Reaction To Language Review: German

[@norbertzillatron3456]

Capitalizing helps to identify the nouns at the first glance. It can also totally change the meaning: "Der gefangene Floh" - the captured flea. "Der Gefangene floh" - the prisoner fled.

[@SaniSensei]

Surprised you didn't use the classic: "Ich bin gut zu Vögeln." 🙂

[@Pophet84]

but only in theory, because in practice you alway have a context!!! a good example are for what i mean with "in practice" are "teekesselchen", same word with diffrent meanings. examples: mutter, bank, decke etc etc simply because of the context, EVERYONE know what "mutter" you mean. whe you go into a toolshop and tell the cashier where you can find a 1 inch "mutter", then he knows that you are not looking for your 1 inch tall birthmother...... and pretty much the same goes for the usuage of nouns/verbs with capital letters. i personaly stopped using capital letters in the german language like 10+ years ago, and i never had any issues. again, its all about the context. so if a prison warden tells me "der gefangene floh", then i KNOW that he doesnt want to tell me that he caught a flea............

[@Bumi-90]

@@norbertzillatron3456 yeah that's a nice party trick for German poems, but in a police report you know it was the prisoner, and in the dog fur care instructions there likely will not be much talk about the recent prison break.

[@Anson_AKB]

@@Pophet84 are you sure that he didn't try to tell you that the beds have to be disinfected because he caught a flea in the escaped prisoner's bed ? :-) and yes, most of the time you can know from the context what is meant, but it still is easier and faster for reading and understanding to get additional hints. _"Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach."_ (when flies fly behind flies, flies are flyingly following flies)

[@krystalgee658]

​@@SaniSenseiOder den Unterschied von umfahren.

[@StellaTZH]

The word for girl is neuter because it used to be a diminuative but got adapted to the standard word. Mädchen comes from Maid, which is feminine. If you want to make something cute or small then you add a suffix in German, in this case -chen. But the suffix changes the gender of the word to neuter. So the "little maid" which became the word for girl got stuck with a neuter gender. The gender change occurs no matter which gender the original word had: der Stuhl (the chair) -> das Stühlchen (the little chair), die Maus (the mouse) -> das Mäuschen (the little mouse), das Wasser (the water) -> das Wässerchen.

[@KeesBoons]

Dutch also has traces of these distinctions as well up to this day. The, (der, die, das) is for male and female gender words de, and for neuter words het. The boy=de jongen, the girl=het meisje. Meisje comes from meid and is a diminutive as well.

[@StellaTZH]

@user-xi6nk4xs4s Yeah, it's really cool! Dutch (and low German) is kinda the stepping stone between German and English. The funny thing when I was visiting Amsterdam was how often I could read Dutch and understand what was meant but once people started talking Dutch, it just sounded too foreign to make out the meaning.

[@KeesBoons]

@@StellaTZH I hear that a lot from German speakers. The writing is not that different, for most words at least, but the way we pronounce words can be very different. Mostly it's just a matter of getting used to "the sound" of Dutch. Many friends in Germany, just across the border (Düsseldorf, Ost-Friesland etc), are more used to the sounds and usually have it pretty easy to understand Dutch. They have been more exposed to Dutch sounds I guess.

[@SFoX-On-Air]

And here I am, a 40-year-old German, still learning something interesting about my own language, thanks to a random KZbin comment. :D

[@stefanbrill4165]

There are traces of diminutives in English as well, e.g. book -> booklet, leaf -> leaflet, duck -> duckling. It always surprised me, how the gender change to neuter is so difficult to grasp. Any grammatic gender, be it female, male, or neuter becomes neuter by diminuation. I suspect most people just don't realise that these words as e.g. "Mädchen", "Jungchen" are diminutives, derived from other words that are not.

[@TyonKree]

I have to interject at 5:00 Yes Germany has three main dialect areas. Low German (Niederdeutsch) in the North, Middle German (Mitteldeutsch) in the Centre and High German (Hochdeutsch/Oberdeutsch) in the South. Now he said that Hochdeutsch is the standard German spoken on TV and taught in school. That is correct in German but wrong in English. If he's (which he apparently is) still speaking about the dialects. We call the standardised version of German "Hochdeutsch", but it is not equal to the dialect group of "Hochdeutsch/Oberdeutsch)". The correct English word for this artificial standard version of German is "Standard German" in English. This distinction is important because Standard German is not entirely made up of the dialects of "Hochdeutsch/Oberdeutsch" but also has strong Middle German influences. Hochdeutsche Dialekte = High German dialects Hochdeutsch = Standard German (technically there are three versions one each from Germany, Austria and Switzerland but that would go too far) Hochdeutsche Dialekte =/= Hochdeutsch If you were to learn some High German dialect (let's say... Alsatian Alemannic) in complete seclusion without ever encountering a single wiff of Standard German and then be put in front of a Standard German speaker you likely wouldn't understand him. The entire purpose of Standard German was to bridge the divide of the various dialects that aren't mutually intelligible. Well that and discriminating against Low German speakers, but that's a story for another time~

[@CavHDeu]

BS. Half of germany along the rhine speaks a frankonian dialect

[@yunie3336]

Wanted to say the same - good explanation 👍🏼

[@TyonKree]

@@CavHDeu The various franconian dialects are Middle German dialects No clue where the gotcha or BS is supposed to be

[@CavHDeu]

@@TyonKree no absolutely not. Middle german is far away from the rhine 🤣

[@TyonKree]

@@CavHDeu I guess you can decipher a map, probably won't manage the actual article de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitteldeutsche_Dialekte tl;dr Middle and Rhinefranconian are both Middle German Dialects

[@OrkarIsberEstar]

For descriptive words "Zeug" (meaning thing) is the end boss here. Flug-zeug (flything) - plane Feuer-zeug (fire-thing) - lighter Bett-zeug (bed-thing) - bedding Werk-zeug (craft-thing) - tool ....and so on. if you dont know a word, point at the thing and say "das Zeug" (that thing) and we know and likely, if you just say something descriptive and add Zeug its the actual word for it

[@nikolagericke938]

😂

[@SFoX-On-Air]

As a German, you can communicate with people from Bavaria, Austria, and Switzerland as long as they want you to. If they don't want you to understand, they can simply slip deeper into their dialect, and you won't stand a chance of understanding a single word, especially if you're from West Germany like me, where anyone who doesn't speak perfectly clear standard German (what he called "High German") gets chased out of the village with torches and pitchforks. People from Liechtenstein, on the other hand, practically don't have a dialect, but they do have their own words that no one here knows. You have to have them explained to you. The KZbinr "Feli from Germany" once interviewed people from the USA who speak German. These communities emigrated from Germany before America was discovered and have not lost their language. Unfortunately, you can hardly communicate with them anymore because the words they use are at best still known to our great-grandparents, and the accent is barely German anymore. However, there is a lot of Yiddish influence.

