I love the German language. Lived in Munich for 8 years in the 90s, totally immersed in it. For me, it's the language of welcome, of friendship, warmth and laughter. Ich vermisse Deutschland sehr. Viel liebe aus Schottland xx
Viel Liebe zurück aus Augsburg! Wir Bayern und Schotten haben sowieso einen besonderen Draht zueinander, wie man an eurem Besuch zur Fußball-EM diesen Sommer sehen konnte.
@@voyance4elle why wait? Find out what the rules are for foreigners to move and live there and apply for a job, that's. what I did, wanting to live in Norway, German by birth. If I wanted to my retirement, I wouldn't have enough money to live here in Norway. So, do it now, if you really want to.
If German sounds aggressive, why are most of the poems and art songs of the classical and romantic periods in German? German is called the language of poets and thinkers because it is as precise as the ancient languages of Greek and Latin and at the same time more flexible than any other language. It can be used to write metrical _and_ rhyming poetry, and in prose it offers endless possibilities for varied formulation. The German vocabulary amounts to at least 5 million lexemes. And every German can make up new words on the spur of the moment if necessary or just for fun - and we do it all the time! Oh, and it is easy! It has no pronunciation - what you read is what you say. No spelling bees here! The grammar may seem daunting, but even with the most rudimentary vocabulary and no knowledge of grammar at all you most certainly will be understood and no one will scold you, because we aren't grammar Nazis! On the contrary, we love what immigrants do with our language, the funniest things happen when foreigners make up words and phrases due to a lack of proper knowledge. My ex-husband from Georgia (the country) once said "Fliegermaus" instead of the correct Fledermaus. So he called a bat "flying mouse". Isn't that the cutest and most German thing you've ever heard? We have many such figurative words already in the correct language, like "naked snail" for slug. Or "shield toad" for turtle. So he did the exact right thing - and every German would understand instantly and laugh approvingly!
@@weichmacher3973 Huch, danke für das Kompliment! Falls es dich tröstet: Ich bin sogar mal wegen Englisch sitzengeblieben in der Realschule. Meine heutigen Englischkenntnisse habe ich mir durch Gucken von UA-cam-Videos erst in meinen 50ern nachträglich angeeignet. Es ist also nie zu spät!
During the Vietnam war, the German government sent a hospital ship, the Helgoland, to Saigon harbour to help the civilians wounded in this terrible war. Recently I saw a program on TV about this war and the hospital ship Helgoland where so many lives were saved and wounded people, often children, were treated and given hope. In this documentary a Vietnamese man now in his sixties was interviewed, who was treated on this ship because he was burned by Napalm and suffered heavy pain. He told under tears how soothing and comforting it was for him when his German nurse sat by his bed singing lullabys for him and giving him the feeling to be loved and cared for. He said that even today he still has these wonderful German words in his ears and that it were the most beautiful words he ever heard and that it helped him so much. Now how terrible can this language be?
That the German language sounds harsh and aggressive is only in the heads of Americans who are brainwashed by Hollywood. Any language can sound aggressive if it is spoken aggressively.
@@Hallo-sz6hkwie alt bist du? Unfähig zu recherchieren? Ich habe keine Minute gebraucht um es zu finden. Einfach mal den Kopf benutzen 😉‼️ Grüße aus 🇩🇪
@@carlarohde942 Anstatt deinen unnötigen Kommentar zu verfassen, hättest du auch einfach einen Link schicken können aber anscheinend bist du dafür zu schlau!💀
@@kilian4977 Wissen ist eine Holschuld und keine Bringschuld. Das lernt man schon in der Schule. Jeder will immer alles auf einem Silbertablett serviert bekommen. Einfach mal die eigenen Gehirnzellen in Aktion setzen. Versuch es ruhig mal. Hilft auch beim Kommentar schreiben‼️ Schönes Leben noch.....
@@ericschulze1337 ich war mehrere male in japan und sie lieben die deutsche Sprache Viele japanische worte sind deutschen Ursprungs Deutsche und japaner waren schon immer freunde Ansonsten kp welchen japaner du meinst 😂
When you hear a German Mother talk to her baby or sing a lullaby, you wouldn´t find it harsh-sounding. And when you hear an American or English drill sergeant yelling at his recruits, you wouldn´t feel that English sounds nice.
German woman here... I actually find it extremely sad when our beautiful language is always put down like this and called aggressive everywhere! EVERY language is beautiful and interesting in itself and deserves to be appreciated or at least not devalued. And yes - I feel personally offended when I hear Americans, for example, shouting and screaming and screeching out the German language in a totally choppy way and with the wildest accent imaginable. Of course EVERY language sounds aggressive when misused in this way! What many people don't understand is that German is a very logical language, which is actually very easy to learn. Even our many compound words are logical and follow a simple principle: take 2 or more existing words, string them together and voilà, you have a fully functional word to describe something - but you don't have to "invent" a new word... So anyone can create new words whose meaning can be understood immediately. Absolutely simple... ^^ Btw: these mega long words that are often given as examples in such videos are not really used in everyday language! There is a separate word for this (of course 😆): "Beamtendeutsch" (words that are only used by civil servants in explanations, legal texts and the like). And as you can see, this is a great example of a compound word that EVERYONE intuitively understands: Beamten (civil servant) + Deutsch (German) = civil-servant-german. WE have ONE SINGLE word for this - in English it takes a whole sentence to describe this official gobbledygook... Which is easier to remember? And what is also annoying and sad about this stereotype: it is often not only said that the German LANGUAGE sounds aggressive, oh no - from an allegedly aggressive sounding language it is then also directly inferred to the general behavior of the normal German! Yes of course, we Germans are all aggressive... Grrr, how I hate that! I find it insulting. It would never occur to me personally to denigrate another language as "dirty" or "aggressive" just because it sounds different from my mother tongue! I have learned various languages (English, Italian, French, Croatian, Spanish, Dutch) and tried others, but unfortunately failed (Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, Greek). The main reason for my failure was that it was virtually impossible for me to form the sound sequences etc. - simply because they differ so much from my own language. Is that why I call these languages aggressive or hard or something else? No, I am not! They are simply different, nothing more... The bad thing is that most of these self-proclaimed language experts don't have the slightest idea what German REALLY sounds like! The Americans in particular only imitate the creepy pronunciation and intonation of Hitler (whose actual voice sounded completely different when he wasn't giving speeches... Besides, this way of speaking is a very old stage technique, which is still taught and used in theaters etc. today). Besides, Germans don't shout at each other all day long - such nonsense... I'm really tempted to make a video on the subject myself and show how aggressive OTHER languages sound when you "bark" them out in this way...
The German language often portrayed agressive in foreign films because people always shout or speak very loudly and emphatically instead of speaking normally.
@@balaenopteramusculus Basically Dutch is a German dialect which has refused the great vowel shift. Though it has further developed to an own language it cannot deny its German roots.
@@Yildirim-f3c Slightly incorrect. I would rather say Hoch Deutsch and Dutch share the same roots which are Germanic - not German. I might come across a wee touchy, haha, but every Dutchie absolutely hates it when people imply Dutch is some form of German. Sisters, not mother and daughter.
In the address: Straße = street Have you watched Feli from Germany‘s „How hitler ruined the reputation of the German language“? That’s a good one, too.
@@robinwbarrett In the newer Rules of "Duden" it´s "Straße", but older people learned "Strasse". Both are accepted in normal life but at school you have to use the newer one.
The reason the German language sounds aggressive and harsh to you is because of Hollywood. A German character in Hollywood movies or shows is either a soldier or officer from the Nazi era, or he mimics the way Hitler used to address his audience when he gave speeches at his rallies.
Hello, young man. Old German man here. I can confirm the assessments about the perception of the German language by and large. It often seems to me that a large proportion of Americans have made themselves quite comfortable with these prejudices and wish that they were confirmed again and again. In addition to the actual difficulties of German: 3 grammatical genders, 4 cases that are applied to nouns, articles and adjectives, there is also the difficulty for English speakers that, despite the mostly identical letters in the written language, they have to learn to read again because Germans often pronounce these letters very differently than English speakers are used to. When Americans read German words and sentences and follow the English rules, they can only fail and they sound pretty ugly. This can then confirm to themselves that German sounds sharp and ugly. I have already seen some of your videos and am very impressed. You seem to be a cosmopolitan young man who wants to have his own experiences and see the world with open eyes. Hats off!
Your message hits the point exactly. There are so many details and grammatical rules you have to follow, that the language seems very complex. But when you are familiar with them, it’s pretty easy most of the times. In some cases it’s very difficult to know the gender of the word. For example „Rost“ can be male or neutral. Ofenrost (oven rack) is neutral (das Ofenrost), but Rost (rust) is male (der Rost). Same word, different gender. So it can be tricky sometimes, but the rules are simple once understood.
I'm becoming a german teacher here in germany and I love how soft and beautiful the german language can be. Yes, we have a lot of consonents but german poetry or even every day language can be smooth as butter imo.
These impressions of Americans in movies and shows at the beginning aren't even German with wrong pronounciation, some of them I have no idea what they actually want to say...
Antideutsche Propaganda. Der normale Amerikaner braucht immer ein Feindbild, aktuell sind das die Russen darum fallen wir wieder ein wenig zurück. Diese Propaganda-Tricks gibt es bei den Anglo-Amerikanischen "Freunden" seit 1871. In dem Jahr wurde beschlossen die Deutschen Völker zu vernichten.
Even for us Germans, some words are much too long, so we use abbreviations, here are two very frequently used examples: - Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz = Bafög (Federal Training Assistance Act) - Öffentlicher Personennahverkehr = Öffis or ÖPNV (Local public transport) ... and the letter ß is a combination of the 2 letters sz or ss .. e.g. in Straße = street
If you know the German language it does NOT SOUND ''aggressive'' at all, just like they think we Dutch SOUND rude, if you know the language it comes across completely differently. (I live near the border of Germany and have worked in Germany for a number of years)
I am German. And to me Dutch doesnt sound rude at all. But I have Norwegian colleagues, who said, that the Dutch people are even more rude than Germans. Because they are even more honest and openly speaking than Germans.
People are very different in their likings. I, German, learned Russian in school (back in GDR). I liked it. I especially like to listen to Russian female singers. Sounds very sweet. I guess as soon as you get familiar with a language you hear it differently. It's not just sound anymore. You start hearing the melody, the meaning of it.
