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Internet terms – in German Posted by on Mar 27, 2011 in Culture, Grammar, Language, Traditions

Hi everybody! When Sandra Rösner asked for some new ideas and needs in her blog post „Think Tank“ a couple of days ago, some of you wanted to learn about „internet terms in German“.

When I first read about this, I thought that this would be hard to answer. Because nearly everything that has to do with computers has English names and is pronounced in English as well. So a browser like „Firefox“ for example, is a browser as well in Germany. But there are some German terms as well. Here are some examples:

Username: der Benutzername
Password: das Passwort
Operating system: das Betriebssystem
Search engine: die Suchmaschine
Menu: die Navigation
Screensaver: der Bildschirmschoner
Comment: der Kommentar
Form: das Formular
Submit: absenden
Shopping cart: der Warenkorb
Database: die Datenbank
Bulletin Board: das Forum
Imprint: das Impressum
to click: klicken
Mouse: die Maus
Display: der Bildschirm
Keyboard: die Tastatur
Settings: die Einstellungen
Mouse wheel: das Mausrad
Page: die Seite
To load: laden
To reload: neu laden
Not available: Nicht verfügbar
File not found: Die Datei wurde nicht gefunden
SEO (Search Engine Optimizing): die Suchmaschinenoptimierung

But there are also some terms that can be both…But everybody will understand them, whether you say them in English or German. Here are some examples:

Software: das Programm
Bookmark: das Lesezeichen
Website: Internetseite
Link: der Verweis

The most common words that definitely remain English are the following:

Internet
Browser
Blog
Social Media
URL (might be translated as „Internetadresse“)
Download
Online Shop
Login
Server
Client
Email
Community
FTP (File Transfer Protocoll)
Webdesign
Touchscreen
Webcam
to surf (the Internet)
@ (at)
HTML
Tag
Referrer

Well, this was just a quick review. I think you will know more terms that could be mentioned here. Let us know! Just use the comment field to do so.

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About the Author: jan

My name is Jan and I live in the south west of Germany. My profession is being a project manager at a company that creates digital media (first of all internet related things). This is my job since over a decade so I´m quite familiar with the web and its tools. Whereat today almost every school kid does. But that´s one of the main reasons why nowadays there are quasi no more limits in the internet and so it can be used for all imaginable types of things. For example learning languages! And that´s where we are at the moment. I first got in touch with Transparent Language when my family and I used to live in France a couple of years ago. I just had a break from work and by coincidence I produced some cultural videos in French. A few months later the whole blogging thing came up and I was lucky to be a part of it. So now my (second) job is to feed you with information, exercises, vocabulary, grammar and stories about Germany and German language. For being a passionate videographer I´m trying to do this more and more by videos. If you have any wishes or needs of topics that should be treated here, please don´t hesitate to contact me via a comment field. I´m open to your suggestions (as long as they are not too individual) and will try to satisfy your needs.

Comments:

  1. Nikola Bucić:

    I could think about upload – hochgeladen

  2. Ian Colville:

    Although das Impressum translates literally into English as ‘imprint’ or ‘masthead’ in the context of the Internet and websites, it means something different. See das Impressum from the website of der Spiegel, for example: http://www.spiegel.de/extra/0,1518,628516,00.html das Impressum fulfills a legal obligation to present information about who is running the company in question – it’s like a legal masthead, but it’s clearly not an imprint.
    Regards,
    Ianc

  3. jan:

    Ian, thanks for the correction and sorry for the mistake!

  4. Sarah:

    I love this list! Thank you so much for sharing. 🙂

  5. Stefan:

    Very interesting. Thanks for creating and sharing this list!