The German Language

"Thank you for travelling with Deutsch Bahn" - the next time I travel by an ICE, I am going to pay careful attention to this announcement, especially the words 'Thank' and 'with'. Wondering why? At the DAAD Stammtisch this Mittwoch (that’s Wednesday in German), I met an American girl who was majoring in Linguistics and the topic for her Masters thesis was the German pronunciation of the English 'th'.

The love Europeans have towards weather-talk is well-documented but from my experience their favourite topic of conversation is 'languages and accents'. One of the first questions I am bombarded with after my revelation of my Indian origins is 'how many languages you people have and how many of them can you speak?’ So, I will take a leaf out of their book and write a blog on the German language.

The German syllable which has attracted my fascination is the 'tsch' which although not exactly same, is quite similar to the 'ch' in English('ch' as in 'chair' not as in 'choir'). You must have noticed it making an appearance in 'Deutsch'. Its usage is quite widespread as you can see in 'Tschüss' meaning 'bye' and 'Tschechischen Republik' which stands for the Czech Republic. Even after knowing this, I would revere you, if you manage to give me the correct German spelling of the Russian tennis player, Anna Chakvetadze. Another syllable which is interesting in relation to Deutsch is the 'j'. Now, you might be aware that like the Dutch, the Germans pronounce 'j' as 'y'; as is evident in the utterance of 'ja' meaning yes (I guess that is from where we have got the English slang 'ya') or 'Joachim'. But what I found weird was that the Germans resemble the Iberians in the way they pronounce the English 'je'. You will know what I mean in case you have heard how the name Javier of the Argentine midfielder Mascherano is pronounced. With this background, I guess they would spell 'Chechnya' as ‘Tschetschnija’.

Even so, German system of spelling isn't flawed like English. Just like in Indian languages, you pronounce as you spell and vice-versa. But all those I have interacted with seem to agree on one point; that German has the most difficult grammar and sentence construction among all European languages. Another notable feature of German is that all nouns, even common nouns, have their first letter capital.

Moving on to vocabulary, I have 3 favourites here. Anyone who has given GRE recently might recollect that 'apothecary' means a druggist. Well if you have ever visited Germany there is no way on earth you will ever forget that. 'Apotheke' is the German word for 'Chemist' and you find these 'Apotheke' shops all over the place. With infectious ailments almost absent here, I have often wondered how so many of them manage to sustain. Do you know the evolution of the word 'bus'? It is actually an abbreviation of 'omnibus' meaning for everyone since a bus is a means of transport for everyone. Now, although colloquial German does take the liberty of using the abridged version, formal announcements in trains and trams always say 'omnibusbahnof' while referring to a bus-top. The names of all weekdays in English end in ‘day’. The same is the case with Hindi and Marathi. But German has one anomaly. Although Monday in Montag and Tuesday is Dienstag (tag means day in German), as I already mentioned above Wednesday is Mittwoch meaning middle of the week. At least, that solves the dichotomy as to on which day does the week begin; Sonntag or Montag.

Apparently, there are more than 50 different dialects in Germany, some quite similar, some mutually unintelligible. The ‘standard’ Deutsch used in newspapers or businesses is ‘Hochdeutsch’. That is also the dialect you will learn if you enrol for a language course in the Max-Muller Bhavans in India. Although it is understood almost everywhere in Germany, it is practised in regular usage only by people from the Hannover-Hamburg region. Even the state of Baden-Württemberg has 2 different dialects – Badish, in use on the Western slopes of the Blackforest and Swabian, spoken along the Eastern slopes. According Thomas, a friend of mine, who hails from Stuttgart and has majored in American history, Swabian speaking people find it easiest to imitate the American-English accent. Another very strange German dialect is the Alemannic, which most Germans, used to other dialects, find difficult to comprehend.

In spite of so much diversity within, a German is quick to distinguish a foreigner on the basis of his accent, irrespective of his lexical and grammatical perfection. Not just that, they can even pin-point the nationality of the foreigner (if he is European of course) on hearing him utter a few sentences in German. And the same goes to a German, fluent in English, who has migrated to the UK. And here I thought only Indians discriminated on linguistic basis!