If you study german, there will be a point, where you become very thankful for the compound words, because they drastically reduce the vocabulary you have to learn. It will take some time to get used to them, though. The key is always to start at the end of the word, then it becomes pretty easy for the majority of words, which consist of only two compounds. Translate the compounds, reverse the order and put "associated with" or "of" in between and you got it. Haustier =Haus (house) + Tier (animal) = "animal associated with the house". If you have more then two compounds, threat all but the last one as one compound and work your way backwards from there. Stadtverordnetenversammlung =Stadtverordnete + Versammlung (assembly) = assembly of Stadtverordnete. Stadtverordnete = Stadt (city or town) + Verordnete (representatives) = Representatives of the city/town. Combine it and you get: assembly of the representatives of the city/town. And in reality, that is as complicated as it usually gets, because words like the Rindfleischübertragungsüberwachungsaufgabendelegations-nonsense (or whatever that was) are not used in spoken language but for the most part only exist as special constructs for buerrocrats. If you use that to judge the language, you could just as well use the preable of the "universal declaration of human rights" (one sentence that is a whole page long) as proof, that english sentences never end.
How can a language by itself sound aggressive? Doesn't aggression depend more on how we speak the given language? I can use the most melodious languages (I think it's Italian, Spanish) in such a way that you cry in fear, while I can also speak scratchy, hard languages so gently that it melts the ice.
When I was on a trip in Germany with family last summer I was sitting alone sprawled on a table head down just waiting for a sibling to come out the store and a girl came up to me and cautiously asked in german if I was alright🥺 she tought I was sad or unwell but I said I was fine in english in confusion and she left, I was really touched. German language and people are not aggressive or cold🙏
I could bet there are more poems in German than in English. Goethe alone wrote between 4,000-5,000. In classical music, German is the 2nd most frequently sung language after Italian. The land of poets and thinkers!
I love it being able to hear where somebody grew up. Most Germans have a special accent. I do love the Brits for their different accents too. It's lovely ❤
I definitely recommend the video by Feli from Germany "How Hitler destroyed the reputation of the German language". It is extremely informative. To be honest, I'm getting tired of expressing my opinion on the prejudices of people who don't speak German. In movies, Americans who play Germans (usually villains) speak German that is difficult to understand even as a German. They almost only shout. Why is it always a German who shouts in movies? As for the extremely long words, I have to say that they are not used in normal language. For example, you don't say Bezirksschornsteinfegermeister (master chimney sweep), you just say Schornsteinfeger (sweep). These long words are usually official or legal words that describe something very precisely.
Consider that no matter where you go, the loudest and most annoying people are almost certainly Americans. And what they have done to the beautiful English language defies description. At least we have our own language.
I think most people in the world hear German when they are watching war movies 🥴 So of course when you hear it it sounds harsh because the people speaking it are soldiers and officers (mostly Nazis)in those types of movies :D By the way, there are all those famous recordings of Hitlers speeches with his typical loud, harsh and quite strange pronounciation, but there are also private not so famous recordings of him speaking normally in private and he sounded totally different then. So this perceived image isn't even how ppl actually spoke back then but something he trained for public speeches! It's fascinating... Especially since most ppl just imitate Hitler when they are making fun of the German language.
Great reaction! :) If you're interested in learning about the "ß" (Eszett), I highly recommend reboss's video "The curious ß". And for learning according to travelling Germany I recommend RobWords's video "How anyone (including YOU) can read German".
People only hate and mock a language they don't know. If you really try to understand a language you learn so much not only about why this language is the way it is but also about the culture and the people who speak this language. I am definitely not an expert on languages but whenever i tried to learn a new one it was so interesting to hear about the history of the country and the culture of the people. Mocking and hating a language shows me you have no respect for any of that and that your perception is only based on stereotypes and prejudices.
As a German, this actually explains one of my biggest problems when I started to *really* learn English (as you may know, we all learn it in school, but as with many things, that only helps you as much as you're interested in it. I was pretty horrible at the subject until about two years after I graduated and became more personally interested in the language). I started to become pretty good in writing/reading and overall understanding the language very fast, but I had an awful time trying to figure out how to pronounce words, how to talk or even how to understand the spoken language. So I would try to follow the advice to watch English or American shows in their original language, but the problem was, for me, the words would all just blend together, especially with a lot of people talking FAST. This video just pointed out the tiny little thing I was never able to pin-point - the little break between the words that is so natural for us. It's really interesting to know and kind of makes me want to look into the comparisons to other languages.
Many of the language characteristics mentioned also exist in other languages. -ach-, for example, is heard much more often in Swiss German or Arabic. Every language sounds aggressive when shouted. The German language has produced great poets and writers. For example, Schiller and Goethe as poets and the Brothers Grimm and Michael Ende (The Neverending Story). When a German gets really angry or aggressive it sounds very harsh, and that's how it should be 😅 And a lot of Germans speak their regional dialect and hardly any standard German.
Danke (thank you) so much for your video. Like you said, nobody talks like that (like what you see in the videos). German is a beautiful language. It's a nice video. Thank you ❤
As I was in Austria, most of the time, the people talked to me quite softly. And there is a way of speaking and writing German in a very formal way to display the degree of education. That is quite daunting for the beginners like I once was.
I have no problem with parody or satire. I love laughing at Charlie Chaplin in "The Great Dictator". His nonsensical speeches were hilarious. Yet don't forget this movie was made in 1940 at the height of Adolf's reign of terror, as a drastic parody of him. However if such speeches are the _only_ thing somebody sees and they slowly come to believe that satire/parody is reality then it gets problematic. The chance that the parody becomes the preconceptions of an entire nation or even language group is high. That makes real interactions more difficult than they have to be. Edit: the letter eszett ß was a creation of the first type setters. The original S shape was a very long, thin letter in the lead type cast used in printing presses. However this long S had a tendency to either bend if it was made with a very thin base; or the letter was far apart from another S due to the thicker base. They simply couldn't be placed close together. Therefore for any double s s indicating a strongly voiced s sound a single lead letter was die cast with a single long S and a short underslung under the short serif at the top (the top bow of the S). This was later simplified into the ß letter to indicate a sharp S sound. This allowed a fairly broad base for the type setting in printing presses plus a shorter distance of these letters within words, allowing for a more natural looking spacing. Edit 2 the 79 letter word Rindfleischettikettierungsaufgabenübertragungsüberwachungsgesetz is a law for the control of the hand-over of departmental tasks in the labeling of beef meats. If you split it up and translate it it doesn't get any better in English. To explain it, one government sector (agriculture) previously controlled how beef meats were labelled. When another institution (the ministry for food) got control over the labeling of foods the tasks had to be handed over from one ministry to the other. This required a law how the regulations were handed over and how the changes were communicated to all involved parties as well that all necessary tasks and rights had been correctly transferred. Phew, okay, that was the explanation. And yes, that's an example of the type of hell that is the bureaucracy of Germany.😂
6:18 - Here it's actually made out of eight words. But the writing here is also wrong. Tho whole and actual name is Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz. So exactly 10 words if you count the two syllables in the beginning and the "und" too. Or short: RkReÜAÜG M-V (bc it's from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern). I'll try to sum the meaning of the word up; It's a law to assign/regulate people, who have the job to check/ examine the labels of beef as well as the labeling of the cows.
I think of the German word "Heimat". There's no word in English that accurately describes this feeling. "Heimat" is a place where you've grown up or with which you feel strongly connected. It's a very intense feeling of: This is where I belong! This is where I can really be myself. And than are a lot of English words, that touch my heart deeply. And where are no expressions in German.
Hi Joel, I've been following your channel for some time now. Possibly, the time has come to looķ closer into the German language and culture. So I would like to draw your attention to the channel 'Listen to German with Anna'. You could start with 'Das Lied der Lorelei'/'The Song of the Lorelei' by Herman Hesse. This has bilingual subtitles is is by the way one of the German Classics, really beautiful. And from there, it's easy to carry on.
Great video. I am German and I love Germany and my language. 😊 I live in the south of Germany (Black Forest) near the boarder to France and Switzerland. We speak a German dialect called: Alemannisch. It's similar to the swiss dialect . (the swiss dialect is also called: Schwizerdütsch/Schweizerdeutsch). We got also French words in our dialect like "Trottoir" which means "Bürgersteig" in German and "sidewalk" in English. We got a spezific grammatic as well^^. the Germans from Hamburg, Hannover, etc often dont understand what we are saying, if we talk in our dialect. 😂 We got some funny words like "wunderfitzig = neugierig = inquisitive" or "Goschehobel = Mundharmonika (an Instrument) = Harmonica. German is real crazy because many areas got dialects like this😂. Greetz from Germany😉
It is interesting how a language sounds different from different viewpoints. For me as a German the language souunds absolutely beautiful. When I watch a Netflix flim and switch to American English it sounds to me much darker than German. Changing back to German feels to me like switching on the light in a dark room. Maybe this is because the German language has all these "hissing" sounds, there are a lot of these sharp "s" sounds or "sch" or both to of the "ch" sounds (one spoken in frount like "ich" and the other guturral like "noch") which have high frequency in fourier analysis. In Arabic there are even more guttural sounds. This is why I never watch Netflix in English because espcially the American English is not enjoyable to me.
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz Gesetz: Law Übertragung: Transfer Aufgaben: Duties/chores Überwachung: supervision Ettiketierung: labelling Rindfleisch: beef (Rind: cattle, Fleisch: meat/beef) So it’s the law that transfers the duty to supervise the labelling of beef.
Für euch deutschen sind wir Österreicher immer deutsche die einfach nicht einsehen wollen dass sie es sind.... bis ihr festhalten müsst das h.tler ja on Wirklichkeit kein deutscher war. 1.: Ihr habt ihr gewählt und gross gemacht nicht wir. Östereich hatte damit nicht das geringste zu tun. 2. Der bömische gefreite war zu dem Zeitpunkt als ihr ihn groß gemacht habt deutscher Staatsbürger Wens um die Sprache geht, so hatte der Herr privat einen weichen öberösterreichische Akzent und seine berühmten reden wurden in einem, mit Hilfe von deutschen sprachtrainern einstudierten, Bühnendeutsch gehalten das mit keinem einzigen österreichischen Dialekt auch nur die geringste ähnlichkeit hat.... Ihr habt ihn gewählt also könnt ihr ihn auch behalten.....
Unsere Sprache ist eine schöne Sprache. Voller Poesie und Zartheit. ... Unsere Sprache wird gerne verfälscht, verhitlert. Obwohl, wenn man sich etliche Sprachen von Hitler anhört, so können wir hören, daß auch dieser Mensch durchaus ein klares Deutsch oder Österreichisch redet (Hitler war Österreicher). Goethe, Schiller, Novalis schrieben in deutsch. Wußten Sie, daß Menschen, die Hegel lesen und verstehen wollen, extra Deutsch lernen? JFK liebte Deutschland! Warum wohl?! Jedes Land hat seine dunklen Flecken. und Geschichten. Ein jedes! Und Deutschland schrieben und komponierten große Geister, Männer wie Frauen! Die Liebe ist die einzige Antwort! ... GOTT ist die Liebe, und wer in der Liebe bleibt, der bleibt in GOTT! Lies und höre das auf deutsch! Danke für diese sehr informative Video!
