Use when writing German-language prose longer than one sentence for Jira tickets, internal German wiki/spec docs, or team-chat to German-speaking colleagues (Slack, Matrix, Teams). Invoke BEFORE composing. Covers anglicism verbs (failt, triggern, returnen), calqued collocations and idioms (blockiert auf, macht Sinn, in 2026), loanword genders (der Commit, die Pipeline), per-artifact register (impersonal for Jira/wiki, ich/du for chat), German typography (Gedankenstrich, Anführungszeichen, Durch…
Use when writing German-language prose longer than one sentence for Jira tickets, internal German wiki/spec docs, or team-chat to German-speaking colleagues (Slack, Matrix, Teams).
Invoke BEFORE composing.
Covers anglicism verbs (failt, triggern, returnen), calqued collocations and idioms (blockiert auf, macht Sinn, in 2026), loanword genders (der Commit, die Pipeline), per-artifact register (impersonal for Jira/wiki, ich/du for chat), German typography (Gedankenstrich, Anführungszeichen, Durchkopplung), and AI-typical rhythm (restatement, symmetric paragraphs, summary closers).
Skip for commit messages, MR/PR descriptions, release notes (English by team convention), conversational chat replies, or single-line acknowledgments.
If you catch yourself thinking 'my German is probably fine here' for anything longer than a sentence — invoke this skill.
Stronger alternatives
This repository is archived — consider an actively maintained alternative.
No editorializing — say what changed, not how good the work is: references/no-editorializing.md.
If unsure, ask — don't guess.
Top anti-patterns
❌
✅
code bricht
schlägt fehl / wirft Exception
gefangen
erkannt / abgefangen
null returnen
null zurückgeben
Test failt
schlägt fehl
Fehler triggern
Fehler auslösen
auf Fehler hitten
auf Fehler stoßen
blockiert auf X
wartet auf X / hängt an X
Full catalogue in references/anti-patterns.md; worked examples in references/examples.md.
Three traps — apply all three disciplines
Over-applying one drives you into another:
Anglicism (verb-level): English where German is canonical. Test failt → schlägt fehl. Targeted by the table above and anti-patterns.md.
Calque (nouns, collocations, idioms): word-by-word translation where the loanword or another German structure is canonical. Wurzelursache → Root Cause; blockiert auf X → wartet auf X; macht Sinn → ist sinnvoll. See anti-patterns.md and lexicon.md.
Amtsdeutsch over-polish: fleeing both traps into stiff officialese and AI-symmetric structure — Datenbestand, Es handelt sich um, passive chains, facts restated per section. See anti-patterns.md and typografie-rhythmus.md. Idiomatic dev speech (ins Gehege kommen, läuft voll, fliegt auf) is wanted, not a violation.
Noun rule: if a native German developer would say the term verbatim in a review or stand-up, keep it English — a German form that sounds like a textbook title is a calque.
Scope note
Commit messages, MR/PR descriptions, release notes and internal IT-project tickets (NRS, NRT, SRV\, IO\, LIC) are English — skip them. This skill governs how to write German, not whether.
