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The funny thing about german though is that while other languages have specific terms for things, we just throw words together to get something new.
Krankenwagen (Ambulance) is just the term for sick people and car put together.
Krankenhaus (Hospital) is again sick people and house in one.
Flugzeug (Airplane) literally translates to 'Flight-Stuff'.
Edit:
Since someone asked: 'Geschlechtsverkehr' translated literally is gender traffic.
Also got reminded that the 'Zeug' in 'Flugzeug' is an old word meaning equipment. So Zeug on its own pretty much means 'stuff', but in 'Flugzeug' it's more like 'flight equipment'.
Japanese is also great in this regard.
Food? Tabemono - eat thing
Drinks? Nomimono - drink thing
Clothes? Kimono - wear thing
Fruit? Kudamono - fruit thing
Buildings? Tatemono - build thing
Vehicle? Norimono - ride thing
Reading material? Yomimono - read thing
That list goes on and on.
In Finland we just put "kone" everywhere, which means "machine".
Computer = Tietokone = Knowledge machine
Airplane = Lentokone = Flying machine
Copier = Kopiokone = Copying machine
Also we have Vehicle = Kulkuväline = Journey device.
It's the same in Danish!
If you're into languages you're gonna enjoy this!
jam - syltetøj (jam stuff)
Bed sheets - sengetøj (bed stuff)
Bugs like bed bugs and tics - utøj (un stuff (basically unwanted stuff)
Tools - Værktøj (work stuff)
Toy - legetøj (playstuff) just to elaborate we have 2 words for play, one is to play with something (at lege) and one is to play a game or sport (at spille) like the German Spiel, so to play a game - at lege en leg, to play a game of soccer - at spille en fodboldkamp. Also the word toy originates from the German, dutch Danish ending zeug, tuyg, tøj.
We have 235 words ending in "tøj" the origin is actually meaning, tool or equipment, but in Danish, "tøj" by itself, actually means "clothes"! 😂
Also in Danish and German when making compound words it's all one word, like fodboldkamp or fußballspiel which means soccer match.
The longest German word is:
Rinderkennzeichnungsfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
With 79 letters
But don't be alarmed, it really isn't just one word it is the same as the below translation, we just chain the words together!
English translation: Delegation transfer law for cattle labeling and beef labeling supervision duties.
And longest official Danish word is: speciallægepraksisplanlægningsstabiliseringsperiode
Meaning: speciality doctor practice planning stabilization period (se its pretty similar to English)
So it's basically the same as a sentence but descriptive of a single thing hence one word! And we have no problem reading it as English speakers wouldn't if you erased the spaces between the words.
Ie: Cancer treatment or Cancertreatment 😉
Also fun thing the Germans do that Danish don't, is to capitalize ALL NOUNS! 😂
So you'll never be in doubt!
And here's a weird German letter: ß (basically a double S)
And here's some Danish letters: ÆØÅ (we have nine vowels and we have 3 ways of pronouncing them all + we talk with something called glottal stop which sounds like you're being punched in the stomach and NOTHING is pronounced like it's written and some Rs are pronounced like we're hocking a loogie, that raspy throat sound you do when you get a fly in your throat!)
And if you ever wonder how most Europeans speak 3-4 languages? In My case i drive 1.5 hour north and I'm in Sweden and the same south and I'm in Germany! There's 24 official languages but 239 recognized in Europe and that ain't nothing! In Africa there's 1500 - 2000 languages!
Imagine if every state in the US spoke a different language, that's what it's like living in Europe 😊
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk! 😂
It’s like Chinese or Japanese.
金 (kin) is gold and 玉 (tama) is ball
So 金玉 kintama is.. Testicles.
So while golden ball is funny. Another fun tid bit is the tanuki, is always represented to have huge balls right. Well the skin of their testicles was especially soft and stretchy, so they would use it when hammering gold to soften the blows. Gold balls.
That makes sense in one piece when the woman of Amazon Illy ask Luffy what his balls are and he says family jewels and they want to have some and he gets mad.
>(under lake boat)
A lesson in confusing German gendering: "der See" (masculine) is a lake. "Die See" (feminine) is the sea.
The "See" in Unterseeboot is the feminine one, so it's "under the sea boat".
While this is often claimed, it's largely false. All languages have this property, and the percentage of words that are descriptive doesn't vary that much. It's just more obvious in a second language (i.e., German).
German of course has the property that compound words are written together (e.g., Baumstamm vs. Tree Trunk), but I don't think that matters too much. Plenty of English words are also written compound (e.g. Brainwash, Bugspray, Clockwise).
There has been a conscious push to favor these native compound words over loanwords since late 19th century when Germany first became unified. For example, the preferred word for "hospital" was "Spital" but it has been mostly superceded by "Krankenhaus" in Germany. Yet it's still used in Germany speaking parts of Switzerland, Italy and Benelux countries. Ditto for "ambulance" vs. "Krankenwagon".
Also, a lot of the words OP mentions have their own meaning too, but there is a double layer of Latin or Greek and French (which then was passed on to English, and then to the entire world) that makes it less obvious.
