OFFICIALLY INACTIVE

Trying to understand German? Pulling out your hair over it? A native speaker is here to save your follicles and help you have fun with the German language!

[germanisnothard]

Hallo) I'm doing an assignment on popular words in Germany in 2014, could you maybe help me with that? What do you think were the most commonly used words in Germany over the year? Please and thank you

sorry, anon, but I can’t help you any more than google could with this one :/

followers?

[germanisnothard]

Hallo! Gibt es eine Differenz zwischen „hier" und „da"? Ist es Regeln für die Verwendung? Weil ich habe die zwei Formen bedeuten "here" gesehen. Sorry for my pretty shit German :)

Hello!

Dein Deutsch ist schon ganz in Ordnung, ich konnte zumindest verstehen, was du fragen willst!

I'll gonna answer in English, if that's okay!

So, the direct translation for 'here' would be 'hier', but you can use 'da' instead, too.

'to be here' can therefore be translated as 'hier sein' or 'da sein'.

It gets a little tricky, though, because 'hier sein' implies being at a certain place, while 'da sein' has more of a meaning of 'being present somewhere'. And 'da' can have the opposite meaning of 'hier', too.

If you want to say 'He's over there!' you'd say 'Er ist da drüben!'

If you wanna say 'He's here with us!" you'd say 'Er ist hier bei uns!'

But if you wanna say, that someone is present at a party for example, you can say for

'He's here!'--> 'Er ist da!'

If you want to be sure, you stick to 'hier' for the direct translation of 'here'.

I hope I didn't confuse you too much, you can ask again, if I explained something badly!

[germanlanguagerocks]

In einem kleinen Dorf wohnte einst ein Mädchen mit dem Namen Barbara. Barbara war in der ganzen Gegend für ihren ausgezeichneten Rhabarberkuchen bekannt. Weil jeder so gerne Barbara’s Rhabarberkuchen aß, nannte man sie Rhabarberbarbara. Rhabarberbarbara merkte bald, dass sie mit ihrem Rhabarberkuchen Geld verdienen könnte. Daher eröffnete sie eine Bar: Die Rhabarberbarbarabar. Natürlich gab es in der Rhabarberbarbarabar bald Stammkunden. Die bekanntesten unter Ihnen, drei Barbaren, kamen so oft in die Rhabarberbarbarabar um von Rhabarberbarbaras Rhabarberkuchen zu essen, dass man sie kurz die Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbaren nannte. Die Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbaren hatten wunderschöne, dichte Bärte. Wenn die Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbaren ihren Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbart pflegten gingen sie zum Barbier. Der einzige Barbier der einen Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbart bearbeiten konnte, wollte das natürlich betonen und nannte sich Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbier. Nach dem Stutzen des Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbarts geht der Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbier meist mit den Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbaren in die Rhabarberbarbarabar um mit den Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbaren von Rhabarberbarbaras herrlichem Rhabarberkuchen zu essen.

ancient German proverb (via germanlanguagerocks)

[germanisnothard]

Right. Really really weird question... You've presumably heard of the musical Wicked. If you haven't, you ought to have. Anyway the song Popular, or Heissgeliebt, has the line "ich zeig dir den Anmach-Trick und den Anlach-Blick..." I can pretty much make out the majority of the song, but have absolutely no idea what that means. And the Internet doesn't seem to know either. Sorry. Can you explain for me? Pleeeease?

Hey!

So, I'm not really familiar with musicals, but translated, these lines would mean something like:

'I show you the trick of flirting and the the look when I smile at you' ('Anmach' in the sense of 'Anmache', which is basically a sleazy way of flirting, and 'Anlach' in the the sense of 'smiling at someone')

It sounds a little wonky, but I'm sure the original makes more sense.

Perhaps my followers have other ideas?

I hope that helped and thanks for the question!

[germanisnothard]

Could you explain the "why the hell there is hay lying around?"

weeelll, wouldn’t you like to know….

[I’ll give you a hint though] NSFW!!!!

[germanisnothard]

Hi! I plan on going to Germany sometime in the future (crossing my fingers), but my German isn't that great. At all. Would it be best for me to stick to English or would it be okay to give speaking German a go, even if I'm really bad at it? I don't want to embarrass myself or offend anyone there if I massacre their language!

Hello!

