Kindergarten

See also: kindergarten, Kindergärten, and kindergärten

German

Alternative forms

Kiga, KiGa (informal short form)

Etymology

Kind (“child”) +‎ -er- +‎ Garten (“garden”). Coined in 1840 by Friedrich Fröbel in the metaphorical sense of “place where children can grow in a natural way”, not in the literal sense of “garden”.^[1]

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /ˈkɪndərˌɡartən/, [ˈkɪndɐˌɡaʁtn̩], [-ˌɡaɐ̯tn̩]
Audio: (file)
Audio: (file)
Hyphenation: Kin‧der‧gar‧ten

Noun

Kindergarten m (strong, genitive Kindergartens, plural Kindergärten)

nursery school; kindergarten; day care center (institution where children below school age play and are looked after during the day)
Synonyms: (widely used interchangeably except that Kindertagesstätte is commoner for religiously and ideologically neutral institutions) Kindertagesstätte, (informal) Kiga

Usage notes

The German institution is not regarded as a school, but as a form of day care. There is an element of Erziehung (“upbringing, character formation”), but none of Bildung (“learning, school education”). At least with regards to the American sense of kindergarten, the German word is a false friend. The proper equivalent is Vorschule (literally “preschool”).

Declension

Declension of Kindergarten [masculine, strong]

	singular			plural
	indef.	def.	noun	def.	noun
nominative	ein	der	Kindergarten	die	Kindergärten
genitive	eines	des	Kindergartens	der	Kindergärten
dative	einem	dem	Kindergarten	den	Kindergärten
accusative	einen	den	Kindergarten	die	Kindergärten

Derived terms

Descendants

→ Albanian: kopsht fëmijësh (calque)
→ Armenian: մանկապարտեզ (mankapartez) (calque)
→ Bulgarian: де́тска гради́на (détska gradína) (calque)
→ Chinese: 幼兒園 / 幼儿园 (yòu'éryuán), 幼稚園 / 幼稚园 (yòuzhìyuán) (calque)
→ Danish: børnehave (calque)
→ Dutch: kindertuin (calque)
→ English: kindergarten
- → Malay: kindergarten
→ Esperanto: infanĝardeno (calque)
→ Estonian: lasteaed (calque)
→ Finnish: lastentarha (calque)
→ French: jardin d’enfants (calque)
→ Italian: giardino d'infanzia (calque)
→ Japanese: 幼稚園 (calque)
→ Norwegian: barnehage (calque)
→ Portuguese: jardim de infância (calque)
→ Russian: детский сад (detskij sad) (calque)
- → Azerbaijani: uşaq bağçası (calque)
→ Serbo-Croatian: dječji vrtić, дјѐчјӣ вртић, vr̀tić, вртић (calque)
→ Spanish: kindergarten, kínder, jardín de infancia, jardín de niños, jardín de infantes
→ Swedish: barnträdgård (calque)
→ Ukrainian: дитя́чий садо́к (dytjáčyj sadók), дитсадо́к (dytsadók) (calque)
→ Yiddish: קינדערגאָרטן (kindergortn) (calque)

References

^ Horace Mann, Elizabeth P. Peabody (1863) Moral Culture of Infancy and Kindergarten Guide‎^[1], page 10:
Kindergarten means a garden of children, and Froebel, the inventor of it, or rather, as he would prefer to express it, the discoverer of the method of Nature, meant to symbolize by the name the spirit and plan of treatment. How does the gardener treat his plants? He studies their individual natures, and puts them into such circumstances of soil and atmosphere as enable them to grow, flower, and bring forth fruit, also to renew their manifestation year after year.