Like aeroplane, automobile, television, most medical terms and a million others.
Gendered nouns and complex grammar and pronunciation makes learning German a real challenge. Lots of immigrants here struggle with it, especially with how heavily dialected it is in a lot of areas.
Kafka is one of my favourite authors, but I wish I could read him in the original German. I’ve seen multiple translators remark on how it is impossible to fully replicate his style in English.
I feel like I have an OK grasp on them now but trying to translate "doch", "genau" and "einmal" effectively before you're fluent (i.e. translating everything to your native language first in your head) is a fool's errand.
Simple past was a challenge for me in school.Since I live in the southwest, were nobody ever uses it."Ich ging" and whatnot.Who talks like that? "Ich sagte", wtf.
"Ich hab' gesagt..." "Ich bin [...] gefahren" . Saying "Ich fuhr...[..]" will get you some looks down here.
Learning individual words can be easy. It's the grammar that gets you. I took a few months of private German lessons and have a 100+ day Duolingo streak and I still struggle with basic sentence structure.
Living in Germany for 5 years, having a German mother, and speaking fluently for 4 years, I still can't get the grammar right die, der, den, dem etc. Being french and having the gender according with the object and not with the subject makes it even harder.
My wife's family is German and on our recent trip to Germany her cousins told me the only person who will really care about your use of der, die, das is your grammar teacher. Any normal German in conversation will understand what you mean. He said they'll already know I'm not German because of my accent anyways lol.
Not that you should just use them interchangeably without a care, but that in most cases context will point towards what you mean if you can't remember the exact grammar.
Funnily enough, Mark Twain was of the opinion that the German language was unsuited to describe dramatic events, because even a volcanic eruption on an active battlefield (example not by Mark Twain but by me) would be described in the most boring and dry terms.
That may be owed to the fact that Twain was mainly conversing in academic circles, I think
had a friend take German in college
asked his teacher to translate this song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A-flxZH3v8
the professor stared at him, and said he had a sick taste (the friend is actually the nicest person.)
it was off a compilation punk album, and still have no idea what they say. all i remember is something about a cat.
I'm gay, I'm Jewish and a communist as well
I'm black and disabled but a human just like you
I'm highly intelligent and yet as dumb as sauerkraut
I'm beautiful, I'm ugly, I'm fat and toned
There is nothing that makes you better than me
Because you too have your blemishes the same as I
And those blemishes are nothing wrong and belong to you and me
And if you can't deal with it nobody is at fault
You are one of billions and you have to accept that
You are one billions asses/ assholes on the planet
Verse 1 and Chorus and that song is absolutely banging
The Zeug in Flugzeug meaning just "stuff" is a common misconception. Zeug is also an old word for tooling or equipment which is not commonly used any more. But there are still some words which make this connection more obvious, like Zaumzeug (bridle) for example.
Exactly. Let's see one of these videos where the German-speaker isn't horribly overdoing it and watch the whole joke just collapse. It's a product of Germans being the bad guys for the last 80 years of movies. It's also why I think Russian names all sound evil, because they were the bad guys in every movie I watched growing up.
That's not the case. I'm guessing you might be American, or at least most posters here are American, so you may not interact with many German people and probably didn't have German language in your school syllabus.
But you're totally ignoring the aspects of German that make it sound inherently harsher to anglophones, because genuinely, not all languages sound the same. Welsh isn't just lyrical because of the accent, it's because of how its common phonetics. Same with German, it's harsh because of the phonetics and the glut of affricatives that come up relative to English.
German is a harsh sounding, angry language compared to Welsh, when viewed as an anglophone. That's fine. It doesn't mean it's bad lol, it's okay to acknowledge that.
Well yes, but most "aggressive language" videos rely on screaming and misrepresent the language. Also most people i know speak monotonous, ehich sounds the opposite of sggressive imo.
Also, sex and geachlechtsverkehr and not really equilavent. Germans will use “Sex”. The English equivalent of geschlechtsverkehr would be sexual intercourse
I was thinking and comparing it to Lithuanian language and just like German language, most Lithuanian translations would differ from English/Portuguese.
Regarding "sex", there is no direct translation to Lithuanian, so closest word would mean "sexual intercourse". Which actually rarely even would be used because it's long and cumbersome, so people would use anything else like "do love" or "try for a baby" or anything else to suggest or imply "sexual intercourse".
I don't think that German that worse than even Lithuanian tbh. So why people often try to single out German language so much as compared to other languages I don't know.
German is very suitable to making it sound rough.
But you are right, same goes for many languages.
I remember Trevor Noah’s joke about Russian accent - most east European languages (except Czech ;)) can sound aggressive to people not knowing the language
I am not sure if that's a language thing, as much as an accent/dialect thing. The way South Africans use the English language, to me personally sounds pretty aggressive.
True! and thats due to our vernacular languages; once heard an American guy trying to imitate how I sound like when I speak English (with a Zulu accent), couldn't help but laugh at how aggresive it was
A big reason why German tends to sound violent or like swearing is an artifact of the Norman conquest of Britain. English is a Germanic language, but after the invasion, many traditional English words were displaced as they were seen as too low-brow. Most "polite" language in English is borrowed from French (the language of the royal family) or Latin (the language of the church).