Well, it always depends on the people, but in general, Germans LOVE when foreigners speak their language (I think this goes for most countries).

I don't think they would make fun of you or even get angry at you. Germans know, that our language is hard to learn, so most people are pretty chill about mistakes.

The good thing is, if you're going to a bigger city, most people will understand English, so if you're totally lost, you can still stick to that.

It's always embarrassing to speak a language you aren't used to yet, but don't let that hold you back, you can only get better and learning the language of the country you're going to can never hurt!

I wish you best of luck that you can make it!

[thelandofmaps]

How to wish someone a happy new year in German [1027x1040] CLICK HERE FOR MORE MAPS! thelandofmaps.tumblr.com

[magnusbane]

ask ANY german person - and i mean literally ANYONE - why the hell there is hay lying around, we will know what to say, it’s germany’s biggest insider joke i am dead serious

[germanisnothard]

Can you explain when and why you use "wohl" and what is the "na?" germans use to greet each other? Thanks!

Hey!

I’m a little afraid of talking BS here, so if there are people who have different definitions, correct me if I’m wrong.

Afaik, ‘wohl' is pretty much interchangable with 'vermutlich' (presumably), or 'wahrscheinlich' (probably).

Example:

‘Heute soll es wohl regnen.’ -> ‘Heute soll es wahrscheinlich regnen.’ (It will presumably rain today.)

However, there are phrases, where ‘wohl' is used in a slightly different context, for example when expressing annoyance.

Example:

‘Das ist wohl nicht dein Ernst?' (Are you kidding me?)

‘Das kann doch wohl nicht wahr sein!' (This can't be true!)

In this case, it’s more of an intensifier, because both sentences could work without it.

Now with ‘Na?' as a greeting, this is pretty simple.

In English you can say ‘How are you?’ to greet someone, and ‘Na?' is pretty much the short version of a German phrase for that, namely 'Na, wie geht’s?' ('geht’s' is abbreviated from 'geht es’), ‘na' being akin to a 'hey' or 'yo' in English.

Some people (me included) stretch the ‘Na?' out, especially when greeting good friends or family, which is really basically a form of showing affection.

Hope that helped a little and thanks for the questions!

[germanisnothard]

Can you explain the differences between dialects in Germany?

Oh, you could write thousands of essays about German dialects.

There are roughly 3-4 different groups of dialects and they all have numerous different subgroups themselves. Also note, that there are German dialects which are spoken outside of Germany (like Austria or Switzerland for example).

Here's a map with the distribution

Like a lot of dialects, they all have their own set of grammatic rules and even own vocabulary. Most notable is probably, that a certain mindset is often associated with them. Someone from Berlin (yes, our capitol has its own dialect, as do a lot of bigger cities) might be seen as loud-mothed and blunt with a certain sarcastic humour, while someone from Saxony might be seen as slighty dumb (which of course, are both stereotypes).

The region where I originally come from is coloured teal in the map above and my father used to talk in this typical Frankfurt/Rhein-Main-Hessian (which of lot of people don't even see as a real dialect, because it is a mix of a them).

I now live more in the north (grey area), and I can't understand people who speak Plattdeutsch, because it's often so different from the one I grew up with. And yes, this is a thing. In more rural areas, especially the old people can have such a heavy accent that a stranger will have a VERY hard time understanding them.

Younger people generally speak a more standard German (of course, with a slang, as young people often do, yo.), but it's becoming more and more 'en vogue' to learn your traditional dialect, too. It's often seen as something 'lower class', and in general, when you want a higher job, your chances to get that is very low, if you can't speak standard German or have a very thick dialect. That's why a lot of people stopped using their dialect and switched to a more High German, but like I said, there are still people who can see the beauty in the different ways you can express yourself, so they make an effort to preserve it.

It's hard to explain the differences via text, you really have to hear it.

I'll just link you to this video, which covers the most important ones!

Oh, and take that one for good measures!

[germanisnothard]

I know the point of your blog is for learning our language. But I was wondering, my english friends (as I live in England) keep making fun of me and call me Hitler, which is extremely offensive. And I don't know what to do? Is it my accent or? :(

Ugh, I'm so sorry to hear that! :< But tbh, if they're your friends, they shouldn't be offensive towards you.

