German and English:

A Comparison of Grammatical and Phonological

Properties

My interest in language began in ninth grade after receiving Guitar Hero as

a Christmas present; one of the songs that came on the game was a German rock
song by the band Rammstein. Not knowing what the words of the song meant, I
decided to translate it. Looking up a translation online was easy enough, but
didnt offer a word-for-word comparison, so, that being what I really wanted, I
went a step further and started looking up the individual words. I quickly
discovered that translation isnt as simple as a direct correspondence, and I began
to pick up on some of the distinct grammatical differences. Eventually, I became
so enthused with German that I decided that Id teach it to myself. By the
beginning of tenth grade, I was comfortable reading, writing, and speaking in the
language, and was able to lazily breeze through three years of German at my high
school. The teacher I had for those three years was a German immigrant and
helped me immensely with the nuances of the language, and encouraged me to
investigate literary German as well which gave me even greater insight into the
finite processes behind the language. As a result of my experience with German, I
found that I had a knack and a passion for language and ended up learning as
much of any other that I could, the more obscure and unpopular the better
(Welsh, Irish, Estonian, etc), though Ive never found one that Ive genuinely liked

more than German. Ive also found a fondness for linguistics in general, especially
the historical and comparative fields.
Despite being relatively quite closely related West Germanic languages, the
phonologies of English and German have quite a few significant distinctions.
These differences become quite obvious when listening to a German learner of
English speak with a heavy accent, as many of the native sounds of English must
be substituted or altered to be articulated. There are, too, several sounds distinct
to the German language that are just as foreign and difficult to produce for most
English speakers.
In particular, the vowel inventory of German has several phonemes that are
absent from English, especially the rounded front mid and high vowels /, /
and /, y/ which are contrastive with e /, e/ and i /, i/ respectively, with only
a featural difference in rounding and slight centralization. As English does not
possess these sounds, and thus speakers have no reason to distinguish them from
one another, it can be very challenging for an English speaker to consistently
pronounce or even hear the difference in them. These sounds (those represented
orthographically by and ), as well as /, /, are product of a process called
umlaut, wherein back and central vowels are fronted and/or raised and marked
orthographically by a diaeresis (eg. a /a, a/ > /, /).
A more subtle dissimilarity is that of the rhotic r consonant. The General
American English pronunciation of r is realized broadly as a voiced alveolar
approximate // and can act as a syllabic nucleus without compromising its
articulatory features, whereas the rhotic consonant of Standard German is most

commonly realized as a voiced uvular fricative //. The German r, unlike its
Anglic counterpart, cannot be syllabic and is often vocalized to an unrounded
near-open central vowel // word terminally and in syllable codas. Despite the
stark physiological difference, however, both articulations of the consonant are
understood by speakers of the other language as having rhoticity consistent with
their own pronunciation of it.
Morphologically, English is comparatively lacking in regards to German:
German nominals decline for both case and gender, in addition to number (and
person in the instance of pronouns), and German is well known for having
absurdly lengthy noun compounds.
Germans declensional system consists of 3 genders; masculine, feminine,
and neuter. Like most languages with grammatical gender, an individual nouns
gender does not necessarily correspond with biological gender, though in most
cases regarding human nouns it will correspond (eg. die Frau the woman is
feminine; der Mann the man is masculine; das Kind the child is neuter). The
grammatical gender of non-human nouns, whether they be animate things,
names of persons or places, or abstract concepts must thus be memorized and,
thought there are some patterns for gender prediction from word form, they are
often counter intuitive; most nouns that end in a terminal -e // are
grammatically feminine, but there are outliers such as Ende end which is neuter.
Nouns then decline for four cases: nominative, accusative, dative, and
genitive. The gender of a given noun will determine its form in which even case it
is being used. The nominative case is considered to be the base form of the word

and is used when the noun is the subject of a sentence; the accusative is used
when the nouns is the direct object of a transitive verb and with certain
prepositions; the dative occurs when the noun is the indirect object or beneficiary
of a verb, and with its own select set of prepositions (it has the general meaning
to or for); the genitive is used to show possession, relation, or partitivity (it
has the general meaning of). English has lost its own declensional traits over the
years, except in some specific instances such as the subjective/oblique forms of
personal pronouns (i.e. he vs. him), and in select adverbial terms, most of which
are considered archaic (i.e. where (LOC); whither (DAT); whence (ABL)).
Compounding in German is done much in the same way as it is done in
English, but whereas Englishs compounds are limited to two words that are
usually orthographically separated (especially as ad hoc constructions), German
has no such restriction, nor is it inclined in writing to keep the words separated.
German nouns compounds are often connected by the use of a genitive interfix
between two nouns like in Leben-s-mittel {life.GEN.means} groceries, but isnt
consistently present, especially in compounds between a noun and another that is
already compounded with the genitive infix: Lebensmittelgeschft
{groceries.store} grocery store. Such words can continue to be compounded
into long, single-word strings until the desired specific meaning is reached.
Word order in German is a bit different than most languages which use a
standardized structured order of subject, verb, and object. Its word order is,
instead of a general ordering of these components, verb second, wherein the verb
is always the second phrase of the sentence regardless of the initial phrase,