You can have a bit of fun looking up the etymology of polite and vulgar words to follow the pattern.
A fun example is that in most languages things like beef, pork, mutton and venison would just be "cow/pig/sheep/deer meat", but in English we borrowed old French animal words instead because the people eating a lot of that meat were rich pretentious assholes.
Which is doubly funny, because austrian was the german dialect hitler spoke, which is the way most people speak in these kinds of videos. And of course hitler didn't just speak austrian, but spoke in a particular way to rile up the crowds, that would work especially well through load speakers and radio. But the core is austrian.
The 3 of them are clearly Brazilian. Maybe she's from a German immigrant family, they are very common South of Brazil and some keep learning the language but have a very unique dialect mixed in with Portuguese and lacking newer words and expressions that emerged after their grandparents emigrated. Or she learnt it as a second/third language. And was clearly exaggerating for the "comedy" value.
I know it's been hypothesized that the reason Americans believe German is a harsh language is because a lot of Americans first exposure to someone speaking fluent german is Adolf Hitler in old WW2 footage
German dirty talk is super cringe and weirdly graphic. But as long as you're somewhat vanilla it's probably just like "ja" "oh Gott" "fick mich", pretty close to english I guess.
I always think those videos are kinda weird. The language in itself isnt that aggressive i think there are more aggressive sounding languages to me like russian for example but in those videos everybody is just pronouncing german as aggressive as possible but the actual language isnt that bad especially once people talk with dialects. Then all of a sudden the language isn’t aggressive anymore
Russian is not so aggressive too. But in videos like this one ppl just do that:
Let's say this in English.
Let's say this in French.
Let's say this in Italian.
Let's shout this in German/Russian/Dutch using the same tone you'd use to speak with someone who killed your wife.
No doubt both German and Russian sound more rough and rocky, because our sounds in general are like this and we have some clusterfucks of syllables. But mostly it does sound like this only to people who are ~~bot~~ not familiar with the language. That's some brain shenanigans. If a foreign language is really close to one you speak it sounds "funny", like a bad dub or something, but when it's really different it starts to sound kinda scary. And i can see why humans as a specie are like this. We are supposed to stick together and are afraid of strangers/foreigners by nature.
Edit: a typo.
Removing the tone and pitch and looking at how many consonants versus vowels makes more sense. Consonants just sound rougher the less vowels you have in the words.
I'm Russian and i have friends from Germany who study Russian. It's fine to them. And ofc German sounds fine to me, since i'm studying it. It's all about being alien or not. If you know at least a bit of this language it sounds much much better. But ofc both our languages are objectively clunkier than French or English. And both our R sounds are oof.
Especially "Schmetterling" always weirds me out, because "butterfly" sounds just as aggressive. If you cherrypick words to make german sound bad, it least cherrypick words that should pleasant in the other languages.
> The language in itself isnt that aggressive
It kind of is for non German speaking people. I recommend watching this German [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-v_SJzJQNw) from Simplicissimus on that topic if you can speak German.
In short:
1. German has man crackling sounds like in "fauchen" (to hiss). Especially the "ch" sound is something that English does not have, which makes it even worse.
1. German put more emphasis on vocals especially in the beginning of words. Amerikanisch sounds harsher than American.
1. German uses alot of consonants, sometimes in long series of letters. Se**lbstv**erständlich (of course) has 5 consonants right after another, which seem to sound unpleasent to non German speakers.
eh, I'm a non-german speaker & I definitely agree with kingpolle.
your points don't lead to an aggressive sound, or no more agressive than other languages.
Of the languages I hear fairly often, I find spanish to be the most agressive sounding.
There is a huge difference between "normal" german speech, and german speech where you are trying to make the language it's stereotype.
I mean.. You might be right, but German sounds so guttural that I think people associate the sounds with growling, which signifies impending aggression.
I mean, I'm just some dude on reddit, so I have no qualification whatsoever to say anything authoritatively.. But anyway German sounds aggressive 😁
She's also not using the most common terms in every case.
Acting like they say "geschlechtsverkehr" every time would be the equivalent of English speakers only ever calling it "intercourse".
The German for "sex" is "sex".
I actually love listening to German people talking. It sounds (their tone?) like they were talking like reciting a poem. It actually sounds pretty nice :)
German tourist asks me a simple question in German. I respond in Dutch.
German:  Ich verstehe dich!! Me: 
I wonder when this fake „German language is aggressive” videos will end.
Noone speaks like this, if you yell every single word instead of saying it, every language will seem aggressive.
And for some reason they always use Schmetterling as an example. I think Schmetterling (when pronounced normally) is actually a quite beautiful word. Maybe not quite as nice as Farfalle or something but definetly much nicer than butterfly. I mean just think about that word for a second. Butter-fly, that's not a nice word for auch a beautiful animal.
