This video is sponsored by squarespace. This is for lovers of English
as much as for lovers of German. German is hard. Learning it means studying an array
of rules, mastering three grammatical genders and knowing whether you’re using the
nominative, accusative, genitive or dative. But in this video, we’re ignoring all of that. I’m going to give you some simple tricks that
are going to help your chances of understanding the German words written in front of
you. Whether they’re on a billboard, a menu, or in a movie. By the end we’ll
be able to decipher THIS - gibberish to the untrained eye - into something that any
English speaker will be able to understand. No prior German knowledge required! And even if you don’t want to learn German,
keep watching because the reasons why these tricks work tell us a lot about our own
language. German and English… have history. Los geht’s! …let’s go. Let’s get that mystery document back up.
The key to decoding this is mainly going to lie in swapping letters in and out, to
make these words look more like English. I’ll go into exactly why it’s possible,
and what it’s got to do with these guys later. But the key point is that English
and German are part of the same language family. They share a common ancestor
that they both developed from. And by retracing that development, you can
find consistencies in how they differ. For example, where English developed a
“th” sound in certain words, German went off in a slightly different direction
and ended up with a “d” sound instead. So where English has “three” German has “drei”,
where English has “thunder” German has “Donner”, English “thing” is German “Ding”. And where
English has “the”, German has a seemingly endless number of words of various genders and cases, all
of which basically mean “the” and begin with D! And while we’re here, German’s “du”
and “dein” have the same ancestry as the age-old English words “thou” and “thine”. So there’s our first trick. Swapping the D in a German word for TH can very often get
you closer to the English equivalent. And linguistically speaking the “d” sound is very
similar to the “t” sound. The processes in our mouths to produce these sounds are extremely
similar. Just a tiny tweak makes a “t” a “d”. And that’s why you can also often swap a German
“t” sound with TH as well, particularly in the middle or end of words, like “Mutter” which
is “mother” and “wert” which is “worth”. This similarity between T and D sounds also
opens up another letter swap opportunity, this time between the two languages. German Ts can often be swapped for English Ds.
Take a look at these pairs. Dream, daughter and deer all have German equivalents beginning with
T. Tier is actually the German word for “animal”, but that’s precisely what deer originally meant
in English before we decided to make it mean one animal in particular. In fact, the Dutch word
for animal is still “dier”. Dutch very often provides a satisfying mid-point between German
and English, a bit like it does geographically. Back to German, the D swap works elsewhere in
some words too. Check out “under” and “leader” becoming unter and Leiter. Incidentally, Leiter
also means ladder! It’s all Ds and Ts again. While we’re throwing Ts around, that
reminds me of another good swap. This time, instead of taking the Ts out,
we’re going to slip them in, in the place of the “sss” sound
made by either one or two Ss. Check out how neatly German Wasser becomes
English water! The German word for “what” is “was”. And if you apply two of our
tricks to German “das” you get its English equivalent “that”. Bonus fact:
there are actually some German dialects that use “wat” and “dat”. As does our
friend from the low countries, Dutch! Ooh! And let’s bring in that
most Germanic of characters, this fat, wiggly fellow, the eszett.
Although its name literally means S Z, it actually replaces a double S. So if you see
it, sub in double S… then try swapping it with a T! German Fuß becomes English foot, with
a bit of imagination applied to the vowels. Let’s fling some more Ts around, because adding a
T can also help you solve all of these words. By subbing it in the TS sound, usually expressed
in German with a Z, we can get much closer to the English “to”, “two” - this time the number
- and “tongue”. And there are plenty of others. Right, more of these to come, but I realise
it’s a lot to take in, with all these consonants flying around. I’ve become somewhat consonant
incontinent. So let’s take a break to understand why these tricks work when they do, which I admit
is not 100% of the time, but the hit rate is good! We’ll get to the cool reason just as soon as
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your first purchase of a website or domain. So earlier I said our translation tricks had
something to do with these guys. What did I mean? Well what do Rapunzel, Hansel & Gretel, Little Red
Riding Hood and others have in common? The answer is that they’re all fairytales featured in the
collections of Germany’s famous Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm and Jacob. By the way, brother
is another word that our tricks worth with because we can swap the D in German
Bruder for a TH to get brother. Anyway, Jacob here is our hero, because as
well as working with “sienem Bruder” to bring together and reimagine European
fairytales, he was also a prolific linguist. So I mentioned earlier how English and German
are from the same language family - the Germanic languages. In fact, more specifically,
Western Germanic languages. And Jacob Grimm was one of the driving forces behind an
ingenious theory about how Germanic languages developed together - known as Grimm’s Law. Long long ago - probably in the first millennium
BC - the Germanic languages went through a consonant shift that moved their consonant sounds
away from those of Proto-Indo-European. That’s the ancient ancestor Germanic languages
share with other language families like the romance languages, celtic languages,
slavic languages and others like Sanskrit. But the language that became modern High
German - which is the the most widely spoke form of German - went through an extra
consonant shift that other Germanic languages, like English, did not. That left
German with different consonant sounds to English BUT those differences
are remarkably consistent! And that’s why we can often swap them in and out,
and get from one language to the other. So now you know the theory,
let’s get onto some more tricks! Another way that English and German
diverged from one another is with the sounds /p/ and /f/. And it means that a
lot of [f] sounds in German - written F, double F, or PF /pf/ - can be swapped
with a P to get you closer to the English. For example, German “Pfeffer” is English “pepper”,
“Pfeife” is “pipe” - they’re both double whammies. But German “auf” has the same linguistic root
as English “up”, and German “Hoffe” is English “hope”. There are so many more - Schiff
and ship, Apfel and apple. It really works! When the English P, the Germans F. The next swap is a piece of cake. Or in
German, ein Stück Kuchen. You can often sub this CH in a German word for a K
and get closer to the English - like Kuchen and cake. Also German “machen”
is English “make” - although it also means do. “Suchen” is related to “seek”.
