sung, German is beautiful: Schuberts "Die Forelle" sung by Ian Bostridge.🥰
just listen to german music and then you know how great this language is. I am half german half american and when I was a kid I loved speaking englisch but now that I am a grown up i prefer my german
My Scottish fiancee loves me to read him German stories to sleep in cause he finds it so calming
At 3:42 the thing he was referring to as overdoing it was the amount of pause he was taking before each word. In regular speech people would tend to mumble all of these out quicker tobmask the effect if the quadruple vowel start there. He clearly separates them.
What I love about the German language is that it is so special. Compound words make learning the language easy and logical. If you know the words ‘Haus’ and “Tier”, you immediately understand the word ‘Haustier’. In English, you would have to learn many more words: ‘house’, ‘animal’ and “pet”. Compound words also allow you to be poetic and creative. You can invent new words by combining existing ones, which can be very poetic. For example, ‘Der Frühlingswind ließ Blütenschnee herunterrieseln’ (The spring wind caused a shower of blossoms to fall). The word ‘blossom snow’ does not officially exist, but you immediately know what is meant and it creates a direct image in your mind.
Many words in German are also very picturesque and, when spoken aloud, sound like what the word expresses. For example, ‘fauchen’ (to hiss): the CH imitates the sound or “Sahne” (whipped cream): is spoken very softly or ‘hüpfen’ (to hop): the voice goes up to the p, short pause, the voice goes down again
Deutsch ist eine wundervolle und ausdrucksstarke Sprache. Nirgendwo anders kann man so sehr seinem Gefühl Ausdruck verleihen, wie mit der deutschen Sprache. Es heißt nicht umsonst, ein Land der Dichter und Denker. Wir sind weder aggressiv noch schlecht, wir sind freundlich, gebildet, aufgeschlossen und hilfsbereit.
Prejudices are probably the biggest reason why the German language is branded as ugly. Of course, everyone hears the language and can judge for themselves whether they like it or not. But stereotypes like “endlessly long words” or “always shouting” simply don’t apply to German. Yes, there are compound words, but Germans don’t speak only in compounds. And by the way, English has them too: breakthrough, toothbrush, aircraftcarrier...
Yee, but the last one of those is actually "aircraft carrier" :)
@darkbum1510Oh oops, well I looked it up and found it written as one word. Anywasy, one can understand what I mean.
@darkbum1510 you write most compounds as separate words. That makes it easier to read, but they're still compounds. By the way "aircraft" is a compound, too. Air + craft. Basically the same as German Flugzeug (Flug + Zeug). People make fun of this because they don't know the old German meaning of "Zeug" which can be something like "device" (in modern German it usually means "stuff")
Because the german language has the opportunity to develop words by connecting them, it is always accurate and can grow with your thoughts. For that it is necessary to have little breaks in between those connected words to understand the full new meaning. Once you understand this, german might be the easiest language to learn, by having a huge vocabulary to express yourself and also problems and solutions. Examples: "Gedankenspiel", means to let your thoughts play around to find new solutions by using "thoughts" and "game" put together.
i do speak german and this is an amazing explanation of our language !
ACTUALLY, WE GERMANS SIT TOGETHER BY THE FIREPLACE AND MAKE UP WORDS TO ANNOY ENGLISH SPEAKERS HIHI 😮😮🤣🤣
facts
shhhhhhhh don't tell them
Eine klassische Englischsprachigenabschreckungsmassnahmenlagerfeuerwortneuschöpfungsversammlung
@NicusXCXI 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Isso.
Auf jeden Fall spielt das meist gebrauchte Englisch/amerikanische Wort " Fuck" bei uns keine Rolle
German language has a depth no any other language can match and is rooted way back in history when there wasn't even a Germany as we know it today, only the longing for one. It's possible to express things based on their true inner meaning not only by their outer impression, something that most probably no other language is capable of. The last three examples are only a small glimps of that.
Rhabarbermarmelade was once called the most beautiful german word. Don't know the english word for Rhabarber but marmalade - jam is clear I think.
And the most people forget, that we have so many dialects sounding differently. U drive one hour and the people talking and sounding different. Look Berlin, there they say dit or ditte instead of dies, here we say dis. The sentence "what is this?" - "was ist denn das/dies?" becomes "wattn ditte?"
