German language lessons: Memory-friendly methods for would-be Nigerian migrants

There’s good news for skilled workers from Nigeria thinking of relocating to the biggest economy in Europe. Labour shortages are the current topic in Germany.

According to the Federal Statistical Office, the number of Germans at retirement age will rise from the current figure of 16 million to at least 20 million by the mid-2030s. By the 2040s, the number of people aged 80 or above will increase, and with them, their need for long-term care. Meanwhile, the workforce will drop by between 1.6 million and 4.8 million in the next 15 years. It is so dire that experts believe the country’s employment sector could be short 7 million workers by 2035.

A foreign ministry portal lists the sectors crying out for help. They are raw material extraction, production, and manufacturing; natural sciences; information technology; air transport; energy; technology; agriculture; forestry and animal husbandry; horticulture; construction; architecture; and surveying and building technology.

A country with a declining native population, a fertility rate of 1.58 children per woman as of 2021, and a dwindling workforce badly needs qualified workers. In some cases, qualified workers with just a rudimentary knowledge of the German language are needed to fill around 778,000 job openings.

“We need labour and skilled worker immigration from third countries,” Vanessa Ahuja of the German Federal Employment Agency told the media. Third countries refer to non-EU countries like Nigeria. Her office’s goal is 400,000 new professionals a year.

However, “rudimentary knowledge of the German language” poses a problem for skilled workers from Nigeria looking for greener pastures in Deutschland.

Thankfully, short-term help has arrived with our MFM for mastering the German language (PS: A long-term solution that will involve the Nigerian government and its counterparts from Germany will be discussed in another article).

What is MFM?

The headline already reveals the meaning, and it’s not the Mountain of Fire and Miracles. It’s an acronym for Memory-friendly Methods. The MFM blends languages (English, Pidgin, and Nigerian local dialects), slang, homophones, onomatopoeia, and other real and imagined literary devices to help you achieve near-mastery of the German language.

We shall start by heeding the advice from “Do-Re-Mi,” a song from the 1965 American musical drama The Sound of Music. Let’s sing along in Julie Andrews’s voice:

Let’s start at the very beginning
A very good place to start
When you read, you begin with A-B-C
When you sing, you begin with Do-Re-Mi…

For us, when you want to learn a new language, you begin with words similar to the ones you already know! So, let’s start.

General similarities between English and German

Being a beginner’s class, it’s important we talk about the things both languages have in common before getting down to the nitty-gritty and comparing specific words.

Both are Germanic languages: These are languages that form a branch of the Indo-European language family containing English, German, Dutch, Frisian, Afrikaans, Gothic, and the Scandinavian languages. They are from the same language family tree; therefore, they were derived from the same syntactic and phonological system. Despite their divergent evolution, it is only natural that English and German, which share the same roots, retained many common elements.

Both use the Latin alphabet: The 26 letters of the modern Latin alphabet are used by both English and German. So, a beginner like you has a head start when reading and sounding out words in the other language. There is no need to adapt to an unfamiliar writing system. The only cause of worry for an English speaker is the mark (called an umlaut) used over a vowel in German to indicate a different vowel quality (Ää, Öö, Üü). Another shock to English eyes might be the lowercase letter ß, called Eszett. It’s used for a voiceless alveolar fricative sound after a long vowel or diphthong. Do not panic; we shall shed more light on this in the MFM 102 class.

Both use Arabic numerals: Although they are named differently, all numbers in German and English are created using the digits 0-9. Not just that, the way the numbers are compounded is similar. “Teen” is the suffix in English which gives rise to thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen… In German, “zehn” is the suffix: dreizehn, vierzehn, fünfzehn, sechzehn…

Both have borrowed words from Ancient Greece: At the peak of its power, Ancient Greece influenced the customs, philosophies, and engineering of many nations. Now, you can hardly find any European language that escaped the influence of Ancient Greece. Here are some Greek-derived words sprinkled throughout German and English: Dilemma, Gorilla, Marathon, Palindrome, Paranoia, Phantom, Saxophone, Theology (Theologie), Therapy (Therapie), etc. There are many other lexical borrowings that are spelt less similarly in the two languages.

Common English words used in German

Below are common English words used in German. However, they are mostly banal, everyday vocabulary and names of objects: Baby, Ball, Boss, Bus, Computer, E-Mail, Fair, Flip-flops, Hobby, Hotel, Information, Job, Name, Park, Radio, Reporter, Ring, Sweatshirt, Taxi, Tourist, T-Shirt, Zoo.

Common German words used in English

Common German words used in English are often more poetic and abstract: Angst, Bildungsroman, Delicatessen, Doppelgänger, Eiderdown, Ersatz, Hamster, Kindergarten, Kitsch, Knapsack, Leitmotif, Poltergeist, Schadenfreude, Spritz, Wanderlust, Weltanschauung, Waltz, Zeitgeist.

Very similar German and English words with different spellings

The following German and English words are so similar that you don’t need us to translate them for you. But since their spelling is slightly different, we have included both for clarity:

• Apfel – apple
• Besser – better
• Buch – book
• Bruder – brother
• Delfin – dolphin
• Foto – photo
• Freund – friend
• Garten – garden
• Gras – grass
• Haus – house
• Helfen – help
• Herz – heart
• Hoffen – hope
• Krokodil – crocodile
• Lampe – lamp
• Mann – man
• Maus – mouse
• Milch – milk
• Studieren – to study
• Tanzen – to dance
• Telefon – telephone
• Tochter – daughter
• Vater – father
• Wasser – water
• Zehn – ten
• Messie – an untidy person
• Peeling – body scrub
• Showmaster – TV show host
• Sprayer – graffiti artist

English words used in German with a different meaning

Here we have English words that already exist, but the Germans have adopted them and given them their own meaning. Examples are:

• Cracker in German means a computer hacker, but in English, it’s a biscuit or a Christmas table decoration.
• Evergreen in German is an old song that is still popular, but in English, it means a tree that keeps its leaves over more than one growing season. Nigerians go along with the Germans here!
• In German, Home office means to work from home, which resonates with most Nigerians. In English, though, it’s the ministerial department of the UK government.
• Public viewing in German is where people congregate to watch an event, just like Nigerians do across many football viewing centres in the country. Whereas public viewing in English means viewing a corpse before a funeral. Blimey!
• Shitstorm in German is a social media backlash often dished out to erring public personalities. In English, it means a messy situation. Close, right?
• A street worker in German is a social worker, but in English, the term refers to a sex worker. No prize for guessing the one Nigerians align with!

German-English False Friends

Words in this category are called false friends because an English speaker might think he or she understands them just by seeing them. However, this sense of familiarity is a trick.

Here are German and English versions of some of these words:

• Art – type
• Bald – soon
• Billion – trillion
• Chef – director/boss
• Direktion – management
• Fabrik – factory
• Fraktion – parliamentary group
• Gift – poison
• Gymnasium – grammar school
• Hose – trousers
• Hut – hat
• Kind – child
• Kraft – power/force/strength
• Limone – lime
• Lokal – pub
• See – lake
• Wer – who
• Wo – where

The strangest has to be “gift” and poison!

Conclusion

We cannot cover everything in this MFM 101 class. We shall take things a notch further and infuse more memory-friendly methods in our MFM 102 and RCCG 201 classes. Redeemed Christian Church of God? No. Read and Converse Creatively in German!

We bet you’re looking forward to that, as well as our CAC 301 and COZA 401 classes!