Deutschland & Deutsch

Before introducing the German language, a video of the German National Anthem is attached below.

What does German sound like to you? While making a comparison with French, German sounds more harsh and choppy, with strong emphasis. Both the languages sound similar to me, and they can easily be associated with Korean and Japanese, with Korean being German, and French being Japanese.

Germany is known as Deutschland in German, and Deutsch would mean the German language in German.  Deutsch originated from the language that was spoken by all German tribes which is known as teutsch.

The German Language is the national language of Germany, and 95% of the population speaks German as their first language. Other languages include:

Language	People Speaking it
Sorbian (0.09%)	East of Germany
North Frisian (0.01%)	Nordfriesland
Danish (0.06%)	Along the Danish Border
Romani (0.08%)	Indigenous Language
Turkish (1.8%), Kurdish (0.3%)	Immigrants

Additionally, other countries in the world speak German as well.

Other parts of the world that speaks the German language:

•         German-speaking states of Austria
•         1/3 of Switzerland (German dialect as their mother-tongue)
•         Liechtenstein 
•         Northern-Italy
•         Czech Republic
•         Poland
•         Some other states previously owned by Soviet Union (Soviet Union now known as Russia) 

Just like French, all nouns in both languages have a gender. The genders are feminine, masculine or neuter. The particles used in front of the noun will change in accordance to the gender of the noun. (For example: der Mann, die Ärztin and also das Mädchen. Feminine, masculine and neuter respectively) Now, one may start to question what noun is of what gender. There is only one way to master it, and that is through memorizing.

Word order in the German language differs from English's word order. When literally translated, “I went to the shopping mall yesterday” becomes “Yesterday went I to the shopping mall”.  One of the many rules is that a verb (went) should always appear after the first “idea” (yesterday).

In the next blog post, I will go into further details about the German language and its dialects. 


Bibliography:

BBC. (4 December, 2010). Languages across Europe. Retrieved 2010 December, 5, from BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/european_languages/countries/germany.shtml

Roberts, I. (2004). The German Language. In I. Roberts, World Cultures: Germany (pp. 27-30). The McGraw-Hill Companies.