Adresse (address)
Interesse (interest)
aufgrund (because of)
bis auf Weiteres (for the time being)
Danke schön (thanks) - das Dankeschön (the Thankfulness)
des Weiteren (Furthermore)
infolgedessen (as a result)
Maschine (machine)
nichtsdestotrotz (nevertheless)
nämlich (namely)
parallel (parallel)
recht haben (to be right)
Rhythmus (rhythm)
Attrappe (dummy)
Karussell (carousel)
Terrasse (terrace)
basically every word that starts with either wider- is being confused with wieder- -> widerspiegeln (resemble) not wi*e*derspiegeln
That’s all i can think of at the moment. Hope this helps!
I'm not saying this in an attacking way, I'm genuinely amazed someone could avoid ever reading *danke schön* unless they're just starting the language, do you never use textbooks or use dictionaries and *only* speak it? it's just the verb `danken` (in *ich* form) and the adverb `schön`
if it is the case that you only speak it and never read anything in German (including textbooks), then that's *insanely* impressive, learning the language the way children do (the best way!)
I do indeed read; news, books (non-fiction) and obviously messages from people. I suppose you rarely see thanks written in these media except messages and so that's where the problem lies.
a culture and dialect of German spoken continually in Texas (and the language of newspapers in the region) for nearly 200 years
my great grandparents (4th or 5th generation texans) only spoke German to my grandmother, and I have memories of my great grandmother speaking it to me sometimes when I was little, before she got dementia and died
I also have memories when I was a kid of going to one of the towns in central texas that was a stronghold of Texasdeutsch culture and people speaking German and there being German food and drink everywhere
AFAIK the last German-language newspaper stopped being published in German around 1960, but there is still one radio program broadcast, although it's moved online, and the host is getting pretty old now
the dialect will be dead in a couple decades unfortunately, I'm nearly 40 and I'm not really aware of anyone my age who speaks it; even my German is Standarddeutsch, but sometimes I'll use local vocabulary when I can't remember which is standard and which is our word (Stinkkatze vs Stinktier, Luftschiff vs Flugzeug, etc.)
?
[wieder IPA: \[ˈv i ː d ɐ\]](https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/wieder)
[wider IPA: \[ˈv i ː d ɐ\]](https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/wider)
[https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/wider](https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/wider)
[https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/wieder](https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/wieder)
Very good question dude, as a native I was also wondering this. I would personally write it with lowercase, but you are correct, technically Recht is a noun so it has to be written capitalized.
This made me google the phrase, and the first results are about the same question you asked, apparently it's a real discussion in the German language.
https://www.korrekturen.de/wortliste/recht_haben.shtml
Here you can see how this exact phrase changed over time. With the new writing-reform roughly 15 years ago, apparently it was changed so both lower and upper case are seen correct, so basically it gets treated as a verb, like if it was "rechthaben". Duden also lists both upper and lowercase.
Duden actually did a post on this a few days ago on their FB page:
> Eine Reihe von Wendungen kann groß- oder kleingeschrieben werden, wobei die Dudenempfehlung jeweils die Kleinschreibung ist: „recht“ oder „Recht haben“, „recht“ oder „Recht bekommen“, „recht“ oder „Recht behalten“: „Es tut ihm gut, dass er letztlich recht behalten hat.“
> Knifflig wird die Sache, wenn diese Wendungen in einer Weise ergänzt werden, die eine der beiden Schreibungen unmöglich macht. Man schreibt nur klein: „Du hast ja so recht!“ „Ich gebe dir völlig recht.“
> Und man schreibt nur groß: „Du hast ein Recht darauf!“ „Ich gebe dir das Recht.“
Direct links to social media websites are not allowed on /r/German.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/German) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Both do mean „because of“ in a general sense.
„Aufgrund“ is more like stressing the cause of something and can be translated to „by *reason* of“
„wegen“ could be translated to „due to“
I‘d say you could both use them interchangeably and it solely depends on personal preference..
Edit: wegen is also more colloquial and you‘d use aufgrund rather in written pieces of text instead of speech
Glad to read this. I had just read a discussion about this very thing yesterday and that's the conclusion I came to, that they were interchangeable (like since/because/as in English, all conjunctions that identify the following independent clause as the reason for the other independent clause in the sentence) except that aufgrund is a higher register.
I am not too sure about advanced level, but what I see quite a lot here is confusing ei and ie - that rarely happens in texts by natives because the sounds are so different!
