So, we were talking about the “simple” elements in German language. We already talked about the pronunciation and the spelling parts. Now for the third element –
3. ‘Logical’ Word building
The one thing I love the most about the German language is its word building. It’s very modular and logical and something very ‘literal’. For example, it doesn’t take you long to realize that prefixes ein-, aus-, and um- are members of the same club and describe the spatial orientation/association of something. Ein- is ‘in’, Aus- is ‘out’ and Um- is ‘around’. So, the words einsteigen, aussteigen and umsteigen are easily understood and remembered once you know that the meaning of ‘steigen’ is to board (a train, for example) or step into. Thus, Einsteigen is board (a vehicle). Austeigen is de-board or alight (from the vehicle) and Umsteigen is to change (the train/bus/…). Same logic applies to words – Einziehen, Ausziehen and Umziehen, that respectively mean to move into a house, to move out of a house and to change houses. (Funnily enough, the word ‘ziehen’ is also used in the context of dressing/undressing, i.e. Einziehen is to dress, Ausziehen to undress and Umziehen to change. This makes for nice jokes or even advertisements. For example, a moving truck carried an ad that displayed a seductive photo of a woman undressing and the line read – “Umziehen kann so schön sein” [“Undressing/Moving can be beautiful!”])
With such nice logic about their prepositions, German does a favor to the learners. To be fair though, pre-/postpositions of pretty much all languages function in the same way. That’s the fundamental reason of having pre-/postpositions in the first place.
Germans can be sometimes a people of very strict, almost “mechanical”, logic. That’s the stereotype anyway. And I see that a nice characteristics because it makes their lives and mine and the country quite orderly. And this “mechanical” quality is also reflected in the German language. Some German words are so literal, clinical or “raw”, that you, the learner, is taken aback. “Really?! That’s a real word? I thought it was just a wordplay!” I said so many times to my colleagues after they told me the word for some or other concept. Case in point – “Schwerkraft”. I knew that ‘schwer’ meant heavy and ‘kraft’ means force. But not in a million years would I have thought that ‘Schwerkraft’ meant ‘gravity’ (the physical force of gravitation). “Yep! German can be so simple!” said my colleague, laughing at my surprised expressions. In a similar vein of being too literal, the words ‘Staubsauger’ (‘Dirt sucker’ = Vacuum cleaner), ‘Glühbirne’ (‘Glowing pear’ = light bulb), and ‘Elf-meter schießen’ (’11 meter shooting’ = penalty kick in soccer) can also be mentioned. German language is full of them and every time I learn a new such word, it amuses me so! Yes, German can be so simple at times.
Another aspect of German word building, and the most iconic among all the languages, is its compound words, i.e. words that simply combine 2, 3, 4, … constituent words together. “What’s the upper limit of that?” you might ask. Well, there is none. Theoretically, you can combine infinite number of words to make up new words and this leads to infinite number of jokes. For example, a comic shows two people playing scrabble in German. They are standing at the opposite ends of a gigantic tables and moving their tiles with long sticks. (The joke premise is that German has horribly long words) Another running joke about this is the German word – Donaudampfschifffahrtgesellschaftskapitän. When you break this compound noun into constituents, and you have to learn to recognize the constituents, you get – Donau (river Danube), Dampf (steam), Schiff (ship), Fahrt (travel), Gesellschaft (company), and Kapitän (captain). The word ‘simply’ means – The captain of the Steamship travel company on the river Danube. Wow, right!? (For me, another amusing thing about such long words is that sometimes they include three identical consonants in a row – 3 fs in the above example. I have not seen such an occurrence in any other language so far!) It’s at this point that some cheeky people add further words to the giant word – Donaudampfschifffahrtgesellschaftskapitänsmütze (the last word Mütze means a cap or a hat) or Donaudampfschifffahrtgesellschaftskapitänswitwe (Witwe = widow). And of course, you could be further adventurous by adding even more words to that. Brim of the hat? Handkerchief of the widow? You pick.
Sure, it’s not easy, in the beginning, to know where the inner boundaries within the long words are and you might try to look up the whole thing in the dictionary (like I did while reading the first Harry Potter book) but once you have built up a little vocabulary, you will be able to see them and the big words would rather amuse than intimidate.
In summary, the German word building is one of the most logical system I have seen. I remember my English learning days. It seemed like they had a new word for every new concept (and so many different words for that one concept too) and I hated memorizing them. Sure, I eventually started to find the underlying modularity in them but German’s modularity and logic is of a whole other level … I think. And it should definitely help you in your learning journey. A word of caution though. German also has some difficult elements (at least they were difficult to me), things like 3 grammatical genders for nouns (and you have to memorize if a noun is masculine, feminine or neutral; thankfully, my knowledge of Hindi prepared for this concept), 4 sentence “cases”, and different endings for verbs, adjectives and nouns depending on the gender and the case. But don’t let that deter you from learning German. If I can, you can surely can. And you’ll get a big help from Germany and Germans in this –
Germany makes big efforts in teaching you German
Last point on my agenda, and it’s a very important one, is the German learning ecosystem. Whether it’s because the people of the DACH countries (D = Deutschland/Germany, A = Austria, and CH = Confederation Helvetica otherwise known as Switzerland) realize that their language is hard for others to learn or because they feel a bit guilty for expecting people to learn, the people and governments of these countries make big efforts to make learning of the language as easy for you as possible. The governments provide a lot of resources, mostly for free, for learners and the people are always ready to help and encourage you in your learning endeavor.
(Continued in the next part)