Are there any German words or combinations of sounds you and many others have difficulty pronouncing? I don't mean tongue twisters designed to be difficult, just regular words, a German equivalent of 'squirrel' so to say.

There's no point to this post other than me being curious.

Edit: since I didn't explain this properly, the English word 'squirrel' is known to be hard to pronounce for Germans, but not for native English speakers. I was curious about which German words are difficult to pronounce for Germans.

Thank you for all the replies!!

My husband and I will become parents soon to a little girl and are currently discussing names. He is German, I am British and we live in another English-speaking country.

Funnily enough two names I’ve always loved (Rosa and Lila) happen to be words for colors in German, although we would use the English pronounciation which is different (edit: it’s pronounced Lai-la in English)

We currently have no plans to move to Germany, however his entire family is still there and given her German heritage I suppose there is a chance she may have also live there at some point in her life.

How would you see these names being perceived in Germany? For context she will have a clearly German last name (von Xyz).

We aren’t sharing our names with anyone we know ahead of the birth and my husband hasn’t lived in Germany for a very long time. Hence why I am turning to Reddit for some unfiltered opinions!

I only ask because when Linus Torvalds was originally developing Linux, he did everything in English instead of Finnish. But I've heard of some German software devs writing all their code comments in German, which seems like a better idea if most people on a project are going to be native German speakers.

So do you use German when naming variables, classes, enumerations, etc?

[Serious] What’s the best comeback for when strangers randomly insult you?

Edit: Added serious tag.

I know Germans will all have different perspectives on this, but I’ve been more hesitant to try to speak to actual Germans in German because I’m from the U.S. and I saw a couple Germans compare listening to an American speaking German to nails on a chalkboard (I was watching Easy German and she had a guest from the U.S. on the channel).

I obviously know that not all Germans have that opinion, but that messed me up a little and made me more self conscious. Either way, I’m not going to try to speak German to a German unless they don’t know English or I’m confident that the sentences I’m saying are actually correct, but yeah.

Lmao

Are there still older people who still speak those dialects?

So I found german idioms on Internet and some of them sound a little bit wierd. So I want to ask u, if these idioms are really used in conversations, or it is better to avoid using them.

1. Ich verstehe nur Bahnhoff - I understand none of this
2. Nicht alle Tassen im Schrank haben - To be crazy
3. Jetzt geht’s um die Wurst - It's now or never
4. Jemandem auf den Keks gehen - To bug someone
5. Schwein haben - To get lucky

And I it would be nice to get more some useful of them. Idioms a really interesting.

For example, do you speak German at home together? Or maybe a mixture of both your native languages? I imagine there are plenty of international couples in Germany.

I'm not sure if this is a family thing or not, but when i'm with my partner's family, if anyone is referring to another family member, they'll say "my..".

"My father, my mother, my aunt etc etc". This happens all the time when a sibling is standing there too, which has often puzzled me.

I would think it normal then to include the sibling and say "Our father/mother/nephew etc" but at least what I've seen in my partner's family, this doesn't happen. It kind of feels like everyone is speaking about their own relationship with the person under discussion.

Is this a family thing I'm seeing or is this something that is fairly normal here?

edit - lots of very different ideas and experiences in the answers but all super interesting. Thank you for taking the time to write a response.

I'm in the south if that makes any difference.

thanks

I know some of the basics, but I want to learn some more of the phrases. I want to keep up with the lingo. (Mostly my German friends find it funny when I imitate the teenagers.)

I know for a fact that I can't pronounce the throat R sound because I'm used to English. So any words that I say in German that involve the letter R, if I say it like I say it in English, do people generally understand?

I am an expat and lived within the Hamburg area for 5 years. I am now accustomed to greeting people with "Moin". I've found out that In Köln and Bonn area its not a known greeting, Definitely not in Bayern and Baden Wuttenberg, but I've heard it in some areas of Niedersachsen.

I’ve had two friends from germany, one from rhineland and one from franconia, none of them had the stereotypical german accent which we see so often in movies. Due to unfortunate circumstances (they went off the grid) I’m not able to talk to them no more but I was wondering if they always had that, or if they worked on their accent?

I’m learning German (~C1) and one of my goals is to minimize the impact any accent has on communication.

I learnt English from a very young age and have almost no foreign accent, and still I struggle to understand some English accents. Sometimes people have excellent English skills but their accent makes spoken communication harder, and even though I try not to, an unconscious bias can still be formed around the accent.

My question is, how big of an issue is this in German? How much extra effort do you need to put into understanding people with accents, and are some accents easier than others?

After living here for a little over a year now, I noticed that people use the word casually, as opposed to saying “Romani”.

On menus, I’ve seen „Zigeunerschnitzel“ as a super common offering as well.

Is it not as offensive compared to in English?

I speak German reasonably well now and can communicate in both personal and professional situations - but that’s limited to Hochdeutsch.

A few days ago I had a phonecall with someone who spoke Bädisch/Schwäbisch (can’t tell which) and I felt like I barely knew German again.

I’m wondering how big is this of an issue among natives, and if it is a problem, how do you get around it? Sometimes it’s not so easy for others to switch to Hochdeutsch and I feel it may be rude to ask. But I also want to get better at understanding German overall.

I’m curious about unique aspects of the German language. I’d love to hear about these words and their meanings, and perhaps some context on how they’re used in everyday conversation. Maybe it’s because of their unique expression, the cultural emotions they convey, or the interesting anecdotes behind them.

Edit: Thank you all for your enthusiastic responses! I’ve learned so many new German words and their fascinating nuances！

Basically a very informal way of greeting your friends and mainly used among Gen X and millennials (And maybe Gen Z. I'm not hip on what the youths are up to these days).

Hi! Aussie here! 👋

I was just wondering, from a German POV, at what point would you draw the line at using “moin”?

I know that in Germany, the social culture is a lot more respectful with its language than how laidback Aussie english can be, but specifically what scenario do you think it starts to become inappropriate to use “moin” as opposed to “guten morgen” socially?

Could you respectfully say “moin” to a barista? To your boss? Where’s the line drawn, y’know? Where would I look really stupid using “Moin”, trying to be a laidback aussie, basically. 😂

I know it can differ based on where you are, so I’m keen for some discussion based on location.

Cheers guys!

edit: i just looked it up and apparently “servus” is a thing too, any insight on that is also appreciated!

When someone in the States (can’t speak for other English-speaking places) is heard speaking in English that is not quite correct and missing parts due to a language barrier, we refer to it as speaking “broken English”. Do Germans refer to similar scenarios of people speaking German with many errors as “broken” or is there another analogy that is made to this (if any is drawn at all)?

Hallo Leute,

Ich bin eine Amerikaner und Ich verstehen nur A1. Germans who play video games in their native language; what are the best translated into German video games to play? What are video games I should avoid playing because they are poorly translated?

Here is my logic on the matter. I want to immerse myself into the language. When we are infants, regardless of our nationality, we have to intuitively pick up the language our parents are speaking. If I throw myself into the language I believe I can identify patterns in your language faster and familiarize myself with certain phrases.

I am a computer gamer, I would prefer games that I can download from Steam.

Dankeschön!

I had to fix something weird in my house and went to the hardware store. I had no real plan on how to fix it or what I was looking for. I found walking around looking for something that could do the job and imagining possible fixes to be oddly pleasurable.

Is there a word in German for this? We don't have such a word in English but you guys always come through with the perfect word to describe complex things.