And a German Buch is an English Book. Again, once you do these swaps, you
basically get the Dutch. Check out Machen. So Dutch viewers, feel free to
use these to cheat with your language too. German Ich becomes Dutch Ik
- both meaning “I”. Incidentally, Old English for I was “ic”. Or something like it.
My Old English pronunciation is always terrible. Anyway, that’s all a Dutch distraction!
Because I was just going to point out that German words that begin with a K often
have an English equivalent beginning with C. Cake is a good example. A German Kuh
is a cow. Kreuz is a cross. And lots of others are really obvious like Kultur and
Culture. You’re unlikely to struggle there. Anymore for anymore? Oh yes! Hanging out at the end of the alphabet are W
& Y and they hold the key to another couple of handy switcheroos you can do. We’re going
to try swapping them in for German Gs. Let’s take the German word Tag. So we already
know what to do with that T. We’re swapping it for a D - remember dream and daughter? And now
let’s try - as I just suggested - removing the G and putting in a Y. And we end up with
DAY. What’s the German for day? It’s Tag. Fascinating historical fact! The Old English word
for day was this (dæg). Notice anything? It has a G at the end! Although it was actually
pronounced more like a Y. It was da’y. Anyway, some more G and Y swaps:
German “Weg” is English “way”, German sagen is English say! And if the Y doesn’t
work, give a W a go. German Bogen is English bow. Oh, and I’ve just thought of another good one!
A lot of Bs in German are Vs in English. Take a look at the German words for “live” and
indeed “liver”, also “to give” is “geben”. And to stick things together is “kleben”
- which is related to the English cleave. Cleave is a fascinating word because it can
both mean to separate and to put together. Little doggy! Had enough of these yet? Well don’t make me stop
before I get to my “triple letter score” trick - with CHT. German words containing CHT often
have a similar English word with GHT instead. I give you: “light” both in the sense of the
shiny stuff and the stuff that’s easy to lift. I also give you “night”, “eight”
and “sight”. There are others! Ones to watch out for though: nicht means
“not”, rather than night. And you wouldn’t be blamed for thinking a Knecht was a knight. But it
isn’t, a Knecht is a servant. But in my defence, the words are related. The English knights saw
themselves as servants of their sovereigns. Right! Or should that be richt? Actually a
German judge is a Richter and they oversee the administration of Recht.
So I think that one counts… Anyway, RIGHT! Those are all the
tools you need to be a “consonant trickster” so let’s put them to the
test and bring back this from earlier. And if you hadn’t already worked out
what this is, it tells you at the top. “Tagesmenü” Let’s work our magic on the
T and swap it for a D, and the G for a Y, and we get something very close to “day’s
menu”. This is a menu of the day’s special! So what’s for starters? Cremige Karottensuppe.
Well already we see we can do another G and Y swap in the first word, and we get
much closer to the English word creamy. And we can swap the K at the start of the next
word with a C, although I suspect you’ve already worked it out - this is creamy carrot soup. Mit
is just the German for with, and if you need any help with the last word, swap the T at the end
for a D and you can work out that it’s bread. The next word is a bit tricky. You probably
already know what a Schnitzel is - a delicious breaded cutlet. What about the start of
the word though? Swap the K with a C and the B with a V and you get CALVS. Does
that look like any English word to you? How about calves? Kalb is the German for
veal - the meat of a young cow, a calf. Und is just German for “and”. And we came across
Pfeffer earlier: it’s our double-whammy P-swap, giving us pepper. And sauce is conveniently the
English spelling. There is a German word for sauce that is extremely similar, but the English
- or rather, French - spelling is also used. Onto our dessert. It’s Apple cake!
The PF again swapped for a P gives us an apple. Then swapping the K
for a C and the CH for a K gets us close enough to cake to work
it out, like we did earlier. And finally, to drink - you have a choice of
coffee or water, if we swap the K for a C and that double S for a T. I’m sure the waiter
will let you have both if you ask nicely. So there you have it, what I’ve basically
given you there is a lesson on Germanic consonant shift, dressed up as some top
tips for translating German. But they really work a lot of the time. If you’ve
enjoyed this, I’ve done the same thing with French! Or check out my guide to the
Dictionary’s darkest secret: GHOST WORDS! Hit like and subscribe and share this with someone who may find it useful. See you in
one of my other videos in a sec.