[@nirutivan9811]

People from Liechtenstein absolutely do speak dialect. When I‘m in Liechtenstein I can speak my Swiss German dialect, they understand me perfectly and answer in a pretty similar dialect. Some words might be a little different, but they speak an alemannic dialect, like we in Switzerland do. The people from Liechtenstein you met where probably just speaking standard German to you and happened to not have a strong accent when speaking standard German.

[@lisakiara10]

​@@nirutivan9811exactly

[@stevevonbeef5036]

some words shift their whole meaning. if you capitalize a word, yout turn it from a verb to a noun. "Weg" for example stand for "way" or "road"; meanwhile "weg" means "away".

[@stevevonbeef5036]

its a bit unfair when its a case where we capitalize at all, for example at the beginning of a sentence: "Weg vom Fahrradweg!" in this example both is written not in the shape of its natural meaning. So if you have no clue it can happen that you tell the people to "way bike away"; and people will wonder what you tried to tell them.

[@alicemilne1444]

​@stevevonbeef5036 There is no confusion normally because nouns in German are usually accompanied by articles. And "weg" meaning away is pronounced differently from "Weg". The difference to English ears would be "veck" (weg) and something like "vague" (der Weg).

[@Anson_AKB]

in english, you also have "a way" and "away" (german "ein Weg" and "weg"), and verbs in the infinitive are prefixed with "to". there is a lot more to everything than a short video can show. btw: in german, we have four cases, but in english you have them too, answering to the questions: 1.who(wer)? 2.whose(wessen)? 3.whom(wem)? 4.who(wen)? and you also have variants for singular and plural. in german, that principle is extended to all 8 combinations of the cases with singular/plural. it is only less visible when many of these variants are identical and you only see the difference with eg boy, boys, boy's, boys' or man, men, man's and men's

[@JoachimReuss]

There are huge differences between all Kinds of dialects. E.g. the question If you wanna eat an egg ist in Hochdeutsch "Möchten Sie ein Ei?" In parts of Vienna it is " Mogst a Oa?"😊

[@agricolaurbanus6209]

​@stevevonbeef5 The meaning of this "Weg...!" Is indicated by the exclamation mark (imperative), the pronounciation and the fact that a verb, in imperative case is missing. Correctly it would be "Gehe da weg!" or "Geh' weg da!". Police or Firefighters etc. will yell this sometimes, as well as parents and dog owners. Usually accompanied by a waving index finger or reverse palm waving.😂

[@berlindude75]

There are two different "ch" sounds in German (beside the Greek-based one that sounds like a "k", e.g. "Christ"): The dark "ch" sound that German shares with the Scots language comes after dark vowel sounds ("a", "o", "u", and "au") and forms deeper in the throat. The light "ch" sound (like in the word "ich") forms more in the front of the mouth and follows the light vowel sounds ("i", "e", "ä", "ü", "ö", "ei", "ai", "eu", and "äu").

[@catalyticcentaur5835]

Gute Beobachtung. / Good observation. I didn't realize this before having seen your comment, but yeah, true. And I can't come up with an exception to what you're describing. Lol, _now_ try to speak "Beobachtung" against the above stated rule. ^^ It's hard for me - going so dissonantly against the grain of habituation. (I needed several tries to get it "right". ^^)

[@berlindude75]

@@catalyticcentaur5835 Wicht vs Wacht, Recht vs Rauch, Laich vs Loch, Fechten vs Fauchen, Mächte vs Macht

[@catalyticcentaur5835]

@@berlindude75 Jo, das bestätigt die von Dir konstatierte Regel, aber gibt's Widersprüche? Mir fällt kein einziges Beispiel ein. Also kurz: Gut erkannt; war mir vorher nicht bewusst ("bekannt" passt hier ja nicht).

[@berlindude75]

​@@catalyticcentaur5835 Ich denke nicht. Einfach auch, weil der gewählte Vokallaut (hell oder dunkel) bereits durch die hierfür nötige Mund-Zungen-Stellung gar nicht den jeweils anderen "ch"-Laut -- ohne sich zu verbiegen -- zulässt. Deswegen ist es auch so schwer, dies absichtlich anders auszusprechen.

[@lutz3319]

@@catalyticcentaur5835 Es gibt eine eher seltene Ausnahme wo das ch wie k gesprochen wird: Fuchs, Dachs, Flachs

[@CoL_Drake]

nouns capitalized makes me read a text like twice as fast xD it REALLY helps alot

[@rvsneveren]

True, capitalisation makes it easier for the reader, but harder for the writer.

[@DJDoena]

Why is high German spoken in the south and low German in the north? For the same reason that Lower Saxony is more north than regular Saxony. It goes by elevation, not by latitude. In general the more south you go, the more up you go, starting from the mud flats at the North Sea and ending on the Zugspitze in the Alps on the German-Austrian border.

[@Bumi-90]

@@DJDoena additionally the convention that north is on the top of a map is in most cases waay newer than the root for the place name

[@Anson_AKB]

do i hear some "geography now! germany" here ? :-) that video is a good first impression with lots of hints on what to have a closer look at, but don't trust all he says, especially not his spelling (and pronunciation) ...

[@winterlinde5395]

@@Anson_AKBgeography now! That’s what I thought!😊

[@TyonKree]

"For the same reason that Lower Saxony is more north than regular Saxony" Oh boy you didn't just write that. Lower Saxony plus Westphalia and some areas in Saxony-Anhalt are the actual Saxony as it existed from 600 to 1296. After Henry the Lion rebelled against the Emperor the duchy was taken apart. The house of Ascania retained the ducal title of Saxony while being situated around Wittenberg which had not been part of the Duchy of Saxony before. And so the name transferred unto this area under the Electorate of Saxony which finally became the Kingdom of Saxony and then the state of Saxony. The people in what is known as Saxony today have no connection to the actual original Duchy of Saxony and its people. They also speak a Middle German dialect and not a Low German dialect as the Saxons did.

[@bastian6625]

High German spoken in the south? Show me one place where that is the case! 🙈

[@ileana8360]

2:32 Hell, no!!! The Bielefeld easter egg got me 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@Dunari87]

me too ... I'm a bit surprised he knows that the city of Bielefeld "doesn't exist" 🤣

[@captainbackflash]

Was ist ein Bielefeld? noch nie von ihr gehört!