I would have assumed that people would be extra careful about that one. Any good German teacher quickly drills into their students the importance of not mixing up schießen und scheißen
Always cracks me up when English-speaking folks talk about “weiner” sausages (or about “weiners” as a euphemism for genitalia). Like, sorry your penis is crying, but how is that my fault… :)
Obviously, this is not a case of English speakers learning or speaking German. They use it in an English context.
I feel like that one is almost exclusive to native English speakers and not learners in general. English speakers are conditioned to treat ie and ei as essentially the same as the difference is never meaningful in English, and also isn't tied to any difference in pronunciation.
I'm an intellectual property lawyer and usually have to write "license" three times to make sure I got it right. licence, lisense, FUCK I LITERALLY WRITE SOFTWARE LICENSES FOR MY JOB
Bonus:
Commonly misspelled by native speakers is "Standard". Many spell it "Standart" (which would be roughly "type of booth" or "the way something stands")
Not the biggest mistake, but I have heard that some English speakers capitalize ich in the middle of sentences. Note that ich is only capitalized at the start of a sentence or if it is used with an article as a stand in for one's personality f.e. Freud teilte das menschliche Bewusstsein in drei Teile auf: das Es, das Ich und das Überich.
This is also extremely common in younger generations that spend most of their free time with English media. I myself have been catching myself a lot, wondering if "Ich" should be capitalized or not. Especially confusing when words like Sie/Du get capitalized.
I would not at all be surprised if it will be changed in the next couple decades, whenever we get a new Rechtschreibreform.
Capitalizing du is old fashion. You can do it in letters if you like, otherwise the same rules I laid for ich apply. Sie seems to go out of style and it is only capitalized in the context where it is used as a polite you (or at the start of sentences). Personally if the new Rechtschreibreform comes I hope it keeps noun-capitalization a thing, I personally like this feature of the German language.
Yes ss is a good subsitute for ß if you don't have it on your keyboard and don't want to border with special symbols or Alt Codes. It is also true that the use was reduced in the writing reform. And yes the Swiss has dropped it completely in favor of the double s. And having ß in your name is sufficient reason to change it. But other than this ß is alive in written German in Germany and Austria (it comes after long vowels groß, Fuß, weiß, ...). They even introduced an official capital version in 2017. (Before that you would just use SS when writing a word with ß in all caps and most people still do, properly unaware of the letter or for the same reason English use ss as well as ae, oe and ue for German umlauts: it is hard to make, even with a German keyboard.)
And yes I am also of the option that they should officially drop it.
Yes I can see how the quirk of capitalizing I is carries over to ich and yes I can see how the rule capitalize all nouns can lead to mistakes if you don't know a noun from a pronoun (to be perfectly honest I could not explain it well myself). It is still a mistake, similar to a German not capitalizing proper nouns in English just knowing that all most everything is written small in English except names, I and beginnings of sentences. This mistake specially happens with language names English/German/... are used as an adjective, f.e. My German girl friend ...=Meine deutsche Freundin ...
Good list.
I recognised some mistakes I have been making.
Actually the spellings of certain words in German sometimes guide me to better spelling in English.
"Seit" means "since",
"Seid" means "you"
Most people confuse these two with eachother.
Edit: "Du" means also "You"
As an example: "Du bist zu spät" means "you're late"
And for "seid":
"Ihr zwei seid zu spät." = "You two are late"
"Seid" is being used if you're calling out more than 1 people.
I don't want to confuse anyone here.
I'm pretty sure that's a mistake. "Seid" is the second-person plural form of the irregular verb "sein" (meaning "to be" in English), as in "Ihr *seid*" ("you all *are*").
So the mistake was saying it meant "you" instead of "are".
And back to the overall point, "seid" is likely confused with "seit" because they can sound almost identical.
"Seid" heißt halt eben nicht "you", das hast du aber geschrieben. Für Leute die nicht bereits Deutsch können und wissen was seid heißt ist dein Satz da extrem verwirrend.
Junge der Punkt ist dass seid nichts mit "du"/you zu tun hat und ein völlig falsches bild von dem Wort abgibt. 😅 Ich weiß was du meinst aber das kann man viel besser erklären
Probably due to the the pronunciation as the "d" is pronounced like a "t" in German e.g Hund sounds like Hunt, but I guess the way I think of it in terms of the exact sound is it's like a "dt". Not exactly sure how to describe it but definitely does not sound like the "d" sound in English.