So, now, I have to say: Every language can sound ugly and nice. It is the intention how and what you will say that makes the sound of a language comfortable or repulsive. And the sound of the voice from the one who is speaking it 😉
German is a much politer, smoother and melodic language than English or Dutch. You should hear someone from Düren. They sing all day, even when getting in a fight. Fantastic. My aunt came from Düren and I could listen to her for hours when she complained about her sore feet. So I believe the aggressiveness is not true.
that´s how Americans always impersonate the language... but it is a lot older than Hitler. The classic Grimm brothers fairy tales were written in German, Mozart/Bach/Beethoven/Goethe/Schiller spoke and wrote in German and a very long time ago the language "Germanic" changed and developed into modern day German ...and English! Like two children growing up, getting married, have kids and their lives moving on in different directions... one great great great grandchild of that language today is the "American version of English" and it´s parent was "British version of English" and the British version developed out of Anglo-Saxon (basically Germanic) ....🐓🐤🐤🐥🐣🥚
Trevor Noah, the black guy you wondered whether he is American, is (or rather was) actually a very great American late show host and a stand-up comedian, who is South African and whose father is Swiss, a language Germans usually find sounds much more aggressive than German (that is Swiss German, not Swiss Italian, Swiss French or Romansh)… He did not grow up with his father, I think, because he was conceived during the South African apartheid regime, but he has met his Swiss father and family as far as I know…
@@XmarkedSpot as most things are… I really enjoyed him on his show… And, since after the election, Jon Stewart will probably drop out of the later show again, it would be great to have at least Noah back…
German is my third language (1- Portuguese, 2- English, 3- German, 4- French, hopefully some day Italian) and I am trying to refresh it once It's been ages since I had German lessons (in school). Well hearing Rammstein and T. L. Twenty-four seven really helps... (yeap I know the rrrr thing with Till...). Anyway, I love earing German way more than English or French.
Although Rammstein in particular sounds extremely aggressive. But that's what Rammstein intended. Unfortunately, many non-Germans now think that Germans talk as aggressively as Rammstein sings. If someone spoke to me like that, I wouldn't exchange a word with them.
@@SlimNesbitt Not all songs are agressive sound (it's industrial metal right?). But I do understand what you mean. Nevertheless it's a fun way to revive my German. :-)
there is a good line from another video (I don't know which one sadly): "every language sounds aggressive when you shout it". If you speak in a normal tone German sounds pretty standard. If you shout in Spanish or Italian they sound harsh aswell. For me the Arabic languages sound like a declaration of war everytime 🤷♂
Since this video mentioned the fate of the German language/culture in the USA, here's a little, okay, not so little, background that _some_ may find interesting. Germans clearly emigrated to North America/USA for a variety of reasons. Simply put, these were economic, political, religious and familial in nature. Economic opportunity predominates as a rationale for almost all emigration. At least some mid-19th century and World War II era emigration was motivated by politics when there was a great deal of social-political upheaval in what is today Germany. Germany, of course, didn't become a unified country until 1871. Religion was a periodic factor in emigration. For example, many confessional Lutherans were unhappy after Frederick William III united both the Lutheran and Reformed churches in Prussia. The Prussian landed-aristocracy tended to be Reformed, following the fashion of the King/Kaiser, whereas most common people remained Lutheran. The Lutherans and their pastors were on-and-off subjected to harassment for remaining strictly Lutheran in dogma. Because of this harassment and because they tired at being beholden to some minor aristocrat landowner, many Lutherans chose to emigrate. Emigration became easier from the mid-19th onwards because steamships became commonplace. Although neither worry-free nor luxurious, the journey from Germany to America was becoming faster, cheaper and less arduous as the 19th century progressed. Emigration laws began to set minimum standards for provisions and hygiene aboard ship, and the competition between the German shipping companies for emigrant traffic also ensured increasing comfort. Norddeutscher Lloyd and Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft were two such companies. Bremen/Bremerhaven was the principal port of departure for emigrants from the German Rhine Provinces. Hamburg was preferred by emigrants from Northeastern German states like Mecklenburg and Prussia. There were other, smaller German emigrant ports like Stettin, but these were minor players compared to Bremen and Hamburg in terms of numbers. The first counting of immigrants to the USA began in 1820. About 152,000 German immigrants entered the country in the 1820s. In the decade of the 1840s, the number rocketed to 1.7 million. Between 1820 and 1920 about 5.5 million immigrants arrived in the USA from Germany. After 300 years of German emigration, more than 7 million Germans came to North America/USA. In order to answer labor shortages and to create markets for goods, some American states formed "immigration societies" to facilitate immigration. Businesses also recognized the advantages of immigration. Germany was seen as a prime source of such labor. American railroads had been granted large swaths of land in order to construct railroads by the federal government. The railroads wanted to sell the excess land to immigrants who could also help in constructing the railroads. So, the railroads would send first-generation German-Americans to their home villages in Germany as agents to recruit emigrants and facilitate their travel. The emigrants' travel might be partially subsidized. If these agents were caught by the German authorities, they would be arrested and deported. Officially, emigrants had to obtain permission to emigrate. As a result of immigration, places like Pommern became depopulated, which may have created problems down-the-line. By the end of the 19th century, German-Americans and German culture were generally accepted as necessary threads in the fabric of American life. They were less geographically and culturally isolated than in previous generations and increasingly spoke English as a first, rather than a second, language, while maintaining a vital written culture in German. German was widely taught in American public schools and was studied by both German and non-German students. German-Americans generally succeeded economically in America. For German-Americans, the early 20th century was a time of growth and consolidation. Their numbers increased, they were successful in their endeavors, and Americans of German heritage rose to positions of great power and distinction. For German-American culture, however, the new century brought severe setbacks, including a devastating blow from which it never fully recovered. That was World War I. World War I brought a backlash against German culture in the USA. When war was declared on Germany in 1917, anti-German sentiment rose to a fever-pitch across the USA. German-American institutions came under suspicion and attack. Some discrimination, although hateful, was cosmetic: The names of schools, foods, streets, and towns were often changed. Music by German composers was removed from concert programs and even weddings. Government agents would attend church services and monitor what was being preached. Physical attacks, though rare, could be violent. German-American businesses and homes were vandalized, and German-Americans accused of being "pro-German" were tarred and feathered. In at least once instance, a German pastor named Edmund Kayser was murdered for being pro-German. The most pervasive damage was done, however, to German language and education in the US. Before the war, there were hundreds of German-language newspapers, magazines and books published. War hysteria resulted in the newspapers either being run out-of-business or choosing to quietly close their doors on their own accord. German-language books were burned. Americans who spoke German in public were threatened with violence or boycotts. German-language instruction, until then a common part of the public-school curriculum, was discontinued and, in many areas, outlawed. None of these institutions ever fully recovered afterwards, and the centuries-old tradition of German language and literature in the United States was pushed to the margins of national life, and in many places effectively ended. During World War I, German-Americans were often accused of being too sympathetic to Imperial Germany. A small minority did, in fact, come-out for Germany, such as H. L. Mencken, and Harvard psychology professor Hugo Münsterberg who dropped his efforts to mediate between the US and Germany and threw his efforts behind the German cause. The US Justice Department prepared a list of all German aliens, counting approximately 480,000 of them, more than 4,000 of whom were involuntarily interred in camps between 1917-18. The allegations against them included spying for Germany or endorsing the German war effort. Thousands were forced to buy US war bonds to show their loyalty. The American Red Cross barred individuals with German last names from joining in fear of sabotage. In Collinsville, Illinois, German-born Robert Prager was dragged from jail as a suspected spy and lynched. A Minnesota minister was tarred and feathered when he was overheard praying in German with a dying woman. Questions over German-American loyalty increased due to events like the sabotage bombing of Black Tom island (an ammunition depot supplying Britain). Many German-Americans were arrested for refusing allegiance to the USA. In Chicago, Frederick Stock temporarily stepped down as leader of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra until his naturalization papers were finalized. Orchestras replaced music by German composers with French composers. In Cincinnati, the public library was asked to remove all German books from its shelves. German-named streets were renamed. The town, Berlin, Michigan, was changed to Marne, Michigan. In Iowa, in the 1918 Babel Proclamation, the governor prohibited all foreign language instruction in schools and use in public places. Nebraska banned instruction in any language except English, eventually the US Supreme Court ruled the ban illegal after the war. The response of German-Americans to these tactics was often to "Americanize" given names and surnames, e.g., Carl to Charles, Schmidt to Smith, Müller to Miller. Even before the war, German-American Gen. John J. Pershing's family had changed their name from Pfoerschin. German-Americans would avoid using German in public places, especially churches. One government official warned that "Every citizen must declare himself American or traitor." Many German-Americans struggled with their feelings, realizing that sympathy for their homeland appeared to conflict with loyalty to the USA. Anti-German feelings were a problem again during World War II, but not quite as problematic as they had been during the first World War. There were still some internments, though, I believe. The loyalty of German-Americans was not questioned as virulently. After all, a lot of the US military hierarchy were of German-American heritage. After the war, one more surge of German immigrants arrived in the United States as survivors of the conflict sought to escape its grim aftermath. These new arrivals were extremely diverse in their political viewpoints, their financial status, and their religious beliefs, and settled throughout the U.S. German immigration to the United States continues to this day, though at a much slower pace than in the past, carrying on a tradition of cultural enrichment, a tradition that has shaped much of what is quintessentially American. guides.loc.gov/germans-in-america/chronology
Wir Deutschen können Licht (hell) von etwas Leichtem (wenig Gewicht) unterschieden. Licht ist nicht leicht. We Germans can distinguish light (bright) from something light (low weight). Light is not light.
Ein Deutscher besucht sein Freund in Amsterdam. An der Haustür steht 3 x bellen. Aber auch nach - wauw wauw wauw - tut sich nichts. Da ist er kopfschüttelnd abgehauen.
I guess it’s the influence from the Hitler regime, that many people from other countries think, our language sounds aggressive. Back in the days the microphones weren’t the best and many people had to scream in them. It was to ensure that all people could hear them. I heard an interview with Hitler and he was very soft spoken there. My husband‘s relative heard one time, how I sung an old song called „Herbstlied“ to my daughter and she loved it so much, that she wants to learn German too. (I’m a bad singer, but she liked how soft the words sounded)
Some languages are easier on ear than other, that's true. But I don't think German language sounds aggressive. I think it's how it's been perceived in pop culture. It's the connection we get from soldiers shouting in war movies and Hitler's yelling rants or Rammstein's dark music. But listen for example to Goethe's Wandrers Nachtlied song and you will agree that German is soothing calm as well.
