Some, such as wurst and pumpernickel, retain German connotations, while others, such as lager and hamburger, retain none. Most of these words will be recognized by many English speakers they are commonly used in English contexts.

3 German terms mostly used for literary effect.

2.3.2.2 Selected works in classical music.

2 German terms common in English academic context.

1 German terms commonly used in English.

German common nouns fully adopted into English are in general not initially capitalized, and the German letter ' ß' is generally changed to 'ss'. Some German words are used in English narrative to identify that the subject expressed is in German, e.g., Frau, Reich.Īs languages, English and German descend from the common ancestor language West Germanic and further back to Proto-Germanic because of this, some English words are essentially identical to their German lexical counterparts, either in spelling ( Hand, Sand, Finger) or pronunciation ('fish' = Fisch, 'mouse' = Maus), or both ( Arm, Ring) these are excluded from this list.Discussion of German history and culture requires some German words.Developments and discoveries in German-speaking nations in science, scholarship, and classical music have led to German words for new concepts, which have been adopted into English: for example the words doppelgänger and angst in psychology.German cultural artifacts, especially foods, have spread to English-speaking nations and often are identified either by their original German names or by German-sounding English names.German words have been incorporated into English usage for many reasons: Typically, English spellings of German loanwords suppress any umlauts (the superscript, double-dot diacritic in Ä, Ö, Ü, ä, ö, and ü) of the original word or replace the umlaut letters with Ae, Oe, Ue, ae, oe, ue, respectively (as is done commonly in German speaking countries when the umlaut is not available the origin of the umlaut was a superscript E). In recent years, however, many English words have been borrowed directly from German. In many cases, the loanword has assumed a meaning substantially different from its German forebear.Įnglish and German both are West Germanic languages, though their relationship has been obscured by the lexical influence of Old Norse and Norman French (as a consequence of the Norman conquest of England in 1066) on English as well as the High German consonant shift. Some of the expressions are relatively common (e.g., hamburger), but most are comparatively rare. It is distinguished from a calque, or loan translation, where a meaning or idiom from another language is translated into existing words or roots of the host language. A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language without translation. The English language has incorporated various loanwords, terms, phrases, or quotations from the German language. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

This term he notes as meaning 'independencedeclarations' (sic), which is perhaps a parchment-saving way our own Declaration of Independence could have been titled.This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. Twain's frustrations with learning German are well documented in his book A Tramp Abroad. And to think we English language speakers consider it a feat to verbalize 'antidisestablishmentarianism' without stumbling.Īs David Sedaris noted in his New Yorker article about learning German, this word is most astutely described as another option for 'partner' or 'lover,' but with a more transient twist: 'the person I am with today.' A more elegant, proper version of the term is lebensabschnittgefährte. What follows are 10 of our favorite seemingly-never-ending German words, which earn a spot on our list thanks to characteristics like technicality, definition, adaptation, or sheer perseverance in length. As Mark Twain put it, 'Some German words are so long that they have perspective.'

As a result, the language is rife with lanky terms. Compound words exist in many languages, but German's grammar construction in particular lends itself to easily tacking on parts to make single words stretch across a page.

Funny german words in english