So we are always talking about "standard" german, but our dialects bring real live to it. And than u have the Schlauberger, who always say that we do not write in dialects... But u can and there are dictionaries for it. Thanks to the company Langenscheid.
Danke für dieses Video! (thanx for this vid!)
German tongue twister -
"Wenn Schnecken an Schnecken schlecken, merken sie zu ihrem Schrecken, dass Schnecken nicht schmecken."
"Der Cottbuser Postkutscher putzt den Cottbusser Postkutschkasten."
"Herr von Hagen darf ich's wagen, sie zu fragen, welchen Kragen sie getragen, als sie lagen krank am Magen in der Stadt zu Kopenhagen."
😊
We do not scream nobody talk like that in german we are very calm
English has some kind of "memory" of umlauts: Most of the irregular plurals use an umlaut in their German counterparts (mouse/mice - Maus/Mäuse, foot/feet - Fuß/Füße, goose/geese - Gans/Gänse, tooth/teeth - Zahn/Zähne, brother/brethren - Bruder/Brüder, man/men - Mann/Männer)
As a German I can fully agree. Another fantastic example from another language is an interview with Mila Kunis (I don't remember which Late Night Show) where she explains that Russian - while for many people sounds like Klingon - to her it sounds like love and passion, because she grew up with it 😊
EDIT: Found it ruclips.net/user/shortsbqbNb8kgRyo?si=aedHRZldOceatyy9
You can only learn german fast when you're in germany and surrounded by germans 🤪
Except in Berlin and NRW, there you learn Turkish and Arabian.😂
at 3:20 it pretty much depends on the german dialect. ripuarian from nrw is a very flowy, partially tonal dialect without the mass of glottal stops, so we naturally weave through high german without using them so much.
if you wanna say ö or ü, form an o, then say the english a. same for u to ü.
You need to read or listen to Rainer Maria Rilke.
... oder Eichendorff
I speak German better then English, and German never sounded angry or ugly zo me but beautiful.
I like German better then English!
😂😂😂😂😂 Lügner
@Prooo1-z8f Ich Lüge nicht.
Ich spreche Deutsch als Englisch!
Und Deutsch ist schöner als Englisch!
Moin ut Noorddüütschland ( low Saxony northern Germany) vun de waterkant Cuxhaven 😁
What is being commented on in this video is High German, only about 200 years old.
Previously, German was spoken in many Germanic dialects and languages.
So that all Germans in Germany could understand each other better and it would be easier to write texts for everyone, High German was introduced and taught in schools from then on.
Of course, the older dialects and various German languages, such as Frisian and Low German, are also spoken in everyday life in Northern and Central Germany.
Here is an example of what is normally spoken in Northern Germany/Low Saxony and Central Germany.
It also varies somewhat from region to region.
Here a text of low German:
Een Text op Plattdüütsch.
Mien Naam is Onke Onken un ik kaam ut Noorddüütsland vun de Waterkant Cuxhoben Dat Land is flach un wi hebbt veel Water üm uns.
Diek, Schaap un gode Luft hebbt wir.
De Spraak warrt op dat Land noch veel snackt. De Kinner lehrt dat vondaag noch in de School.
So dat weers för di op platt 😊
Allerbest un hool di wuchtig mien Keerl 👍
Looks a lot like flat dutch...
Im dutch and i can read it just as good as flat dutch
@Samergslim I'm English and got the drift of that. My name is Onke Onken and lives in the area of Cuxhaven, the land has lots of water and is flat. Something I couldn't quite work out other than taught in school. How did I do?
Greetings to the south from Schleswig Holstein 😅
Thank you sooo much for that!! I‘m from South West Germany and I speak Alemannish which sounds totally different to High German, too. People who speak Platt and me won’t understand each other and people who speak High German don’t understand us both.
This is Badish Alemannish:
I bin üssm Schwarzwald un I schwätz ke Hochditsch, I kaan des nid un wer nid in’d Schüel gangenisch vrschdooods kai weng. Do hogsch no ani un leerschs.
YES, that is German.
So when somebody talks about how German sounds he precisely should say „High German“.
It was Martin Luther who created modern standard German with his translation of the Bible.
As for Plattdeutsch, it looks more like Dutch than modern standard German, or "Hochdeutsch."