[@ileana8360]

@@captainbackflash 🤣👍

[@Swammy68]

@@captainbackflash Why you don´t meat Jessica Biele in a Field, shame on you. 🤣

[@DTheName]

Capitalization can change the meaning of a word drastically. Like: (der) 'Weg' = (the) 'way', and 'weg' = 'gone'/'away'

[@jassidoe]

The thing is, dialects inside of Germany are already vastly different. They use different words, have a different sentence structure, grammar... sometimes it's easier and sometimes you don't understand anything at all. The further apart they are, the less likely they understand each other if they speak their regional dialect at 100%. Most people I have met speak something of a watered down version, so I can understand most of it. But if people of Bavaria or Baden-Württemberg choose to dial their dialect to the max, I'm totally lost. Same with Switzerland and Austria. As a German, you will only understand what they are saying if they want you to understand. Otherwise it will sound like an entirely different language.

[@Anson_AKB]

that can even be true for one's own regional dialect if you usually speak only (almost) high german in some district while, especially when spoken fast.

[@kls1404]

Sometimes you can't even undestand the dialect in the nearest village (5 km).

[@majimasmajimemes1156]

Capitalisation in German is very important. "Helft den armen Vögeln" = help the poor birds "Helft den Armen vögeln" = help the poor to f*ck

[@ChriDDel]

Loch means hole in german.

[@peter_meyer]

It does in scottish as well. In a way.

[@jasperzanovich2504]

@@peter_meyer I assume it has the same linguistic roots, same with Hosen (pants) and hose (Schlauch).

[@moonli1551]

the capitalisation of nouns is actually super important bc it can completely change the meaning of the word lol for example Essen = food & essen = to eat. Or Arm = arm (eng.) & arm (ger.) = poor

[@moonli1551]

Or Zahlen = numbers & zahlen = to pay. there are so many of these lol

[@moonli1551]

Capitalisation is also important for formal speech: sie = she & Sie = you (formal). ihr = her & Ihr = your (formal)

[@DJDoena]

Yes and no. All these examples are valid but words are always in the context of a sentence. You can always make fun of the Swiss because they can no longer distinguish if you should drink beer "in Maßen" (in moderation) or "in Massen" (en mass). With the word "Kiefer" the article makes the difference if you're talking about a pine tree or a jaw. And with "umfahren" it's the difference in pronounciation. Both will cost you time, it's just whether you spend that time behind the wheel or in jail. Or "Wir essen(,) Oma" where it's the punctuation that makes all the difference. So yes, capitalization makes a difference but the whole sentence has more influence on if you're understood or not.

[@MartinBeerbom]

@@DJDoena My favorite Swiss ambiguity is "Busse" ("Buße", fine) and "Busse" ("Busse", buses), because there are countless signs of it in the tourist regions.

[@julianbauer9775]

Seeing a text without capitalitions is like reading a quick written massage to a friend it gets the meaning transfered but looks just wrong.

[@MellonVegan]

10:20 We all text like that anyways ^^ But capitalisation does make things easier to read. In general, a lot of the rules of the German language make it a little harder to learn but also easier to read or understand. It requires more effort from the speaker and less from the listener. Edit: by that I mean basically all the rules that English doesn't have that he mentioned. All of them make the language easier to understand (by being less ambiguous).

[@Naanhanyrazzu]

Funny animal names? The normal animal names are usually rather unspectacular, which may be because I'm used to it as a German. Things get wild with insect names, however. You have things like die Tapezierspinne (the wallpapering-spider), das Waldbrettspiel (the forest-board-game), das Getreidehähnchen (the grain-chicken) or der Zitronenfalter (the lemon-folder). [Falter can be either another term for butterfly, but also someone who folds something.]

[@Afk_Kun]

It's funny I've nevery really thought about that capitalizing makes text easier to read but seeing the text all lowercase in the video just confirmed that for me haha

[@derravensberger9395]

To see the advantages of capitalization, this sentence is enough - der gefangene floh written like this (der Gefangene floh - the prisoner fled) it means something completely different than like this (der gefangene Floh - the caught flea).

[@RakkiOfficial]

About the capitalisation of nouns, it's just a grammar rule that has been around for hundreds if not a thousand years. While it won't likely be abolished in the next few decades to centuries, we do write our messages on WhatsApp and similar most of the time uncapitalised so we're also kinda used to that as well xD also: for german kids in school learning English, it's weird learning how English capitalises their nouns because that doesn't make much sense to us too xD

[@Rick2010100]

I was once in Bavaria and a waitress spoke to me with a thick Bavarian accent. I answered her in Low German dialect. She said that she didn't understand a word. I said that I felt the same way. She then spoke High German - as much as she could.

[@k3daevin]

"Can you understand the other german speaking countries?" Depends, as always :3 As a South German, I understand Swiss-German and Austrian-German better than some North-German Dialect.

[@demidron.]

4:44 North being "up" and south being "down" is just an arbitrary convention used on maps and it wasn't always that way. High German is from the more mountainous area. Low German is from low-lying land. They're completely literally high and low and that makes far more sense than thinking they refer to north and south.

[@adlerdeszeus]

I agree, especially in consideration that the Western World is arrogant beyond believe by talking about geographical directions (North, East,South or West) not being on earth but looking from the universe „down“ to globe. The majority of human beings (Asians & Africans) are looking from the earth to sky…. which results in West being right hand and east being left hand…. opposite to our extraterrestrial view…. in this regard the Low and High is to be taken as the consequence of what you see being on the ground…. and here the low German is definitely lower than the entire hill/mountain part of southern Germany….

[@Nightara]

Most of the stuff he said in the video is (sometimes painfully) accurate. I kinda disagree on what he said about Germans judging foreigners for having an accent - yes, we tend to quickly switch to English if we notice a foreign accent, but that's bc English is simply a very wide-spread second language in Germany, especially among "younger" generations (Boomers and younger, in this case), and we simply assume that it's similar for most other countries (which it's not, but that's just a general misconception over here). But especially Millenials and younger ppl tend to not really care about accents IMO - you most likely won't hear any praise from a German for speaking German, that's true, but it's kinda hard to get a German to praise you in any regard, so that's just - normal. But that doesn't mean that they're not gonna be at least a bit impressed (we are well aware that German grammar can be difficult to wrap your head around), we just tend to not show it xD Imo capitalization kinda gives the sentence a "structure" you can skim over - nouns are easily spotted, and bc the verbs tend to be at the end of the sentence, you can kinda get the gist of a sentence by just skimming over nouns and looking at the last word. You just kinda need the first noun (Usually the subject), the other nouns in the middle (objects) and the verb, and you can already answer the "who does what with whom?" question. Especially in online media, ppl tend to just not capitalize stuff at all, similar to English - but it's obviously a lot more apparent in German. I absolutely agree on the pronuciation part - yes, German tends to have a slightly rougher pronunciation, but all of those videos are grossly overdoing it, that's like claiming "I never understand what Americans are saying, they all speak like they're chewing a pound of gum" - which, well, American English definitely smears out words a bit, but that description is just straight up misrepresenting reality. And having a range of soft and harsh sounds gives us the opportunity to use them as tools for e.g. poetry - onomatopoeia is huge in German poetry, simply bc we have the option to do so without going "beyond regular words". Regarding other accents, I grew up in Bavaria and moved north, now I'm living somewhere in the middle of Germany. I usually don't struggle to understand any European German accents (Not counting Dutch, that's a separate language) except for maybe a few extreme cases of heavy northern accents. For Texan German, I really have to focus to understand it in a conversation, but Texan German is very different from the accents spoken in Europe.

