February 3, 2025 • 1559 words

German Language and Media

Learning German

I didn't do these things:

  1. Attend classes in Chinese/English
  2. Use textbooks in Chinese/English
  3. Study grammar in Chinese/English
  4. Use language learning apps to learn
  5. Prepare for an exam

I jumped right into channels like Julia Beautx, Alicia Joe, DesyF, WELT, ARTEde, Alica Schmidt, Sophia Thiel, WDR, etc. There are many TV channels under ARD or ZDF. I started learning German in 2025.3, but I was still busy with Russian.

German keyboard uses "qwertz" and messes up some symbols which is inconvenient to me. I modified the English QWERTY keyboard and simply changed the positions “;'[]” to “öäüß”.

Tech Companies and Platforms

  • SAP is a large software company.
  • Hetzner is a German cloud company.
  • CCC: Chaos Computer Club is the largest hacker group in Europe, it has a YouTube channel. It has many videos about security and systems.
  • DeepL: A translation service based in Germany. DeepL has less language pairs than Google Translate but the quality is often better.

Social Media

WhatsApp and YouTube are the main apps in Germany. (I think it is very sad that there isn't a video platform primarily in German that I can immerse into, sort of like Vk video in Russian or Bilibili in Chinese. To my knowledge in EU only Czech has local alternatives like this called "Seznam")

MyVideo was a video platform primarily in German that sadly shut down (See Internet Archive) and the data was lost.

Other Platforms

  • Mastodon is a decentralized, self-hostable, open-source social media, maintained by the German non-profit Mastodon GmbH. If you change the browser "Preferred languages" to German, Mastodon would display German posts.
  • gutefrage is a Q and A website.
  • XING is a job website from Germany.
  • Zalando is a German online shopping platform.
  • German Wiki on Reddit

Singers

  • LINA is a German singer known for song Egoist.
  • Shirin David is a popular German singer known for "Gib ihm".
  • Katja Krasavice is a German social media personality and pop singer known for mature themed songs.
  • Loredana is a Swiss-Albanian rapper and singer, known for hit songs like "Kein Plan".
  • Elif is a singer of Turkish descent with hit songs including "Unter meiner Haut".
  • Enyadres is a German singer and influencer with makeup and reaction videos.
  • Luna Farina is a German singer, also featuring covers, vlogs, and entertainment content.

Commentators

Beauty & Lifestyle

Before 2000

2000+

Entertainment Influencers

Food

LGBT

Sports

Soccer

There are many soccer clubs in Germany, some examples include

Soccer players:

Other Sport Channels

  • Alica Schmidt is a German sprinter, with contents mainly about training sessions.
  • Team Deutschland is a channel about German athletes and interviews.

Tech Channels

  • c't 3003 is a tech commentary channel.
  • fosstopia is a channel about open-source softwares.

Culture Channels

Interview Channels

Society Channels

Philosophy

Germany has many towering philosophers, including Kant, Marx, Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, etc. The Frankfurt school is a group of social theorists.

Classical Music

German has many of the greatest classical music composers, including Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Strauss, Brahms, Mozart(Austrian) etc.

Composers

  • Hans Zimmer is a very popular composer known for composing Interstellar.
  • Max Richter is a minimalist composer known for recomposing four seasons.

Kids Channels

Entertainment

Other Channels

Doku

News and Selected Regional Channels

Names of Germany

Germany is called "Deutschland", but nobody calls German people "Deutschlander", they are called Germans or Nemtsy.

Science Dominance in Early 1900s

If you go to math genealogy project and trace to early 1900s, you would likely find their teachers come from Germany. University of Gottingen in 1930 was the best and dominant university in science in the world. Sadly, the era ended with rise of Nazis.

Prisons in Germany

According to Wikipedia "Often, prisoners have television, private bathrooms, and free time".

About English Fluency

Germans and Nordic countries have very high English fluency compared to other countries (such as China, Russia, and some other Central/East European countries) and use English sometimes in organizations, talks, interviews, and political debates.

DW is the most popular International media in Germany. DW English news/documentary is more popular than the DW German language news/documentary. I watched DW documentary long before knowing any German.

Interesting Vocabulary

German and Russian have some similar words, 'Milliarde' (миллиард, "billion" in English), 'Karte'(карта, "map" in English), "Soldatin"(солдат, solder in English). Some words are pronouced similar to Russian than English, for example, 'region'(регион), 'real'(реально), "emotional"(эмоциональный). There are a lot of "kt" in german, the k is like "к", it's more phonetic unlike English. In English, "c" can be pronouced as the Cyrillic "к", part of "ch"("ч") or as the Cyrillic "с", or notoriously in "choir", "chef". German w is like "в", j is like "й", and v is like "ф".

Coming from English, German is many times easier compared to Russian. Sadly German doesn't have the cool letter "ø" which is in other Germanic languages.

Interestingly "tor" means gate (Brandenburger Tor) in German and not the onion relay. "Auch" means also in English and "also" means so in English.

Germany Geography

In Europe, Germany is the 7th largest and 2nd most populous country as of 2025. So it's very small, around the same land size as Japan.

Some Germany cities change the spelling in transliteration to English. For example, Munich (München), Cologne(Köln), Brunswick(Braunschweig). Some other cities kept the original spelling like Berlin, Hamburg with perhaps slightly different pronunciations.

States

Germany has 16 states.

Saxony is South of Lower Saxony, and the low means low in height. Berlin has 3-4 million people as of 2025, while Hamburg, Munich has 1-2 million people. Germany can be divided into 3 zones, North German Plain, Central Uplands(including Bavaria), and Alps in the south. Germany isn't very cold in winter, and it's very cool in the summer.

Dialects

While Germany is small, German have accents, with 3 main groups High German(central and southern highlands), Low German(northern lowlands), and Frisian. Standard German is the official language based on dialects from the High German group.

Major Rivers

Major rivers in Germany include Rhine(from Alps to North Sea), Danube(rises in the Black Forest and flows into southern Germany into the Black Sea), Elbe(originates from Czech and empties into North Sea). So even though they aren't far apart geographically, Rhine and Danube flow in different directions.

Major Cities

Many cities are located on rivers. Cities on Rhine include Cologne, Düsseldorf, Bonn, Mannheim, Duisburg. Cities on Danube include Vienna. Cities on Elbe include Hamburg, Dresden, Magdeburg. Frankfurt is on Main(Frankfurt in German is "Frankfurt am Main"), Berlin is on Spree, and Heidelberg, Stuttgart on Neckar. Leipzig was at the confluence of several smaller rivers. Nuremberg is located on Pegnitz River. Munich on River Isar.

Recent Problems/Debates

Recently [German face some problems/debates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_economic_crisis_(2022–present), including the refugee influx, ethnic shift (historically Germany is mostly of one ethnicity), German proficiency among migrants (or assimilation of migrants, including Muslims), Russian energy problems, competition from China in manufacturing, political polarization (rise of AfD, BSW).

Note: I am not in Germany right now and I am not going to talk/comment about politics.

My Trip to Germany

I have been to Germany and Switzerland with my parents in 2014 when I was 9 years old for around 5 days (10 days total including other European countries), exactly when Germany won the world cup. But I forgot almost everything.

Germany Buildings in Shanghai

In Shanghai there is a Mercedes Benz arena located along HuangPu river near the China art museum metro station, and I see it every time I walk there. There is also a German center in Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park in Pudong near my parent's house.

Note: This blog is written in early 2025. Things might change in the future.

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