All I would say is, talk to them and tell them it makes you uncomfortable if they make Nazi-references about you. You weren't around when it happened and your German heritage doesn't make you a Nazi.

It could be, that they find your accent funny, because many people associate a German accent with villians, so this could be it.

Still, this doesn't make it better. Make it clear, that they hurt you with stuff like that. If they don't listen, it might be time to look for new friends, as bad as it sounds.

Some people might say, just retort with offensive stuff about them, but this only works if you know you can trust these people and seeing that you're in a minority in your group I wouldn't risk it.

I'm sorry that I can't really talk frome experience, but I'm lucky enough that I never met people who were prejudiced against me for being German.

Perhaps my followers have some advice?

[germanisnothard]

Tasting some German Treats

[transgemder]

to prove that people who use the language thing to misgender you are full of shit: Denne er Kat. Kit er søtt. (norwegian: This is Kat. Kit is cute.) It's not that hard. or ~*grammatically incorrect*~ signed, a norwegian. (sorry if my english is bad, it's not my first language)

Thank you.

[twistedkate-deactivated20150203]

Yes, neopronouns can traverse language. But I’d like to know where these transphobes got the impression that they’re supposed to?

I mean, you don’t use “he” or “she” in French. You don’t use “il” or “elle” in Arabic. You don’t use “howa” or “hiya” in Russian.

I don’t see how “You can’t use them in other languages” could be a legitimate argument in the first place.

[transgemder]

Normalizing and “justifying” the misgendering of trans people, aka: transphobia.

[ughsocialjustice]

First of all, maybe this is a typo, but søtt means sweet in Norwegien, søt means cute. Second, it’s not just about pronouns. If it was, there wouldn’t be a problem. But it’s not. Many languages (including Norwegien) catgeroize nouns by gender. When you conjugate these words, there is no conjugation for ‘kit’ pronouns. Should people restructure their entire language just for your weird pronouns? For every other language that uses gendered pronouns? Just because Anon didn’t use words with gendered nouns, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. This is what we mean we say neopronouns don’t work in other languages and only serve to confuse those who speak other languages. It’s transphobic, it’s grammer. -The Trans One

[germanisnothard]

I made a long ass post about neonpronouns in German if someone wants to educate themselves :)

[germanisnothard]

Neopronouns and why they couldn’t work in German

[DISCLAIMER: This isn’t a post against a more gender neutral language, much to the contrary. I personally think it is totally unnecessary to always convey a gender while speaking about or addressing a person.]

Neopronouns in and itself aren’t really that bad when used right. If they are used as some kind of inside joke between friends to cope with the fact, that someone isn’t comfortable with their usual pronouns, the usage of them is totally justified. Now, where I think it goes onto problematic territory is, when people demand from strangers, that they use their made-up pronouns, expecting everyone to understand them and use them correctly, despite the fact that people might have a disability which prevents them from using these pronouns (because even for people, who aren’t disabled it can become quite confusing) or… and now, we’re getting to the actual theme of this post:

People who aren’t from an English speaking country either don’t understand how to use neopronouns in English and/or how to implement neopronouns into their native tongue.

Every time I see a neopronoun-user fighting with non-native speakers, who tries to explain to them, that their pronouns aren’t usable in their language, I see how former is getting angry and accuses the non-native-speaker of transphobia.

Even though is this scenario, it’s actually the neopronoun-user who is the ignorant one. Because they just assume, that every language works like English and you can just replace their pronouns with the usual ones.

Which isn’t the case and is a very xenophobic way of thinking.

I can’t speak for other languages besides German; I just saw posts about how it isn’t possible in Spanish to use these pronouns, because the gender of the subject is still conveyed in the adjectives. And I can’t imagine how they could work in languages which are even farther away from the western ones.

Now, to German.

As anyone who is learning German most likely already knows, we have a WHOLE lot of pronouns and articles, which are all gendered.

This article here which is in German sadly introduces a new set of gender neutral pronouns, which the German language doesn’t have. (We have ‘es’ but this is just as offensive as calling someone an ‘it’ in English, because it’s used for object and animals, not for people.)

As you can see, the author shows, that you actually need three sets of new pronouns (personal, relative [aka articles], and possessive) which all need to be flexed to fit the case (nominative, genitive etc.)

