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Trend 3: More prepositions, fewer datives: Whereas in the past the German verb “haften” – which means to be liable – had to be followed by the dative case, nowadays collocations of the type “haften gegenüber” – literally speaking to be liable to, towards or vis-à-vis somebody – are used more frequently: “Der Verkäufer haftet […]

Here comes part 2: Trend 2: Legal terms that have been used for decades become replaced by Anglicisms Let’s take the matter of control in company law, which in German legal terms used to be named as “Beherrschung”. Twenty years ago, we never had German texts that spoke of “Kontrolle” over a company or that

A very tricky thing in German are compounds, which can be quite long as is evident in the photo. And with Frankfurt now buzzing with AMLA, which shortly will move to the Messeturm, we have a very good example of that: “Geldwäscheverdachtsanzeige”. This is (i) a notification of (ii) the suspicion of (iii) the laundering