Also I think in recent years Rammstein did their thing for the perception of the german language. Maybe try another band with soft spoken words like Annenmaykantereit ua-cam.com/video/SpdVsST7liw/v-deo.html There is an acceptable translation of the song on genius.
German does not sound aggressive at all. However, those of us of a certain generation, are immediately reminded of the rousing speeches of a certain Austrian painter.
From a German Neighbor for France: A saying is " Le français est fait pour râler, l'allemand pour gueuler" : French is made for complaining, German for yelling... It's due from two factors Second Reich and third reich. The first gave us 1870 and our bloodiest war - 1.7 millions of death in a country of 39 millions people at this time -, the second it's self explanatory...
Really enjoyed this post Joel and having had a Scots father I'm not unfamiliar with the gutteral 'Ach' sound. For me with a foreign languge the difficulty is always getting used to the rhythm, how the words flow. Yes, some more along these lines please. Danke. 👍👍
In my opinion, the German language is often perceived as aggressive because many Americans were influenced by propaganda videos from World War II, in which an Austrian loudly declared war on other countries. These videos were deliberately made to sound aggressive. This portrayal has led to the general association of the German language with aggression, even though this is not the natural tone of the language.
Like others have stated, the thought of the harsh language comes from media that often portrays it in that way. It is supposed to sound like the evil speeches of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels from the 1940s. Furthermore, popular music like common german Rap (Sido, Cro), Tic Tac Toe (Warum, Verpiss Dich) from the 90s and Joachim Witt (Goldener Reiter, Die Flut) from the 80s gives the same feeling. In reality there are quite a few Germans that have an outstandingly soft and fluffy voice, but aren't heard that way often. One of my favorite German songs, Kein Zurück by Wolfheim (ua-cam.com/video/UjsvyeBWNQQ/v-deo.html), has a nice mixture of the serious tone of the songs subjects, but the voice keeps on flowing. The Eszett is also in Beißen, which starts with B.
Some German dialects are softer than others, some are sing-songy... If people enounciate standard German very clearly, e.g. because the other is still learning, it might sound harsher and more hacked than normal speaking.
The Eszett you are probably talking about is in "Straße", or "...-straße" - which would be Street in English. Since every company has an adress you can probably find it on the packaging if the company is based in Germany, Austria or Switzerland
Compund words are very practical to describe new items by combining old words like for a glove - a "Handschuh". As many will have already guessed it is a shoe (=protectional device) for the hand. English sometimes uses the same principle, for example with 'fly': butterfly, dragonfly, firefly. But all things should be done with moderation. That "Rinder........" at 6:23 happens when people in legal profession run amok It is the name of a law. Usually they squeeze the name of a law that is really long enough to fill a whole sentence in ONE word --- and you get legalese, a language ordinary people don't understand. I am German ans I am quote literate but here it takes me too several seconds to seperate all those words that got in this monsterword to be able to read it let alone comprehend what I just read. Another example you often see starts with "Donaudampfschiff....". There once was a shipping company on the danube (=Donau) that had a complicated name. It starts the beginning of a silly (kids-)game to find a word that is a bit longer than what the last kid had and soon you will end up with 'colour of the peak of the cap of a captain of a ship of the danbian shipping company using steam boats...'. This a bit less difficult to read but almost as unincomrehensible as the German monsterword and also a description nobody would want to use in daily life - no matter of Engllish, American or German.
German is one of the most beautiful languages there is. It often sounds harsh and aggressive to non-German speakers. One reason why many people still feel this way is the use of the German language during the 3rd Reich. Those 12 years turned the language of poets and thinkers into the language of beasts and murderers. Hitler specially adopted a style of language that sounds particularly aggressive. What you hear in his speeches is not his normal language. But he and his comrades-in-arms not only wanted to burn books, they also wanted to change the language. In Germany, there are around 20 different dialects and three separate languages. The transitions are fluid, and in some federal states we encounter several language variants at once. To ensure that all Germans understand each other, there is “High German”. The dialects are often incomprehensible to the individual. Although German, they are completely different. High German is taught in schools. At home, people often speak their own dialect. There are also some dialects in Austria, Switzerland and other neighboring countries. So, enough. Now you know why Germans have a reputation for being good teachers. Give him a word, and he'll make a book out of it. ☯☮💖
Hi. If you are interested in how English and German are connected, you should give a video of RobWords a try called "How Anyone (Including You) Can Read German".
The more to the north the nicer German sounds, low Saxon is the best, it is the same dialect we speak in the North east of the Netherlands.., or used to speak...
There was one austrian painter who started a lot of trouble and he was yelling aggressively all the time in public speeches. It was so much, that even my german then teenage grandmother turned off the radio, when his speeches were on, because she couldn't stand it. And that example is seen as the international standard for how german sounds 80 years later still.
ß - this letter is called "sharpe s" and the reason is that it is pronounced fast and sharp or voiced. Nowadays word spelling has changed and a word like "bißchen" is written "bisschen". So "ß" could stand for double s or sz.
Right up to the 1970s, every business person in Commonwealth countries with a German accent was "Austrian." I remember thinking, I must visit Austria - half the people I meet are from there.
German varies greatly in sound from one region to another. I find the German spoken in Austria, Bavaria (inc Bayerisch) and southern Germany, much easier on the ear than that spoken further north. The "ch" is a soft "sh" sound in the south, but like the ch in loch in the north, for example. Swiss German is simply weird. 😅
I‘m living in Switzerland about 9 years yet. 😂 Even, when Swiss people are angry, they sound extremely cute. 😅 My favorite words are herzig, hässig and Schafseckel.
There is this parody of a Hitler speach by Charlie Chaplin in the movie The Dictator, when the mic got scared and tried to hide. That's why people think the German language is harsh, despite Chaplin, in this speach, spoke a phantasy language with no meaning.
Listen to Werner Herzog speaking English. Yeah- the villian in "Jack Reacher-2" He is a living stereotype of the German language. But what he is saying is damn deep and philosophic.
The reason why ß is often in adresses is quite simple: Because of the word Straße, which means street. So any adress that has the German equivalent of -street in it also has an ß. Though Straße is also sometimes spelt Strasse.
If you find an S at the beginning or in the middle of a German word, the usual pronunciation will be soft, like the English Z-sound. If you want to indicate the English S-sound, you use double S spelling or the Eszett. Germans also call it "scharfes S" meaning sharp-S, which makes sense when you think about the sibilance of it. An S at then end of a word in German also takes the sharp pronunciation.
1:45 That one is from the British comedy Format "Live at the Apollo", so he's probably Brititsh. But I guess, German has that reputation all over the world.
8:50 But most important issue figured out to be the retraction of Coca Cola products from German market. This led to introduction of "Bluna", a lemonade without cola and without coca. 😂
5:19 This „ß“ is in addresses in the street. „Straße“ means street. When I wrote my adress I always write „Strasse“ instead of „Straße“ The deliveryroom in Hospitals named „Kreißsaal“ it came from the old word „kreißen“ for screaming
![American reacts to Posts That Prove American's Think That Only They Exist [part 2]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KZ_wRzra8yo/mqdefault.jpg)
I love the German language. Lived in Munich for 8 years in the 90s, totally immersed in it. For me, it's the language of welcome, of friendship, warmth and laughter. Ich vermisse Deutschland sehr. Viel liebe aus Schottland xx
Viel Liebe zurück aus Augsburg! Wir Bayern und Schotten haben sowieso einen besonderen Draht zueinander, wie man an eurem Besuch zur Fußball-EM diesen Sommer sehen konnte.
My dream is to visit Schotland and maybe come live there one day. Greetings from Germany (Bad Münstereifel near Bonn and Cologne) ^^
Liebe Grüsse aus Niedersachsen❤
Grüsse aus dem Schwarzwald - wir lieben Schottland und die schottische Gastfreundschaft.
@@voyance4elle why wait? Find out what the rules are for foreigners to move and live there and apply for a job, that's. what I did, wanting to live in Norway, German by birth. If I wanted to my retirement, I wouldn't have enough money to live here in Norway. So, do it now, if you really want to.
If German sounds aggressive, why are most of the poems and art songs of the classical and romantic periods in German? German is called the language of poets and thinkers because it is as precise as the ancient languages of Greek and Latin and at the same time more flexible than any other language. It can be used to write metrical _and_ rhyming poetry, and in prose it offers endless possibilities for varied formulation. The German vocabulary amounts to at least 5 million lexemes. And every German can make up new words on the spur of the moment if necessary or just for fun - and we do it all the time! Oh, and it is easy! It has no pronunciation - what you read is what you say. No spelling bees here! The grammar may seem daunting, but even with the most rudimentary vocabulary and no knowledge of grammar at all you most certainly will be understood and no one will scold you, because we aren't grammar Nazis! On the contrary, we love what immigrants do with our language, the funniest things happen when foreigners make up words and phrases due to a lack of proper knowledge. My ex-husband from Georgia (the country) once said "Fliegermaus" instead of the correct Fledermaus. So he called a bat "flying mouse". Isn't that the cutest and most German thing you've ever heard? We have many such figurative words already in the correct language, like "naked snail" for slug. Or "shield toad" for turtle. So he did the exact right thing - and every German would understand instantly and laugh approvingly!
Fliegermaus
Genial
@@thomasmorgenroth4668 Was ich gesagt habe: Jeder Deutsche versteht es sofort und lacht anerkennend! 🤪
Because it translates better from the Klingon original.
you can express yourself better in english than i can in my mother tongue german.
@@weichmacher3973 Huch, danke für das Kompliment!
Falls es dich tröstet: Ich bin sogar mal wegen Englisch sitzengeblieben in der Realschule. Meine heutigen Englischkenntnisse habe ich mir durch Gucken von UA-cam-Videos erst in meinen 50ern nachträglich angeeignet. Es ist also nie zu spät!
During the Vietnam war, the German government sent a hospital ship, the Helgoland, to Saigon harbour to help the civilians wounded in this terrible war. Recently I saw a program on TV about this war and the hospital ship Helgoland where so many lives were saved and wounded people, often children, were treated and given hope. In this documentary a Vietnamese man now in his sixties was interviewed, who was treated on this ship because he was burned by Napalm and suffered heavy pain. He told under tears how soothing and comforting it was for him when his German nurse sat by his bed singing lullabys for him and giving him the feeling to be loved and cared for. He said that even today he still has these wonderful German words in his ears and that it were the most beautiful words he ever heard and that it helped him so much. Now how terrible can this language be?