The sounds of Ä, Ö and Ü can be easily heard in English (Am).
Here are examples:
SAD / BAD / MAD = the sound of the A in these words is the same as Ä, so if you would ask a Finn to write the words as it sounds to them, they would write “sääd” / “bääd” / ”määd”.
HEARD (i.e. ”I heard a noise”) = the sound of the pronunciation of EA is (almost) the same as Ö or
WORD = where the pronunciation of O also sounds (almost) like Ö, so a Finn would write ”hörd” and ”wörd”.
FEW / VIEW = the sound at the end of EW in both words is basically what would be closest to the sound of Ü (Ü is the same sound as Y in Finnish and Estonian), so a Finn would write ”fjyy” / ”vjyy” (the J is not a mistake since Finns pronounce J like the the letter Y in YOU).
So these sounds do exist in a similar way in English (Am.), ofc they are not exactly the same sounds but English also has different accents. E.g. the word WATER is pronounced differently in British English than American English (and yes there MANY different variations of British English). So again if you would ask a Finn to write what the word sounds like spoken in each accent, this would be the result:
VUAADER (Am. English)
VUATHER (Br. English)
Finnish is one of the languages where the words are spoken exactly as they are written. So a double O (i.e. OO) is a long O and a double S (i.e. SS) is a long S or a pause in between the two consonants, KAS-SI (kassi = bag). Which means that if you can pronounce the letters in the Finnish way, you can basically read Finnish even if you have no idea what it means. I’ve done this with friends from the US, Germany, Spain, etc.
I speak English, Finnish and German as a native language, so I recognize the similarities constantly.
Caution: The _Finnish_ Ä is like the vowel sound in English sad/bad, but the _German_ Ä isn't; it's like the one in get/pet. In addition, German Ö and Ü have two sounds each - a "long" one and a "short" one - which aren't interchangeable.
On point. So I have learned English too. Over the original verb I have wrote how it's sound, so I could pronounce it right
The thing you explained with ä is correct. With ö not exactly. And your examples with ü are bs.
Few and view are absolutely not the same sound as the German ü. Neither are heard and word the same sound as ö in German (it might be in Finnish, I don't know!).
Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark also has the Ä and Ö (Æ and Ø) Sweden and Finland has the Å also.
And Finland is the absolute king of endless long words (we call those "sentences" in other languages). More like a certain famous Welsh village.
ä, ö and u are old shorthand for ae, oe and ue. Scribes started putting a little "e" on top of the a, o and u to shorten the ligatures. And then later on, starting in the 16th century, they were all writing in Kurrent script, where an "e" looks almost like two dashes. And so you had two dashes that turned into dots (at least in print, I still learned to put dashes on top of a, o and u in handwriting)
You can still replace ä, ö and ü with ae, oe and ue in German when you don't have access to special characters, or when you suspect that others might be having problems with those characters. For example if you ordered something from China and you live in München or Köln, I'd always write "Muenchen" or "Koeln" because otherwise there's 90% chance it will come out as "M?nchen" and "K°+ln" on the label 😄
why am i so interested in seeing that as a german? hahahahah😂 cant even stop...
I belong in the minority who thinks that German sounds beautiful whilst French sounds ugly. I thought so even as a 12-year-old kid trying to choose my second foreign language (after English). I love how German sounds when spoken! I loved learning it and I still love speaking it.
Curiously... the exact opposite happens when it comes to music. I'd rather listen to french lyrics than in german. Fascinating how the human brain responds to sounds!
To me as a German a lot of the French language also sounds harsh and the flow aggressive as well. But when a French person speaks German with a French accent, it might just be my favorite of all the accents. All of a sudden very charming and somehow "cute". That applies - to my ears at least - also to the French accent in English.
So to sum up, if the French want to sound nice and adorable, they should just ditch French and speak neighboring languages with their accent 😀
In my comment I used selected music to show how gentle german music in dialect can be. But German music is very versatile. I sometimes also like french music, so it is not competition - just some suggestions, maybe you find something interesting.
