Native English speakers often find German grammar rules pretty baffling. So, imagine if English speakers used German grammar and syntax while speaking their native tongue. Overlearner, a YouTuber who speaks multiple languages, created a video to show what a typical conversation would sound like.
Overlearner’s page discusses the optimal ways to learn languages, music, martial arts, and many other skills.
What’s interesting about the video is German’s unique syntax.
For example:
Person 1: Must you today also to work?
Person 2: No, I must today not to work I have today a day free but I work morning and over morning.
When people speak English but with German grammar
Or there was a crazy situation that went down at Person 2’s job. He’s a tooth doctor, or was we would call him, a dental assistant.
Person 2: Yesterday is a female patient in the clinic come that such fear before tooth doctors had that she during the examination to scream begun has then upstood and out the building run is.
Person 1: Wow, what for a crazy situation, yes.
The video’s mixed-up syntax reminded many people in the comments of a “Star Wars” character. “This sounds like AI Shakespearean Yoda having a stroke,” one commenter wrote. “So… to Germans, Yoda was the only normal one?” another added.
The video is a great way for English speakers to better understand what German sounds like to native speakers. It’s also a wonderful reminder that we should give any English speakers learning German or German speakers learning English a lot of credit because figuring out how to switch syntax like that must be maddening.