Kindergarden is perhaps the most known german word. You can use it in almost all languages, and everyone will sure understand it. Well, actually, it has suffered a little change when came to english language. Germans say “Kindergarten”, with a ‘t’ instead of a ‘d’, but, anyhow the word, in Germany or in Hong Kong, means the field of educational and child care services offered by the government or by private initiatives for kids in their early childhood. ‘Kinder’ means ‘children’ (das Kind – the child: nouns in German are written with capital letters); and ‘Garten’, well, means, of course, ‘garden’.
In some countries, the people sometimes like to use their own word for ‘Kindergarten’, but they just translate the meaning of the german word literally. In some spanish-speaking countries, you can use certainly the german word. That would be, more or less, ‘garden of children’, or ‘children’s garden’, or Kindergarten. Almost all schools in the world have such a nice garden, because it has been proved that the transition to the first grade is much less hard to the children when they have learnt first that getting away from home for a while, far from mom and dad, is part of that big ‘investment’ which is learning.
The Kindergarten is quite important, it seems to be a proved thing that the boy’s performance in high school times is higher when they’ve had a nice introduction to the school’s world.