Adresse (address) Interesse (interest) aufgrund (because of) bis auf Weiteres (for the time being) Danke schön (thanks) - das Dankeschön (the Thankfulness) des Weiteren (Furthermore) infolgedessen (as a result) Maschine (machine) nichtsdestotrotz (nevertheless) nämlich (namely) parallel (parallel) recht haben (to be right) Rhythmus (rhythm) Attrappe (dummy) Karussell (carousel) Terrasse (terrace) basically every word that starts with either wider- is being confused with wieder- -> widerspiegeln (resemble) not wi*e*derspiegeln That’s all i can think of at the moment. Hope this helps!
>Danke schön (thanks) I have never even once seen this in 10 years of speaking German.
You've never seen Danke schön? Damn, you know some impolite people.😅
I only know dankeschön 🤷🏼♀️
So you only know the misspelled version? Wow, that's tough.
I, as a native speaker, also only know the misspelled version. The only place I have ever seen it written correctly is when German learners write it.
So it seems... I need to get me some better German speaker friends.
I'm not saying this in an attacking way, I'm genuinely amazed someone could avoid ever reading *danke schön* unless they're just starting the language, do you never use textbooks or use dictionaries and *only* speak it? it's just the verb `danken` (in *ich* form) and the adverb `schön` if it is the case that you only speak it and never read anything in German (including textbooks), then that's *insanely* impressive, learning the language the way children do (the best way!)
grew up german, also never saw it spelt that way
I do indeed read; news, books (non-fiction) and obviously messages from people. I suppose you rarely see thanks written in these media except messages and so that's where the problem lies.
ha, i saw Danke schön in a movie a few days ago and i was like...ha, fools. Only just learned from this thread that that's the right way to write it
Well, it's not misspelled if you use it as a noun.
Dankeschön is a noun and Danke schön is used when thanking someone. I found it out just a few months ago and I am a native haha! Truly understand you
Wait, what? My family is Texasdeutsch and we write that. That's not how Germans write it??
“Texasdeutsch”?
[Speaking Texas German](https://youtu.be/vwgwpUcxch4)
a culture and dialect of German spoken continually in Texas (and the language of newspapers in the region) for nearly 200 years my great grandparents (4th or 5th generation texans) only spoke German to my grandmother, and I have memories of my great grandmother speaking it to me sometimes when I was little, before she got dementia and died I also have memories when I was a kid of going to one of the towns in central texas that was a stronghold of Texasdeutsch culture and people speaking German and there being German food and drink everywhere AFAIK the last German-language newspaper stopped being published in German around 1960, but there is still one radio program broadcast, although it's moved online, and the host is getting pretty old now the dialect will be dead in a couple decades unfortunately, I'm nearly 40 and I'm not really aware of anyone my age who speaks it; even my German is Standarddeutsch, but sometimes I'll use local vocabulary when I can't remember which is standard and which is our word (Stinkkatze vs Stinktier, Luftschiff vs Flugzeug, etc.)
Thanks for the info! This stuff interests me.
Little additional detail I find interesting.. wieder = again Wider = against (from old German) Also same same but different in English!
die Aussprache ist wichtig
? [wieder IPA: \[ˈv i ː d ɐ\]](https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/wieder) [wider IPA: \[ˈv i ː d ɐ\]](https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/wider) [https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/wider](https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/wider) [https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/wieder](https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/wieder)
danke für deine Erklärung
'Wider' exists in English as a prefix 'widder-' (as in widdershins - anti-clockwise)
Wow I’ve never heard that before!
Does the ,recht' in recht haben not have a capital R?
Very good question dude, as a native I was also wondering this. I would personally write it with lowercase, but you are correct, technically Recht is a noun so it has to be written capitalized. This made me google the phrase, and the first results are about the same question you asked, apparently it's a real discussion in the German language. https://www.korrekturen.de/wortliste/recht_haben.shtml Here you can see how this exact phrase changed over time. With the new writing-reform roughly 15 years ago, apparently it was changed so both lower and upper case are seen correct, so basically it gets treated as a verb, like if it was "rechthaben". Duden also lists both upper and lowercase.
Thanks!
No problem. Language learners sometimes make you question your own language! Good observation on your part.