That the German language sounds harsh and aggressive is only in the heads of Americans who are brainwashed by Hollywood. Any language can sound aggressive if it is spoken aggressively.
You can't drop such a comment without telling us the name of the documentary..
@@Hallo-sz6hkwie alt bist du? Unfähig zu recherchieren? Ich habe keine Minute gebraucht um es zu finden. Einfach mal den Kopf benutzen 😉‼️ Grüße aus 🇩🇪
@@carlarohde942 Anstatt deinen unnötigen Kommentar zu verfassen, hättest du auch einfach einen Link schicken können aber anscheinend bist du dafür zu schlau!💀
@@kilian4977 Wissen ist eine Holschuld und keine Bringschuld. Das lernt man schon in der Schule. Jeder will immer alles auf einem Silbertablett serviert bekommen. Einfach mal die eigenen Gehirnzellen in Aktion setzen. Versuch es ruhig mal. Hilft auch beim Kommentar schreiben‼️ Schönes Leben noch.....
Germans speaking german:😊
Americans imitating german:😡😡
So... its the americans that sound aggressive not the germans 😅
Genauso ist es
Gehirnwäsche
Jo so sicht dat ut 😉
ich mag den Japaner der sich über die deutsche Sprache lustig macht^^
@@ericschulze1337 ich war mehrere male in japan und sie lieben die deutsche Sprache
Viele japanische worte sind deutschen Ursprungs
Deutsche und japaner waren schon immer freunde
Ansonsten kp welchen japaner du meinst 😂
When you hear a German Mother talk to her baby or sing a lullaby, you wouldn´t find it harsh-sounding. And when you hear an American or English drill sergeant yelling at his recruits, you wouldn´t feel that English sounds nice.
German woman here...
I actually find it extremely sad when our beautiful language is always put down like this and called aggressive everywhere! EVERY language is beautiful and interesting in itself and deserves to be appreciated or at least not devalued. And yes - I feel personally offended when I hear Americans, for example, shouting and screaming and screeching out the German language in a totally choppy way and with the wildest accent imaginable. Of course EVERY language sounds aggressive when misused in this way!
What many people don't understand is that German is a very logical language, which is actually very easy to learn. Even our many compound words are logical and follow a simple principle: take 2 or more existing words, string them together and voilà, you have a fully functional word to describe something - but you don't have to "invent" a new word... So anyone can create new words whose meaning can be understood immediately. Absolutely simple... ^^ Btw: these mega long words that are often given as examples in such videos are not really used in everyday language! There is a separate word for this (of course 😆): "Beamtendeutsch" (words that are only used by civil servants in explanations, legal texts and the like). And as you can see, this is a great example of a compound word that EVERYONE intuitively understands: Beamten (civil servant) + Deutsch (German) = civil-servant-german. WE have ONE SINGLE word for this - in English it takes a whole sentence to describe this official gobbledygook... Which is easier to remember?
And what is also annoying and sad about this stereotype: it is often not only said that the German LANGUAGE sounds aggressive, oh no - from an allegedly aggressive sounding language it is then also directly inferred to the general behavior of the normal German! Yes of course, we Germans are all aggressive... Grrr, how I hate that!
I find it insulting. It would never occur to me personally to denigrate another language as "dirty" or "aggressive" just because it sounds different from my mother tongue! I have learned various languages (English, Italian, French, Croatian, Spanish, Dutch) and tried others, but unfortunately failed (Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, Greek). The main reason for my failure was that it was virtually impossible for me to form the sound sequences etc. - simply because they differ so much from my own language. Is that why I call these languages aggressive or hard or something else? No, I am not! They are simply different, nothing more...
The bad thing is that most of these self-proclaimed language experts don't have the slightest idea what German REALLY sounds like! The Americans in particular only imitate the creepy pronunciation and intonation of Hitler (whose actual voice sounded completely different when he wasn't giving speeches... Besides, this way of speaking is a very old stage technique, which is still taught and used in theaters etc. today).
Besides, Germans don't shout at each other all day long - such nonsense...
I'm really tempted to make a video on the subject myself and show how aggressive OTHER languages sound when you "bark" them out in this way...
Well written!
So true. Those stupid idis should stop watching silly Nazi movies and get some real education.
I found just the 'Niederdeutsch/Platt' great. It's so down to earth!
@@zasou571 Where's my comment? Unbelieveable! Too close to the truth again?
Die deutsche Sprache ist gar nicht leicht zu lernen. Ich weiß, ich versuche sie zu lernen
The German language often portrayed agressive in foreign films because people always shout or speak very loudly and emphatically instead of speaking normally.
Don forget the German in WW2 films!
Cause most of the actors arent german but actors that dont know german..
@@blondkatze3547 In Films (US, french or english) the bad guys are always german. Und sind immer die Lauten, Dummen oder nicht gemochten.
@@mats7492 Wouldn't blame the actors, but the producers, directors who hire actors. And of course too Mr Hitler and the old Prussians.
@@biankakoettlitz6979ACHTUNG, SCHNELLER,SCHNELLER, MARSCH MARSCH.......EINS ZWEI EINS ZWEI😂
Yes, you are right. No one speaks like that in germany. Only the people who imitate germans 😮 Thx for saying my native language is beautiful ❤
There is no language to describe everything so detailed, precise, and clear as the German language.
Dutch? 😋
@@balaenopteramusculus Basically Dutch is a German dialect which has refused the great vowel shift. Though it has further developed to an own language it cannot deny its German roots.
@@Yildirim-f3c Slightly incorrect. I would rather say Hoch Deutsch and Dutch share the same roots which are Germanic - not German. I might come across a wee touchy, haha, but every Dutchie absolutely hates it when people imply Dutch is some form of German. Sisters, not mother and daughter.
In the address: Straße = street
Have you watched Feli from Germany‘s „How hitler ruined the reputation of the German language“? That’s a good one, too.
Effectively it is a double S as in Strasse
I would argue that Hitler did destroy a bit more than just the reputation of the German language.
@@robinwbarrett true
@@buddy1155 right
@@robinwbarrett In the newer Rules of "Duden" it´s "Straße", but older people learned "Strasse". Both are accepted in normal life but at school you have to use the newer one.
The reason the German language sounds aggressive and harsh to you is because of Hollywood. A German character in Hollywood movies or shows is either a soldier or officer from the Nazi era, or he mimics the way Hitler used to address his audience when he gave speeches at his rallies.
I think, exacly this is the point, iam german, so every time i hear german speech from a non-german, so i think he is a timetraveler from 1940s or so
This song is my favorite German song from Reinard Mey. Gute nacht freunde.
Greetings from Aruba!!
What a coincidence - on yesterday I tried to play this piece on my guitar - funny ;-)
..es wird Zeit für mich zu gehn, was ich noch zu sagen hätte dauert eine Zigarette und kurzes Glas im stehn😊
Hello, young man. Old German man here. I can confirm the assessments about the perception of the German language by and large. It often seems to me that a large proportion of Americans have made themselves quite comfortable with these prejudices and wish that they were confirmed again and again. In addition to the actual difficulties of German: 3 grammatical genders, 4 cases that are applied to nouns, articles and adjectives, there is also the difficulty for English speakers that, despite the mostly identical letters in the written language, they have to learn to read again because Germans often pronounce these letters very differently than English speakers are used to. When Americans read German words and sentences and follow the English rules, they can only fail and they sound pretty ugly. This can then confirm to themselves that German sounds sharp and ugly. I have already seen some of your videos and am very impressed. You seem to be a cosmopolitan young man who wants to have his own experiences and see the world with open eyes. Hats off!
Lovely message! Herzlichen Dank!
Your message hits the point exactly. There are so many details and grammatical rules you have to follow, that the language seems very complex. But when you are familiar with them, it’s pretty easy most of the times. In some cases it’s very difficult to know the gender of the word. For example „Rost“ can be male or neutral. Ofenrost (oven rack) is neutral (das Ofenrost), but Rost (rust) is male (der Rost).
Same word, different gender. So it can be tricky sometimes, but the rules are simple once understood.
I'm becoming a german teacher here in germany and I love how soft and beautiful the german language can be. Yes, we have a lot of consonents but german poetry or even every day language can be smooth as butter imo.
I love my land and my great language!
🫂🇩🇪🫂🇩🇪🫂
These impressions of Americans in movies and shows at the beginning aren't even German with wrong pronounciation, some of them I have no idea what they actually want to say...
its often gibberish..
Antideutsche Propaganda. Der normale Amerikaner braucht immer ein Feindbild, aktuell sind das die Russen darum fallen wir wieder ein wenig zurück.
Diese Propaganda-Tricks gibt es bei den Anglo-Amerikanischen "Freunden" seit 1871. In dem Jahr wurde beschlossen die Deutschen Völker zu vernichten.
Even for us Germans, some words are much too long, so we use abbreviations, here are two very frequently used examples:
- Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz = Bafög
(Federal Training Assistance Act)
- Öffentlicher Personennahverkehr = Öffis or ÖPNV
(Local public transport)
... and the letter ß is a combination of the 2 letters sz or ss .. e.g. in Straße = street
French is worse in this regard, without abbrevations, no one would be able finish a sentence in time. But french has better status in the world.
Ironically, some of the greatest operas, choral works etc., are german and only sound good when sung in german
That is true. People exposed only to Italian singing missed some incredible music.
It's not an opera, but the Champions League anthem is also sung in German. I've never heard anything negative about it - quite the opposite!
If you know the German language it does NOT SOUND ''aggressive'' at all, just like they think we Dutch SOUND rude, if you know the language it comes across completely differently. (I live near the border of Germany and have worked in Germany for a number of years)
Thank you for saying this 🙏😊
@@frankmunster1566 kein dank.
I am German. And to me Dutch doesnt sound rude at all. But I have Norwegian colleagues, who said, that the Dutch people are even more rude than Germans. Because they are even more honest and openly speaking than Germans.
@@ckeuer thank you!...honesty above all else instead of beating around the bush
@@thedutchhumandutch sounds funny as hell!
Diese Kommentarsektion ist jetzt Eigentum der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 🇩🇪
As German I feel Russian and Arab sounds more aggressive.
People are very different in their likings.
I, German, learned Russian in school (back in GDR). I liked it. I especially like to listen to Russian female singers. Sounds very sweet.
I guess as soon as you get familiar with a language you hear it differently. It's not just sound anymore. You start hearing the melody, the meaning of it.
Russian is by far the most decissive way to say no. Sometimes I use NJET for rethoric reasons. It works.
