Leben in Deutschland test: the words the questions are made of

The Leben in Deutschland test asks 33 questions drawn from an official catalogue of 310, and 17 right answers pass. The questions are published, so the obstacle is not the facts but the words the questions are written in. Meinungsfreiheit (freedom of expression) and verfassungswidrig (unconstitutional) are B1 words with whole ideas folded inside them, and the catalogue reuses a small set of such words across every topic. This page collects about fifty of them, grouped by the root they are built on, each with its article, its plural where the noun has one, and a sentence in the shape the test uses.

The grouping is the method, not a convenience. German builds its civic vocabulary by gluing a root to a front word, so das Recht (the right, the law) gives das Grundrecht (basic right) and der Rechtsstaat (state under the rule of law). Once the root and a handful of front words are known, a word you have never met, such as das Wahlrecht (the right to vote), reads itself.

The Recht family

Das Recht is a right, and also the law as a whole. It is the root of nearly every constitutional question, because Germany's constitution, das Grundgesetz (the Basic Law), exists to guarantee rights and to bind the state itself to the laws. A state so bound is a Rechtsstaat, and the test's favourite adjective, verfassungswidrig, describes whatever breaks that order, above all a party that wants a Diktatur (dictatorship). Nearly every third question touches this family, so it comes first.

The same trick builds the freedoms. Die Freiheit (freedom) plus a front word names each one, and the test asks for them by name, so the front word is the part to read. One of them wears an older costume in the catalogue, die Glaubens- und Gewissensfreiheit (freedom of faith and conscience), which is the long form of freedom of religion, and das Asyl (asylum) is the one basic right reserved for foreigners.

The Bund family

Der Bund is the federation, the top storey of the German state. Below it stand the sixteen Bundesländer (federal states), each with its own parliament and government, and below them the Gemeinden (municipalities). Every national institution carries Bund as a prefix, which makes the vocabulary look formidable when it is one prefix plus a few short nouns. The test's largest single habit is asking who does what, so each organ in the table is listed with the task the catalogue attaches to it.

Behind the organs stands one idea the test asks about repeatedly, die Gewaltenteilung (the separation of powers). German names the three powers with Latin words, and each maps onto organs from the table above. Two traps recur. The press is not a state power, because it is free precisely by standing outside the state, and the people elect only the Bundestag directly, never the chancellor and never the president.

The wählen family

Wählen means to choose, and in civic German to vote or to elect. It is the root of the catalogue's biggest cluster, above thirty questions, and almost all of them are built from this one verb. Three numbers travel with it. The Bundestag is elected for four years, the voting age is 18, and the threshold a party must clear is five percent of the second votes.

The Versicherung family

Versichern is to insure, so die Versicherung is the insurance, and the German welfare state, der Sozialstaat, is built from five compulsory insurances that each bolt a need onto the front of that word. Everyone who is permanently employed pays into them automatically, employer and employee roughly half and half, and the arrangement as a whole is called die soziale Marktwirtschaft (social market economy), a free market with a safety net under it. The catalogue tests the five names, the one impostor, and the two words on every pay slip.

The Amt family

Das Amt (plural die Ämter) is an office or public authority, and the everyday questions in the catalogue each hide one. Someone wants to marry, has moved house, or needs help raising a child, and the question is really asking which office owns the scenario. The offices are compounds too, and the front word says what the office is for, as in das Einwohnermeldeamt, where der Einwohner (inhabitant) and anmelden (to register) are both in the name.

Where this comes from

This page condenses the word lists of the topic chapters of Leben in Deutschland: Der Wortschatz zum Test by Anju Mishra, chiefly chapter 1 (the Basic Law and the basic rights), chapter 2 (the state and its organs), chapter 3 (federalism), chapter 4 (parties and elections), chapter 5 (the welfare state) and chapter 12 (family, education and everyday life). Each of those chapters opens with a scene in which Amir, who is studying for the test, has the words explained to him at Lena's kitchen table, and every word that appears in the official questions or answers carries a check mark in the list.

The full chapters hold what a page cannot. Each word list runs to thirty or forty entries with the neighbour words that make the German complete rather than crammed, a short list of words to recognise but not learn, and a box called Why it is so with the history the test quietly assumes, such as why asylum is a basic right and why the president is not elected by the people. The free sample of the book contains the first two chapters complete, the Basic Law and the state organs.

Continue with

• How to prepare for the Einbürgerungstest / Leben in Deutschland test
• Der, die or das? The endings that decide German gender