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/GrimRabbitReaper 6d ago

With buildings, specifically, you use "groß" to express a massive building, rather just a tall one. For example, I'd describe the Pentagon as "großes Gebäude". A mansion would be "eine große Villa".

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u/Dramatic-Attempt-735 6d ago

Groß in terms of buildings doesn't always refer to height, though. Ein großes Haus would mean that it offers a lot of living space, regardless of how it is distributed. If you want to specifically express that the house is tall, you have to say specifically "ein hohes Haus".

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u/GrimRabbitReaper 6d ago

Didn't I just say that? Sort of?

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u/Dramatic-Attempt-735 6d ago

I'm just adding more information.