Hi everybody! Welcome to another post that looks at the curiosity of a certain word. Today, we will have a look at the German word cousin. Check out the video below that explains the post, if you prefer watching instead of reading!

French?

Cousin looks very un-German. Because it is. It was adapted to German from the 13th century Middle English cosin, which was again adapted from Old French cousin. So, it is essentially French. Germans also write it like the French: der Cousin and die Cousine.

Nothing curious about this. But let’s get to the pronunciation.

How to pronounce it?

This is where it gets different from French. Whereas often words borrowed from another language are pronounced the same as in the source language, there are some differences here.

Not so much with der Cousin. The French le cousin becomes der Cousin, which sound the same. Hear it in the video above.

But with the female variant, there are some differences. Where in French, the final -e is silent, it is pronounced in German. So, the last bit of die Cousine is pronounced similar to die Rosine. 

Is there another word for Cousin?

Yes, there is! The actual German word for cousin is der Vetter. This form is used quite a lot, too. The female form, however, is barely ever used. I did not even know it existed, before I found out by researching it for this post. It is: die Vetterin. Quite straightforward, but it looks and sounds so odd.

Apart from meaning cousin, Vetter or Vetterin can also be used for a distant relative.

In general, though, der Cousin and die Cousine are used most of the time, though.

I hope this post was helpful for you to improve your German! Is there a German word that you find curious? Let me know in the comments, and I can make a post about it!