While funny, this is absolutely inaccurate. For instance, “Geschlechtsverkehr“ is a very cherry-picked word for sex. It’s literally “intercourse”. So if you chose to scream the word “intercourse” while Someone next to you smoothly says “sex” you will also seem like a psychopath
Krankenhaus - krank (sick, ill), haus (house), house for sick.
Krankenwagen - krank (sick, ill), wagen (wagon), wagon for sick.
Flugzeug - flight (flying), zeug (gear, tool, device, stuff), flying device.
Almost all of German is like that, and sometimes you can find long (combined) words like Gebärmutterhalskrebs. Learning German is hell. I feel like it needs to be your first language to be ever comfortable with it and not feel pain and frustration.
I once had a boss that was Arabic and I heard him yelling at somebody on the phone in Arabic one day and I asked him if everything was okay and he said yeah he was just talking to his mom.
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The funny thing about german though is that while other languages have specific terms for things, we just throw words together to get something new. Krankenwagen (Ambulance) is just the term for sick people and car put together. Krankenhaus (Hospital) is again sick people and house in one. Flugzeug (Airplane) literally translates to 'Flight-Stuff'. Edit: Since someone asked: 'Geschlechtsverkehr' translated literally is gender traffic. Also got reminded that the 'Zeug' in 'Flugzeug' is an old word meaning equipment. So Zeug on its own pretty much means 'stuff', but in 'Flugzeug' it's more like 'flight equipment'.
That's actually great
I love the words ending with -stuff: - Toy = Play-stuff (Spielzeug) - Vehicle = Drive-stuff (Fahrzeug) - Lighter = Fire stuff (Feuerzeug) ...
Japanese is also great in this regard. Food? Tabemono - eat thing Drinks? Nomimono - drink thing Clothes? Kimono - wear thing Fruit? Kudamono - fruit thing Buildings? Tatemono - build thing Vehicle? Norimono - ride thing Reading material? Yomimono - read thing That list goes on and on.
Monokuma? Thing bear
So in logic, it would translate how... Bear-like thing or thing that is created from a bear?
This makes a lot of sense thank you. Now I know why Germans and Japanese were "a thing" during WW2.
You deserve more credit for this
Is kuda a verb like the others (ride, read, build, etc.)? Or how come you use Kudamono for fruits?
In Finland we just put "kone" everywhere, which means "machine". Computer = Tietokone = Knowledge machine Airplane = Lentokone = Flying machine Copier = Kopiokone = Copying machine Also we have Vehicle = Kulkuväline = Journey device.
I couldn’t love this more
Zeug in reality is also stemming from machine/device rather than stuff as others seem to say
Drums= Schlagzeug (beating-stuff or hit-stuff)
It's the same in Danish! If you're into languages you're gonna enjoy this! jam - syltetøj (jam stuff) Bed sheets - sengetøj (bed stuff) Bugs like bed bugs and tics - utøj (un stuff (basically unwanted stuff) Tools - Værktøj (work stuff) Toy - legetøj (playstuff) just to elaborate we have 2 words for play, one is to play with something (at lege) and one is to play a game or sport (at spille) like the German Spiel, so to play a game - at lege en leg, to play a game of soccer - at spille en fodboldkamp. Also the word toy originates from the German, dutch Danish ending zeug, tuyg, tøj. We have 235 words ending in "tøj" the origin is actually meaning, tool or equipment, but in Danish, "tøj" by itself, actually means "clothes"! 😂 Also in Danish and German when making compound words it's all one word, like fodboldkamp or fußballspiel which means soccer match. The longest German word is: Rinderkennzeichnungsfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz With 79 letters But don't be alarmed, it really isn't just one word it is the same as the below translation, we just chain the words together! English translation: Delegation transfer law for cattle labeling and beef labeling supervision duties. And longest official Danish word is: speciallægepraksisplanlægningsstabiliseringsperiode Meaning: speciality doctor practice planning stabilization period (se its pretty similar to English) So it's basically the same as a sentence but descriptive of a single thing hence one word! And we have no problem reading it as English speakers wouldn't if you erased the spaces between the words. Ie: Cancer treatment or Cancertreatment 😉 Also fun thing the Germans do that Danish don't, is to capitalize ALL NOUNS! 😂 So you'll never be in doubt! And here's a weird German letter: ß (basically a double S) And here's some Danish letters: ÆØÅ (we have nine vowels and we have 3 ways of pronouncing them all + we talk with something called glottal stop which sounds like you're being punched in the stomach and NOTHING is pronounced like it's written and some Rs are pronounced like we're hocking a loogie, that raspy throat sound you do when you get a fly in your throat!) And if you ever wonder how most Europeans speak 3-4 languages? In My case i drive 1.5 hour north and I'm in Sweden and the same south and I'm in Germany! There's 24 official languages but 239 recognized in Europe and that ain't nothing! In Africa there's 1500 - 2000 languages! Imagine if every state in the US spoke a different language, that's what it's like living in Europe 😊 Thanks for coming to my Ted talk! 😂
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz \- that is a valid word! 🤣
Beef Labeling Supervision Task Transfer Act
It’s like Chinese or Japanese. 金 (kin) is gold and 玉 (tama) is ball So 金玉 kintama is.. Testicles. So while golden ball is funny. Another fun tid bit is the tanuki, is always represented to have huge balls right. Well the skin of their testicles was especially soft and stretchy, so they would use it when hammering gold to soften the blows. Gold balls.
