Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Awful German Language (1880)

cs.utah.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 317 posts

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#271

Post by posterboy »

azernik wrote: post #89
LolNoGenerics wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just today I had a chat with a friend about a movie named "rogue one". Roug, Rook, Roug, Rook. If feel quite fit writing english but talking - as someone with very litte practice - drives me mad.

That specific example points to the root cause of most English pronunciation weirdness - an insistence on preserving original spelling for loanwords even if they come from languages with very different orthography. "Rogue" and "chef" are both French loanwords that English still spells as if they were French, not to mention all the Latin loanwords that still give middle-schoolers endless pain.

Like fashion and law, spelling and pronounciation are a sign of status. It's not supposed to be easy. From another point of view, what does the state of the orthografy say about the authorities, are they lenient, chaotic ... speaking a different language?

School children are very low in the social hierarchy, of course, because they cannot defend themselves. Of course they are going to be oppressed when they note that there's no system behind and when they say it's too complicated they will be called lazy. The parents had to wade to shit, so they don't even notice the smell anymore, and now the children have to, too.

On the other hand, conservative orthography can help to learn the related languages (ie. French, Latin), serve as interesting step into history, exercise memory, and what not.

There could be no regular spelling. That's an illusory proposition, given the breadth of dialects that exist. So next you will require all the poor children to learn a new dialect, basically. Is that any better? It would be a loss of diversity, each one preserving a little bit of historic language development - and status. It's really a shame that status varies. Learning a language properly might give some stability.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#272

Post by liftbigweights »

hannasanarion wrote: post #215
liftbigweights wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It amazes me how many people claim English is easy to learn People think english is simple because we don't have the gender+conjugation+declension system of many languages. So initially, english appears simple. A boat is a boat is a boat. But everywhere else - from spelling to grammar to phonetics, english is irregular and has so many exceptions that it really requires effort to become native or even fluent. One co…

"simple" is not synonymous with "easy to learn". There is some research that suggests that it is easier for adults to learn isolating languages, like English and Mandarin, than it is for adults to learn synthetic languages like German, Russian, or Arabic. In other words, adults are better at learning lists of words than systems for constructing words. The fewer grammatical morphemes they need to learn, the faster the…

> "simple" is not synonymous with "easy to learn".

I used simple in reference to "gender+conjugation+declension system of many languages". In that specific context, it does make it easier to learn english than german or spanish.

> There is some research that suggests that it is easier for adults to learn isolating languages, like English and Mandarin, than it is for adults to learn synthetic languages like German, Russian, or Arabic.

English is a germanic language and hence a synthetic language. Not sure why you lumped it with Mandarin. I don't know mandarin but I've heard that spoken mandarin is easy to learn since it very regular and has fairly limited vocabulary. Their tonal system make it extremely hard for people from non-tonal languages and their writing system is notoriously difficult.

> In other words, adults are better at learning lists of words than systems for constructing words.

Yes. It is easier to learn english on the front end because we lack the gender+conjugation+declension. My point is that what makes english difficult is the irregularities and exceptions.

> The fewer grammatical morphemes they need to learn, the faster they can reach functional fluency.

In other words "simple is easier to learn"?

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#273

Post by woodpanel »

modernerd wrote: post #243
woodpanel wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

Thanks for taking my response the way you did and not as an insult (honestly, you're a rare exception these days on HN for not just downvote and leave as soon as the topic touches politics)!

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#274

Post by posterboy »

zvrba wrote: post #173
klodolph wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, "the" and "a" are critical for understanding whether you are introducing something new or assuming that I know what you are talking about from context. If I use "the" then it's something clear from context, if I use "a" it's something new. The languages I know make a big fuss about this so I'm curious how you can figure out from context whether you can figure out something from context.

> I'm curious how you can figure out from context whether you can figure out something from context. Erm, memory? You remember whether something has been introduced or not. Take a hypothetical phone conversation, an example that nobody has managed to explain to me satisfactorily: A: "Where are you?" B: "I'm in [the/a/(nothing)] shower." People tell me that "the" is the correct thing to use. But A is none the wiser; B…

> It's tautological "the"

It's the (sorry) obligatory "the", because "the shower" has been lexicalized. This is very intimate, because the situation in which one talks about the shower, especially when still learning the language, will virtually always be at home with family. But enough talk. I will go to bed ... to bed myself. First I will go to the shower, an' shower, though. It's overall very unlikely I will have an in-shower phone call.

