User:Sprachkind/German


 * My little personal contribution to keep track of all the terms and other German used on the show. Hopefully somewhat useful and/or entertaining.
 * Comments, requests, and questions can go on the talk page here or my user talk page.

Translations
Note: Basis for language discussion and critique is (usually) contemporary Standard German. Since that is what the show is apparently working from, or trying to, i.e. they do not seem to actively aim for 'historical' German, or try to immitate morphological changes of the terms through time and adoption by different language-speakers. Which could account for a multitude of weirdnesses (but afaik they haven't even given that as a handwave-y reason). Hence everything will be judged first by modern standards of spelling, grammar, etc.

Common problems
So in general the show's writers have problems with:
 * bad compounds: merely sticking words together (like it's done in English) without fitting them the way they work in German (i.e. with the proper interfix); or putting the wrong types together:
 * ignoring differences between nouns/adjectives/verbs; lots of them look identical in English, but not in German
 * determinans/determinatum swap: swapping the describing and described word in a compound resulting in a completely different meaning
 * dictionary slip: looking up a word in a dictionary or machine translator, and then picking the wrong word for the intended meaning (e.g. the Mellischwuler)

German primer

 * Just a place for a variety of language issues. (Note that they may be more complicated if examined in full (as are all things), but here are reduced to the necessary and 'every-day' basics for brevity and usability.)

German language divisions and history

 * Since there sometimes seems to be a bit of confusion about the terms.

Internally the German language is split into varying dialectical regions. Approximately the nothern third of Germany is/was the region of Low German, while the lower two thirds are High German; the latter is split in half into the northern Middle German and southern Upper German. Standard German is a form of High German (which is often used as a synonym for Standard German).

High German language development is historically split into the following phases: Old High German (8-11th century), Middle High German (11-14th), Early New High German (14-17th), New High German (17th-today). The Grimms worked in the 19th century, and so spoke New High German, same language as today.

Spelling & special letters
The umlauts ä, ö, ü: they are proper sounds/letters on their own and cannot just be exchanged for regular a, o, u without changing the words pronounciation or meaning, to either render it a different one or nonsensical. They developed from writing the vowel letter with an added e beside or above it, the latter which developed into the dots. If the version with the dots are not or cannot be used, umlauts can still be written as "vowel+e": ae, oe, ue (e.g. the name Goethe).

The ß (Eszett or 'sharp s') is historically a ligature of sz, but nowadays replaced by ss if the letter is not available. Generally, ß follows after long vowels and diphthongs, while ss marks short vowels.

All nouns are capitalised in German; this helps with faster and easier reading and less ambiguity (e.g. as some word may be identically written but have different meanings and pronunciations, e.g. long Weg vs. short weg: "a way" vs. "away"). Funnily enough, the Grimm brothers were against this way of capitalisation, promoting and themselves writing without capitalising nouns.

ie & ei are commonly confused by English speakers because in German they are the other way round phonetically: In German ie is a long 'i'/'ee' and the diphthong ei is like in "pie". Hence why things like Frieden, Sieg, Tolkien often get their ie swapped to ei when spelt by English speakers.


 * I wonder if anyone actually reads this far? Or finds it useful. Comments, requests, and questions can go on the talk page.