What do you think about Herbert Grönemeyer - Der Weg? ruclips.net/video/_9CnnYhFQHY/video.html
If you like some drama... Faber - Lass mich nicht los ruclips.net/video/ucf0ntIRetI/video.html
For everybody who have been a child - Sarah Lesch - Testament: ruclips.net/video/97ZBHAJmmho/video.htmlsi=F5uNYdR6rGyX1dtZ&t=210
Always kind of fun: Revolverhelden - Gekommen um zu bleiben: ruclips.net/video/eVkC47zKQWc/video.html
Olli Schulz - Dann schlägt Dein Herz - ruclips.net/video/HdUz1ZwUzvQ/video.html
How about the good life? Steiner & Madlaina - Das schöne Leben: ruclips.net/video/T3tetf-dAj0/video.html
A little bit strange: Mine & Edgar Wasser - Aliens: ruclips.net/video/zeT_5VvGNlM/video.html
A cologne song about breathing techniques... kind of: The piano has been drinking - 16 Memme en d'r Vringmaschin Live: ruclips.net/video/__GDw5nYoPQ/video.html
How about philosophy with socks? Sockosophie: ruclips.net/video/MVBeLoO1NuU/video.html
One of the most beautiful love songs without using the word love: AnnenMayKantereit - 3. Stock: ruclips.net/video/keZdP9ETm4s/video.html
Do you know what happens at 3? Frank Ramond "Ich zähl bis drei": ruclips.net/video/vUdEG0C1RNE/video.html
Or do you like some insanity? Till Lindemann - Wach auf: ruclips.net/video/hiOjK992bPU/video.html
Nothing for you? I'm sorry - Knorkator - Tut uns leid: ruclips.net/video/Nk270u6jWg8/video.html
@SaschaAtrops Thank you for your suggestions, I will give these a try! And you're right, it's not a competition. Maybe I haven't listened to the right music in german yet.
I've loved the sound of German since I was a child. I didn't like the sound of French until I was eighteen and began studying it ( I'd had three years of German by then.) French sounds very refined and elegant. But German is still my favorite foreign language. 🇩🇪🇨🇵
US America likes to care and foster his 80 years old prejudices towards us germans through mainstream media, TV, movies, comedians etc.
1:40 Must be some ancestral memory from when most foreigners only heard it being yelled from the opposite trench…
In german ist that "ach" sound in some words not that often used as in arabic for example.
"Ö" is easy to pronounce! It's similar to the "i" in "girl". Or "e" in "Berlin".
In Scotland we still can use fricatives such as in bocht , focht and dochter instead of bought, fought and daughter. " It's a sair fecht " means its a hard fight.
In swabian dialect t is often spoken d, p as b and k as g. So Tochter is in swabian spoken Doochder. And in current german fechten means fencing, but in old days, remaining in some ,frozen phrases', fechten meant fighting, in current german kämpfen.
I am German and I love the Scottish dialect! It is so fun to listen to. The melody of speech in Scottish Englis resembles the Swiss German melody of speech. The Swiss also loooove their ch fricatives!
@brittakriep2938 Und ich bin Neigschmeckter und bin auch noch etwas verwirrt, "Isch ebbes unglar?" Ist etwas unklar?
Totally different words but somehow i managed to understand it.
Hardest thing is to understand those guys in the real swabian area near Memmingen or Kempten.
Over9000ize: l be dr Freind von dr Britta, ond be aus Aldwirddaberg. Heidzodag schwätzad de meischde Leid hauchdeidsch, ond de Kendr wird nex anders mei beibrochd. I ka da schwäbischa Dialegd no halbwägs schwätza, do felld mr afanga auf. Memminga ond Kembda send em Allgai, do gohds schau langsam mid am Alemanischa aus Voararlberg a.
Nun, ich rede noch Dialekt, zumindest die Übergänge vom Schwäbischen zum Alemanischen verstehe ich recht gut, da in meiner Kindheit, bin Jahrgang 1965, auch in meiner Heimatgegend manche alten Leute ähnlich gesprochen haben.
Believe me , if you can speak German , it sounds like any other language.
The persons in the examples speak agressive. in that way spoken every language sounds agressive
Especially in the US the speeches of Hitler are taken as the only examples for German language.
You have to know, that Hitler gave really many speeches, sometimes several a day, often without microphone. This way he ruined his voice, thus he sounded very rough, even with using microphone. There are very few recordings of his "normal" voice, even Hitler did not sound aggressive.
Little addition.
He also used a specific way to pronounce in a way that is better in open areas if you don't have a microphone or so.
