We welcome Bryant to the team, who will join Scott on our English blog.
Continuing with the subject of languages, today we will analyze German, which has a strong presence in the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, all of which have received successive waves of German immigrants over the last 200 years. Currently, there are approximately 100 million German speakers throughout the world. The language is spoken in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, in the French regions of Alsace and Loraine, and in the Alto Adige region of Italy.
These days, studying German opens up an infinite amount of doors, both professionally and commercially. On the one hand, being able to communicate with German peers/clients distinguishes you from the competition and adds fluidity to your negotiations. On the other hand, Germans happen to be among the most likely to travel and, consequently, consume abroad. Likewise, German has left an indelible mark in the world of literature and art, thanks to the geniuses of Goethe, Kafka, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, among others.
There are three grammatical genders in German: feminine, masculine, and neutral, each of which causes a certain inflection in a given sentence. There are four grammatical cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative. Possessing an abundance of grammatical endings, German—unlike other languages—clearly identifies what the purpose of each word in a sentence is. There is a singular order to sentences because the subject and predicate do not fit in the regular place, especially when an adverb or a complementary preposition precedes the sentence. German is the creative language par excellence, given that it lends itself to new words through simple union. Thus, it is the preferred language in the scientific sphere, in which new terminology is constantly needed to denominate new processes and elements that have been discovered.
