{"id":12036,"date":"2020-09-17T11:00:31","date_gmt":"2020-09-17T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/?p=12036"},"modified":"2020-09-16T13:58:57","modified_gmt":"2020-09-16T13:58:57","slug":"the-curiosity-of-the-german-word-wehrmacht","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/the-curiosity-of-the-german-word-wehrmacht\/","title":{"rendered":"The Curiosity of the German Word “Wehrmacht”"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may have heard of the German word\u00a0die <\/em>Wehrmacht\u00a0<\/em>(armed forces), which was what the German armed forces were called during the Second World War. When trying to pronounce the word, you may have gotten close to something that sounds like “Warmacht”, which may have lead you to conclude that\u00a0Wehr\u00a0<\/em>must mean “war” in German. Not true! Let’s explore what it DOES mean, and whether there might be a reason why\u00a0Wehr\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0War\u00a0<\/em>sound and look so similar.<\/p>\n

The word Wehr<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Image by Rados\u0142aw Dro\u017cd\u017cewski at Commons.wikimedia.org under license CC BY SA 4.0<\/p><\/div>\n

The verb sich <\/em>wehren<\/em> means “to fight back”, and sich gegen etwas wehren\u00a0<\/em>means “to resist something” or “to defend oneself”. The noun\u00a0die Wehr<\/em>, then, means “resistance”, “defense”. For example, die Feuerwehr <\/em>(the fire department) really means “the fire resistance”. Sounds quite a lot more adventurous, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n

Back to Wehrmacht<\/em>. When the Wehr <\/em>is not at the end, but at the beginning of the word, it could become an adjective. Die Macht\u00a0<\/em>means both “power” and\u00a0“force”, so\u00a0Wehrmacht\u00a0<\/em>could be translated to “defensive force”. And in German, we pronounce it as follows:<\/p>\n

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