It has a sharper pronunciation and enunciation to be more distinctive (thus more intelligible) at a higher distance from the speaker.
It's called "Bühnendeutsch" (stage german).
Just an example of the "aggressive" German language. Have fun listening.
ruclips.net/video/5daz713b7Gk/video.htmlsi=3iRuIIjr0x6cMjYL
Everything sounds harsh when you shout😅
Component words are good for technical descriptions. Everyone understands them right away.
The video are from the 2bored guys. Two german men. Their make very interesting Videos in german. fern is his english hoster, for his english content.
I like how Charlie Chaplin spoke his speech in The Great Dictator when the microphones were bending down anxiously ....
His speech is not real German but it is intended to sound German :-). This is how non German speakers feel the German language when it is spoken aggressively, I understood. Remarkably, the movie was done in a time Hitler reigned Germany. A brave work by Charlie.
As a native German I can understand that my native language is very puzzling to you to learn. I learned English in my youth and it was complex, BUT when it came to learn french it was even more complex because of the genders which were different in my language. In French car is female, in German car is neutral. So I am with you when you have to face even 3 genders and the declinations and conjugations in the German language. For me it's easy because I was accustomed to these stumbling blocks as a child.
Maybe a little hint for you concerning the typical compound words in German. The main word is at the end: Kräuterbutter is mainly butter like in English. The word before "butter" is the additional description. Kräuter means herbs. So Kräuterbutter is a butter with the addition of herbs. You maybe name it herb butter in English? Knowing this you can demystify every German noun monster. The most important word is the one at the end!!! Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän is the Kapitän (captain) of a Gesellschaft (a society) of Dampf-Schifffahrt (steam shipping) on the river Donau (Danube). It's that easy 🙂.
Danke für dieses tolle Video über meine Muttersprache ❤ Dieses lange Wort kannte ich noch nicht. Liebe Grüße ❤
The main problem is that somebody who has difficulties recognizing words longer than 5 letters try to recognize the individual words that make up a word of 79 letters because they are not aware thar there are actually about 12 words there.
You definitely have to know all the words in the compound to be able to break it apart quickly. But even that can become tricky (even for Germans) when you got words like "Blumentopferde" - like what the hell are Blumento Pferde. Oh no, it's Blumen Topf Erde. But the "Pferde" part is just so familiar (means "horses") that you can really stumble over such a compound.
In German ,there is nothing agressive. It is a thing you wanned. greetings from Germany
Overdoing it … he meant he made the breaks longer, more pronounced than they actually are.
cause of nine and nein.... i dont know
As a German: We loooooooooove when people just try their best to pronounce German words! ❤
Nobody expects perfection (only when we try ourselves, of course) and whenever someone asks for help, most of us will go through fire and walk barefoot over broken glass to provide any form of support.
So please, keep on trying! ❤
I’m no language expert, but when I try to teach someone about Umlaute, I explain it like this: the base letter shows the shape your mouth should form, and the two dots - the umlaut - mean your tongue should make an “E” sound. So for ä, your mouth forms an “A” while your tongue makes an “E”; for ö, your mouth forms an “O,” and so on.
If I spoke as loudly as in those videos, then every language would sound aggressive. Normal German doesn't sound like that!
arbeit arbeit nicht schlafen 🙃😉 I learned a couple of important German words when i was working in Frankfurt 🤔🤭🙃🙃😂
Where did you work? In a coal mine??
assembly and disassembly of old machines in a production factory, and installation of ventilation systems in new buildings, construction of bridges, houses, roofs, tiles, facades, curbs, landscaping, fences,... but not in cola mine, we are not in 1950, can you imagine that?
Übung macht den Meister :-) in english you can say... practice leads to mastery. nice video, like it.
you might enjoy videos about german influence in america back in the day and how their culture was restricted because of both world wars
The fact that Americans apparently cannot get beyond the Nazi clichés that Hollywood has been perpetuating for decades and that have been instilled in the population through prejudice says much more to me about education in the US than about the German language and how it is spoken in everyday life. Certainly not like in those stupid Hollywood movies or by stupid, obnoxious, tasteless commedians... No knowledge of German culture, mentality, and the German language, along with its wonderful variety of dialects.
