# German



## juliante (Jun 7, 2013)

I am thinking of learning German. The main reason is that I want to be able to completely immerse myself in winterreise and das lied erde. And lots more lieder in the future. And going forward I hope opera will click. Any comments / thoughts / experience ? Will it be worthwhile? (Not withstanding staving off dementia by creating new neural pathways)


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Good luck!


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## Guest (Feb 17, 2016)

Worthwhile just to be able to understand poetry? I don't know. But in general, I think it is always good to learn at least one other language. But don't do it just to understand some poems - which, by the way, is going to be a little more problematic. Poetry doesn't always follow the same rules as normal literature, and can be harder to learn than regular prose. I speak German fairly fluently, and I even have difficulty with things like Wagner. Consider someone learning English and then trying to read Shakespeare. It will take a lot of work.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

I have done just that (still doing it, in fact) and have not regretted it for a single moment. German-language music is a whole world of its own - and a very beautiful world for that. Wagner, Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Haydn... an entire pantheon of musical "Teutonic gods". And depending on what you do, understanding poetry and music is not the only thing German is good for. So yes, by all means go for it.

Yes, the language of Schubert and Wagner is different from the modern conversational German. But if you learn the second, understanding the first will not be an insurmountable problem.

Regarding that video: the stereotype that German is harsh and ugly-sounding is just that, a worn-out, tired clichee. It depends as much on the speaker and the content of what is being said as on the preconceived notions of the listener. I've been dealing with German in all kinds of contexts for about the last six years, and sometimes it still sounds like music to me....


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

Enjoy! It will train your brain into an entirely new way of thinking, e.g., trying to understand über-long sentences but having to wait until the end of the sentence to get hit with the verb.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Well done! I wanted to do this as well (for exactly the same reasons) but I couldn't find an evening class in my town that I could join. Maybe next year?


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## jenspen (Apr 25, 2015)

A few years after I'd finished my Arts degree, more or less on a whim, I took German 101 and 102 by correspondence (home-duties, living-in-a-country-town, boredom...).

For various reasons, it was the most valuable subject I ever attempted. 

And, just think, you'll be able to listen to Winterreise, the St Matthew Passion usw. with your eyes closed!


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## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

Kivimees said:


> Enjoy! It will train your brain into an entirely new way of thinking, e.g., trying to understand über-long sentences but having to wait until the end of the sentence to get hit with the verb.


I quadruple like Kivimees posting - Get hit with the verb at the end of a sentence! That explains so much why many Germans become annoyed with foreigners who don't fully listen to the whole sentence or strophe being communicated.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Ilarion said:


> I quadruple like Kivimees posting - Get hit with the verb at the end of a sentence!


Or with *nicht*.

The parliament applauded the report of Deputee Such-and-Such regarding the topic of this-and-that... NOT!


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Regarding that video: the stereotype that German is harsh and ugly-sounding is just that, a worn-out, tired clichee.


True enough - nor should anyone think of German as dull, e.g., look how a simple word like 'the' is turned into an adventure. :tiphat:


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

jenspen said:


> And, just think, you'll be able to listen to Winterreise, the St Matthew Passion usw. with your eyes closed!


Yes, and Wagner  I find German to be beautiful all by itself, but together with _that music_ it becomes absolutely magical. The man had an excellent sense for language and poetry, and how to combine them with music in the best possible way.


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

viel Spaß beim lernen


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Viel Glück beim Lernen


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

I've found that if you are studying something out of your own inner desire, not because your job or your college is forcing you to, there is plenty of both Glück and Spaß involved.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Kivimees said:


> Enjoy! It will train your brain into an entirely new way of thinking, e.g., trying to understand über-long sentences but having to wait until the end of the sentence to get hit with the verb.


When I was in Munich some years ago, having dinner with a non-German business associate who lived there, he was talking about how difficult it was to have a real argument in the language as you always had to wait until the end of the other person's sentence to even know what they were saying! With English you know much sooner so can interrupt right away :lol:

As to Wagner's German, many years ago there were some reviews in the German Press of the Ring Cycle performed in Andrew Porter's translation in which they envied the British for having an easier time understanding what was happening than Germans did with language of Wagner!


