The German Language Legacy

English and German are genetically related. They are both members of the Indo-European family of languages. More specifically, English and German are descended from the West branch of the ancestor language Common Germanic (or Proto-Germanic). This is where the two languages part ways, so to speak, with German representing the High Germanic group and English the Anglo-Frisian branch. The genetic relationship between English and German is made evident by the large number of English-German cognates: e.g. apple vs Apfel, bed vs Bett, house vs Haus, father vs Vater, fish vs Fisch, dream vs Traum-- to name but a few.

In addition to words shared through common ancestry, English, being an insatiable word borrower, has incorporated a wealth of German words and phrases into a wide range of semantic fields: e.g. delicatessen (from the German Delikatessen), hamburger (Hamburger), sauerkraut (Sauerkraut), kindergarten (Kindergarten), kaput (kaputt), Pretzel (Brezel), and many many more.

The following list is a sampler of (more or less) commonly used German words and phrases in modern English.

angst (German Angst; literally: anguish): persistent anxiety and fear (hence: angst-ridden)

anschauung (German Anschauung; literally: outlook, view): point of view, attitude (cf. weltanschauung)

autobahn (German Autobahn; literally: motor-road, motorway): freeway, expressway, interstate

Bauhaus (literally: architecture house): A school of design and architecture founded in Weimar by Walter Gropius; relating to the principles of Bauhaus design and aesthetics

bildungsroman (German Bildungsroman; literally: education novel): a coming-of-age novel

blitzkrieg (German Blitzkrieg; literally: "lightning war"): a violent surprise attack by air forces, esp. with reference to the bombing of London in 1940 (also referred to as The Blitz)

ding an sich (German Ding an sich; literally: thing in itself): the perception of things through intuition and thought (as opposed to sensory perception). English philosophers have adopted the literal translation thing-in-itself to describe this school of thought.