50 Hilarious Reasons Why The German Language Is The Worst
German may be the most widely spoken language in the European Union, but let's be honest - it's just downright funny sometimes. We roasted French, so now it's time for the German language to have its turn.
People around the world learning how to speak German have long struggled with German's fearsome grammar, in which multiple funny words are stuck together to make more descriptive terms. This leads to things like long, aggressive store names and job titles, as well as migraines for tourists and expats in Germany. The spelling of these long German words is an even more sensitive subject.
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Since German is an ancestor to English, a lot of funny German words were passed down to us but changed in spelling over time. The original German forms of these words now have... Well, 'interesting' connotations. See for yourself below.
Oh, and just for the lols, here is the longest word in German - Donaudampfschifffahtselektrizitatenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengessellschaft. Standing proudly at 80 letters, this word translates to "Association for Subordinate Officials of the Head Office Management of the Danube Steamboat Electrical Services" and is an absolutely real concoction of letters. Try not to break your tongue with it!
However, according to Olly Richards, a polyglot and the founder of I Will Teach You A Language, German actually isn't too difficult to master.
"One of the main reasons German isn’t all that hard to learn is that German and English originate from the same language families and share more similarities than you probably realize," Richards wrote. "Both German and English are Indo-European languages that stem from the Germanic family of languages. About 40% of German vocabulary is similar to English vocabulary, which is good news for native English speakers!"
Richards said that pronunciation is also more straightforward than you might think and grammar is relatively easy to pick up thanks to recognizable patterns. "If we examine the phrases 'what is that?' and 'was ist das?', the connections are obvious."
Also, the polyglot thinks that it's is much easier to pronounce words phonetically in German than in English. "In English, letters often change sounds without any logical explanation. This isn’t the case in German."
"Although some aspects of German may seem difficult, once you break the language down, it's not actually that hard."
Here Germany makes much more sense. Why make up a new word when you can repurpose old ones? Gloves really are “hand shoes.”
Sechs is german for six and sound almost like sex. Vier means four in german and sounds like fear. And fünf is german for five.
The French say "How are you called?" when they want to know your name. I suppose it's like asking "How do I get your attention?" really.
Brilliant, although it's a purposefully complicated joke name :D Fahrradständer is a real German name for a bicycle stand, above says something in line of "climate protection enforcing device securing place" ;)
I'd go with "Klugscheißer" (clever-pooper), don't know what that word above is supposed to mean.
And if you REALLY want to confuse them: Use Russian. They have two more cases.
For your information, German isn't shouted aggressively by Germans at all. We imply that from the second world war because of how the Gestapo were. If you say the above German word normally, it sounds quite nice.
Never ever in my quite long life have I heard anybody use that word lol.
Whoa! Same in Finnish, pesukarhu. I guess it comes directly from German.
Emphasis on the first syllable- possible grave bodily harm court case coming your way, emphasize the last part and you're good.
Well when you really think about the word "butterfly", is it a sexy word? Butter. Fly.
in swiss german (dialects from german, and just to be clear, each region has it's own swiss-german), we have some words which are endemic, like "Summervogel": literally it means summer-bird, practically it's butterfly or schmetterling...
In Danish and in Norwegian, the word for butterfly is "summerfugl". Not in Swedish though. I wonder why...
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The invention of butterflies came about like this: "Hey, you got butter on my fly!" "Well, you got a fly jammed into my butter!"
Etymology: butterflies love to fly around a butter churn, as they are attracted to the butterfat fermentation. In German, sour cream is called Schmand (or "Schmetten" in Bavaria - which is close to the Czech Republic, where cream is known as "smetana"). Semantics rock!
Note: this post originally had 86 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.
Really? I mean...did you ever hear italian people talking to each other? It looks and sounds like they would hit each other the next second. Same goes for arab people
The shouting and the hands flying everywhere while talking, might have some harsh words too. You never know if they are angry or happy. Then they hug and laugh
Waving a rolling pin doesn’t exactly scream “let me hug and kiss you” either.