[@WereDictionary]

There is a community of Texas Germans. Its a couple thousand people and they just never stopped speaking German. KZbin has some videos on them and as a German, I could understand their dialect. It was a little unexpected but its far easier to understand than Swiss German. While the picture of the hedgehog at 7:27 is adorable, we call them Igel. A Stachelschwein is a porcupine. Girls being neuter is because the german word for girl is a diminutive and diminutives are neuter. Way back in the dark ages when most people were part of the property they lived on, a fair amount of women wound up as maidservants (Mägde. singular Magd). There were other professions but those were uh, less reputable and you had to be of age for most of them. So the only job that was left for a girl to occupy was that of a little maid. So in German, they took the job title (Magd), added the diminutive (Mägd-chen) and filtered out the g so that it was easier to pronounce. The german word for girl remained Mädchen until today.

[@red_dolphin468]

Gut zu wissen wo das Wort Mädchen seinen Ursprung hat. Danke ! Nice to know, where the word for girl has its origin. Thanks !

[@catalyticcentaur5835]

The literal translation of "hedge hog" is funny. :-) "Heckenschwein" or (as a diminuitive because they are small) "Heckenschweinchen". I think, I'll use the latter preferrably from now on. :-)

[@jensschroder8214]

German uses the Latin alphabet, like English. There are also the three umlauts ÄäÖöÜ and the little ß Ä can also be replaced by Ae if the character cannot be found, ö -> oe, ü -> ue. ß can be replaced by ss. But that doesn't apply the other way around. There is the name "Müller" and "Mueller". There is the word "Busse" and "Buße", "Masse" vs "Maße" Germans write "Fußball", Swiss write "Fussball"

[@Anson_AKB]

the "ß" causes problems in official forms when people are required to write eg their name or address in _uppercase only_ but at the same time may not give a false name. thus they can't follow both orders at the same time when there is no uppercase "ß" in our alphabet. usually it's more important to give the correct name and thus ignore the use of uppercase. I also don't know how such cases of "not available characters" are handled in swizzerland when they usually replace that letter with a doubled "s" ... some years ago, unicode took care of this problem by introducing an uppercase "ẞ", but that character still can't be found on (almost?) any keyboard or in almost any font. for details google for "wikipedia scharfes s" (or copy&paste that char from this comment)

[@kls1404]

There is also the capital ß: ẞ

[@Justforvisit]

@@Anson_AKB As far as I know of, "ß" is commonly accepted as lower case and upper case at the same time.

[@baumgrt]

@@Anson_AKB I would think that a name containing a ß wouldn’t cause any issues in Switzerland, e.g. for official documents like passports etc. There’s plenty of people with letters in their names that are less common in this area of Europe. For uppercase letters, it would probably just get replaced by ss with much less hesitation. Outside of such official use, e.g. for letters or e-mail, people would probably automatically replace it with ss if they have to type the name. Since the usage of ß changed quite noticeably during the orthography reform in 1996, I wonder if and how this affects names. Do they keep the pre-reform spelling, at the risk of people mispronouncing the name (lengthening vowels where they shouldn’t), or did they undergo the reform as well?

[@Jo-sg8qb]

Im from a small town near Berlin and spend a summer in Eastbourne (south England) as a teen. When riding the bus, we tried to identify the languages spoken by the tourists around us, and we always had a good guess. But in the second week their were some others teens on the bus and we just couldn't figure out, what language they were speaking. Until one of them turned around and told us: We are from Bavaria!

[@Hirnspatz]

As somebody already mentioned, one German ch sound is similar to the Scottish one as in "Loch". But there is another softer ch sound which also exists in English, for example as the starting sound of "huge".

[@Outside998]

The capitalization of nouns is actually something that English did. In fact, the US constitution is written just like that, with all nouns capitalized.

[@MellonVegan]

Little disclaimer concerning language simp: That entire channel is 50/50 between information and piss take. So while Texas German is real, people don't primarily learn German to unlock Yiddish DLC ^^

[@Henning_S.]

The letter "ß" is a combination of the old german letters s and z, the s looked like an f, just without the horizontal line and the z looked almost like a 3, just with a flat top. If you write them together it looks almost like "f3" which got combined to "ß"

[@nikolagericke938]

In hungary it is used like this, they write sz and pronounce it like a sharp s.

[@Henning_S.]

In german the sz only exists in combination words if the first word ends with s and the second starts with z...

[@MartinBeerbom]

I'm a German from the lower Rhine region (Niederrhein), and we have notriously problems to correctly pronounce the different "sch" sounds (e.g. Kirsche/Kirche = cherry/church), soooo.... just forget it, just say something, we have the same problem.

[@Peter_Cetera]

Und ich habe ich schon immer gefragt, warum???

[@MaikesOneWomanShow]

Ich komme auch vom Niederrhein und kann das bestätigen. Meine Mutter spricht fast ausschließlich "sch" statt "ch". Und "i" klingt auch oft eher wie "ü/ö". Dann kommt da sowas wie "Kürsche" (Kirche) bei rum. Ich habe mir das, auch durch jahrelangen Gesangsunterricht, mittlerweile abgewöhnen können 😄

[@michanone]

Kann ich so auch aus Erfahrung bestätigen. 😅 Unser Hauptdarsteller im Theaterstück unserer Schule hat beinahe seinen Text vergessen, weil er "ich" sagen sollte, anstatt "isch". Der arme Kerl ist auch hier in der Nähe von Köln aufgewachsen. We can relate. :)

[@yunie3336]

Eastern German who lives in South Western Germany now... it's actually like the same with the UK, every region has a dialect, with particular words that can not be understood by others who are not from the same area. It took me 6 years to be able to do it...and that's longer than it took me to speak a decent Japanese (even though they have the same thing going on if you're not in Tokyo anymore 😅)

[@benjamintenhaken8662]

I was born on the German North Sea coast, more precisely in East Frisia (Ostfriesland). There is also West Friesland, which is in the Groningen region of the Netherlands, and North Friesland in Schleswig Holstein. In West Friesland in the Netherlands, Frisian is still spoken today. Low German (Plattdeutsch) is spoken in East Frisia and North Frisia. However, Low German is not a dialect but a language in its own right within the German language.But there are other regions in Germany where Low German is spoken. However, Low German can vary greatly from region to region.

