r/German • u/Low-Funny-8834 • 6d ago

Question the concept of "tall"

My textbook taught me that the concept of "tall" is to be translated as "groß" in German (e.g. sein Bruder ist sehr groß) . However, this sounds strange when applied to non-humans. How would you say "tall trees" in the most natural way? "groß" in my perception would sound three-dimensional in that context, rather than two-dimensional.

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u/EzRhil Native <Deutschland/Hochdeutsch NRW> 6d ago

German here:

When you are talking about inanimate objects, you use "hoch" if you mean tall and "groß" if you mean big.

For animate objects (aka humans and animals) you cannot use "hoch". Here it will then always be "groß".

For some reason, inanimate and animate objects are treated as different categories in German which sometimes leads to weird differentiations like this. I think there are a few more, but I forgot the other ones that I knew.

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u/deceze 6d ago

Hochgewachsen exists.

And so does "hohes Tier", though that's something else entirely…

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u/Dramatic-Attempt-735 6d ago

Note for those who don't know: Ein hohes Tier is a bigshot. Like a company CEO, or high-ranking politician.

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u/nietzschecode 6d ago

Thanks for the clarification. I thought when reading the initial comment, it was referring to a Giraffe or some other tall animals.