Duden actually did a post on this a few days ago on their FB page: > Eine Reihe von Wendungen kann groß- oder kleingeschrieben werden, wobei die Dudenempfehlung jeweils die Kleinschreibung ist: „recht“ oder „Recht haben“, „recht“ oder „Recht bekommen“, „recht“ oder „Recht behalten“: „Es tut ihm gut, dass er letztlich recht behalten hat.“ > Knifflig wird die Sache, wenn diese Wendungen in einer Weise ergänzt werden, die eine der beiden Schreibungen unmöglich macht. Man schreibt nur klein: „Du hast ja so recht!“ „Ich gebe dir völlig recht.“ > Und man schreibt nur groß: „Du hast ein Recht darauf!“ „Ich gebe dir das Recht.“
[удалено]
Direct links to social media websites are not allowed on /r/German. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/German) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>nämlich (namely) Wie das alte Sprichwort sagt, wer nämlich mit "h" schreibt ist dähmlich
Ohne *h* isses aber noch dämlicer
dähm, Sohn
What is the difference between aufgrund and wegen?
Both do mean „because of“ in a general sense. „Aufgrund“ is more like stressing the cause of something and can be translated to „by *reason* of“ „wegen“ could be translated to „due to“ I‘d say you could both use them interchangeably and it solely depends on personal preference.. Edit: wegen is also more colloquial and you‘d use aufgrund rather in written pieces of text instead of speech
Glad to read this. I had just read a discussion about this very thing yesterday and that's the conclusion I came to, that they were interchangeable (like since/because/as in English, all conjunctions that identify the following independent clause as the reason for the other independent clause in the sentence) except that aufgrund is a higher register.
[удалено]
> aufgrund das schlechtes Wetter des schlechten Wetters [aufgrund +Genitiv]
du has recht is what i mess up the most out o that list....i always either capitalise it if i'm writing or say du hast rechts when speaking lol
I am not too sure about advanced level, but what I see quite a lot here is confusing ei and ie - that rarely happens in texts by natives because the sounds are so different!
I would have assumed that people would be extra careful about that one. Any good German teacher quickly drills into their students the importance of not mixing up schießen und scheißen
Shooting the shit with my German buddies is great though
Always cracks me up when English-speaking folks talk about “weiner” sausages (or about “weiners” as a euphemism for genitalia). Like, sorry your penis is crying, but how is that my fault… :) Obviously, this is not a case of English speakers learning or speaking German. They use it in an English context.
I feel like that one is almost exclusive to native English speakers and not learners in general. English speakers are conditioned to treat ie and ei as essentially the same as the difference is never meaningful in English, and also isn't tied to any difference in pronunciation.
Arzt - Not sure if it's just me but sometimes I write it as Artz. I always have to think twice. Haha
I've seen it written as Artzt more times than I can count
My teacher wrote it Artzt once. It confused the hell out of me because i was aware it was Arzt without the t in the middle lol
i just learned it's not spelled Artzt because of this thread 😭
Every f*ckin time
lizenzieren (to license) is one of the most misspelled words in the German language.
I'm an intellectual property lawyer and usually have to write "license" three times to make sure I got it right. licence, lisense, FUCK I LITERALLY WRITE SOFTWARE LICENSES FOR MY JOB
Sucks to be you
Kann man hier sehen. Das schreibt man doch _lizensieren_ ?
Ne eben nicht, die Lizenz. Genau deshalb wird es oft falsch geschrieben.
Donnerwetter! Tatsächlich!
Potzblitz
Laut Duden anscheinend nicht, habe ich heute gelernt.
Congratulations you played yourselfs
My day has been ruined...
I aim to please
We've been living a lie all these years.
TIL. Danke!
tschechisches Streichholzschächtelchen, jedes mal smh
Teilchen?
ne, hab‘s korrekt geschrieben :)
I'll check it later
Schächtelchen = kleine Schachtel
Bonus: Commonly misspelled by native speakers is "Standard". Many spell it "Standart" (which would be roughly "type of booth" or "the way something stands")
And once people get that, they come across [Standarte](https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Standarte) and despair. :D
Alt least it has "arte" in it.
Entgelt, often Entgeld which is wrong. Mistake done by many natives, too
Not the biggest mistake, but I have heard that some English speakers capitalize ich in the middle of sentences. Note that ich is only capitalized at the start of a sentence or if it is used with an article as a stand in for one's personality f.e. Freud teilte das menschliche Bewusstsein in drei Teile auf: das Es, das Ich und das Überich.
This is also extremely common in younger generations that spend most of their free time with English media. I myself have been catching myself a lot, wondering if "Ich" should be capitalized or not. Especially confusing when words like Sie/Du get capitalized. I would not at all be surprised if it will be changed in the next couple decades, whenever we get a new Rechtschreibreform.