[@henrikhaas6980]

German and Scottish Dialect... Some years ago, about 30 years to be honest, a friend of mine was going to study English language at Munich University. As a start, just to boost his skills, he went to Britain for a couple of weeks - speaking English with the Brits in order to get better pronounciation, better use of vocabulary, better grammer etc. He's been there around London already for a while, when one eveing, visiting a pub and have a chat with some random people, one of his new friends made a compliment about his language: "Never thought you're German - guessing from that rolling R and other clues, I thought you're from Scotland!" 🙂 That's one of the reasons why I love to watch your vids - listening to a very "German" sounding English, which I indeed way better understand than Cockney or other dialects from the southern part of Britain. Tumbs up for Scotland!

[@rh-yf6cg]

Yes

[@karinwenzel6361]

So true. Having lived in Scotland for 3 years I realized that we Germans can master the Scottish pronunciation test easily.Try saying "It's a bra bright moonlight night tonight" with a Scottish accent. [It's a braw bricht munlight nicht tenicht.]

[@hendrikwiekenberg]

Most times using capitalizing in "official" Letters or E-Mails. Or here, on YT. In chats (like MS Teams or equal) i write in lower cases - answering is pretty quicker without captials.

[@TiborgSGE]

Moved to Germany some 12 years ago.Obviously,i do speak German quite well now,but it wasn't an easy task to learn it and even if you do you'll have huge surprises just by visiting a place that is 200 km from your place.It can be a completely different experience.Living in Westerwald for over a decade,visited the south of Baden-Würthemberg some time ago and it was like i arrived in another country when it comes to the German language.Hochdeutsch can save you,but it's always a challenge and it's very interesting to be honest.

[@PsycHoOone]

I like it when you watch stuff about other languages, but the irony of listening to a bloke with a thick Scottish accent reacting to an English video of your own language is always funny xD

[@SavageIntent]

Texas German sounds very interesting. Germans founded the town of Frederiksburg in Texas, and until WW1, the whole town was German, with German stree signs and storefronts, but then German became unpopular and a lot of people changed to English to fit in. But a lot of people still speak German there, with a funny accent!

[@prodbysen]

many germans on social media and messaging apps don't capitalize nouns, so no it's no problem to read like this some other commenters made some good points that the meaning of the sentence might completely change if different words are capitalized but you can always understand based on context, at least i never ran into problems understanding something and people never have asked me what i meant because i never capitalize nouns too at least not in my private life

[@OkamiRissi]

I think the most fun thing about german is the way to have words have COMPLETELY different meaning depending on how they're pronounced my personal favorite will forever be "umfahren" Because depending on if the 'um' is more pronounced or the 'fahren' is more pronounced it can mean driving over something or driving around something

[@Kamil0san]

There is like a distance thing, the further you go away from your home then it gets harder to communicate, and that counts for most languages.

[@deniskramer3562]

Like most non-Germans, he didn't understand that “High German” has two very different meanings. On the one hand, it means standardized German, and on the other, it means the southern dialects. Because “High German” is actually a northern dialect, in other words: High German is actually Low German. Yes, that is confusing.

[@karinwenzel6361]

I think the confusion comes from the fact that German linguistic terms are not translated correctly. Niederdeutsch = Low German works, but Hochdeutsch should be tranlated into Standard German (the equivalent to Received Pronunciation). The High German dialects in the South are actually called Oberdeutsch (= Franconian, Swabian and Alemannic, Bavarian and Austrian dialects). The area where Mitteldeutsch is spoken ranges from Belgium and Luxemburg to Saxony. And BTW since when is American a language. ;-)

[@SvenQ45]

That was nice and funny. 😁 Here in Baden-Württemberg (South-West Germany) some people also say merci. Speaking of which you should consider reacting to those CopyCat Channel videos. Yes everything you can touch, see, hear and so on is written with a capital. And names of ourse. On the other hand in English, English, French and so on is written with a capital letter. And yes the articles can be strange but then again never forget one thing: Language and logic doesn´t mix.

[@klarasee806]

I find it particularly helpful when skimming or finding specific sentences or sections of text if the nouns are capitalized, because it helps my brain to orientate itself quickly. I can't say for sure whether it also helps me when reading at normal speed. I like reading novels by English-speaking authors in the original and have never missed capitalized nouns. Either way, I would find it a great shame if this peculiarity of our language were to gradually disappear. That is what is currently looming, because many people these days are obviously too lazy to write capital letters.

[@sarediv]

Capitalisation and lower case are important for the structure of sentences and contexts. The imprecise lower-case words "er hat in moskau liebe genossen" can have different meanings simply through capitalisation and the end-of-sentence sign, without changing the order of the words: Er hat in Moskau liebe Genossen. - He has dear comrades in Moscow. Er hat in Moskau Liebe genossen. - He has enjoyed love in Moscow. Er hat in Moskau liebe Genossen? - Does he have dear comrades in Moscow? Er hat in Moskau Liebe genossen? - Did he enjoy love in Moscow? ;-)

[@Präkkle]

He's trying the hardest he can to restrain himself from unleashing his full scottish dialect

[@Lancor84]

We usually can read without capitalization perfectly well, but it looks "lazily" written. Like you didn't bother to hit the shift key during typing. It has this vibe of early internet culture where people were really bad at typing and didn't bother to capitalize. So it kinda looks juvenile.

[@Kivas_Fajo]

It's not flying object, it's flight object, because Flug means flight, while fliegen means flying.

[@dirkdriessen1133]

Noone in germany speaks american, because american does not exit.

[@benlee6158]

I love the Vienna accent. At work I always switched to my own version of viennese, when Austrians called. Did quite well I think. Don't just say ik. No big deal writing with capital letters. Animal or plant or organ names are often simply translations of the scientific Latin or Greek word, while English and the romance languages simply use the Latin/Greek. Best example: Hippopotamus is Greek for "river horse" which translates to it's German name Flusspferd (also Nilpferd).

[@danielkramps2022]

As far as I know, capitalization has been used only irregularly in Early Modern times, then there was a phase in the 19th century when for some reason it was dropped altogether (or at least in scholarly texts, which you'd expect to be up to date on those matters), until near the end of the 19th century the language was further standardized and capitalization with it. Those non-capitalizing texts are perfectly readable for modern Germans, though.

