Germany: a language with an exact word for it

The cliché about German is that the words are long. The more interesting thing is why: the language would rather build one precise word than approximate with five.

Once you see that, the grammar stops feeling hostile. All those cases and endings are doing a job — they tell you who did what to whom before the sentence has finished arriving.

I found German the least forgiving language I have tried to speak badly. Spanish lets you gesture your way through. German quietly waits for the correct ending.

But it is also, for exactly that reason, one of the most satisfying. When a German sentence works, it clicks shut like a good lid.

The word I stole permanently is "doch". It is the reply that contradicts a negative — someone says you didn't, and you say doch, and the argument is over in one syllable.

I tell students who are afraid of German grammar that they are not learning rules. They are learning a machine that removes ambiguity, and that ambiguity is what was making them nervous in the first place.