{"id":8254,"date":"2017-03-23T20:42:25","date_gmt":"2017-03-23T20:42:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/?p=8254"},"modified":"2017-03-23T20:49:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-23T20:49:00","slug":"the-curiosity-of-the-german-word-cousin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/the-curiosity-of-the-german-word-cousin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Curiosity of the German Word &#8220;Cousin&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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!<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Curiosity of the German Word &quot;Cousin&quot;\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XjB1PXuRnX0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>French?<\/h2>\n<p><em>Cousin<\/em> looks very un-German. Because it is. It was adapted to German from the 13th century Middle English\u00a0<em>cosin<\/em>, which was again adapted from Old French <em>cousin<\/em>. So, it\u00a0<em>is\u00a0<\/em>essentially French. Germans also write it like the French:\u00a0<em>der Cousin<\/em> and\u00a0<em>die Cousine<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing curious about this. But let&#8217;s get to the pronunciation.<\/p>\n<h2>How to pronounce it?<\/h2>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Not so much with\u00a0<em>der Cousin<\/em>. The French\u00a0<em>le cousin<\/em> becomes\u00a0<em>der Cousin<\/em>, which sound the same. Hear it in the video above.<\/p>\n<p>But with the female variant, there are some differences. Where in French, the final -e\u00a0is silent,\u00a0it\u00a0<em>is\u00a0<\/em>pronounced in German. So, the last bit of\u00a0<em>d<\/em><em>ie Cousine\u00a0<\/em>is pronounced similar to\u00a0<em>die Rosine.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<h2>Is there another word for <em>Cousin<\/em>?<\/h2>\n<p>Yes, there is! The actual German word for cousin is\u00a0<em>der Vetter<\/em>. This form is used quite a lot, too. The female form, however, is barely ever used. I did not even know it\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">existed<\/span>, before I found out by researching it for this post. It is:\u00a0<em>die Vetterin<\/em>. Quite straightforward, but it looks and sounds so odd.<\/p>\n<p>Apart from meaning\u00a0cousin,\u00a0<em>Vetter<\/em> or\u00a0<em>Vetterin\u00a0<\/em>can also be used for a distant relative.<\/p>\n<p>In general, though, <em>der Cousin\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>die Cousine\u00a0<\/em>are used most of the time, though.<\/p>\n<p><strong>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!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<img width=\"350\" height=\"198\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2017\/03\/Transparent-Cousin-350x198.jpg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2017\/03\/Transparent-Cousin-350x198.jpg 350w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2017\/03\/Transparent-Cousin-768x434.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2017\/03\/Transparent-Cousin.jpg 958w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><p>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&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/the-curiosity-of-the-german-word-cousin\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":8269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[68,551768,2617,13],"class_list":["post-8254","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-language","tag-family","tag-pronunciation","tag-videos","tag-vocabulary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8254"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8270,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8254\/revisions\/8270"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}