There is no word for „kind“ in the German language. When I first find out about it I was quite surprised. As a child, I was read children’s tales and there were always two characters there: kind and evil. When I did not know how to feel about somebody I was asking my mom if he was kind or not. And somehow this word meant for me always a lot.
In Germany, you can be friendly, nice, good, Hilfsbereit, which means somebody who is ready to help. But you can’t be kind. Germans don’t need this word. Are those words above an alternative to “kind”? To me no.
It is so strange to me. Are people in Germany all kind and that’s why they don’t need an extra word for it? Hm, I don’t think so.
But what Germans do have more than a lot are laws. Laws for EVERYTHING. I doubt there is a country with more laws than they have in Germany. Really. And this country is great: I mean you can be a free, healthy, happy man here. You can have a well-paid job as a teacher. Even if you don’t have much money you are not afraid to go to a doctor (which in some countries you are, because you don’t have any health insurance). You can walk at night alone without a fear and you can trust the police, you can get a great education here in Germany almost for free. You can say how you really feel and think and you will not be arrested because of it (if of course, you don’t break the law).
Maybe mankind is so lazy, (bad?) that without rules we can’t be good? We can’t be kind? Can’t we? Is it all because we must?
Update: I found a word which to me would be kind in german: gut von Herz. :) But rarely somebody is using it.
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