[@Yora21]

I'm from the very North of Germany and had several Swiss and Austrian friends, and lived in Southern Germany for 10 years. For younger people under 50, we all speak Standard German effortlessly and there's no difficulty talking to each other. Listening to them talking with their grandparents can be a very different story, though. The non-standard local dialects can be completely unintelligible to people not used to them.

[@RenkTV7]

High german is spoken in the south, because of the height of the ground level. The land border from low to high german starts, when you reach the hill and mountain region.

[@knutritter461]

High- and Lowgerman have nothing to do with north and south ("up" and "down") but with higher/lower elevation. Northern Germany is lower, southern Germany is hilly/mountainous. That's why it's called high and low. 😉 And btw: German native speakers don't have accents, they have dialects instead! Native speakers never speak with an accent of their own native language. The same rule applies to English native speakers: US-American, Australian, British, .... those are all dialects of English. But if an Indian speaks English he/she speaks English with an Indian accent. 😉

[@laudbubelichtkind8026]

To the Letter "ß". It don't looks like a B. Because this letter don't exist at the keyboard of other nations everybody use the B for writing instead. The letter "ß" originates as the ⟨sz⟩ digraph as used in late medieval and early modern German orthography, represented as a ligature of ⟨ſ⟩ (long s) and ⟨ʒ⟩ (tailed z) in blackletter typefaces, yielding ⟨ſʒ⟩.

[@Justforvisit]

About the capitalizing: Good luck with "in essen essen essen" compared to the correct "In Essen Essen essen" 🤣

[@zaphodbeeblebrox9443]

Oops, Baden is the most popular language there is? I've never heard that before, but for me as a Badener, it's of course good news. The only question is which Baden dialect is meant, Swabian, Palatinate, Franconian or Alemannic. But I've actually been asked a few times on the phone where I'm from because people like my dialect, it's mostly people from northern Germany and yes, when I'm speaking to people from other regions, I usually forget that I shouldn't speak dialect but standard German. Well, in southern Germany the different dialects usually get along, it's just that in the north it's easier if you speak standard German.

[@hansmeiser32]

"it's just that in the north it's easier if you speak standard German." Dude, I worked in Stuttgart for some time - I'm from Bochum - and met people there I did not understand at all and either they refused to speak High German or weren't able to - I don't know. It was a pain in the ass until I discovered a workaround: written communication. Instead of talking to them directly I send them E-mails even though they were sometimes in the same office as me.

[@Blaise2211]

Probably someone else has already written that, but Low German is spoken in the 'low lands' on the coast, where there are no mountains. High German is spoken in the 'mountains.' So it's not related to the map, but to the altitude.

[@axelplate9080]

English: "i"- German": "ich" - Dutch "ik". probally one reason why they pronounce it the dutch way in parts of nothern germany. This guy eats books? a bit weird. You can find lots of beatiful songs in german if you want to hear "nice"german.

[@xnoreq]

Ballaststoffe sind gut für die Verdauung.

[@brittakriep2938]

I am german, but as a swabian i don' t say ich, but i.

[@Anson_AKB]

@@brittakriep2938 when some tourists from the southwest came to us in berlin, we couldn't understand 95% of what they said until they tried harder to use less dialect, and finally they complained "Mir schwätze doch hochdüütsch" (high german: Wir reden doch hochdeutsch = english: but we already are speakig high german)

[@brittakriep2938]

@@Anson_AKB : Stimmt ja auch zu einem gewissen Grad, Niederdeutsch ist es jedenfalls nicht. Spaß beiseite, um die Verwechslung mit Hochdeutsch im Sinne von Schriftdeutsch zu vermeiden, wäre es besser bairich und schwäbisch/allemanisch als Oberdeutsch zu bezeichnen. Ich weis nicht, vor Jahren als Kind haben meine Eltern gerne das Ohnsorgtheater, Kommödienstadel und Millowitschtheater angesehen. Mit dem Millowitsch hatte ich manchmal Probleme, aber die Dialekte der anderen Volkstheater waren so sns Hochdeutsch angelehnt, faß man es problemlos verstehen konnte. Wenn allerdings bis in die 80er Jahre hinein das Süffunkschwäbisch gesprochen wurde, so war das für mich ( Brittas Freund) als Schwaben völlig unnatürlich. Inzwischen ist es allerdings besser,. Bei den anderen Dialekten kann ich fies nicht beurteilen, es war aber in meinem Augen unglaublich, daß es Leute gab, die sich über die , unverständlichen ' (?) Volkstheaterdialekte beschwerten. Noch ein paar Hinweise zum schwäbischen Dialekt: Hören sie mal das Lied ,Klara' der Gruppe Pommfritz an, oder von Hank Häberle ,Geistertruck am Aichelberg', bzw. ,Weg do, Platz do, jetz komm i.

[@Naanhanyrazzu]

@@Anson_AKB The same problem applies the other way round. Here both sides have to make an effort and not just one.

[@ShoreVietam]

"High" German is high, because the south is the mountain-region. It is high-er than the coastal "Low" German. I wonder why all those channels don't know that. "Up" on the map is not "high", especially not to medieval people that couldn't travel easily. But I guess generally seeing "high" (geographical) as equal to "up" (latitude) explains some flat earthers. xD

[@drgoodman5420]

Das macht aber irgendqie kein sinn wenn es z.b. auch Hochjapanisch gibt in Japan gibt das aber nichts mit der "Höhe" zutun hat

[@itsmebatman]

In Switzeland they have to subtitle Swiss German content with German German, so that everyone can understand it. When I was young and visited Bavaria for the first time there were some old folks I could not understand at all. When North Germans speak Platt most other Germans probably don't understand, but the Dutch might understand that just fine.

[@anashiedler6926]

The funny thing is austrian german is almost the same as german german and for most parts is easily understandable by both, but as soon as you start going into culinary terms, reading recipes or cookbooks, then things get interesting, and many people require a translation between austrian and german terms. (I believe this is due to trade routes in the old times or simply because of the habsburg empire and the crownlands). Austrian german mostly uses terms stemming from italian and hungarian, but also czech and eastern languages for cooking, while germany uses more terms from french, and nordic countries)

[@bug6]

I just came back from Calgary (Canada) visiting some friends and poutine (fries with gravy and cheese) is a very big thing there. We talked about it and they had a story where they didn't get any gravy on their fries in the US. So I asked what gravy exactly is. I still hadn't an idea for a translation so I googled it up as "Bratensoße / Fleischsoße". So I said it out loud and they asked what it means. So I tried a direct translation as "flesh sauce / meat sauce" and they couldn't stop laughing how easy we (and probably also other languages) create our nouns 😁

[@ingeblume1887]

If you ever come to Germany, I wish that you meet as much as possible nice and friendly people to talk to. And that you will have a really good time!

