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Sounds and words

This is how it is with babies: In the first few months, they babble to themselves. You can’t understand them yet. But at some point, they say their first word.

M a m a

First they make the sound m, then an a, then another m and another a. These sounds make a word. The child begins to speak.

That’s how it is with all our words. They consist of sounds that we put together. Sounds make words, and words make sentences. Sounds are not only different from one another; there are also different kinds: we distinguish vowels, consonants, umlauts and diphthongs.

We communicate with one another using sounds and words. The sounds and words of different languages can vary greatly. We call our language German. It is one of around 7,000 languages still spoken on Earth. German is spoken mainly in Germany, Austria and part of Switzerland.

Of Letters and Writing

To write down sounds, we use special symbols. We call these symbols letters. We can pass on letters that we have written down to others. Without letters, there would be no books, newspapers or internet. In German, there are 26 basic letters, plus 3 umlauts and the Eszett (ß), which is not used in Switzerland or Liechtenstein. Each letter has a lowercase and an uppercase form. Together, all the letters are called the ABC or the alphabet. We can put letters together to make words, and use words to form sentences, share information and tell stories. When we write something by hand, we usually use cursive. When we type, we use print.