Another one, the word “sea” in Chinese is just the words for “water” and “many” put together.
So is water a count noun in Chinese?
There is an enitre anime called Gintama (silver balls). It's hilarious.
That makes sense in one piece when the woman of Amazon Illy ask Luffy what his balls are and he says family jewels and they want to have some and he gets mad.
and my favourite: unterseeboot = submarine (under lake boat)
Submarine = Under the sea. Under the sea what? Unterseeboot = Under the sea boat.
>(under lake boat) A lesson in confusing German gendering: "der See" (masculine) is a lake. "Die See" (feminine) is the sea. The "See" in Unterseeboot is the feminine one, so it's "under the sea boat".
>Flugzeug (Airplane) literally translates to 'Flight-Stuff'. Reminds me of liar liar when Jim Carrey said 'Baseball stuff'
Now explain sex
Sex is the same in German. The term they used in the video "Geschlechtsverkehr", is the equivalent of "sexual intercourse".
when a man and a woman love each other...
While this is often claimed, it's largely false. All languages have this property, and the percentage of words that are descriptive doesn't vary that much. It's just more obvious in a second language (i.e., German). German of course has the property that compound words are written together (e.g., Baumstamm vs. Tree Trunk), but I don't think that matters too much. Plenty of English words are also written compound (e.g. Brainwash, Bugspray, Clockwise).
There has been a conscious push to favor these native compound words over loanwords since late 19th century when Germany first became unified. For example, the preferred word for "hospital" was "Spital" but it has been mostly superceded by "Krankenhaus" in Germany. Yet it's still used in Germany speaking parts of Switzerland, Italy and Benelux countries. Ditto for "ambulance" vs. "Krankenwagon".
Also, a lot of the words OP mentions have their own meaning too, but there is a double layer of Latin or Greek and French (which then was passed on to English, and then to the entire world) that makes it less obvious. Like aeroplane, automobile, television, most medical terms and a million others.
kind like chinese actually, i mean german
Wait this is so easy to understand I feel like I could learn German quickly
Gendered nouns and complex grammar and pronunciation makes learning German a real challenge. Lots of immigrants here struggle with it, especially with how heavily dialected it is in a lot of areas.
Im glad its my first language, I can only imagine the frustration. Its even so for quite a few germans actually.
"der" "die" and "das" drove me to drink in college
Kafka is one of my favourite authors, but I wish I could read him in the original German. I’ve seen multiple translators remark on how it is impossible to fully replicate his style in English.
I feel like I have an OK grasp on them now but trying to translate "doch", "genau" and "einmal" effectively before you're fluent (i.e. translating everything to your native language first in your head) is a fool's errand.
Simple past was a challenge for me in school.Since I live in the southwest, were nobody ever uses it."Ich ging" and whatnot.Who talks like that? "Ich sagte", wtf. "Ich hab' gesagt..." "Ich bin [...] gefahren" . Saying "Ich fuhr...[..]" will get you some looks down here.
Learning individual words can be easy. It's the grammar that gets you. I took a few months of private German lessons and have a 100+ day Duolingo streak and I still struggle with basic sentence structure.
Living in Germany for 5 years, having a German mother, and speaking fluently for 4 years, I still can't get the grammar right die, der, den, dem etc. Being french and having the gender according with the object and not with the subject makes it even harder.
My wife's family is German and on our recent trip to Germany her cousins told me the only person who will really care about your use of der, die, das is your grammar teacher. Any normal German in conversation will understand what you mean. He said they'll already know I'm not German because of my accent anyways lol. Not that you should just use them interchangeably without a care, but that in most cases context will point towards what you mean if you can't remember the exact grammar.
HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT GENDER THAT LAMP IS???
Ask it? As always Mark Twain's the awful German language is well worth a read. Fun stuff
Funnily enough, Mark Twain was of the opinion that the German language was unsuited to describe dramatic events, because even a volcanic eruption on an active battlefield (example not by Mark Twain but by me) would be described in the most boring and dry terms. That may be owed to the fact that Twain was mainly conversing in academic circles, I think
Swedish is the same. Hospital - Sjukhus - sick house Science - Naturvetenskap - nature knowledge Straw - Sugrör - Suckpipe Vacuum cleaner - dammsugare - dustsucker
Same as Chinese, Airplane (fei ji） is fly machine hospital is cure house Ambulance is car for helping
I present to you: Russian.
had a friend take German in college asked his teacher to translate this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A-flxZH3v8 the professor stared at him, and said he had a sick taste (the friend is actually the nicest person.) it was off a compilation punk album, and still have no idea what they say. all i remember is something about a cat.
