German Speaking Lesson 3

In our today’s German speaking lesson, we will learn to utter correctly German words and phrases look like English and learn some German slang words which are call “Denglisch”.

German and English words that are similar

German and English are both supposed Germanic languages, therefore they have some common characteristics:

hallo!	hello!
gut	good
der Film	movie/film
der Freund	boyfriend
das Restaurant	restaurant

German words and their totally different meanings

We have to be careful when speaking these German words. Because these words are not what they appear to be:

	Sounds like	Actually means
groß	Gross; disgusting	Big
fahrt	Fart (teehee!)	Drive; ride
das Handy	Handy; useful	Cellphone / mobile
der Chef	Chef; someone who cooks	Boss. (Think of it like "chief")
Hell	Hell. The pit of fire and brimstone.	Bright!
das Gift	Gift; present	Poison!

So, please watch out when a strange German offers you a “gift”… At that time, you must run away as fast as possible!

If you are unfortunately involved in this situation, you must know these 2 German words to call the police for help:

die Polizei	Police
hilfe!	help!

Actually, those words sound like their English equivalents too!

How English becomes Denglishch in Germany

Every generation has its own slang words, but to the surprise of the grandmother, the boy is starting to adopt English slang! (Gasp!) This is something happening all around Germany.

We call this kind of slang “Denglisch” because it is usually mixed with English words, phrases, and sentence structures.

Deutsch (German) + Englisch (English) = Denglisch

Here are some German words that you might hear but it’s actually Denglishch:

babysitten	babysit
showmaster	TV host
der Computer	computer
das Camping	camping

Furthermore, many Denglisch words are complicated because they don’t make much sense at all via its utterance.

der Beamer	projector
das Mobbing	bullying; harassment
der Smoking	tuxedo — a bunch of well-dressed Germans

A Beamer in the Uk means a BMW (a type of a car) but in German Beamer is a projector

So the good news is that when you learn German, a good chunk of the language will look familiar.

So be careful to check your word meanings to avoid a tragedy.

This is the end of our today's German speaking practice. We hope that you can know how to speak these above German words correctly. And don’t forget to follow us in the next German lesson.

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