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The Awful German Language (1880)

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Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#241

Post by Koshkin »

yesenadam wrote: post #158
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…

Latin is a dead language, and we did not have a will to adopt it as a universal language I'm not sure what you mean by this. I used to believe that "Latin is a dead language" - until I learnt more about the subject. It was spoken everywhere in the Roman Empire, and the local differences evolved into the Romance languages. They are what Latin is today. And it (the relatively fixed 'classical' version anyway) was a uni…

> Romance languages. They are what Latin is today

That’s the same as looking at a tree and saying, “This is what I will be in a hundred years.”

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#242

Post by davidgh »

zvrba wrote: post #145
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 As a native speaker of Slavic language, I've never understood the need for differentiating between "THE table" and "A table". It's useless and clear from the context what is meant (note that both are different from "THIS/THAT table", which I do NOT deem useless.) For English and Norwegian, I've learned grammatical rules that cover ca 80% of use-cases, the rest is gues…

> As a native speaker of Slavic language, I've never understood the need for differentiating between "THE table" and "A table"

This was a common sentiment I heard from Russian students when teaching them English. The concept of articles is absolutely maddening, I think, when your native language does not have it.

I recall trying to teach it with a simple explanation. “I heard a dog walking outside. The dog pushed the door open and entered.” By switching from “a dog” to “the dog”, I expressed that the dog I heard was the same dog that entered. We translated the same sentences into Russian and they expressed that it was natural to assume, without the articles it was the same dog. I then asked them “but what if was a different dog that entered?” and they indicated the speaker would likely add a clarifying clause to the statement to ensure that there are two different dogs in scope.

It caused me to ponder and I came to the realization that some of these elements of language while seemingly “useless” (meaning, you could clearly make a language work without them) are what add subtle richness to a language. Just as I can do without a ternary in JavaScript, I enjoy its succinctness even if it might be a bit confusing for a new learner.

I recall comparing some of my own difficulties learning Russian as a native English speaker. My head literally exploded when I realized for every verb I had to learn a perfective and imperfective aspects. Something simple like “I did it.” What on earth is the difference between the two aspects, I often asked. To Russians it was clear - it addeded subtle richness.

I guess what I learned is that in language “not needed” does not mean “useless”. I learned to love the richness of the Russian language and began to better appreciate some of richness of my own language that I previously took for granted.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#243

Post by modernerd »

woodpanel wrote: post #225
modernerd wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the “agency of societies” that helped English lose its gendered nouns. One theory is that Old English society found them useless because there was overlap between endings, causing noun ending inflection to “collapse” into a single neutral form, which started in the North of England and progressed to the South.[1] Societal changes are already influencing gendered nouns in Germany[2]. Some dialects of German (Nied…

> "I've spoken with Austrian natives [...] who admit that it feels increasingly old fashioned to them. " I can guarantee you, that your sample of Austrian natives is not representative of the majority of native speakers. Not even remotely. As a native speaker you will barely notice it, unless foreigners remind you of it. > "To me it seems entirely reasonable to call gendered nouns “useless”, and to see them as a burd…

Thanks for sharing - it's good to hear other opinions on this, and it's very likely the group of five or so people I was speaking to are not representative.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#244

Post by coldtea »

rytis wrote: post #208
coldtea wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Erm, memory? You remember whether something has been introduced or not. Not a very reliable tool. At least "bring THE table" introduces some error correction in the sentence. - "Come by the shop tomorrow. And bring THE table". (confused by the explicit "THE", the error correction kicks in:) - "Huh? What table?" - "The one we talked about last week on the phone", - "A, yes!"

Then why not use 'THAT' and 'ANY' instead? Also, in your example, what is the purpose of referencing particular phone with 'THE'? Why not just 'on phone'? NB. Just like zvrba I was (still am) having troubles with As and THEs. Baltic language speaker here btw.

>Then why not use 'THAT' and 'ANY' instead?

For variety. Why not just wear black everyday?

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#245

Post by sarabande »

TomMarius wrote: post #201
sarabande wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this conflates typically verbose academic/philosophical writing with German itself. Many great old philosophers came out of Germany, in a time where writing obtusely to make a point was in vogue (in English, too, not just German), so this may add to the perception of German philosophy needing to be contorted. I've read refreshingly concise modern works in both and English and German and can assure you that st…

Could you share an example? I'd like to read something while learning German.

I can't say I really found use out of the book I'm about to mention, but Michael Bordt writes a lot of philosophy/self-help books in a concise German style. For example, "Die Kunst, die Eltern zu enttäuschen: Vom Mut zum selbstbestimmten Leben."