Which would mean, if you add everything together you come up 24 (read: twentyfour) new words, which you have to learn and use correctly.

Now, this wouldn’t be too bad, if we just take this as one new set of pronouns and implement it as an alternative to the already established one.

But can you already see where the problem with personalized pronouns would be?

Where in English, you basically have 4 new words to learn (example: bun/buns/bun/bunself) in German you’d have to learn 24 new words for every person you meet who wants you to use neopronouns.

And this is the first reason why this couldn’t work. This absolutely defies the purpose of pronouns, which is to simplify language and being able to substitute a name for a word which can be used in a more general sense (like for all women you use she, for all men you use he). To demand that people basically learn new grammar which they can use for one person only isn’t really realistic.

Another thing is that the German language is also more gendered than the English one.

A lot of words we attach to people are gendered. An example would be ‘friend’ which in German is ‘Freund’ (m) and ‘Freundin’ (f). Of course, you could come up with a gender neutral term, but the thing is: the whole reason for neopronouns is that they aren’t supposed to be gender neutral. So what kind of suffix should someone put at the end of ‘Freund‘ to fit for example bun-pronouns? (Not to mention, bun aka bunny means ‘Kaninchen’ in German, and how can you turn that into a pronoun?)

Same goes for professions. For example a medical doctor would be either an ‘Arzt’ (m) or a ‘Ärztin’ (f). So what should we call a person who uses neopronouns when they are a doctor?

Not only that, but adjectives are gendered as well. In English you would say, for example: ‘A beautiful man’ or ‘A beautiful woman’, in German you would say: ‘Ein schöner Mann’ or ‘Eine schöne Frau’. See the difference? You automatically convey a gender via the articles and the adjectives. Again, we could search for a gender neutral alternative, and again, the problem with neopronouns is, that they aren’t supposed to be gender neutral. So how would you describe a person with neopronouns in the German language? You’d had to walk around certain words as to not gender the person, for example: ‘Diese Person ist schön.’ (‘ist’ is gender neutral) [‘This person is beautiful’], thereby robbing yourself from expressing yourself freely and forming sentences like you want.

All in all: Neopronouns are already confusing and unnecessary in English and are even more impossible in German. But I think we should establish a more genderneutral language or at least a neutral alternative for German agender/neutrois or non-binary folk, so that they aren’t forced into the two sets we have. (Not to be confused with gender inclusive language, which deals with getting rid of the generic masculinum in German and an introduction to gender neutral terms when referring to a group of people [For example: ‘Studierende’ instead of ‘Studenten’]).

Sources:

A short German article about German neutrois

Powerpoint from tumblr user otherkinlogic about the correct usage of neopronouns in English

Gender neutral pronoun alternatives in English which are designed to be practical in use and adaptable for every person who doesn't like she/he pronouns

P.S. Before you get angry: I’m very open for (CONSTRUCTIVE!!!) criticism, so if you have any ideas how to actually change the language in a practical way, be my guest!

[germanisnothard]

I kinda wanna make a post about how neopronouns couldn't work in German. (I don't mean gender-neutral pronouns in general, just the tumblr-BS with personalized cutesy pronouns)

Anyone interested?

[germanisnothard]

Goodnight!

Gute Nacht!

Schlaf gut!

Schlaf schön!

Guts Nächtle!

[germanisnothard]

What do you mean, Til Schweiger has a slur? I don't doubt you, but as an American learning German it can be hard to tell. ): Is it really obvious in some places where it could be obvious to me? (I also haven't seen any of his movies to call him a bad actor but I was told that he mostly acts in sloppy romance movies that women love going to)

Awww, I didn't want to offend or anything, it's just my opinion.

Well, basically, you can hear his bad pronunciation when he yells at these guys in this scene you requested me to transcript.

But no matter in what movie he plays, the way he talks just annoys me extremely.

And yes, he's a bad actor, he basically plays himself all the time, and more often than not he takes his little daughter to play with him, and yeah.... let's just say there are better child actors out there.

He also is a great advocate for the 'Bild', which is basically like 'The Sun' in the UK. Also, he's pro-war and overall a very arrogant person. A lot of people love him though, so yeah, he's really popular, but that doesn't mean anything, as we all know.

And I will shut up know, before his fans start to come here, ahaha.