[@uwesauter2610]

In other languages, the trivial object of Brillenputztücher (glasses cleaning cloths) requires a whole sentence. Not to mention the Tiefseefisch (deep sea fish), Doppelhaushälfte (double one-half house/semi-detached house), Wahlpflichtfach (choice-obligation subject /elective compulsory subject), Selbsthilfegruppe (Self-help group/support group) etc.

[@Kivas_Fajo]

The Platypus is called Schnabeltier in German which translates to beak animal.

[@sylviav6900]

For the Texan German, check Feli from Germany's channel. She did a part, in which she explains why there are those around 6000 German speakers in Texas and tries to understand their German.

[@somersaultcurse]

10:30 no problems to read that text with all letters being small. but it makes sense to write nouns with a capital letter, bcs there are some differences. the word "ehe" for example. written small its "before" and writen with a capital "E" its "marriage". or "fliegen" means fly (with an airplane) while "Fliegen" means houseflies. there are hundreds of examples, so to cut it short, we are just lazy. instead of creating a whole new word, we just change the letter size. similar practice to the compound words. :)

[@arthur_p_dent]

1:45 Many Texans are descendants of German immigrants and many spoke German until fairly recently, and developed a very own "Texas German" dialect. This dialect, however, is rather moribund. German generally lost popularity after WW1 and WW2, lots of "German Americans" "Angicized their names", Johannes Braun became John Brown (famous allusion to that in "back to the Future"), Friedrich Schmidt became Fred Smith, and so on. At the same time, people stopped speaking German or passing it on to the next generation. Only very few continued to speak it at home. This trend persisted, and as a result nowadays there are only a few thousand speakers of "Texas German" left, most of whom are well into their Seventies or older. There are probably a few videos about the subject on youtube.

[@red_dolphin468]

high german and low german are called so because of the level of elevation within the countryside . Northern is it flat and coastline in the south is the Hill- and mountanrange area so its HIGHER than the LOW LANDS -

[@matt47110815]

There are many places in the US where German is spoken, and up to WW1 there were many German Language Newspapers. The Pennsylvania Dutch, btw, speak not Dutch, but Duits (Deutsch), which is an alemanic Dialect, with some Murican Words/Grammar in it. Texas... the last influx of German population there was due to WW2. A lot of German POWs, captured in North Africa were brought to Camps there, and stayed. Also during WW2: Germans residing in the UK were deported to Jamaica.

[@MarieBra]

Also we have three kinds of R. In a lot of parts of NRW people use the French r. Franconias and Lower Saxonys use a trilled r and the rest a flat r. I suppose in the regions close by the Dutch border they use the dutch R (rolled like in English).

[@Yora21]

I've seen videos of older Texans speaking German natively, and they speak perfect modern Standard German. I think here in Germany, very few people would guess that they are not from central Europe.

[@milzbrandvirus]

Low German to High German is vaguely the equivalent to Scots to English. It's basically it's own language, but not everyone can speak it in the North. Im from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and I'd say the people here speak mostly High German, albeit having low german influence in the vocabulary. Even though I'd love for you to visit the "east german" side of Germany, you'd be probably better off visiting the "western side" - because of history many people didn't learn English but Russian in school over here (until 1989 at least), so it probably is hard to get along with only english.

[@HenryLoenwind]

People who'd flip the names of High and Low German would also be affronted by the Scottish Highlands not being a coastal region. Putting places onto maps, then rotating those maps that north is away from you, and then putting those maps on computer screens, so the direction "up" isn't pointing the ways the mountains go, are rather modern customs. And without that, more people tend to think of mountains as "high" and the coast as "low" than the other way around. In fact, I don't think I've ever met someone who's said, "High up on the coast"...

[@MichaelW.1980]

It actually makes perfect sense that „high german“ is lower on the map, than „low German“ dialects, if you consider the height above the mean sea level. Because that is literally what it means. Low German was spoken in the flat parts of Germany near the sea, while high German was spoken in the mountain-y parts of Germany, which on the map are on the bottom. That being said, nowadays the cleanest hochdeutsch is spoken in Lower Saxony now, while the native dialect, „Plattdeutsch“, which is actually changing quickly between the regions of Lower Saxony, actually is rarely ever spoken now.

[@Mr.Z1989]

4:08 Yes, except of Switzerland.

[@beldin2987]

G does not sound like Gay, the guy really has no real clue of the german language.

[@DJKLProductions]

I understand that this video is rather humorous and I can laugh at anything that mocks facts about the German language, but not when a statement, a joke is based on misinformation. For example, the claim that the terms "High German" and "Low German" don't make sense just because the language area of the former dialect group is in the south ("down") and that of the latter in the north ("up"). Automatically associating north and south with "up" and "down" is just stupid... The terms "High German" and "Low German" refer to the average altitude of the language areas. Incidentally, generally spoken High German cannot be equated with the dialect group of the same name, even if the creation of the former is largely based on the latter. Nevertheless, they are not the same. Additional information on the "ß": The eszett, also known as the "sharp s", is a letter that emerged from the ligature of a long s (ſ) and the old spelling of the z (ʒ) and was therefore originally two letters. I also don't like it when a statement is based on half-knowledge or incomplete research. Unfortunately, you find that in so many areas these days. In any case, I would like to add that capitalising nouns in German makes sense: There are some verbs and adjectives that would be indistinguishable from nouns without capitalisation. In addition, words of the former type can be nominalised, in which case capitalising them helps to clarify that situation. Another commenter (@norbertzillatron3456) has already provided an example of why capitalisation is not stupid, but rather smart.

[@Peter_Cetera]

I agree...

[@Anson_AKB]

yes, the original video was more of the funny/sarcastic type (for people who know the true rules and reasons) and not a big help for learning true facts. and yes, ß = ſʒ = ſ + ʒ, and thus it is called "sz" (or "sharp s"). you can google for it: "wikipedia ß" or "wikipedia sharp s". and some time ago unicode was extended to also include an uppercase version of ß : ẞ

[@Vamirez]

There were many many German settlers in the US, and at some point German could have possibly become the main language for the US. Didn't happen, but there are German speaking communities there, and not only in Texas.

[@CRYOKnox]

As a rule of thumb with nouns is if you can see and touch it it with a capital letter. This doesn't make sense with the Sun, Acid, Lions. But we'll don't tell your teachers that you think so

[@heikeschikschneit1385]

I was in Switzerland once and a woman approached me. I didn't understand her, so she repeated herself. I still couldn't understand her. It was only when she switched to English that I understood what she was trying to tell me. Before that, I had never really imagined that I wouldn't understand anything at all, as I don't live very far from the Swiss border. 😅

[@offydannerson8049]

Capitalizing Nouns yields some Benefits, but i think it mostly serves asthetic Purposes. It helps reading Texts, as you can easily identify Nouns. Nowadays especially young People do not capitalize anymore, because they feel like it's a Pain when you use Smartphones or Keyboards, so presumably this Feature is slowly going to die.