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

All I have to say is viel Glück dabei, mein Freund.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Kivimees said:


> True enough - nor should anyone think of German as dull, e.g., look how a simple word like 'the' is turned into an adventure. :tiphat:


A very _die_-cent explanation, meister-pöster!


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Some of my favorite German music - who knows, maybe it will provide yet more motivation to the OP to get on with learning German :tiphat:











What an exquisite pleasure to close my eyes and let the music and the words wash over me like a wave. Music simply does not get any better than this, does it?


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## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Some of my favorite German music - who knows, maybe it will provide yet more motivation to the OP to get on with learning German :tiphat:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


You don't go wrong with Kurt Moll - What a Bass that guy was.............


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Ilarion said:


> You don't go wrong with Kurt Moll - What a Bass that guy was.............


You had me at "hello", Kurt!


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## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

Lukecash12 said:


> You had me at "hello", Kurt!


Forgive me, I don't understand "you had me" - Please help me understand


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## CypressWillow (Apr 2, 2013)

I remember (or mis-remember) a quote from long ago:
"I speak in Spanish to God, in French to a gentleman, in Italian to a pretty woman, and in German to my horse!" 
But my ex-husband is a Berliner, and his spoken German was always beautiful! 
So go for it!


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## Poppy Popsicle (Jul 24, 2015)

The most beuatiful German to my ears is from Hamburg. There are some very "peasant-sounding" accents in Germany, as jarring to the ear as I imagine Texan English to be. I mean the sort of gibberish you hear in cowboy films.


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## Guest (Feb 19, 2016)

The high German, particularly that spoken around, say, Frankfurt-am-Main, is a beautiful language, and nothing like the caricatures made of it. And really, the caricatures really are nothing more than a mocking of the regional differences in how hard or soft one pronounces things like the German "ch," and how the "r" is rolled in the back of the mouth - not really that different from French.

But for me, I love all the regional idiosyncrasies. The German in which I was immersed was that of the Alemannisch and Schwaebisch dialects of the Southern Black Forest and Bodensee regions, along with the peculiar Swiss German dialects of Central Switzerland (Aargauertuutsch and Zurituutsch).


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Poppy Popsicle said:


> The most beuatiful German to my ears is from Hamburg. There are some very "peasant-sounding" accents in Germany, as jarring to the ear as I imagine Texan English to be. I mean the sort of gibberish you hear in cowboy films.


Meinst du etwa Plattdeutsch?

My fiance is from Hamburg. He does not speak much Platt, but his German is beautiful anyway


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

DrMike said:


> *The high German, particularly that spoken around, say, Frankfurt-am-Main, is a beautiful language, and nothing like the caricatures made of it.* And really, the caricatures really are nothing more than a mocking of the regional differences in how hard or soft one pronounces things like the German "ch," and how the "r" is rolled in the back of the mouth - not really that different from French.


Yes, it is, and I hope it remains that way in the future instead of turning into _Denglisch_ - the Americanized German or _Kanak Sprak_ - the multicultural German.


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## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

DrMike said:


> The high German, particularly that spoken around, say, Frankfurt-am-Main, is a beautiful language, and nothing like the caricatures made of it. And really, the caricatures really are nothing more than a mocking of the regional differences in how hard or soft one pronounces things like the German "ch," and how the "r" is rolled in the back of the mouth - not really that different from French.
> 
> But for me, I love all the regional idiosyncrasies. The German in which I was immersed was that of the Alemannisch and Schwaebisch dialects of the Southern Black Forest and Bodensee regions, along with the peculiar Swiss German dialects of Central Switzerland (Aargauertuutsch and Zurituutsch).


Hochdeutsch around Frankfurt am Main??? I was told that hochdeutsch is spoken around Hanover.


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## Guest (Feb 19, 2016)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Meinst du etwa Plattdeutsch?
> 
> My fiance is from Hamburg. He does not speak much Platt, but his German is beautiful anyway


Platttuutsch chann i noed, aber Zurituutsch siicher scho. 's isch 's baeschte Tuutsch vo d'gaanze Waelt! Vo Hamburg weiss i gar nuut.