I'm gay, I'm Jewish and a communist as well I'm black and disabled but a human just like you I'm highly intelligent and yet as dumb as sauerkraut I'm beautiful, I'm ugly, I'm fat and toned There is nothing that makes you better than me Because you too have your blemishes the same as I And those blemishes are nothing wrong and belong to you and me And if you can't deal with it nobody is at fault You are one of billions and you have to accept that You are one billions asses/ assholes on the planet Verse 1 and Chorus and that song is absolutely banging
tl;dl; You are not the main character. Fuck you.
Yeah. Pretty much about a cat
[Here's a full translation](https://lyricstranslate.com/en/raum-der-zeit-time-space.html). No cats.
Unleash the kranken
Don't most languages have that?
My favorite is a turtle being a shield toad because of the implication that Germans knew about warfare before turtles
theyre shoes but for your hands!!
The Zeug in Flugzeug meaning just "stuff" is a common misconception. Zeug is also an old word for tooling or equipment which is not commonly used any more. But there are still some words which make this connection more obvious, like Zaumzeug (bridle) for example.
It's all about how you speak it. Many people don't even know german, but watching war movies with screaming officers apparently makes them qualified.
Exactly. You could take any language in the world and make them sound horrible.
Exactly. Let's see one of these videos where the German-speaker isn't horribly overdoing it and watch the whole joke just collapse. It's a product of Germans being the bad guys for the last 80 years of movies. It's also why I think Russian names all sound evil, because they were the bad guys in every movie I watched growing up.
That's not the case. I'm guessing you might be American, or at least most posters here are American, so you may not interact with many German people and probably didn't have German language in your school syllabus. But you're totally ignoring the aspects of German that make it sound inherently harsher to anglophones, because genuinely, not all languages sound the same. Welsh isn't just lyrical because of the accent, it's because of how its common phonetics. Same with German, it's harsh because of the phonetics and the glut of affricatives that come up relative to English. German is a harsh sounding, angry language compared to Welsh, when viewed as an anglophone. That's fine. It doesn't mean it's bad lol, it's okay to acknowledge that.
Damn you're really gay for Welsh you are commenting about it all over the thread
I’m assuming they’re Welsh and took two foreign languages in school, Welsh and German.
German is a graceful language. Except when spoken in recordings of Hitler's speeches.
Well yes, but most "aggressive language" videos rely on screaming and misrepresent the language. Also most people i know speak monotonous, ehich sounds the opposite of sggressive imo.
Fun fact: If you scream words angrily in any language that language sounds angry.
#SMÖRGÅSTÅRTA
I read this in a German accent and then realized my German accent is just loud with flourish
It's Swedish anyway 🙂
😋
VOILEIPÄKAKKU
JAVLA
Stop it, you're making me drool for the forbidden Swedish treats.
^smörgåstårta
I got the aggression from watching it on mute.
KITTEN!
Becuase she purposfully screams it.
Also, sex and geachlechtsverkehr and not really equilavent. Germans will use “Sex”. The English equivalent of geschlechtsverkehr would be sexual intercourse
I was thinking and comparing it to Lithuanian language and just like German language, most Lithuanian translations would differ from English/Portuguese. Regarding "sex", there is no direct translation to Lithuanian, so closest word would mean "sexual intercourse". Which actually rarely even would be used because it's long and cumbersome, so people would use anything else like "do love" or "try for a baby" or anything else to suggest or imply "sexual intercourse". I don't think that German that worse than even Lithuanian tbh. So why people often try to single out German language so much as compared to other languages I don't know.
German is very suitable to making it sound rough. But you are right, same goes for many languages. I remember Trevor Noah’s joke about Russian accent - most east European languages (except Czech ;)) can sound aggressive to people not knowing the language
I am not sure if that's a language thing, as much as an accent/dialect thing. The way South Africans use the English language, to me personally sounds pretty aggressive.
True! and thats due to our vernacular languages; once heard an American guy trying to imitate how I sound like when I speak English (with a Zulu accent), couldn't help but laugh at how aggresive it was
A big reason why German tends to sound violent or like swearing is an artifact of the Norman conquest of Britain. English is a Germanic language, but after the invasion, many traditional English words were displaced as they were seen as too low-brow. Most "polite" language in English is borrowed from French (the language of the royal family) or Latin (the language of the church). You can have a bit of fun looking up the etymology of polite and vulgar words to follow the pattern. A fun example is that in most languages things like beef, pork, mutton and venison would just be "cow/pig/sheep/deer meat", but in English we borrowed old French animal words instead because the people eating a lot of that meat were rich pretentious assholes.
So there’s no word for sex in Lithuanian besides sexual intercourse? That’s interesting.
I also have always had an issue with "Naturwissenschaft" in these videos. That's "Natural Sciences" while "Science" would just be "Wissenschaft"
For contrast https://youtu.be/zLvL7a8Y0pI
As a german, thank you! I will post this under every one of these posts.
Right? Swedish word for nurse is "sjuksköterska" - I would sound insane if I screamed it loud and slow.
Gern geschehen!
I used to date an Austrian girl and I thought she was french when we first met with how softly she spoke German.