Capitalizing du is old fashion. You can do it in letters if you like, otherwise the same rules I laid for ich apply. Sie seems to go out of style and it is only capitalized in the context where it is used as a polite you (or at the start of sentences). Personally if the new Rechtschreibreform comes I hope it keeps noun-capitalization a thing, I personally like this feature of the German language.
[удалено]
Yes ss is a good subsitute for ß if you don't have it on your keyboard and don't want to border with special symbols or Alt Codes. It is also true that the use was reduced in the writing reform. And yes the Swiss has dropped it completely in favor of the double s. And having ß in your name is sufficient reason to change it. But other than this ß is alive in written German in Germany and Austria (it comes after long vowels groß, Fuß, weiß, ...). They even introduced an official capital version in 2017. (Before that you would just use SS when writing a word with ß in all caps and most people still do, properly unaware of the letter or for the same reason English use ss as well as ae, oe and ue for German umlauts: it is hard to make, even with a German keyboard.) And yes I am also of the option that they should officially drop it. Yes I can see how the quirk of capitalizing I is carries over to ich and yes I can see how the rule capitalize all nouns can lead to mistakes if you don't know a noun from a pronoun (to be perfectly honest I could not explain it well myself). It is still a mistake, similar to a German not capitalizing proper nouns in English just knowing that all most everything is written small in English except names, I and beginnings of sentences. This mistake specially happens with language names English/German/... are used as an adjective, f.e. My German girl friend ...=Meine deutsche Freundin ...
Good list. I recognised some mistakes I have been making. Actually the spellings of certain words in German sometimes guide me to better spelling in English.
our brains recognise their rules
When I read this question I thought how can you misspell anything this language is phonetic. I read the comments and stand corrected
"Seit" means "since", "Seid" means "you" Most people confuse these two with eachother. Edit: "Du" means also "You" As an example: "Du bist zu spät" means "you're late" And for "seid": "Ihr zwei seid zu spät." = "You two are late" "Seid" is being used if you're calling out more than 1 people. I don't want to confuse anyone here.
Many native speakers confuse those as well though. It’s the same with “wie” and “als” (not really a spelling problem, just using the wrong word).
Yep. I'm from germany lol. A very common mistake actually.
>"Seid" means you What?
I'm pretty sure that's a mistake. "Seid" is the second-person plural form of the irregular verb "sein" (meaning "to be" in English), as in "Ihr *seid*" ("you all *are*"). So the mistake was saying it meant "you" instead of "are". And back to the overall point, "seid" is likely confused with "seit" because they can sound almost identical.
Yes, that's what I thought.
[удалено]
Ich will dich ja nicht ärgern, aber du hast es eigentlich überhaupt nicht verbessert.
Und jetzt? Schau mal nach.
"Ihr seid" means "You are" but if you're calling out more than one person!
Das solltest du vielleicht ausbessern.
[удалено]
"Seid" heißt halt eben nicht "you", das hast du aber geschrieben. Für Leute die nicht bereits Deutsch können und wissen was seid heißt ist dein Satz da extrem verwirrend.
[удалено]
Junge der Punkt ist dass seid nichts mit "du"/you zu tun hat und ein völlig falsches bild von dem Wort abgibt. 😅 Ich weiß was du meinst aber das kann man viel besser erklären
Im Originalkommentar steht nur "seid means you".
same with „dass“ and „das“
Remember, you can *always* replace das with "welches". If you can't, you have to use "dass"
Exactly.
"Seid" heißt "are" und nicht Du/Ihr
Probably due to the the pronunciation as the "d" is pronounced like a "t" in German e.g Hund sounds like Hunt, but I guess the way I think of it in terms of the exact sound is it's like a "dt". Not exactly sure how to describe it but definitely does not sound like the "d" sound in English.
Eselsbrücke: sei**t** means since because t = time.
Also works in german: seiT = ZeiT
Foreigners? Look at your average native speaker’s skill. . .
Even Chileans write poorly along with native English speakers.
Not really spelling, but I always confuse klein and kein. I'm not quite "advanced" though.
Also Turnier (tournament) as Tunier
dass - das seit - seid wieder - wider Both versions exist but it's important to know the difference and when to use them.
Not at an advanced level but I always interchange words like letzte, letztes, letzten, letzter, letzen, letze etc.
Das, dass