Eine wunderschöne Sprache
If you study german, there will be a point, where you become very thankful for the compound words, because they drastically reduce the vocabulary you have to learn. It will take some time to get used to them, though. The key is always to start at the end of the word, then it becomes pretty easy for the majority of words, which consist of only two compounds. Translate the compounds, reverse the order and put "associated with" or "of" in between and you got it. Haustier =Haus (house) + Tier (animal) = "animal associated with the house". If you have more then two compounds, threat all but the last one as one compound and work your way backwards from there. Stadtverordnetenversammlung =Stadtverordnete + Versammlung (assembly) = assembly of Stadtverordnete. Stadtverordnete = Stadt (city or town) + Verordnete (representatives) = Representatives of the city/town. Combine it and you get: assembly of the representatives of the city/town. And in reality, that is as complicated as it usually gets, because words like the Rindfleischübertragungsüberwachungsaufgabendelegations-nonsense (or whatever that was) are not used in spoken language but for the most part only exist as special constructs for buerrocrats. If you use that to judge the language, you could just as well use the preable of the "universal declaration of human rights" (one sentence that is a whole page long) as proof, that english sentences never end.
How can a language by itself sound aggressive? Doesn't aggression depend more on how we speak the given language? I can use the most melodious languages (I think it's Italian, Spanish) in such a way that you cry in fear, while I can also speak scratchy, hard languages so gently that it melts the ice.
Absolutely right.
When I was on a trip in Germany with family last summer I was sitting alone sprawled on a table head down just waiting for a sibling to come out the store and a girl came up to me and cautiously asked in german if I was alright🥺 she tought I was sad or unwell but I said I was fine in english in confusion and she left, I was really touched. German language and people are not aggressive or cold🙏
I could bet there are more poems in German than in English. Goethe alone wrote between 4,000-5,000. In classical music, German is the 2nd most frequently sung language after Italian. The land of poets and thinkers!
Ave Maria, for example.
Silent Night is also originally in German.
I love it being able to hear where somebody grew up. Most Germans have a special accent. I do love the Brits for their different accents too. It's lovely ❤
The comedian at the beginning 1:38 who orders a "BRÖTCHEN" like Hitler is Trevor Noah. He is from South Africa.
2.WW propaganda about germans is still alive!!!
There are also German words that sound smoother than in English: Schmusen - cuddling😅
Blume - flower.
I definitely recommend the video by Feli from Germany "How Hitler destroyed the reputation of the German language". It is extremely informative.
To be honest, I'm getting tired of expressing my opinion on the prejudices of people who don't speak German.
In movies, Americans who play Germans (usually villains) speak German that is difficult to understand even as a German. They almost only shout. Why is it always a German who shouts in movies?
As for the extremely long words, I have to say that they are not used in normal language.
For example, you don't say Bezirksschornsteinfegermeister (master chimney sweep), you just say Schornsteinfeger (sweep).
These long words are usually official or legal words that describe something very precisely.
Consider that no matter where you go, the loudest and most annoying people are almost certainly Americans. And what they have done to the beautiful English language defies description. At least we have our own language.
Most really long compound words are technical terms and not used in everyday conversations.
I think most people in the world hear German when they are watching war movies 🥴 So of course when you hear it it sounds harsh because the people speaking it are soldiers and officers (mostly Nazis)in those types of movies :D By the way, there are all those famous recordings of Hitlers speeches with his typical loud, harsh and quite strange pronounciation, but there are also private not so famous recordings of him speaking normally in private and he sounded totally different then. So this perceived image isn't even how ppl actually spoke back then but something he trained for public speeches! It's fascinating... Especially since most ppl just imitate Hitler when they are making fun of the German language.
10:07 your clapping at the end was very cute :) ♥
Great reaction! :) If you're interested in learning about the "ß" (Eszett), I highly recommend reboss's video "The curious ß".
And for learning according to travelling Germany I recommend RobWords's video "How anyone (including YOU) can read German".
People only hate and mock a language they don't know. If you really try to understand a language you learn so much not only about why this language is the way it is but also about the culture and the people who speak this language. I am definitely not an expert on languages but whenever i tried to learn a new one it was so interesting to hear about the history of the country and the culture of the people. Mocking and hating a language shows me you have no respect for any of that and that your perception is only based on stereotypes and prejudices.
While German is certainly not an easy language to learn, it is by far not as aggressive as it is portrayed in cheap Hollywood movies. On the contrary!
To hear what German also sounds like, here's an old folk song from 1840: ua-cam.com/video/zMOuTVwfXDE/v-deo.html
As a German, this actually explains one of my biggest problems when I started to *really* learn English (as you may know, we all learn it in school, but as with many things, that only helps you as much as you're interested in it. I was pretty horrible at the subject until about two years after I graduated and became more personally interested in the language). I started to become pretty good in writing/reading and overall understanding the language very fast, but I had an awful time trying to figure out how to pronounce words, how to talk or even how to understand the spoken language. So I would try to follow the advice to watch English or American shows in their original language, but the problem was, for me, the words would all just blend together, especially with a lot of people talking FAST. This video just pointed out the tiny little thing I was never able to pin-point - the little break between the words that is so natural for us. It's really interesting to know and kind of makes me want to look into the comparisons to other languages.
Many of the language characteristics mentioned also exist in other languages. -ach-, for example, is heard much more often in Swiss German or Arabic. Every language sounds aggressive when shouted. The German language has produced great poets and writers. For example, Schiller and Goethe as poets and the Brothers Grimm and Michael Ende (The Neverending Story). When a German gets really angry or aggressive it sounds very harsh, and that's how it should be 😅 And a lot of Germans speak their regional dialect and hardly any standard German.
Danke (thank you) so much for your video. Like you said, nobody talks like that (like what you see in the videos). German is a beautiful language. It's a nice video. Thank you ❤
The image problem is the biggest point why people think about it like that
As I was in Austria, most of the time, the people talked to me quite softly.
And there is a way of speaking and writing German in a very formal way to display the degree of education. That is quite daunting for the beginners like I once was.
I have no problem with parody or satire. I love laughing at Charlie Chaplin in "The Great Dictator". His nonsensical speeches were hilarious. Yet don't forget this movie was made in 1940 at the height of Adolf's reign of terror, as a drastic parody of him.
However if such speeches are the _only_ thing somebody sees and they slowly come to believe that satire/parody is reality then it gets problematic. The chance that the parody becomes the preconceptions of an entire nation or even language group is high. That makes real interactions more difficult than they have to be.
Edit: the letter eszett ß was a creation of the first type setters. The original S shape was a very long, thin letter in the lead type cast used in printing presses. However this long S had a tendency to either bend if it was made with a very thin base; or the letter was far apart from another S due to the thicker base. They simply couldn't be placed close together. Therefore for any double s s indicating a strongly voiced s sound a single lead letter was die cast with a single long S and a short underslung under the short serif at the top (the top bow of the S). This was later simplified into the ß letter to indicate a sharp S sound. This allowed a fairly broad base for the type setting in printing presses plus a shorter distance of these letters within words, allowing for a more natural looking spacing.
Edit 2 the 79 letter word Rindfleischettikettierungsaufgabenübertragungsüberwachungsgesetz is a law for the control of the hand-over of departmental tasks in the labeling of beef meats. If you split it up and translate it it doesn't get any better in English. To explain it, one government sector (agriculture) previously controlled how beef meats were labelled. When another institution (the ministry for food) got control over the labeling of foods the tasks had to be handed over from one ministry to the other. This required a law how the regulations were handed over and how the changes were communicated to all involved parties as well that all necessary tasks and rights had been correctly transferred.
Phew, okay, that was the explanation. And yes, that's an example of the type of hell that is the bureaucracy of Germany.😂
meaning ß a ligature (of the old slender s and z or a second s; may be spelled "ss" nowadays)
6:18 - Here it's actually made out of eight words. But the writing here is also wrong. Tho whole and actual name is Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz.
So exactly 10 words if you count the two syllables in the beginning and the "und" too.
Or short: RkReÜAÜG M-V (bc it's from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern).
I'll try to sum the meaning of the word up;
It's a law to assign/regulate people, who have the job to check/ examine the labels of beef as well as the labeling of the cows.
I think of the German word "Heimat". There's no word in English that accurately describes this feeling.
"Heimat" is a place where you've grown up or with which you feel strongly connected.
It's a very intense feeling of: This is where I belong! This is where I can really be myself.
And than are a lot of English words, that touch my heart deeply. And where are no expressions in German.
Hi Joel, I've been following your channel for some time now. Possibly, the time has come to looķ closer into the German language and culture.
So I would like to draw your attention to the channel 'Listen to German with Anna'. You could start with 'Das Lied der Lorelei'/'The Song of the Lorelei' by Herman Hesse. This has bilingual subtitles is is by the way one of the German Classics, really beautiful. And from there, it's easy to carry on.
Great video. I am German and I love Germany and my language. 😊 I live in the south of Germany (Black Forest) near the boarder to France and Switzerland. We speak a German dialect called: Alemannisch. It's similar to the swiss dialect . (the swiss dialect is also called: Schwizerdütsch/Schweizerdeutsch). We got also French words in our dialect like "Trottoir" which means "Bürgersteig" in German and "sidewalk" in English. We got a spezific grammatic as well^^. the Germans from Hamburg, Hannover, etc often dont understand what we are saying, if we talk in our dialect. 😂 We got some funny words like "wunderfitzig = neugierig = inquisitive" or "Goschehobel = Mundharmonika (an Instrument) = Harmonica. German is real crazy because many areas got dialects like this😂. Greetz from Germany😉
EVERY language sounds aggressive when it's shouted. Feli from Germany has made several videos about this.
It is interesting how a language sounds different from different viewpoints. For me as a German the language souunds absolutely beautiful. When I watch a Netflix flim and switch to American English it sounds to me much darker than German. Changing back to German feels to me like switching on the light in a dark room. Maybe this is because the German language has all these "hissing" sounds, there are a lot of these sharp "s" sounds or "sch" or both to of the "ch" sounds (one spoken in frount like "ich" and the other guturral like "noch") which have high frequency in fourier analysis. In Arabic there are even more guttural sounds. This is why I never watch Netflix in English because espcially the American English is not enjoyable to me.
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
Gesetz: Law
Übertragung: Transfer
Aufgaben: Duties/chores
Überwachung: supervision
Ettiketierung: labelling
Rindfleisch: beef (Rind: cattle, Fleisch: meat/beef)
So it’s the law that transfers the duty to supervise the labelling of beef.
As a german.. what always gets me and apparently most people forget: Hitler was not german
Ever heard of the Holy Roman Empire of the german nation?
Österreicher
Für euch deutschen sind wir Österreicher immer deutsche die einfach nicht einsehen wollen dass sie es sind.... bis ihr festhalten müsst das h.tler ja on Wirklichkeit kein deutscher war.
