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The Awful German Language (1880)

cs.utah.edu

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Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#21

Post by schoen »

yorwba wrote: post #18
schoen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One answer is parsing ambiguities. https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/1705/w%c3%b6rter-... (replaced with better link) English has tons of ambiguities, including many possible parsing ambiguities of this kind, but written English would have many more ambiguities without a delimiter between words.

Separating parts of compounds by spaces prevents ambiguous decompositions, but allows ambiguous groupings. (Like "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.", which would be less confusing if "fruit flies" were written "fruitflies" or at least "fruit-flies".) I'm not sure which is worse.

I had the intuition that the spaces strictly decreased ambiguity, but your point makes me really unsure of this.

But written German already distinguishes nouns from verbs with capitalization; can the grouping problem be made worse by spaces in the absence of ambiguities about which part of speech a word is? (Obviously the German convention doesn't totally eliminate all such ambiguities, since "wie" 'like (preposition)' and "mögen" 'like (verb)' are both lower case, although "Fliegen" 'flies (insects) and "fliegen" 'flies (verb)' can be distinguished sufficiently to remove the specific kind of ambiguity present in this particular sentence even if "wie" and "mögen" were homonyms.)

(corrected thanks to commenter below!)

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#22

Post by org3432 »

simonmales wrote: post #16

As a foreigner living and working in Germany for a number a years, reading succinct explanations of German grammar is actually quite refreshing. Personally, grammatical concepts in English for me are quite challenging. Now try and learn a language that has complex grammar rules when you don't _actually_ know your own rules is quite imitating.

I found I understood English grammar better after learning German since it's explicit about the cases, syntax, nouns etc. It sort of revealed what the underlining mechanism was that in English was invisible.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#23

Post by verelo »

yorwba wrote: post #18
schoen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One answer is parsing ambiguities. https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/1705/w%c3%b6rter-... (replaced with better link) English has tons of ambiguities, including many possible parsing ambiguities of this kind, but written English would have many more ambiguities without a delimiter between words.

Separating parts of compounds by spaces prevents ambiguous decompositions, but allows ambiguous groupings. (Like "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.", which would be less confusing if "fruit flies" were written "fruitflies" or at least "fruit-flies".) I'm not sure which is worse.

The hyphen seems like a very reasonable compromise, at the very least it tells you the space was intentionally omitted and it should be read together as a compound.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#24

Post by Tehnix »

mitchty wrote: post #3

Heh, its honestly not that bad of a language, and has undergone two reforms (maybe 3? I forget) since this document was created. The "awful" parts of German are in some ways its saving grace. Example: surfing is Wellenreiten, literally wave-riding or riding waves. This whole thing is all over German with compound words. Its really no different conceptually from "the old blue car" in English, its just mashed together…

Eh, it's not anything like it. German is very different from English, especially in the way you position the verbs.

It's a rather silly example, with one word. Following that logic, French would be a lot easier for anything English speaking person, with all their words that are 90% equivalent to their English counterparts

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#26

Post by tannhaeuser »

schoen wrote: post #21
yorwba wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Separating parts of compounds by spaces prevents ambiguous decompositions, but allows ambiguous groupings. (Like "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.", which would be less confusing if "fruit flies" were written "fruitflies" or at least "fruit-flies".) I'm not sure which is worse.

I had the intuition that the spaces strictly decreased ambiguity, but your point makes me really unsure of this. But written German already distinguishes nouns from verbs with capitalization; can the grouping problem be made worse by spaces in the absence of ambiguities about which part of speech a word is? (Obviously the German convention doesn't totally eliminate all such ambiguities, since "wie" 'like (preposition…

mögen = to like

Magen = stomach

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#27

Post by GreeniFi »

I’m not German but spend a lot of time with Germans who are more often than not fantastic fun. And quite “freigeistlich” I find.

This is an excellent German stand-up comedian who plies his trade in London: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=48gV9W9UZHk

A curious thing that I have noticed that when Germans speak and write English, they often don’t differentiate between 2 previously mentioned subjects or objects. For example:

Dave and Andy went to London with lunch and a book. He forgot it at the train station.

Is it something in the structure of the German language that means this confusion is created in translation? Ie we are left unclear as to whether it was Andy or Dave who forgot something and whether it was his lunch or his book.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#28

Post by jhasse »

mitchty wrote: post #3

Heh, its honestly not that bad of a language, and has undergone two reforms (maybe 3? I forget) since this document was created. The "awful" parts of German are in some ways its saving grace. Example: surfing is Wellenreiten, literally wave-riding or riding waves. This whole thing is all over German with compound words. Its really no different conceptually from "the old blue car" in English, its just mashed together…

btw: "Surfen" is a lot more common than "Wellenreiten" in Germany.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#29

Post by TulliusCicero »

k__ wrote: post #7
mitchty wrote: post #3

Heh, its honestly not that bad of a language, and has undergone two reforms (maybe 3? I forget) since this document was created. The "awful" parts of German are in some ways its saving grace. Example: surfing is Wellenreiten, literally wave-riding or riding waves. This whole thing is all over German with compound words. Its really no different conceptually from "the old blue car" in English, its just mashed together…

To me, as a Germany, it felt rather strange that in English it isn't the same. Like, why would you add a space between two words that are meant to be read together?

If they get used together enough, they do become a compound word. Only two-word compounds though, English doesn't really do the three-word/four-word/N-word compounds like German does.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#30

Post by the8472 »

jacobush wrote: post #19
emsy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there are also slightly funny ones -plane / Flugzeug / flight stuff -lighter / Feuerzeug / fire stuff -light bulb / Glühbirne / Glow pear -eyeball / Augapfel / Eye apple

Yes, yes, but to my ear, "zeug" feels closer to "thing" than "stuff" in these examples. That's no less funny.

-zeug indicates that it is a set of things. Historically the fire stuff has been a set of tools to make fire. Zaumzeug was the set of gear you put on a horse etc.
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