Spelling & Grammar - German is Weird

Gänsefüßchen

You won’t believe how complex the topic of quotation marks is until you do what I am doing in this very moment: write a text in a language other than your own.

Zoooologe

I was not able to find any human being who states this monstrosity of a term as a job description on their LinkedIn page. However, zoo oologists are probably not just made up for some spelling fun.

Angstschweiß

The German language is notorious for the insane amount of consonant you can string together. However, there seems to be a consensus that 8 is the maximum.

Reliefpfeiler

German palindromes range from given names (Anna, Otto) to animals (Reittier – “mount”, Uhu – “eagle owl”) to objects (Lagerregal – “Storage rack”, Rotor – “Rotor”) and everything in between.

With 67 letters, this is the longest German word that is actually used

Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung

It is a widely known fact that the German language gives you the opportunity to stack words on top of each other to create genuine lexical monstrosities.

ß: This letter does not exist in any other language but German. It is even a bit too German for the Swiss, so they never use it ;)

ẞ

Fußball, Weißwurst, Scheiße: ß is seen in some of the most internationally renowned German words out there.

Gell…?

Many Germans don’t even mind pronouncing the “ll,” smearing the word into something like “ge’” or “ge’ah.”

Gericht

The German language offers a good amount of word pairs that seem completely unrelated to each other but spell exactly the same. “Gericht” is a classic example.

Lizenzieren

We all agree that German grammar was made by the devil himself—and he was not in a good mood. When it comes to spelling, however, the language is far less diabolic. Except for some cases….

Although Nutella is not a German product, many of my compatriots have an almost cult-like devotion to the spread. It even has a tradition of causing emotional fights at the breakfast table about its true gender.

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz is one of the longest German words in use

Rindfleischettikettierungs…

It is a widely known fact that the German language gives you the opportunity to stack words on top of each other to create genuine lexical monstrosities.

lizenzieren

We all agree that German grammar was made by the devil himself. When it comes to spelling however, my mother’s tongue is far less diabolic. Except for some special cases…

German is weird: Fun Facts and Trivia about the German language