Depends where the Italians or Arabs are from, in my mind. Levantene Arabic, for example, is soft and beautiful.
Ole Peder Amrud Hagen follower
Ole Peder Amrud Hagen lol
to be fair, most languages sound harsh and angry when you don't speak or understand the language.
danielw lol
carmelosf15 -
I agree with the arabians, but Italian, really? They sounds like they're always kind, like grampas cuddling you and filling you of food.
Not when they're arguing. :o)
Jéssica Gomes yes
I speak Italian, and I can confirm that it sounds no less aggressive when you're used to it. Then again, as an Italian, we're pretty aggressive by nature.
Chocoholic lol
Chocoholic good
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Indeed. Italian is probably the most beautiful of all languages.
I think italians just totally dont understand what another is saying, and so they result to some secret italian sign language.
Eh! Oh! Eh! Eh! Oh!
Oh, German! It's the wurst! ...I'll go
German here. That is actually funny.
I read most of those with the voice of Rammstein's lead singer, I'm laughing so hard crying
Rammstein ist not the best example how german sounds...
I remember when another kid brought rammstein in for my German teacher to hear... fun times mix, right there. I also remember once, when she had to detour through a back hallway before coming to our class. you know. "The" hallway. she had this shocked facial expression that itself would translate into "OH MY GOODNESS".
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I read it with the voice of the actor playing Hitler in this video (don't mind the subtitles it's just that as a scientist this video is in my favorites).
Are any German speakers here annoyed that people say you sound aggressive? I've actually moved on from World War 2 films...
I'm annoyed that in all movies of the present germans sound and look like nazis :D
It annoys me that people keep this stereotype as though there is any relation between modern Germans and the Nazis.
I got past that stereotype as a young adult and it's allowed me to travel to some lovely spots (Munich and the Bavarian Alps). On two or three occasions, Germans were disappointed for two seconds that my family name isn't German, but they had no issue with it being Jewish (it could have been Hittite for all they cared). Anyways, my not eating pork means more Schinken for everyone else. ;)
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Well, if the jackboot fits...
What annoys me are the myriads of Hitler and World War 2 jokes. Not because I'm offended and not because I don't want to be reminded of that dark chapter of our history. But because it's just boooooring. The same things over and over again, and they don't apply to present-day Germany at all. Come on, comedians, make fun of us in a more creative way! We are weird bunch with strange habits, it can't be that hard writing good jokes without implying we all talk like Hitler or Goebbels!
I'm not. I think German sounds aggressive or harsh to other people because in German it's important to pronounce the end of a word very clearly. Cause it makes a difference if you say "den" or "dem". Other languages tend to combine or blend words.
I think, the only time I heard somebody that sounded angry in German was my German teacher. She was born behind the Berlin Wall, so my history teacher tapped her to speak during WW2 week, and to be quite fair, she was really pissed. (in her classes, she spent an entire week around VE day talking about the Holocaust. it wasn't a very comfortable week, as you can imagine, but it was, she felt, necessary. and, she had a point). There was a kid who, apparently, didn't believe the Holocaust happened in that history class, and the dumbass said something to that effect. Lets just say the entire school learned some new and interesting words and phrases, from like four different languages. Normally, she was easily the sweetest, dearest woman you've ever met. Happy, bubbly- slightly too energetic. Way to honest and real a teacher.
@Roman Hans: It's like me saying I'm surprised you still use the word slavery.
1. I don't stereotype German language because I love it 💞💞 2. I get annoyed that in most films, the British actor is the villain. 3. I get annoyed that in most films and programs that do have a British character, its always a really posh old fashioned accent that they use 🙄
Does it look that bad if I tell just southern accent ?
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thank you for that.
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I posted online that I was surprised when I came to Germany and people were using words like Führer, Achtung, Jawohl, and Luftwaffe. German people replied really angrily, saying that’s their language and they’re not going to change it. Which is fine, but they need to know that Americans learned those words from Hogans Heroes and Hitler so they don’t exactly make a great impression on us.
