The Awful German Language (1880) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#131

Post by hv42 » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 4:14 AM UTC

apo wrote: post #73

English grammar is far simpler than German grammar. Eliminating noun genders, declensions, and cases (as English does) is a great simplification over German. I've never understood the need for noun genders and I scratch my head at a society that makes its members memorize such useless information. That said, German pronunciation is more regular than English pronunciation. Every letter combination is in most cases pro…

What's really killing me is that the genders don't matter when you have a plural form.

It's all the same (ie. using "die" and the plural cases)

In Spanish or French for eg. you still have gender marks (los/Las for eg.) with the plural form but in German, it's all the same.

That makes me wonder why it's so necessary to have genders in the first place since the German plural doesn't have marks of it and it doesn't hurt understanding.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#132

Post by beerlord » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 4:15 AM UTC

pitaj wrote: post #70

zwieback wrote: post #41

I'm German but have been living in the US for 25 yrs and my verdict is that the German grammar is overly and unnecessarily complicated. The pronunciation, on the other hand, is sane, which cannot be said of English.

It's not English pronunciation that's wrong, it's the spelling.

What If English Were Phonetically Consistent?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8zWWp0akUU&t=6s

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#133

Post by yongjik » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 4:30 AM UTC

Koshkin wrote: post #50

bitL wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite appearance, German is very illogical language full of idioms and exceptions one has to master. Also, even natives usually don't master the full extent of language and the overbearing nature of language with its need for precise use of words/formulations specific to a given situation often leads to strong reliance on syntax/appearance of complexity. You can see it in typical German philosophy, where the langua…

Yet, the greatest philosophers after the Greeks were all German-speaking (Hegel, Kant, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Mach...). Also, physicists, mathematicians.

Well, on the other hand, the greatest musician after the Greeks composed the majority of his greatest creations only after he stopped hearing German.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#134

Post by trhway » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 4:44 AM UTC

bobogei81123 wrote: post #128

kingofpandora wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never understood the need for noun genders What a peculiar comment. It's like saying, what's the use of termites? No, seriously, why _do_ we have termites? Do we really need termites?

If someone is creating a new language now, that is a concept that would definitely not be included.

Or may be there would be more than 3 genders.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#135

Post by taneq » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 4:46 AM UTC

apo wrote: post #73

English grammar is far simpler than German grammar. Eliminating noun genders, declensions, and cases (as English does) is a great simplification over German. I've never understood the need for noun genders and I scratch my head at a society that makes its members memorize such useless information. That said, German pronunciation is more regular than English pronunciation. Every letter combination is in most cases pro…

> I've never understood the need for noun genders and I scratch my head at a society that makes its members memorize such useless information.

A lot of redundancy in human languages seems to be related to disambiguation and error correction.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#136

Post by stewbrew » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 5:02 AM UTC

apo wrote: post #73

English grammar is far simpler than German grammar. Eliminating noun genders, declensions, and cases (as English does) is a great simplification over German. I've never understood the need for noun genders and I scratch my head at a society that makes its members memorize such useless information. That said, German pronunciation is more regular than English pronunciation. Every letter combination is in most cases pro…

You're mosly right about pronouciation but German pronouncation isn't as regular as e.g. Spanish or Italian. In German you have open and close vowels, i.e. the "e" can sound slightly different depending on its position in a word. There is some variation between local dialects though.

IMHO the need for genders, cases etc. becomes obvious in spoken language where these things serve to guide the listener's expecations. "Simpler" languages often use redundant wording, formulaic constructions to make up for them.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#137

Post by analog31 » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 5:04 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #135

apo wrote: post #73

English grammar is far simpler than German grammar. Eliminating noun genders, declensions, and cases (as English does) is a great simplification over German. I've never understood the need for noun genders and I scratch my head at a society that makes its members memorize such useless information. That said, German pronunciation is more regular than English pronunciation. Every letter combination is in most cases pro…

> I've never understood the need for noun genders and I scratch my head at a society that makes its members memorize such useless information. A lot of redundancy in human languages seems to be related to disambiguation and error correction.

Indeed, I once read an article about the Iliad, in which it claimed that the combination of the rhythm and other poetic features made it harder to screw up when reciting from memory.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#138

Post by poulsbohemian » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 5:05 AM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #133

Koshkin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, the greatest philosophers after the Greeks were all German-speaking (Hegel, Kant, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Mach...). Also, physicists, mathematicians.

Well, on the other hand, the greatest musician after the Greeks composed the majority of his greatest creations only after he stopped hearing German.

Well played, points for cerebral humor.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#139

Post by bzbarsky » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 5:15 AM UTC

man-and-laptop wrote: post #62

Koshkin wrote: post #34

German is an amazing, beautiful language. With not much of the vocabulary borrowed from other languages, words actually make sense. From that perspective, German can be seen as the modern equivalent of Latin, and if I were to choose only one language to remain on the entire planet, it would be German (sorry English, Chinese and Spanish). Its sounds are easier for non-native speakers to pronounce - especially compared…

You could say the same thing about Russian. Like German, it doesn't borrow very heavily from other languages; and a lot of the words are simple variations of each other with different prefixes and suffixes. It was even the Lingua Franca (or "Latin") of the Communist bloc. On the other hand, Russian might be an even harder language to learn than German, given that it's Slavic and uses a different alphabet. There's alw…

Russian doesn't borrow heavily? There's a ton of borrowing from French in Russian.... I hadn't appreciated quite how much until I started learning French.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#140

Post by delib » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 5:21 AM UTC

apo wrote: post #73

English grammar is far simpler than German grammar. Eliminating noun genders, declensions, and cases (as English does) is a great simplification over German. I've never understood the need for noun genders and I scratch my head at a society that makes its members memorize such useless information. That said, German pronunciation is more regular than English pronunciation. Every letter combination is in most cases pro…

> I scratch my head at a society that makes its members memorize such useless information.

Such a weird perspective on language and on the agency of societies. There are tons of "useless" things in any language. For instance, why not get rid of all the tenses in English? Do we really need the past progressive?

To make English spelling more "logical" (so people need to remember less useless information!), we should again look to Mark Twain:

> Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. (http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/twain.htm)