Guten Tag, fellow language adventurers! This week, we are looking to the heavens as we stare in awe at the moon crossing in the front of the sun and wondering exactly how you say eclipse in German. (Doesn’t everyone wonder that? Of course, everyone wonders that). In true German fashion, the word is a bit of a mouthful – die Sonnenfinsternis. If you are new to German, those five syllables may seem to take as long to get right as the eclipse itself, but don’t let that intimidate you. It is really quite a beautiful and descriptive compound word.
Sonnenfinsternis is made up of two words: Sonne and Finsternis. You probably already know–or can guess–that Sonne means sun. And what happens to the sun in a solar eclipse? Our normally bright and cheerful star goes dark. In German, it becomes the darkness — die Finsternis. The German word Sonnenfinsternis literally means sun darkness.
Now you can impress family, friends and total strangers as the sky darkens in the middle of the day and you shout, “Es ist die Sonnenfinsternis!” It is up to you whether you want that to sound exciting or ominous. Just be sure to wear your Sonnenfinsternisbrille or the midday darkness will last a whole lot longer than that one to four minutes NASA predicts.
Did that word just get longer, you ask? Yes. Yes, it did. You see, German can just keep adding on to its words. It has become rather famous for its special ability to create unwieldly compound words. Sonnenfinsternis, as you now know, means sun-darkness, er, solar eclipse. Brille means glasses. And everyone wanting to look up during an eclipse must wear their sun-darkness-glasses in order to protect their Netzhaut.
Netzhaut is as fun as Sonnenfinsternisbrille, but easier to say. It means retina, but if you break it down, it means net skin. That seems random and not as fun as I made it out to be. I think it is fun because that is pretty much exactly what retina means. You just probably didn’t know that because you probably don’t speak Latin. English just stole a lot of Latin and called it English. Now we go around saying words with no idea what they mean. Netzhaut is a net-skin and retina is a net-like tunic. Pretty fascinating stuff, language is.
There are a lot more words related to the Sonnenfinsternis. If you would like to practice German vocabulary related to the eclipse, check out my little interactive slide presentation below. It will guide you through practicing some vocabulary and end with a short video explaining eclipses in German so you can hear many of the words you just finished practicing. It technically even works on mobile, but your fingers probably are not small enough, and the interactive video will just pop up little clickable dots rather than display the text.
The arrows in the bottom right will full screen the interactive presentation!
Happy viewing!