Why German Sounds So Aggressive

German sounds harsh and aggressive. Why?

Sources:

Music:

Artlist:

Ian Post - Deutschlandlied
Ardie Son - First Sunrise
Hans Johnson - Food Fight
Randy Sharp - Just Try Me
Yonatan Riklis - It’s a Slippery Slope
Yoed Nir - Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major BMV 1007 - I Prelude
Hawkins - Solveigs Song
Ian Post - Dusk

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Armchair documentaries, almost weekly

[fern-tv]

This is a reupload. It came as a surprise to us that YouTube wants us so to show authoritarian dictators with their clothes on.

[franciskafayeszter]

I grew up bilingual, learning German and Hungarian as a child. My favourite German word is Geborgenheit. For me this word expresses a very deep sense of intimacy, feeling secure, like a parent lovingly carrying a child, who is slowly falling asleep.

[lnsnllq]

Some other great german words:
1. Kabelsalat: literally cable salad, meaning a mess of cables
2. Schadenfreude: literally damage joy, meaning the joy of someone else's suffering.
3. Verschlimmbessern: literally worse improving, meaning trying to make something better, and the result is worse than what it was in the beginning
4. Ohrwurm: literally ear worm, meaning having a song in your mind you just cant forget, so you always sing it in your mind

[mentalmoves]

I learned German in school in Sweden. After I visited southern Germany, like Munich, and also Austria and Switzerland, I realized that German language could sound quite different. There are dialects sounding much softer and some r and auch sounds that are completely different pronounced.

[sdweston]

As a native German speaker I can tell you that German sounds harsh mostly in Hollywood movies

[PeteTheWargamer]

I'm currently in the process of learning German and I've found the compound words to actually be really helpful. Being able to figure out what a word means based on the words it's made up of is much easier than having to learn an entirely new word. Great video!

[paulfoss]

People say German sounds angry, and do exaggerated voices, but whenever I hear actual people speaking German it sounds like they are very carefully setting the words down. I'll say that I think people have gotten the angry impression from Hitler and Rammstein, and the stereotypes that emerged from that, and that now they are just hearing what they expect to hear, but they just reject that and insist that it sounds impossibly angry.

[oytuuuuuuuuuu]

A friend of mine, who grew up in Germany, told me that the word formation is pretty literal. She told me that "Krankenwagen" (ambulance) is literally the combination of "sick" (krank) and "car" (wagen). I found it lovely.

[rickcharon]

I once had the chance to hear a poem, recited by a young German woman, and let me tell you that I was captivated, not because I understood what she was saying ( thank you for the subtitles for that ), but because she had this sweet way of pronouncing words, as if singing a lullaby to a child. So no, German is an aggressive language only for those who confine themselves to the past. Tschüs

[TheUntypicalGerman]

News flash: When you yell you sound aggressive, no matter the language.

[GeekmanCA]

"Weltschmerz" was a word I needed to learn today. sigh.

[horse_chestnut]

I've been to Germany, and as an American who is learning German, I can say it's very soft and not at all harsh-sounding when natives speak it in daily life. It is very fun to speak once you've gotten the hang of the new sounds, too, and after getting much more used to it, I love it.

[cgardner]

I came back from a two week vacation in Germany and one of my favourite things was to listen to the German language spoken in public. I find it so intellectually fascinating and stimulating to my ears.

[whitehawk]

German doesn't really sound that aggressive.
It's basically just because people's main exposure is a certain Austrian war veteran who had been exposed to poison gas.

[yourDecisin]

There is a reason why many popular artists and writers were German in the past. German is a complex, yet very vibrant language. It is honest, well-structured, playful, full of love, and also dark at times. Whatever you want to express, you can express. This is the beauty that lies hidden in it

[Lunakunbaby]

Literally no language deserves hate or criticism. Every language is beautiful in its own way. 💜

[kurtjanssen]

I'm Dutch and love the German language. Mostly thanks to German TV I watched as a child (Sendung mit der Maus, Hallo Spencer, Bud Spencer, sesamstraße,

Und vielleicht auch, weil ich in der Provinz Limburg wohne und unser Dialekt der deutschen Sprache sehr ähnlich ist 😉

[ze_baronkrigler]

I have been learning German for 5 years and It really doesnt sound agressive, I quite like how the Vowels are so precise and each word has no tricks to how it is pronounced, It is such a logical language and that is what I love about it

[xoxrvn]

Hey, here's a re-comment:

Honestly German is my 3ed language and I learned it in my mid-20s. And I think whoever thinks German is a harsh language has either watched a lot of TikTok/YouTube/.... videos making fun of the German language or hasn't been to Germany or a REWE and heard the cashier's "tschüüöüöüöüöüöüöss" 😌

[elouan.onirio]

I used to suffer from prejudice against German and Dutch/Flemish languages as a Belgian French speaker, it's sadly part of the culture I was raised in. But once I discovered the beauty of both languages and the cultures attached to them I literally fell in love. I even considered moving to Germany or to the Netherlands but I'm probably moving to Flanders. Knowing is a first step to love.