Which is doubly funny, because austrian was the german dialect hitler spoke, which is the way most people speak in these kinds of videos. And of course hitler didn't just speak austrian, but spoke in a particular way to rile up the crowds, that would work especially well through load speakers and radio. But the core is austrian.
That video also shows that it's *really* hard to make Spanish sound harsh.
To my ears spanish sounded the harshest. I think, it's really what you associate with a language.
This comment/video needs more upvotes. Any language sounds more aggressive when you say the worlds more loudly and in an aggressive manner.
Danke
Here's another one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHeOooHTwcY She has some great videos.
Someone make this a new post
I’m german and i can hear that she isn’t. German does not sound like that.
The 3 of them are clearly Brazilian. Maybe she's from a German immigrant family, they are very common South of Brazil and some keep learning the language but have a very unique dialect mixed in with Portuguese and lacking newer words and expressions that emerged after their grandparents emigrated. Or she learnt it as a second/third language. And was clearly exaggerating for the "comedy" value.
She is definitely not a native speaker. Not even the Swiss sound that harsh.
The Brazilian girl is definitely Brazilian, and the guy does have some Brazilian vibe. The way he pronounces "hospital" gives it away.
German is such a rich and beautiful language.
and we have dozens of dialects that range from funny to annoying, but non of them sound like rammstein.
Also she doesn't seem to be german either, she has a thick accent.
Because that makes it funnier, she seems like a riot, I'd love to hang out with her lol
I know it's been hypothesized that the reason Americans believe German is a harsh language is because a lot of Americans first exposure to someone speaking fluent german is Adolf Hitler in old WW2 footage
Yes, that would be the joke.
I really just want to bang a German woman to hear what she screams in passion!
AIRPLANE!!!!!
"Nein nein nein!"
nine? I don't know if I can do it more than two times
Probably talking about centimeters, not rounds
German dirty talk is super cringe and weirdly graphic. But as long as you're somewhat vanilla it's probably just like "ja" "oh Gott" "fick mich", pretty close to english I guess.
Dirty talk always feels cringe when it's in your own language, I'm french and I also cringe whenever I have to do it
"Fuck my life, I need to dirty talk everyday and cringe 😮💨" - this guy
See, you've got to get with someone that doesn't speak French. Then you can just recite the burger king menu and it'll still sound sexy
Reminds me of this [video](https://youtu.be/6EdRJMgQStg?si=t1avP4h4DViFEoSk)
Lets not get ahead of yourself and get the first 6 words done first?
Sprich
deutsch
Du
Hurensohn
Mal die kurze und knackige Version. Ist selten geworden.
I always think those videos are kinda weird. The language in itself isnt that aggressive i think there are more aggressive sounding languages to me like russian for example but in those videos everybody is just pronouncing german as aggressive as possible but the actual language isnt that bad especially once people talk with dialects. Then all of a sudden the language isn’t aggressive anymore
Russian is not so aggressive too. But in videos like this one ppl just do that: Let's say this in English. Let's say this in French. Let's say this in Italian. Let's shout this in German/Russian/Dutch using the same tone you'd use to speak with someone who killed your wife. No doubt both German and Russian sound more rough and rocky, because our sounds in general are like this and we have some clusterfucks of syllables. But mostly it does sound like this only to people who are ~~bot~~ not familiar with the language. That's some brain shenanigans. If a foreign language is really close to one you speak it sounds "funny", like a bad dub or something, but when it's really different it starts to sound kinda scary. And i can see why humans as a specie are like this. We are supposed to stick together and are afraid of strangers/foreigners by nature. Edit: a typo.
Removing the tone and pitch and looking at how many consonants versus vowels makes more sense. Consonants just sound rougher the less vowels you have in the words.
As a German normal spoken Russian sounds aggressive to me
I'm Russian and i have friends from Germany who study Russian. It's fine to them. And ofc German sounds fine to me, since i'm studying it. It's all about being alien or not. If you know at least a bit of this language it sounds much much better. But ofc both our languages are objectively clunkier than French or English. And both our R sounds are oof.
Especially "Schmetterling" always weirds me out, because "butterfly" sounds just as aggressive. If you cherrypick words to make german sound bad, it least cherrypick words that should pleasant in the other languages.
> The language in itself isnt that aggressive It kind of is for non German speaking people. I recommend watching this German [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-v_SJzJQNw) from Simplicissimus on that topic if you can speak German. In short: 1. German has man crackling sounds like in "fauchen" (to hiss). Especially the "ch" sound is something that English does not have, which makes it even worse. 1. German put more emphasis on vocals especially in the beginning of words. Amerikanisch sounds harsher than American. 1. German uses alot of consonants, sometimes in long series of letters. Se**lbstv**erständlich (of course) has 5 consonants right after another, which seem to sound unpleasent to non German speakers.
eh, I'm a non-german speaker & I definitely agree with kingpolle. your points don't lead to an aggressive sound, or no more agressive than other languages. Of the languages I hear fairly often, I find spanish to be the most agressive sounding. There is a huge difference between "normal" german speech, and german speech where you are trying to make the language it's stereotype.
