Growing up, we learn to write in our mother tongue at school. While expressing things in a written rather than spoken way is a bit new to us as kids, slowly, with the time we spend reading and writing, we start to understand how meaning is encoded and transferred in the written format. However, at that time, we had no idea that texts may look quite or even entirely different in other languages. I assumed that the way that German is used in writing was universal everywhere in the world until my English teacher told me that I was not meant to write „I am at home“, but “I am at home”. Yes, indeed the quotes look different in German. As a language learner, you often won’t recognize or be taught those small differences until quite late in your learning journey. They are not very easy to look up online, plus when you just start out learning a new language, there will be other things occupying your mind.
Even if not taught early on, it does make sense to know the way your target language works in written texts, because will help you in multiple ways: firstly, there will be fewer surprises for you when you read something, and in turn, your texts will be a lot better understood by natives. Secondly, understanding the way a language is written helps you understand more about that language’s culture, as it is closely linked with the way thought is expressed when writing. And thirdly, you may find elements that make so much sense to you that you may wish they were used in your native language’s texts as well.
In the next section, I will introduce five areas of language where interesting differences exist between German and English, and also give you little related cultural or historical side notes. Whether you are a German beginner or already at an intermediate level, odds are, there may be some features of the German written language you didn’t know about yet!
1) Numbers
Where English writes 1st, 2nd, and 3rd to create ordinal numbers, German simply uses a full stop to do the same: 1. means first, 2. second, and 3. third. Like this, there is no need to change the suffix (st, nd, rd) depending on which number is being converted into its ordinal version. But there are more differences related to numbers between the languages. Decimal plates are marked by a full stop in English, while a comma is used in German, 1.5 versus 1,5. On the other hand, English also uses the comma, but to increase the readability of large numbers: the comma defines groups of three digits. In German, a space or a full stop may be used to do the same. What would be 1,000,000 in English can be written as 1.000.000 or 1,000,000 in German. This is something to be aware of for anyone working with both languages in the financial sector or science. Since I know this, I find myself involuntarily triple-checking my bank transfers.
2) Nouns
While in English, only names are capitalized, every single noun in German starts with a capital letter. “The tree is in the garden” would be written as “Der Baum ist im Garten” in German. Another feature of German nouns is noun contraction, meaning that several nouns used together to convey one meaning are also written as one item. Noun contraction gives you words like “Förderbandreinigungsvorrichtung” (conveyor belt cleaning device), which is indeed only one word. With this feature of the language, it is possible to create your own German words, and it also makes it clear that what the reader is seeing is one unit of meaning. Conversely, without knowing the sub-nouns contained in the composite noun, it can be frustratingly difficult for a learner to look it up. Sometimes it can be tough even for natives to identify the sub-nouns, and there is a set of jokes related to this difficulty. Faced with the word “Blumentopferde”, many Germans would be confused, thinking the word was “Blumento-Pferde” (blumento-horses), and they would wonder what a “Blumento” is. However, the actual word is “Blumentopf-Erde” (flower pot-soil). Luckily, it is possible to split the main parts of meaning of the composite noun by dashes: It is equally correct to write “Förderband-Reinigungsvorrichtung” (conveyor belt-cleaning device) instead of “Förderbandreinigungsvorrichtung”.
3) Extra letters
German has all the letters of English, plus an additional four: ä, ö, ü, ß. When writing programming code, in bank transfers or in other situations that require a common standard between different countries, those letters historically caused problems. Thus, there is an alternative way of writing them: ae for ä, oe for ö, ue for ü and ss for ß. Additionally, while ä, ö, and ü also exist as capital letters, no capital version of ß existed for a long time due to the lack of any noun starting with the character (see point 2). After longstanding discussions, in 2017, capital ß (ẞ) was included officially in German orthography. Since then it is finally possible to write all-capital advertisement texts and font designs of words with ß. However, since it is a relatively new element, capital ß is not included in German keyboards yet.
4) No possessive apostrophe
While in English, an apostrophe is used to mark possession, such as in “Stephy’s Inn” or “It is Tony’s bike”, it is not correct to write the same in German. To mark possession, the letter s is appended to a person’s name like in English, but no apostrophe is used. “Stephys Inn” is correct. However, due to the increased usage of English in Germany in the recent decade, people increasingly mix features of the two languages. It is not rare to see “Tony’s Café” in Germany (and to hear a close-by group of Germans complaining about it). Sometimes one can even see people getting confused about other instances where s is appended to words such as the plural. I have indeed seen people write “Auto’s” (“car’s”) when they intended to say cars, the Plural form of car.
5) Relating words using a dash
Lastly, my personal favorite German feature is that expressions like “Du kannst Daten hochladen und herunterladen” (You can upload and download data) can be written as “Du kannst Daten hoch- und herunterladen”. It is also possible to spell out the first word and omit parts of the second: “Beethoven-Symphonien und -Sonaten” (Beethoven symphonies and Beethoven sonatas). This saves space and in some instances increases clarity in texts. Consider “Regen-, Bade-, Winter- und andere Mäntel” (rain coats, bath robes, winter coats, and other coats) for saving space and also energy on word repetition. Furthermore, meanings change when the dash is omitted. “Hunde- und Katzenfutter” (dog food and cat food) would become “Hunde und Katzenfutter” (dogs and cat food – dogs, and also cat food) without the dash.