1.: Ihr habt ihr gewählt und gross gemacht nicht wir. Östereich hatte damit nicht das geringste zu tun.
2. Der bömische gefreite war zu dem Zeitpunkt als ihr ihn groß gemacht habt deutscher Staatsbürger
Wens um die Sprache geht, so hatte der Herr privat einen weichen öberösterreichische Akzent und seine berühmten reden wurden in einem, mit Hilfe von deutschen sprachtrainern einstudierten, Bühnendeutsch gehalten das mit keinem einzigen österreichischen Dialekt auch nur die geringste ähnlichkeit hat....
Ihr habt ihn gewählt also könnt ihr ihn auch behalten.....
@@tobiasfreitag2182 Ich würdemal behaupten, hier hat gar keiner Hitler gewählt. Es ist 2024, guten Morgen auch.
@@tobiasfreitag2182Deine Rechtschreibung ist echt unter aller Sau. Sorry!
Unsere Sprache ist eine schöne Sprache. Voller Poesie und Zartheit. ... Unsere Sprache wird gerne verfälscht, verhitlert. Obwohl, wenn man sich etliche Sprachen von Hitler anhört, so können wir hören, daß auch dieser Mensch durchaus ein klares Deutsch oder Österreichisch redet (Hitler war Österreicher).
Goethe, Schiller, Novalis schrieben in deutsch.
Wußten Sie, daß Menschen, die Hegel lesen und verstehen wollen, extra Deutsch lernen?
JFK liebte Deutschland! Warum wohl?!
Jedes Land hat seine dunklen Flecken. und Geschichten. Ein jedes!
Und Deutschland schrieben und komponierten große Geister, Männer wie Frauen!
Die Liebe ist die einzige Antwort! ...
GOTT ist die Liebe, und wer in der Liebe bleibt, der bleibt in GOTT!
Lies und höre das auf deutsch!
Danke für diese sehr informative Video!
If I didn't already know English, I would learn it for this channel. It is so beneficial to experience such positive perspectives from you.
So, now, I have to say: Every language can sound ugly and nice. It is the intention how and what you will say that makes the sound of a language comfortable or repulsive. And the sound of the voice from the one who is speaking it 😉
Fern always makes movies in short. Absolutely great content from them.
German is a much politer, smoother and melodic language than English or Dutch. You should hear someone from Düren. They sing all day, even when getting in a fight. Fantastic. My aunt came from Düren and I could listen to her for hours when she complained about her sore feet. So I believe the aggressiveness is not true.
that´s how Americans always impersonate the language... but it is a lot older than Hitler. The classic Grimm brothers fairy tales were written in German, Mozart/Bach/Beethoven/Goethe/Schiller spoke and wrote in German and a very long time ago the language "Germanic" changed and developed into modern day German ...and English! Like two children growing up, getting married, have kids and their lives moving on in different directions... one great great great grandchild of that language today is the "American version of English" and it´s parent was "British version of English" and the British version developed out of Anglo-Saxon (basically Germanic) ....🐓🐤🐤🐥🐣🥚
The strange thing is that people say Americans tend to speak (their accent and sometimes their vocabulary) an earlier form of British English.
Trevor Noah, the black guy you wondered whether he is American, is (or rather was) actually a very great American late show host and a stand-up comedian, who is South African and whose father is Swiss, a language Germans usually find sounds much more aggressive than German (that is Swiss German, not Swiss Italian, Swiss French or Romansh)… He did not grow up with his father, I think, because he was conceived during the South African apartheid regime, but he has met his Swiss father and family as far as I know…
"very great" is a matter of opinion, to say it lightly. Otherwise you're right.
@@XmarkedSpot as most things are… I really enjoyed him on his show… And, since after the election, Jon Stewart will probably drop out of the later show again, it would be great to have at least Noah back…
@@Attirbful You do you. Have a nice one!
@@XmarkedSpot I most certainly will! Same to you!
German is my third language (1- Portuguese, 2- English, 3- German, 4- French, hopefully some day Italian) and I am trying to refresh it once It's been ages since I had German lessons (in school). Well hearing Rammstein and T. L. Twenty-four seven really helps... (yeap I know the rrrr thing with Till...). Anyway, I love earing German way more than English or French.
Although Rammstein in particular sounds extremely aggressive. But that's what Rammstein intended. Unfortunately, many non-Germans now think that Germans talk as aggressively as Rammstein sings. If someone spoke to me like that, I wouldn't exchange a word with them.
@@SlimNesbitt Not all songs are agressive sound (it's industrial metal right?). But I do understand what you mean. Nevertheless it's a fun way to revive my German. :-)
there is a good line from another video (I don't know which one sadly): "every language sounds aggressive when you shout it". If you speak in a normal tone German sounds pretty standard. If you shout in Spanish or Italian they sound harsh aswell. For me the Arabic languages sound like a declaration of war everytime 🤷♂
5:30 "Scheisze" describes very well the quality of this video so far. 😉
Greetings from Germany 🤜🤛
Since this video mentioned the fate of the German language/culture in the USA, here's a little, okay, not so little, background that _some_ may find interesting.
Germans clearly emigrated to North America/USA for a variety of reasons. Simply put, these were economic, political, religious and familial in nature. Economic opportunity predominates as a rationale for almost all emigration. At least some mid-19th century and World War II era emigration was motivated by politics when there was a great deal of social-political upheaval in what is today Germany. Germany, of course, didn't become a unified country until 1871. Religion was a periodic factor in emigration. For example, many confessional Lutherans were unhappy after Frederick William III united both the Lutheran and Reformed churches in Prussia. The Prussian landed-aristocracy tended to be Reformed, following the fashion of the King/Kaiser, whereas most common people remained Lutheran. The Lutherans and their pastors were on-and-off subjected to harassment for remaining strictly Lutheran in dogma. Because of this harassment and because they tired at being beholden to some minor aristocrat landowner, many Lutherans chose to emigrate.
Emigration became easier from the mid-19th onwards because steamships became commonplace. Although neither worry-free nor luxurious, the journey from Germany to America was becoming faster, cheaper and less arduous as the 19th century progressed. Emigration laws began to set minimum standards for provisions and hygiene aboard ship, and the competition between the German shipping companies for emigrant traffic also ensured increasing comfort. Norddeutscher Lloyd and Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft were two such companies. Bremen/Bremerhaven was the principal port of departure for emigrants from the German Rhine Provinces. Hamburg was preferred by emigrants from Northeastern German states like Mecklenburg and Prussia. There were other, smaller German emigrant ports like Stettin, but these were minor players compared to Bremen and Hamburg in terms of numbers. The first counting of immigrants to the USA began in 1820. About 152,000 German immigrants entered the country in the 1820s. In the decade of the 1840s, the number rocketed to 1.7 million. Between 1820 and 1920 about 5.5 million immigrants arrived in the USA from Germany. After 300 years of German emigration, more than 7 million Germans came to North America/USA.
In order to answer labor shortages and to create markets for goods, some American states formed "immigration societies" to facilitate immigration. Businesses also recognized the advantages of immigration. Germany was seen as a prime source of such labor. American railroads had been granted large swaths of land in order to construct railroads by the federal government. The railroads wanted to sell the excess land to immigrants who could also help in constructing the railroads. So, the railroads would send first-generation German-Americans to their home villages in Germany as agents to recruit emigrants and facilitate their travel. The emigrants' travel might be partially subsidized. If these agents were caught by the German authorities, they would be arrested and deported. Officially, emigrants had to obtain permission to emigrate. As a result of immigration, places like Pommern became depopulated, which may have created problems down-the-line.
By the end of the 19th century, German-Americans and German culture were generally accepted as necessary threads in the fabric of American life. They were less geographically and culturally isolated than in previous generations and increasingly spoke English as a first, rather than a second, language, while maintaining a vital written culture in German. German was widely taught in American public schools and was studied by both German and non-German students. German-Americans generally succeeded economically in America.
For German-Americans, the early 20th century was a time of growth and consolidation. Their numbers increased, they were successful in their endeavors, and Americans of German heritage rose to positions of great power and distinction. For German-American culture, however, the new century brought severe setbacks, including a devastating blow from which it never fully recovered. That was World War I. World War I brought a backlash against German culture in the USA. When war was declared on Germany in 1917, anti-German sentiment rose to a fever-pitch across the USA. German-American institutions came under suspicion and attack. Some discrimination, although hateful, was cosmetic: The names of schools, foods, streets, and towns were often changed. Music by German composers was removed from concert programs and even weddings. Government agents would attend church services and monitor what was being preached. Physical attacks, though rare, could be violent. German-American businesses and homes were vandalized, and German-Americans accused of being "pro-German" were tarred and feathered. In at least once instance, a German pastor named Edmund Kayser was murdered for being pro-German.
The most pervasive damage was done, however, to German language and education in the US. Before the war, there were hundreds of German-language newspapers, magazines and books published. War hysteria resulted in the newspapers either being run out-of-business or choosing to quietly close their doors on their own accord. German-language books were burned. Americans who spoke German in public were threatened with violence or boycotts. German-language instruction, until then a common part of the public-school curriculum, was discontinued and, in many areas, outlawed. None of these institutions ever fully recovered afterwards, and the centuries-old tradition of German language and literature in the United States was pushed to the margins of national life, and in many places effectively ended.
During World War I, German-Americans were often accused of being too sympathetic to Imperial Germany. A small minority did, in fact, come-out for Germany, such as H. L. Mencken, and Harvard psychology professor Hugo Münsterberg who dropped his efforts to mediate between the US and Germany and threw his efforts behind the German cause. The US Justice Department prepared a list of all German aliens, counting approximately 480,000 of them, more than 4,000 of whom were involuntarily interred in camps between 1917-18. The allegations against them included spying for Germany or endorsing the German war effort. Thousands were forced to buy US war bonds to show their loyalty. The American Red Cross barred individuals with German last names from joining in fear of sabotage. In Collinsville, Illinois, German-born Robert Prager was dragged from jail as a suspected spy and lynched. A Minnesota minister was tarred and feathered when he was overheard praying in German with a dying woman. Questions over German-American loyalty increased due to events like the sabotage bombing of Black Tom island (an ammunition depot supplying Britain). Many German-Americans were arrested for refusing allegiance to the USA.