except in some subordinate clausal constructions where the verb is displaced to

the end of the clause. When possible, though, German does use SVO; this only
changes when a phrase other than the subject is initial in the sentence, and in
subjects containing an indirect object, there is a tendency to put the indirect
object at the beginning. English, on the other hand, will very rarely deviate from
its word order, usually for poetic or euphonic reasons only, but such changes are
not typical in common parlance.
On the topic of semantics, German and English operate in much the same
way. The most notable semantic featural differences are perhaps the many
culturally informed idioms that all languages have. Some of these idioms can give
excellent insight into a culture on a linguistic level, as many of them contain
common expressions that are pervasive throughout the area wherein the
language is spoken. Many, if not all, of the idiomatic expression in German have a
direct equivalent in English, but hardly any of them translate perfectly; the phrase
wer wei, warum die Gnse barfu gehen basically corresponds with the English
its just the way things are, but translated directly it comes out as who knows
why the geese go barefoot. Idioms such as this are very common in colloquial
German, just as similar ones are in English as they have a culturally recognized
concrete meaning and dont require ingenuity on the part of the speaker due to
their definite structure.
One other similarity between the semantics of the two languages, is their
use of non-productive composite verbs pairing verbs with a particular adverb or
preposition to construct a new verb phrase (eg. the English go away meaning

leave). However, whereas a large amount of Englishs vocabulary has come

from Latin roots and cant be broken down, many of Germans more complex
verbs are these types of compounds (though in German, the adverbal particles
are prefixed to the verbs in the infinitive, then separate during conjugation). A
good example is the German word halten to hold. Depending on the adverbal
prefix, its meaning can vary widely: anything from to cling festhalten (lit. hold
tight), to to observe, follow einhalten (lit. hold in), to to continue anhalten
(lit. hold on). In cases like these, one can see that the meanings of the compounds
do not perfectly preserve the meanings of their components.
Because I dont have anyone with whom to converse in German, nor much
practical use for the language, acquiring and retaining the grammar and
vocabulary was and still is a struggle. I am yet to be able to think in the language,
though some of the more commonly occurring and used lemmas come out
unconsciously in different situations, especially in uncomfortable or awkward
situations, such as when talking with somebody I dont know well or have never
met before; working, for example, on an in class assignment with a classmate
with whom Ive perhaps never spoken, I might have to stop myself from saying
sollen wir anfangen? instead of should we get started?. For whatever reason, its
more comfortable to use language I know my addressee does not understand,
rather than whats best for cohesive communication. Though, I think this has less
to do with the fact that phrases are easier for me to produce in German, and more
to do with my own unconscious social stubbornness. I do, however, frequently
(and usually by accident) use German syntax when speaking English; sometimes

its just more intuitive to say certain things. Also, when having a conversation in
English, sometimes Ill blank on a particular word that has the meaning Im trying
to express, yet Ill be able to think of the word for it in German. Essentially, in
learning German, Ive greatly expanded my expressive lexicon, but am limited in
using this expanded vocabulary to very few situations, wherein my addressee
would necessarily speak German as well as English.
When I first began learning German, several years ago now, I remember
countless examples of seemingly similar things in both grammar and lexicon
between German and English that I later found out were misleading. Along side
many false-cognates, German also has lots of set phrases that are very similar to
ones in English, but that are used in a completely different way in different
environments. One example of this is the limited use of the particle zu with
infinitive verbs. Due to its similarity to the English use of to with infinitives, and
without any formal teaching, I had no precedent on how to use it correctly and
would insert or omit it when doing the opposite was required. In English, we use
the to infinitive form with many non-transitive, non-auxiliaries such as in the
phrases I want to eat, and I forgot to eat. Since the two phrases in English are
constructed identically in English (other than replacing the verb, of course), I
tended to construct translations of such sentences either with both phrases
having zu or lacking it. Doing so would leave me at least correct half the time. Not
until my class in high school, were I was able to directly inquire as to its use, was I
able to properly apply it; the phrase I want to eat would in German be realized
as Ich mchte essen (without the zu) because the verb eat is considered to be

acting as the compliment of want, whereas the phrase I forgot to eat would be
realized Ich verga zu essen (with zu). In this case, essen constitutes an infinitive
clause, that is, a dependent clause with no grammatically realized subject, though
it can be inferred to be the same as that in the main clause.
Over the past years of my studying the German language, Ive constantly
been comparing it with English on a morphological and syntactic basis usually
more through happenstance as I recognize certain connections than through
genuine research. My main focus, though, was comparing them on a historical
level; tracing their phonological and grammatical changes from Proto-Germanic to
their current stages. However, I had never before considered juxtaposing the
languages semantic traits, and doing so here, as well as a deeper look into the
other grammatical aspects, I feel has given me new realms of inquiry to consider
in the future, and I will continue to plumb the depths of their relation.