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## Guest (Feb 19, 2016)

Ilarion said:


> Hochdeutsch around Frankfurt am Main??? I was told that hochdeutsch is spoken around Hanover.


Well, I had been working with finances in Zurich, and while I love the Zurich dialect, it could be difficult trying to learn Hochdeutsch around it. One day I had to talk with someone from Frankfurt, and his Hochdeutsch sounded so perfect in my ears, it was almost like he was speaking to me in English, it was that understandable. I don't have any experience with anybody from Hannover. I did interact with someone from East Germany - I believe he was from Dresden - who pronounced the "ch" so softly, it sounded more like "sh." So something like "ich moechte" sounded more like "ish moeshte."


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## Guest (Feb 19, 2016)

And I have to apologize - I don't know how to quickly pull up umlauted letters while typing, so I tend to replace it with an "e" after the letter, hence umlauted "o" becomes "oe" when I type it out - or I simply leave out the umlauts. In my clip of Swiss German in post 28, there are actually supposed to be a lot more umlauts.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I grew up in a bilingual English/German household and I'm pretty sure my love of classical music would not have been possible without this. It's a very useful language for classical music and literature but not really for anything else (all educated people in Germany speak good English so you won't need it for business). But if you have enough free time...go for it.

My family is from near Frankfurt and I can attest that what my older relatives speak is _not_ Hochdeutsch - not even close.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Ilarion said:


> Forgive me, I don't understand "you had me" - Please help me understand


I was joking about how masculine the singer was.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> I grew up in a bilingual English/German household and I'm pretty sure my love of classical music would not have been possible without this. *It's a very useful language for classical music and literature but not really for anything else (all educated people in Germany speak good English so you won't need it for business).*But if you have enough free time...go for it.


German is not good for anything else? Is this the famous German self-effacement? I know, this is just a single example, but at the trucking company I work for half of the shipping documents that go with our loads are made in German. Hardly "not useful".

Besides, isn't it one of the rules of business that if you want to have reliable partners - not just people you buy something from once a year and they cannot remember who you are afterwards - but tried and true partners, you should be able to communicate in their language, no matter if it is German, Italian or Japanese?


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> I grew up in a bilingual English/German household and I'm pretty sure my love of classical music would not have been possible without this. It's a very useful language for classical music and literature but not really for anything else (all educated people in Germany speak good English so you won't need it for business). But if you have enough free time...go for it..


That is not true.
Most people even young persons in Germany can speak very little English.
All TV serials and films are dubbed so they here very little English. It is the same in Italy and France. In eastern Europe there are even fever that can speak English.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I like the OP's plan of learning German for lieder--might as well just start practicing on Duolingo and, when you're done with that, get to memorizing Winterreise! You don't have to know the language perfectly to enjoy it!


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Sloe said:


> That is not true.
> Most people even young persons in Germany can speak very little English.
> All TV serials and films are dubbed so they here very little English. It is the same in Italy and France. In eastern Europe there are even fever that can speak English.


Well, there are far more Poles/Germans/Italians and French who can speak English than there are native-English speakers who can speak Polish/German/Italian or French.

I'm reminded of a joke I was told:
Q. What do you call a person who speaks two languages?
A. Bilingual
Q. What do you call a person who speaks three languages?
A. Trilingual
Q. What do you call a person who speaks one language?
A. English!!!


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Sloe said:


> That is not true.
> Most people even young persons in Germany can speak very little English.
> All TV serials and films are dubbed so they here very little English. It is the same in Italy and France. In eastern Europe there are even fever that can speak English.


This is not my experience, especially as regards Germany. It´s getting better in Eastern Europe too. I´ve travelled in Europe for about 3 years totally, and of course we have tons of well-educated European students in Copenhagen, socializing at cafes, working here etc., in English.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Headphone Hermit said:


> Well, there are far more Poles/Germans/Italians and French who can speak English than there are native-English speakers who can speak Polish/German/Italian or French.
> 
> I'm reminded of a joke I was told:
> Q. What do you call a person who speaks two languages?
> ...