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#246

Post by skrause »

willyt wrote: post #228
lolc wrote: post #182

As a native speaker I can confirm the observations of Mark Twain. What is ignored in such humorous tirades is that every human speaker will push information density to the very limit of understandability. In every language. They will use all the tools available. Sure, the German case system is getting weaker as the centuries go by. And in some situations you will wonder why it's used still. But that doesn't mean the…

English is not easy: Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s wr…

People often confuse the English language and the English spelling. The English language is actually really easy to learn because it has a very simple grammar.

The English spelling is a different problem set because it often reflects how a word was pronounced centuries ago. It has no connection to the current pronunciation, so learning the correct spelling of a word is basically like learning Chinese characters.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#247

Post by vram22 »

I've been learning German slowly over time. As someone else said in this thread, at least some parts of it (more so some of the vocabulary) is not very difficult for people who know English well, which is partly due to English and German having some common historical roots, I've read. E.g. the "Saxon" in the term Anglo-Saxon is from the Saxons, from the Saxony area (part of Germany), or so I've read in the past.

One of my favorite German words is entschuldigung, for the sound of it.

There's a ring to the thing.

Have you seen what I mean?

:)

https://translate.google.com/#de/en/Entschuldigung

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#248

Post by vram22 »

zvrba wrote: post #145
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 As a native speaker of Slavic language, I've never understood the need for differentiating between "THE table" and "A table". It's useless and clear from the context what is meant (note that both are different from "THIS/THAT table", which I do NOT deem useless.) For English and Norwegian, I've learned grammatical rules that cover ca 80% of use-cases, the rest is gues…

>As a native speaker of Slavic language, I've never understood the need for differentiating between "THE table" and "A table". It's useless and clear from the context what is meant (note that both are different from "THIS/THAT table", which I do NOT deem useless.)

One differentiating example could be:

One person says to another:

1) Put it on the table.

vs. saying:

2) Put it on a table.

(Where, in both cases, by "it", they mean some object, say a book or any other thing).

1) would imply there is only one table in the room, so "the" was used.

2) would imply there is more than one table in the room, so "a" was used, meaning put it on any table you wish, it doesn't matter which one.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#249

Post by zvrba »

davidgh wrote: post #242
zvrba wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never understood the need for noun genders As a native speaker of Slavic language, I've never understood the need for differentiating between "THE table" and "A table". It's useless and clear from the context what is meant (note that both are different from "THIS/THAT table", which I do NOT deem useless.) For English and Norwegian, I've learned grammatical rules that cover ca 80% of use-cases, the rest is gues…

> As a native speaker of Slavic language, I've never understood the need for differentiating between "THE table" and "A table" This was a common sentiment I heard from Russian students when teaching them English. The concept of articles is absolutely maddening, I think, when your native language does not have it. I recall trying to teach it with a simple explanation. “I heard a dog walking outside. The dog pushed the…

> “I heard a dog walking outside. The dog pushed the door open and entered.”

"THE door"? Which door? Why is "the" there? Seems as yet another case of "tautological article", as the answer is "that exact door that was opened by the dog", so why not just write "[The] dog pushed door open and entered."? No extra information is conveyed by "the".

Of course it's maddening since no explanation makes full sense.

> I then asked them “but what if was a different dog that entered?”

Indeed, what would you say in English if it were a different dog? "I heard a dog walking outside. [Another] dog pushed the door open end entered."

Writing the second sentence as "A dog pushed the door.." if there were another makes absolutely no sense to me (because: which dog? -- another one or the same one?), so when writing "Dog pushed door.." it's very natural to assume that it's the same dog.

> What on earth is the difference between the two aspects, I often asked. To Russians it was clear - it addeded subtle richness.

Ah, but aspect is more than just subtle richness: it's a tool that it makes it possible to succinctly express complex temporal relationships.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#250

Post by err4nt »

CamouflagedKiwi wrote: post #164
err4nt wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet we have a wide variety of programming languages, and switch between them as the need arises for a better fit to the problem domain we're working in. With the wide variety of things like number systems in different languages, wouldn't it make sense that using some languages might be better for mathematical communication, and others maybe not offer the precision required to communicate everything necessary? It woul…

That's a softer form of it which is fairly obviously true; a language with no words for weather will obviously limit discussion of the weather forecast. That's a bit different to whether it limits your ability to think about those things though.

Do you speak more than one natural language? I am an anglophone but took most of my schooling in french. Though I work in english now, I can remember distinctly 'thinking in English' and 'thinking in French' and depending on the problem I was wrestling with, the constructs of the language you frame your thinking in absolutely can give you an advantage or disadvantage.

I always thought it was remarkable how much human thought was imprisoned by language, and it really makes me wonder what a human 'without language' would be capable of thinking.

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