Führer literally means leader/guide. Achtung means attention, Luftwaffe is the airforce. Why would we stop using these words?
A lot of the translations are wrong! Furthermore it's useless, to compare German words with only Roman languages! But some of the examples are very funny! :D
I tought the same thing. I speak Dutch (Flemish to be precise) and a lot of the words I understood because they have a lot of similarities with my language, both Germanic languages. So comparing them with Roman languages seems odd.
Most of the comparisons were to English, a Germanic language.
Eva Kranke love
So many wrong translations...like we don't say "Seidenkrawatte" we just say "Krawatte" - wich is not much different to the french, italian or spanish version. "Seide" is silk, but usually you don't name the material. And well "schmetterling" is a wrong word to describe the sound of the german language... If you pronounce "butterfly" like an army general it sounds hard as well. But you can say "Schmetterling" in a very soft way as well. And if you translate the meaning it says very small crushing wings, wich is much nicer than a fly wich sits on the butter :D Most of the examples are funny, but some are just wrong... or misspelled
Do air forces have a bootcamp-esque basic training? I want to see a hard bitten NCO screaming at airforce recruits, calling them butterflies now.
Frank Eric like
My parents literally thought that every street in Germany was name Einbanstrasse until they learned that it meant one way street. Needs to say they had a little hard time finding their car.
It's 4 a.m. here in Berlin and I'm lying next to my husband trying hard not to giggle too loud. 🤭🤭🤭
I'm so going to submit this to my city's street naming suggestion box. Just to make people giggle.
I have played Scrabble in German. Scrabble is not really capable of easily forming long words, but there are plenty of short words in German, they are what they string together to make the long ones!
Alun Palmer lol
I'm German and I'm Italian. Some translations are wrong, but I love this kind of Unsinn. And... yes, 'Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach.' makes to me perfect sense. :D It means: When flies fly behind flies, flies fly behind flies.
Nicola Tranchida yes
German is the best language in the world. Much better than that stinky gibberish you call 'English'
That's preference. I like english more. I love reading in english. And I'm German.
Same. There are so many beautiful languages in this world.
Non-German read it like this: "Teutsch is the über Language, Jawohl!"
The kids always used to ask me to say nice things in German, but in a shouting angry voice. For some reason they thought it was hysterically funny to have me shouting, "You are all great and I really love you" in German. I enjoy being multilingual, but I forget what it's like to look at a language from the outside sometimes.
I would like to introduce you to Amorite. too bad I don't speak it. (does anybody? dead languages are like that.)
*laughs in german*
My wife who lived in Germany for a couple years told me that once someone ask her for directions. She told them (in german) that she would take them "around the corner". She did not know that in german taking someone around the corner means to murder them.
😂 😂 😂 I love when that happens. Went to England with a friend. Entered a restaurant, he wanted to have the menu but asked for the map. Both means Karte in German. 😂
this post was made 3 years ago?
I was also wondering why it's been dug up again.
I love this post and my room mate does too! I'm learning German right now (at this school: https://www.speakeasysprachzeug.de/en) and I am living with a German room mate. He wouldn't believe me as I've told him those odd German things so I found your post and showed it to him. Now as we are both done laughing like idiots I think your post might finally made him realize that I was right all along. Anyway thank you very much for the fun time we had.
Vitoria Silva Barbosa what
One time my German teacher wrote something on the board and one guy asked, "Is that the WIFI password?" LMAO
Please roast Russian next month(^_^)!
I always wanted to learn german. I failed the uni exam for that faculty *sob*. And until now all i can say is only ich liebe dich. Somehow it always amused my online german friends when i told them that. They always asked do i know the meaning? Yeah i do. But it's the only german i can. T_T
That's a good sentence to know in every language
In German “I love you“ is only for romantic love, not for friends/family. So of course they were amused that you had declared to be in love with them.
I think bye (see you) is Tot ziens, but thats about all aI remember, and I probably misspelled it :p
That's actually Dutch. :)