[@yunie3336]

If you also think that verbs at the end is your nemesis, never try to learn Japanese (it's always at the end )...German has SPO as well, so the example he brought up doesn't apply, cause it was not a main sentence and the verb in his sentence was HABE (have) not gegessen (eaten, cause that's past tense)

[@Djegosandra]

It's not Litchenstein. It's Liechtenstein. Short i despite the e and the ch really is like the loch in Loch Ness, which is easy for Germans to pronounce and literally means "Hole Ness" if it were a German lake. Bonus: The G is also "ch" at the end of words; Tag (day) -> Tach (also a standard greeting if you don't wanna say "Moin"). The R I never learned to pronounce. I love hearing Yiddish, which sounds like an even funnier Dutch to me. Lots of its words made it into colloquial language. Since most won't get the Bielefeld joke: It's a German meme since at least the 60s that Bielefeld doesn't exist (hence it's cut out of the map). Reckon it was a joke, but High German and Low German refer to the elevation of the land, maps were oriented East in the past anyways, and they indeed are different languages with Low German becoming Dutch and English while it's nearly extinct in Germany itself. I'm from the North but barely understand it because my school really messed up keeping that tradition alive. Many of the old geezers around here still speak it fluently (rural area), but claim to not understand English despite using identic words at times, like vacuum pump. Anyways, I always say that you can identify a foreigner by their accent if they grew up 40 km away from you, or maybbe even less. Some old people could probably hear if someone is from the next village and of course hate them because rural rivalry is vicious. After 300 km of travelling inside Germany people start to sound really funny, after 500 km you don't recognise anymore what language they're speaking and after 1000 km you start to read the restaurant menu in English. Meanwhile Scottish English is easier for me to understand than Austrian and Schwitzerdütsch is something that I can just listen to with my mouth agape and just marvel at the speed people can talk at. The purest German (Schriftdeutsch) is spoken in Lower Saxony, by the way, because High German was introduced there so recently that they just speak it as it's written, branding no accent on it whatsoever. Other lovely animals are the shield toad (turtle), girdle animal (armadillo) and the horn ox (stupid ass). And Flugzeug is rather flying gear/equipment. A Zeughaus (equipment house) is an armuory, for example, but meanwhile Zeug just means "stuff".

[@Sekire1]

As to why german is spoken in the US, here is a paragraph from wikipedia: According to the Academy for Cultural Diplomacy in 2012, "German-Americans make up the largest self-reported ancestry group within the United States, accounting for roughly 49 million people and approximately 17% of the population of the U.S

[@Schmetterling-j4b]

I come from Germany and I could hardly understand anything in Austria, but maybe only because I was in a small village and everyone there spoke with a dialect.

[@l0ud5p34k4]

4:10 in my job I speak to quite a lot of people from all over the German-speaking countries and I have to say, especially speaking to older folks from Switzerland is quite challenging. Younger people will try to speak high German if I have to ask them to repeat what they said. I got used to most dialects by now but sometimes there are words in dialects, that don't even exist in high German plus different regions tell the time differently, so that's always a challenge but luckily I grew up learning both ways. (some say quarter to nine, some say three quarter nine to say 8:45)

[@Faygris]

Swiss German is the funniest and hardest to understand dialect. And the stereotype is that they speak unbelievably slowly, which is actually true to some extent 😄

[@eisikater1584]

I'm from Bavaria, South Germany, so I understand Austrian (at least the Vienna dialect) pretty well, and when I speak Bavarian, Austrians will understand me. The North German Plattdeutsch, or Swiss German: Definitely no. And let's not start talking about "Kölsch", that's the language they speak in Cologne (Köln) and also the name of what they call "beer". Hearing him talk about animals: An "Igel" is a hedgehog, but it's pronounced like "eagle". A "Taube" is a dove but can also describe a deaf woman. And a rattlesnake is a "Klapperschlange", which is just the literal translation because we don't have any here. Why a mole is a "Maulwurf" (snout thrower), one possible explanation is that you see his snout throwing out earth and disappears underground faster than you could whack it.

[@Marcrobyroth]

In 2010, during a Bundeswehr course in Weiden in the Upper Palatinate (Bavaria), I went into town with three fellow soldiers to do some shopping. We asked a man on the street where the nearest supermarket was... he could have answered just as easily in Polish, Indian or Klingon, none of us understood a word. Bavarian is a language in itself

[@MenschGebliebenerHaider67]

Bou dua an Rollan nou, droum af da Stoum ligd da Voudan af da Moudan lass roudan, lass roudan gibt's wieda an kloan Broudan.

[@Marcrobyroth]

@@MenschGebliebenerHaider67 ja ungefähr so

[@Anna-zi7sx]

Capitalisation makes a big difference in reading a German text

[@hansmeiser32]

6:25 "it (ß) looks really out of place in words..." I actually completely agree. The letter not only looks out of place it imho looks awkward as well. That's why I don't use it anymore and always write "ss" instead.

[@janehand2]

The eszett (ß) which is sometimes referred to as „scharfes s“ is literally an s and a z pushed together in gothic print. The s used to look a bit like the lower case f and the z resembled a 3. Over time ſ and ʒ merged into one single letter and ſʒ became ß.

[@thorstenh.5588]

He really said "beautyful american accent"? Interisting. 🤣😂🤣

[@andreasfischer9158]

Eesh been ein bearleener. John F. Kennedy. Beautiful!

[@thorstenh.5588]

@@andreasfischer9158 🤣

[@mickypescatore9656]

Hi, Mert! This guy is funny! 😀

[@spring_in_paris]

Hello, You asked how does it feel to see somebody not using upper and lower case letters? Like someone running their fingernails across a blackboard 🥴. Plus, as already mentioned in other comments, capitalizing a letter of a word can change the whole meaning of the sentence. With love from Germany ❤🤘🏻

[@arthur_p_dent]

4:59 Simply put, "High " and "Low" German refers to altitude. Low German = coast, High German = mountains. FWIW, the name "Netherlands" literally means "Low Lands", and this can also be seen in the context of the West Germanic dialect continuum (High German underwent certain sound shifts which Low German, Dutch, Frisian, Scots, and English all did not, so in some way you could split West Germanic there: Low German and all the above mentioned languages on one side, High German (including standard German) and Yiddish on the other.

[@sakkikoyumikishi]

I realise that the pronunciation table for the letters is a joke, but I can't stop laughing at the thought of someone trying to actually use that to learn German and end up being admitted to the hospital because they sound like they're having a stroke 😂