#Deutsche Sprache

[hi-i-am-a-sock]

hot take: opinions "german sounds harsh" and "german sounds beautiful" can coexist

[feuer-bluete]

@ deutschsprachige Community

Was sind eure Top 3 deutschen Kosenamen? Romantisch oder platonisch.

[german-enthusiast]

I think non-Germans might not be aware of this because there's rarely a way to naturally stumble upon it but

GERMAN IS INSANELY REPRESENTED ON WIKIPEDIA

I rarely see wiki entries (that aren't hyperspecific to a country or culture) that don't have a German page! In fact:

["Number of German articles on Wikipedia by 2023 (... in) June there were 2.8 Million German articles on Wikipedia. This places the German wikipedia on the third place of the ranking, whcih is lead by the English version with around 6.7 Million articles."]

41% of the English Wikipedia exists in German! This is a literal goldmine of content!!

Read about your interests! Look up your favorite celebrities! Read summaries of books, movies, mythologies, whatever your heart desires!!!!

Want to read but don't know what to search for? The homepage of the German Wikipedia (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hauptseite) is updated everyday with - an article of the day - on this day in the past - in the news - recently deceased - did you know? for you to peruse. And of course, the German version has a "random article" function too! It's called "Zufälliger Artikel" or "Zufällige Seite" and can be found on the left side of the screen (laptop) and in the popup menu on the left side (mobile)!

[lina-fresa]

me : yeah i speak german

also me for no reason : ✨sucking at deutsche grammatik✨

[unoffi-ciel]

Du bist non-binär und sprichst deutsch? Das trifft sich gut, ich bin non-binär und neugierig!

(leider kann ich nicht mehr Antworten zur Auswahl geben, aber bitte sehr gerne rebloggen und in die tags deine eigene Option schreiben!!)

[sylvyspritii]

For my next April Fools special... ...I think i want to do an entire livestream in German For those of you who don't know, i can speak Dutch, English, and a little bit of German But the funny thing is, my spoken German is bad (i can read and understand it well enough though), as in, it's really silly, it's broken, it's like a weird version of German with random Dutch and English words scuffled into it but "Germanised" For example, i'd say stuff like; "Hallo mein gütte freunden! Wilkommen allemaal für der grosse Sylvyspritze Deutsche Lebenstrëam Speciaal! Heute gehen wir er ein geweldigge zeit von mächen ja, jetz getz löst!" See? It's a cursed and awesome idea right? I think i should do it, what do you think? uwu

[soulbutterlanguages]

Soooooo I had the day off of work and i decided to spend as much time as possible studying languages! 

I tried to study German and Italian all day and this is how it went 👀

[callingrockybeach]

Sagt mir bitte auch woher ihr kommt (also aus welchem Land)! Dankeschön!

[detgirldiesernation]

[german-enthusiast]

a run-of-the-mill German 6-line-sentence

1: The quote

Due to my studying the second-language-acquisition of German in university, I tend to notice complex sentences (probably more than the average reader). In the book I'm currently reading ("Sprache ist, was du draus machst!" by Simon Meier-Vieracker) I stumbled upon this sentence:

Um zu verstehen, wie Fußball in unserer Gesellschaft zu dem werden konnte, was er ist, nämlich ein für viele Menschen Identitätsstiftender, einen riesigen Markt begründender und in andere Bereiche wie die Politik ausstahlender Teil der Alltagskultur, muss man auch die Sprache in den Blick nehmen, mit der über Fußball gesprochen und geschrieben wird.

(In the book this spans 6 lines)

2: Translation

For those who don't know German or are still learning it, here's help:

In the picture, I've gone for a phrase-by-phrase translation. A more elegant translation that still keeps it as one sentence might be:

In order to understand how soccer could -in our society- become what it is, which is a part of everyday culture that establishes a huge market and for many people even identity, and which also radiates into other areas like politics, one has to take into account the language which is used to speak and write about soccer.

(I realize that there's a comma too many after "the langauge" in the picture but I can't be bothered to go back and change that now)

3: Thought One

The thing (for me at least) is: This German sentence isn't even that crazy.

Yes, even German natives will probably notice that this is a long sentence and weak readers/native Germans struggling with academic language will possibly need multiple reads to comprehend it fully

but in the grand scheme of things, this is not the worst it can be! (See for example the famous author Thomas Mann and his sentences, which stereotypically and famously span one to one and a half pages).

For additional context, Simon Meier-Vieracker, the author of the book this quote is from, is a linguistics professor BUT the audience for this book is specifically non-linguists and the writing generally is academic-ish but intentionally bridging between everyday language and linguistic topics!

4: Thought Two // So what?!

You might wonder why I even find it noteworthy as a long German sentence because, as shown above, it can be translated into an equally long and complex English sentence.

What's different between the elegant English translation and the German original is that in the OG, the definition of "what it is" is made up of participles ("identitätsstiftend", "begründend", "ausstrahlend"). I've translated these as English participles in the screenshot but you might've noticed that it's rather weird and clunky!

In English, when creating long run-on sentences, people usually go for multiple dependent clauses.

We do this too, of course! The last part of the OG ("mit der über Fußball gesprochen und geschrieben wird") is one of those.

However, we often extend sentences by adding in grammatical modifiers (in German "Attributes", which IMO is a way more commonly word already than 'grammatical modifiers') that are not dependent clauses.

Short digression: What's a grammatical modifier? Wikipedia explains, it is "an optional element in phrase structure or clause structure which modifies the meaning of another element in the structure. For instance, the adjective "red" acts as a modifier in the noun phrase "red ball"" Typical grammatical modifiers are adjectives and adverbs (though they are not always used as modifiers!). Nouns can also be modifiers (consider: "land mines" or "mines in wartime"). Dependent clauses can also be modifiers. [end of digression]

Back to German: As stated, we like going for non-sentence modifiers (in addition to clauses as modifiers). The three participle-phrases in the German quote are great examples of this. They are not dependent clauses (since they do not have a finite verb), they're "merely" phrases - participle phrases. Again, English uses these a lot too but not as much to build huge sentences (which in general aren't as typical for English as they are for German).

5: Conclusion

Long German sentences can be a pain for both German learners and German natives, but I just love to analyze them and I think it's so fun to notice how long German sentences come about. That's it. I just thought this was neat.

TL;DR Long German sentences are often not only comprised of many (main and dependent) clauses. Instead of dependent clauses, you'll also often find pariciple phrases which largely fulfill the function of a dependent clause but are a little funkier. English doesn't do this as much. I think it's fun.

[lina-fresa]

Ich überprüfe heute A1 Deutsch Grundlagen. 📑 Das mache ich gerne mindestens einmal pro Woche, es ist einfach und wichtig! ✍🏽

Lied der Woche : "glücklich" - Montez

[irina-auf]

Gelb und Orange haben Gesellschaft bekommen: Blau stand heute in einem Verschenkregal. Klar, dass ich das mitnehmen musste. :)

[unoffi-ciel]

Heute mal ein second-hand meme, geschaffen von einem Amerikaner, der in Deutschland lebt

[ineedtolearngerman3monthsago]

First Post

I've been meaning to start a language blog and get serious with my studies, but just didn't find the time. Now that I've been living in Germany for almost 2 months now, I guess this would be a good time to learn German. tbh it's very necessary and I'm kinda freaking out lolz,,,,,,,,,