In Chicago, Frederick Stock temporarily stepped down as leader of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra until his naturalization papers were finalized. Orchestras replaced music by German composers with French composers. In Cincinnati, the public library was asked to remove all German books from its shelves. German-named streets were renamed. The town, Berlin, Michigan, was changed to Marne, Michigan. In Iowa, in the 1918 Babel Proclamation, the governor prohibited all foreign language instruction in schools and use in public places. Nebraska banned instruction in any language except English, eventually the US Supreme Court ruled the ban illegal after the war. The response of German-Americans to these tactics was often to "Americanize" given names and surnames, e.g., Carl to Charles, Schmidt to Smith, Müller to Miller. Even before the war, German-American Gen. John J. Pershing's family had changed their name from Pfoerschin. German-Americans would avoid using German in public places, especially churches. One government official warned that "Every citizen must declare himself American or traitor." Many German-Americans struggled with their feelings, realizing that sympathy for their homeland appeared to conflict with loyalty to the USA.
Anti-German feelings were a problem again during World War II, but not quite as problematic as they had been during the first World War. There were still some internments, though, I believe. The loyalty of German-Americans was not questioned as virulently. After all, a lot of the US military hierarchy were of German-American heritage.
After the war, one more surge of German immigrants arrived in the United States as survivors of the conflict sought to escape its grim aftermath. These new arrivals were extremely diverse in their political viewpoints, their financial status, and their religious beliefs, and settled throughout the U.S. German immigration to the United States continues to this day, though at a much slower pace than in the past, carrying on a tradition of cultural enrichment, a tradition that has shaped much of what is quintessentially American.
guides.loc.gov/germans-in-america/chronology
Wir Deutschen können Licht (hell) von etwas Leichtem (wenig Gewicht) unterschieden.
Licht ist nicht leicht.
We Germans can distinguish light (bright) from something light (low weight).
Light is not light.
Ein Deutscher besucht sein Freund in Amsterdam. An der Haustür steht 3 x bellen. Aber auch nach - wauw wauw wauw - tut sich nichts. Da ist er kopfschüttelnd abgehauen.
"... Zapperlot, dat Ding ward lichter" (Max und Moritz by Wilhelm Busch)
Depends on the dialect, though ;-)
I guess it’s the influence from the Hitler regime, that many people from other countries think, our language sounds aggressive. Back in the days the microphones weren’t the best and many people had to scream in them. It was to ensure that all people could hear them. I heard an interview with Hitler and he was very soft spoken there.
My husband‘s relative heard one time, how I sung an old song called „Herbstlied“ to my daughter and she loved it so much, that she wants to learn German too. (I’m a bad singer, but she liked how soft the words sounded)
Bullshit
Some languages are easier on ear than other, that's true. But I don't think German language sounds aggressive. I think it's how it's been perceived in pop culture. It's the connection we get from soldiers shouting in war movies and Hitler's yelling rants or Rammstein's dark music. But listen for example to Goethe's Wandrers Nachtlied song and you will agree that German is soothing calm as well.
Omg, is it still mandatory for US-stand-ups to hawk around Hitler/Goebbels voice imitations? Didn´t know that....
Also I think in recent years Rammstein did their thing for the perception of the german language. Maybe try another band with soft spoken words like Annenmaykantereit ua-cam.com/video/SpdVsST7liw/v-deo.html There is an acceptable translation of the song on genius.
Just imagine "ß" to mean a double "s" in anything and you're pretty close.
German does not sound aggressive at all. However, those of us of a certain generation, are immediately reminded of the rousing speeches of a certain Austrian painter.
From a German Neighbor for France:
A saying is " Le français est fait pour râler, l'allemand pour gueuler" : French is made for complaining, German for yelling...
It's due from two factors Second Reich and third reich.
The first gave us 1870 and our bloodiest war - 1.7 millions of death in a country of 39 millions people at this time -, the second it's self explanatory...
Failed Austrian painter!
The media make it agressive. Only Hitler talked like this, bit he was from Austria
Really enjoyed this post Joel and having had a Scots father I'm not unfamiliar with the gutteral 'Ach' sound. For me with a foreign languge the difficulty is always getting used to the rhythm, how the words flow. Yes, some more along these lines please. Danke. 👍👍
Its just like Glaswegian
A nice reaction to a great video about the most beautiful language in the world.
In my opinion, the German language is often perceived as aggressive because many Americans were influenced by propaganda videos from World War II, in which an Austrian loudly declared war on other countries. These videos were deliberately made to sound aggressive. This portrayal has led to the general association of the German language with aggression, even though this is not the natural tone of the language.
There is beautiful German poetry ...
Like others have stated, the thought of the harsh language comes from media that often portrays it in that way. It is supposed to sound like the evil speeches of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels from the 1940s. Furthermore, popular music like common german Rap (Sido, Cro), Tic Tac Toe (Warum, Verpiss Dich) from the 90s and Joachim Witt (Goldener Reiter, Die Flut) from the 80s gives the same feeling.
In reality there are quite a few Germans that have an outstandingly soft and fluffy voice, but aren't heard that way often. One of my favorite German songs, Kein Zurück by Wolfheim (ua-cam.com/video/UjsvyeBWNQQ/v-deo.html), has a nice mixture of the serious tone of the songs subjects, but the voice keeps on flowing.
The Eszett is also in Beißen, which starts with B.
Some German dialects are softer than others, some are sing-songy...
If people enounciate standard German very clearly, e.g. because the other is still learning, it might sound harsher and more hacked than normal speaking.
@@la-go-xy Me, a Swabian :)
@@LexusLFA554 so, from a sing-songy region :-)
The many "sch" counteract that somewhat, though.
The Eszett you are probably talking about is in "Straße", or "...-straße" - which would be Street in English. Since every company has an adress you can probably find it on the packaging if the company is based in Germany, Austria or Switzerland
Compund words are very practical to describe new items by combining old words like for a glove - a "Handschuh". As many will have already guessed it is a shoe (=protectional device) for the hand. English sometimes uses the same principle, for example with 'fly': butterfly, dragonfly, firefly.
But all things should be done with moderation. That "Rinder........" at 6:23 happens when people in legal profession run amok It is the name of a law. Usually they squeeze the name of a law that is really long enough to fill a whole sentence in ONE word --- and you get legalese, a language ordinary people don't understand. I am German ans I am quote literate but here it takes me too several seconds to seperate all those words that got in this monsterword to be able to read it let alone comprehend what I just read.
Another example you often see starts with "Donaudampfschiff....". There once was a shipping company on the danube (=Donau) that had a complicated name. It starts the beginning of a silly (kids-)game to find a word that is a bit longer than what the last kid had and soon you will end up with 'colour of the peak of the cap of a captain of a ship of the danbian shipping company using steam boats...'. This a bit less difficult to read but almost as unincomrehensible as the German monsterword and also a description nobody would want to use in daily life - no matter of Engllish, American or German.
German is one of the most beautiful languages there is. It often sounds harsh and aggressive to non-German speakers. One reason why many people still feel this way is the use of the German language during the 3rd Reich. Those 12 years turned the language of poets and thinkers into the language of beasts and murderers. Hitler specially adopted a style of language that sounds particularly aggressive. What you hear in his speeches is not his normal language. But he and his comrades-in-arms not only wanted to burn books, they also wanted to change the language.
In Germany, there are around 20 different dialects and three separate languages. The transitions are fluid, and in some federal states we encounter several language variants at once. To ensure that all Germans understand each other, there is “High German”. The dialects are often incomprehensible to the individual. Although German, they are completely different. High German is taught in schools. At home, people often speak their own dialect. There are also some dialects in Austria, Switzerland and other neighboring countries.
So, enough. Now you know why Germans have a reputation for being good teachers. Give him a word, and he'll make a book out of it. ☯☮💖
Hi. If you are interested in how English and German are connected, you should give a video of RobWords a try called "How Anyone (Including You) Can Read German".
the ß is often in adresses because its in the word Straße which meens street
Jetzt müssen wir uns auch noch für unsere Sprache entschuldigen? Deutschland wird also doch abgeschafft.
You can shout or speak harsh in any Language. We have just other Sounds or Letters.Tz, Sp, St, Sch, ch, eu, Au, Äu.
A lot of languages have these sounds as well. Especially tz, sch, and ch (like in Nacht).
The more to the north the nicer German sounds, low Saxon is the best, it is the same dialect we speak in the North east of the Netherlands.., or used to speak...
Geschmackssache
There was one austrian painter who started a lot of trouble and he was yelling aggressively all the time in public speeches. It was so much, that even my german then teenage grandmother turned off the radio, when his speeches were on, because she couldn't stand it. And that example is seen as the international standard for how german sounds 80 years later still.
ß - this letter is called "sharpe s" and the reason is that it is pronounced fast and sharp or voiced. Nowadays word spelling has changed and a word like "bißchen" is written "bisschen". So "ß" could stand for double s or sz.
Right up to the 1970s, every business person in Commonwealth countries with a German accent was "Austrian." I remember thinking, I must visit Austria - half the people I meet are from there.
German varies greatly in sound from one region to another. I find the German spoken in Austria, Bavaria (inc Bayerisch) and southern Germany, much easier on the ear than that spoken further north. The "ch" is a soft "sh" sound in the south, but like the ch in loch in the north, for example. Swiss German is simply weird. 😅
I‘m living in Switzerland about 9 years yet. 😂 Even, when Swiss people are angry, they sound extremely cute. 😅
My favorite words are herzig, hässig and Schafseckel.
There is this parody of a Hitler speach by Charlie Chaplin in the movie The Dictator, when the mic got scared and tried to hide. That's why people think the German language is harsh, despite Chaplin, in this speach, spoke a phantasy language with no meaning.
When visiting my family in England, and talking to my wife in German, quite often they think we are arguing.
Listen to Werner Herzog speaking English. Yeah- the villian in "Jack Reacher-2" He is a living stereotype of the German language. But what he is saying is damn deep and philosophic.
The reason why ß is often in adresses is quite simple: Because of the word Straße, which means street.
So any adress that has the German equivalent of -street in it also has an ß. Though Straße is also sometimes spelt Strasse.
If you find an S at the beginning or in the middle of a German word, the usual pronunciation will be soft, like the English Z-sound. If you want to indicate the English S-sound, you use double S spelling or the Eszett. Germans also call it "scharfes S" meaning sharp-S, which makes sense when you think about the sibilance of it. An S at then end of a word in German also takes the sharp pronunciation.
1:45 That one is from the British comedy Format "Live at the Apollo", so he's probably Brititsh. But I guess, German has that reputation all over the world.
8:50 But most important issue figured out to be the retraction of Coca Cola products from German market. This led to introduction of "Bluna", a lemonade without cola and without coca. 😂
the comedian is trevor Noah from south africa. His father is from Switzerland.
5:19 This „ß“ is in addresses in the street. „Straße“ means street. When I wrote my adress I always write „Strasse“ instead of „Straße“
The deliveryroom in Hospitals named „Kreißsaal“ it came from the old word „kreißen“ for screaming