If you shout, all languages are ugly
👍👍Sergeant Hartmann ("Full Metal Jacket" legendary)
We had to memorize that in school:
Vom Eise befreit sind Strom und Bäche,
Durch des Frühlings holden, belebenden Blick,
Im Tale grünet Hoffnungs-Glück;
Der alte Winter, in seiner Schwäche,
Zog sich in rauhe Berge zurück.
Von dort her sendet er, fliehend, nur
Ohnmächtige Schauer körnigen Eises
In Streifen über die grünende Flur;
Aber die Sonne duldet kein Weißes,
Überall regt sich Bildung und Streben,
Alles will sie mit Farben beleben;
Doch an Blumen fehlt's im Revier,
Sie nimmt geputzte Menschen dafür.
Kehre dich um, von diesen Höhen
Nach der Stadt zurück zu sehen.
Aus dem hohlen finstern Tor
Dring ein buntes Gewimmel hervor.
Jeder sonnt sich heute so gern.
Sie feiern die Auferstehung des Herrn,
Denn sie sind selber auferstanden,
Aus niedriger Häuser dumpfen Gemächern,
Aus Handwerks- und Gewerbes Banden,
Aus dem Druck von Giebeln und Dächern,
Aus Straßen quetschender Enge,
Aus der Kirchen ehrwürdiger Nacht
Sind sie alle ans Licht gebracht.
Sieh nur sieh! wie behend sich die Menge
Durch die Gärten und Felder zerschlägt,
Wie der Fluss, in Breit' und Länge,
So manchen lustigen Nachen bewegt,
Und, bis zum Sinken überladen
Entfernt sich dieser letzte Kahn.
Selbst von des Berges fernen Pfaden
Blinken uns farbige Kleider an.
Ich höre schon des Dorfs Getümmel,
Hier ist des Volkes wahrer Himmel,
Zufrieden jauchzet gross und klein:
Hier bin ich Mensch, hier darf ich’s sein.
German can sound very beautyful, soft and kind: ruclips.net/video/W9S3YMmIFdw/video.htmlsi=I5AuvS7lZp-8KtFE
you DO have in english the ö sound like in earl or hurdle. the ü sound is the middle part in you or chew. and ä is mostly like a in man. so it is quite weird seeing an english speaker trying the ö sound and ending up with o while having it clearly in turn and burn.
What is the difference between german and english in speaking it?
An observation I made on myself (how do I speak english and how do I speak german) is:
English is very lazy. The sound forms at the back of my throat,
the lower jaw is relaxed, the incisors are not aligned, as the relaxed jaw moves backward.
You hardly have to move your lips, hardl must close your mouth, and are still halfway intelligible.
German needs more tension.
The sound forms more behind the upper incisors,
the lower jaw is moved forward, so that the incisors stand in line.
And for the harsh sounds, you spit them out, not down on the ground with relaxed jaw, but AT the face of the one in front of you, you push your jaw even MORE forward and your lower lip even more.
As fun, you can use the word "sh**" as wonderful example. With the english relaxed jaw it is more a resignating word for yourself, when it's an angry "SH**!", then you also push the jaw forward.
Most of the german sounds you find somewhere in the english language just as well, just written with different letters in other words. The "ü" is one of the few I have not found in english. E.g. the "ä" is pretty much the 'a' in "bad", for the "ü" begin with the 'u' from "purple", keep the sound and get your incisors in line.
The "ß" is the 'ss' in "hiss", easy. My guess this is one of the occasions where in english you also have the germanic incisor alignment.
The long words are compound nouns that are not written separately. That is the trick: hotwaterbottleinspectioncommissioningordganisation.
Depending on where you live (aka which english dialect you speak) the umlauts can be approximated quite easily in "plain" english.
To pronounce ä, say "air". The result are two sounds: ä, then r.
For ö, say "burn". You say "börn".
For ü, purse your lips as if saying "ohh", then without moving the lips say "see". You will say "süü".
Well I remember when I (a german girl) came back from Texas, where I was living for several months, and I heard german again at the airport, I didn't wanna speak it anymore.
It sounded harsh for me too.
You can Substitute the Umlaute ä, ö and ü with ae, oe and ue once you understand this it will be way easier to speak them just make the German sound for "a" then switch to the one for "e" always go back and forth between them go faster and increase the pitch you should end up pretty close something like this: "aaaeeeaaeeaeaeaeääää".