I would say it is a bit similar with Germans. Everything that exists in English like classical music forums also exists in German so the need to speak other languages is not there.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

According to Wikipedia, about 64% of Germans speak English:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population

Take that for what it's worth.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Blancrocher said:


> According to Wikipedia, about 64% of Germans speak English:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
> 
> Take that for what it's worth.


To what extent and how many of these feel comfortable with speaking English?


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

DrMike said:


> And I have to apologize - I don't know how to quickly pull up umlauted letters while typing, so I tend to replace it with an "e" after the letter, hence umlauted "o" becomes "oe" when I type it out - or I simply leave out the umlauts. In my clip of Swiss German in post 28, there are actually supposed to be a lot more umlauts.


"You can't make an Umlaut without breaking Äggs"... as my dear old grandmother (didn't) used to say.


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## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

Lukecash12 said:


> I was joking about how masculine the singer was.


Thanx:tiphat::tiphat::tiphat:


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung = speed limit

Love it!


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Kivimees said:


> Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung = speed limit
> 
> Love it!


Although most everything pales in comparison with Welsh (Cymraeg), or at least the town with the longest name...

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogoch

Transl.: The Church of St. Mary's in the hollow of the white hazels near to the rapid whirlpool of Llantysilio by the red cave.

They have recently trimmed it to 38 letters!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Becca said:


> Although most everything pales in comparison with Welsh (Cymraeg), or at least the town with the longest name...
> 
> Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogoch
> 
> ...


You have to love a people whose language is so lovely to listen to and so visually horrifying. I suspect everyone there sings just to prove that it's possible.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Kivimees said:


> Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung = speed limit
> 
> Love it!


Oh yes! So do I. There was a photo in the thread about the Bayreuth Festspielhaus with the words "Inszenierungsbezogene Einführungsvorträge" - introductory lectures about the staging. In English it is five words, in German two.

I am listening to Winterreise right now, because of this thread. The texts may be quite depressive, but they are definitely worth understanding.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

I've read that the most difficult German word for native English speakers to pronounce is _Streichholzschächtelchen_ (little matchbox). But since there is most likely no opera or lieder where that word is used, the OP might as well not bother


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I've read that the most difficult German word for native English speakers to pronounce is _Streichholzschächtelchen_ (little matchbox). But since there is most likely no opera or lieder where that word is used, the OP might as well not bother


Not even in the opera "Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern" ?


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

^ Wer weiß..........


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## shadowdancer (Mar 31, 2014)

I remembered my personal (with portuguese as mother tongue) difficult with Wirtschaftswissenschaftler.
Why not call it just "Economist"? 
Anyway, probably there won't be an Opera or a lieder with this word.


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## Guest (Feb 24, 2016)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I've read that the most difficult German word for native English speakers to pronounce is _Streichholzschächtelchen_ (little matchbox). But since there is most likely no opera or lieder where that word is used, the OP might as well not bother


That is nothing compared to some of the words in Swiss German, for example, the Swiss German (Zurich dialect) word for kitchen cabinet. German: Kuchenkaestchen. Schwiizertuutsch: Chuechichaestli. Hard to describe, but most Americans would say that, to say it properly, you have to hock up a ball of phlegm.
http://forvo.com/word/chuchich%C3%A4schtli/
By the way - the best part of Swiss German is that it is more of a spoken language, so you really can't spell anything wrong. You just spell phonetically. Some have tried to produce instruction booklets, but it is rather pointless, as each individual Swiss Canton has its own dialect - Bern and Zurich sound vastly different, and Southeastern Switzerland (Chur, St. Moritz) are yet more different.


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## Guest (Feb 24, 2016)

This is a Swiss band that was fairly popular in the late 90's - I don't know how popular they still are. They are call Zuri West - they are from Bern (get it, west of Zurich?), and sing in the Bern dialect. I have a harder time understanding all of what they say, as I spent more time in Central and Eastern Switzerland.


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

Let's give Wiener deutsch a try:


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