German voice overs: what you need to know

German is an official language in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and Belgium. That’s around 100 million mother-tongue speakers – and another 30 million who speak it as a second language.

German is an inflected language with four cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative), three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), two numbers (singular, plural), plus strong and weak verbs. It has many words derived from Latin and Greek and a few borrowed from French and Modern English.

Language History

German is part of the German language family – no surprise there. However, it wasn’t until the end of the Holy Roman Empire that it broke away as an independent language.

Standard German merges features of the Thuringian-Upper Saxon, Upper Franconian, and Bavarian dialects. This means German is most similar to other languages based on High German dialects, such as Luxembourgish and Yiddish.

Close Relations

German is closely related to English, Dutch, and the Scandinavian languages. Other related languages are Afrikaans and Frisian languages. An interesting grammatical feature of this group relates to compound nouns – putting together several nouns to create a new one.

Accents and Voice Over Tips

Written German is standard, although there are some spelling differences in Switzerland. And for most Germans, standard German (‘Hochdeutsch’) is the language they use for work and everyday life. There are also several German dialects. Dialects primarily express emotion, humor, and help social bonding.

If your voice over is targeting a specific region, even a smattering of the local vernacular may help to engage your audience. If you’re aiming for a wider target group, standard German is the way to go.

There are five main groups of accents, including low Saxon, Alemannic, and Bavarian. The north-south divide within German is known humorously as the Weißwurstäquator – the white sausage equator. This sausage is famously from the south and accents below the ‘equator’ change significantly. In fact, Swiss German sounds different enough to be subtitled on German television. It may not be easily understood by all.

Words per minute

During translation from English, German texts can expand by up to 35%. Since German words tend to be longer, reading rates are slower, too. Around 20% slower.

German has a similar syllabic rate to English (which means that speakers of both languages can pronounce a similar number within a given time). However, due to the text length differences, we would recommend aiming for 130 words per minute.

Please also take into account the information density and target audience for your video. Talking to kids? Slow it down. Trying to convey complex data to a professional audience? Give them time to take it in.

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