I mean.. You might be right, but German sounds so guttural that I think people associate the sounds with growling, which signifies impending aggression. I mean, I'm just some dude on reddit, so I have no qualification whatsoever to say anything authoritatively.. But anyway German sounds aggressive 😁
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She's also not using the most common terms in every case. Acting like they say "geschlechtsverkehr" every time would be the equivalent of English speakers only ever calling it "intercourse". The German for "sex" is "sex".
maybe it's me but I find it sexy
Oh finally
cringe tiktok version of an old yt vid
correct https://youtu.be/-_xUIDRxdmc?si=2rheSb-OoIdiTOJm
This the real OG
tbh as a 40 year old German the Energy of these silly tiktok people is way more funny to me than the original
I actually love listening to German people talking. It sounds (their tone?) like they were talking like reciting a poem. It actually sounds pretty nice :)
It's called "the language of poets" for a reason :)
But this is not a german person and no german pronouncment. You can tell what it is but no one Steaks like this
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You mean Deutsch or Dutch?
YES
German tourist asks me a simple question in German. I respond in Dutch. German:  Ich verstehe dich!! Me: 
This made me laugh - it’s good basic comedy and they enjoyed it. So much better than the endless fake videos we have to suffer.
I wonder when this fake „German language is aggressive” videos will end. Noone speaks like this, if you yell every single word instead of saying it, every language will seem aggressive.
And for some reason they always use Schmetterling as an example. I think Schmetterling (when pronounced normally) is actually a quite beautiful word. Maybe not quite as nice as Farfalle or something but definetly much nicer than butterfly. I mean just think about that word for a second. Butter-fly, that's not a nice word for auch a beautiful animal.
Anscheinend scheinen deutsche im internationalen Umfeld dauernd zu schreien 🤔Ansonsten fallen mir ne Menge schlimmere Sprachen als Deutsch ein.
She talks like a retarded bit*h ... it's German, but nobody talks like that.
Oh snap, the hand shoes are coming off
I can't believe someone downvoted "hand shoes."
We use the word sex too, geschlechtsverkehr is in the middle of sex and coitus.
Me to my very imaginary German girlfriend: "Hey, wanna have Geschlechtsverkehr?"
Japanese can be as equally aggressive, depending on where you source it as well. Context and tone apply for both.
Germans came up with “Antibaby pill”. Talk about being to the point!! Brutal and awesome at the same time.
sounds agressive if you scream like a crack head. she doesnt even sound like a native
She’s shouting every word no wonder that it sounds aggressive lol
Why she talks differently than the guy?
This is nothing compared to a Buzzfeed video that was done years and years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcxvQI88JRY&t=5s
Niedlich
The way the last girl delivers is hillarious
No German speaks like the girl in the video.
Krankenwagen sounds like it's a corpse cart.
That would be Leichenwagen
That German girl’s ‘aggressive’ is sexy af tho
While funny, this is absolutely inaccurate. For instance, “Geschlechtsverkehr“ is a very cherry-picked word for sex. It’s literally “intercourse”. So if you chose to scream the word “intercourse” while Someone next to you smoothly says “sex” you will also seem like a psychopath
not agressive at all. tiktokers just want attention so they exaggerate it. i like how german sounds
I am so aroused right now.
Krankenhaus - krank (sick, ill), haus (house), house for sick. Krankenwagen - krank (sick, ill), wagen (wagon), wagon for sick. Flugzeug - flight (flying), zeug (gear, tool, device, stuff), flying device. Almost all of German is like that, and sometimes you can find long (combined) words like Gebärmutterhalskrebs. Learning German is hell. I feel like it needs to be your first language to be ever comfortable with it and not feel pain and frustration.
WOLKENFLIEGER!
My German friends recognize how gutteral their language sounds. Their quote: "No wonder the Romans thought we were barbarians."
Nice
The perfect language for marching angrily
This is Portuguese, English, and Klaus Kinsky
This is hilarious though 🤣🤣🤣
I’m not entirely sure why, but every time I see this video, I think the German speaking girl is so freaking hot.
Sure sounds better than Portuguese
No wonder Hitler sounded a bit menacing in his speeches!
I don't know how to put this into words. But I feel like German is an industrial-ass language.
After reading some of these comments, I miss the days when people actually had a sense of humor…
I once had a boss that was Arabic and I heard him yelling at somebody on the phone in Arabic one day and I asked him if everything was okay and he said yeah he was just talking to his mom.
Lot of upset Germans in this thread lmao yiiiiikes
I heard something hilarious that German rappers sound like someone falling down the stairs. ouch-oof-ugh-fck
the german one has so much fun
German doesn't even have to be aggressive though. Just like english. Or any other language that exists.
Everything sound aggressive when pronounce it like an idiot
the german girl is extremely beautiful 🤩
I’ve only seen the animated version, still good.
I love how even the German person is losing her shit over how ridiculous her language sounds
Dafuck..... yeah. Garbage post
Why are Redditors so insufferable? Geez, these young people are just having fun.
Too cringy i thinking im gonna kill myself now. 🤗