The given explanation is not satisfying. There's a difference between rhetorics and grammar. The common denominator is syntax (phonology, too, to a degree) but it differs between vocal and written speech. The semantics are the same, but you can take a look at the wiktionary page of [a] to get an idea of how diverse that is.

[a] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/a

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#275

Post by woodpanel »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #238
woodpanel wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

>I can guarantee you, that your sample of Austrian natives is not representative of the majority of native speakers. Not even remotely. Agreed. I find it hard to imagine how something can possibly sound old fashioned when there is no more modern alternative. My German may not be perfect, but I have never heard anyone fudge definite articles in a way that makes them indistinguishable from each other (or drop them alto…

> I find it hard to imagine how something can possibly sound old fashioned when there is no more modern alternative.

Exactly. Who'd be insulted by the moon being male in German and the sun being female? The sun, men or the moon?

Languages represent a form of continuous application of voluntary cooperation. Which is why almost no native speaker will think of his words he uses as an insult (either to a gender or that gendered word) but as a means to deliver information.

Using gender-neutral German in every day interactions will automatically make you come across affected. It is a linguistic Clinton-Thumb.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#276

Post by type0 »

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…

Grammar articles ("a" and "the") often times function as a type of glue for your words so that sentences can keep a certain pace, they also provide a lot of meaningful information on how sure you are about the thing that you are talking about.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#277

Post by rags2riches »

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…

English grammar is too simple. I often can't tell if a word is a noun or a verb. In particular, headlines can be really hard for me to parse when they seem like nothing more than a handful of nouns.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#278

Post by type0 »

peterlk wrote: post #147
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…

I am fascinated by how little syntax is required to actually communicate with each other. You can remove gender from language entirely and still understand what people mean. We can even get rid of time-based tenses and instead say something like "I go to the store yesterday". This is incorrect English, but the point is still communicated. As you say "the" and "a" could be condensed. You could go even further and comb…

> Why does flat (low) German exist, and how far is it from Dutch (or English)?

I'm not a linguist by any means but as I understand it's a separate language with its' own dialects. Lower saxon nowadays might have a gradual dialect continuum in the West into the Netherlands but in a days of Hanse it was a widespread language around the Baltic sea and had a huge influence on other languages and cultures. Even today part of it's dialects are closer to Swedish than high German (specially Pommern which was part of Sweden for quite some time).

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#279

Post by posterboy »

zvrba wrote: post #224
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!"

> Not a very reliable tool. Exactly. Alternatively (note the missing "THE") > "Come by the shop tomorrow. And bring table" then, confused by seemingly nonsensical request of bringing some table along [why "some" -- because he doesn't remember the earlier conversation]: "Huh? Why, what table?" As rytis pointed out, if the "sender" wants to emphasize the context, he'd say "And bring THAT table." On the other hand, if t…

A rule I heard was about abstract nouns requiring the article. It is not a strict rule, it seems, and what is abstract or not could be a matter of debate. In line with the OP notion something abstract would be exactly something that was not known. So here, the whole scenario is "the table". It's not any old table. In the speakers mind it is the sole reason of the listeners existence.

"hello, table?"

"Yes, this is table speaking"

"Is it still there?"

"Yes, it is here?"

"good good. bring it, table!"

It seems almost as if "it" and "the", highly underspecific terms are way more complicated in nature and thus have to repeated often to remind us ... just as much as egoists tend to speak a lot of "I", which I tend to avoid when I write my own texts because I do know who I am talking to. That is, "come" is usually preceded by "you", to address the recipient. "you come" is a full sentence. It's regularly binding "here", but if "here" needs to be specified, the verb is "come by". The object is a new phrase, and to set that off with the appropriate contrast, we simply use an article. Otherwise, "come to shop" would appear like a compound verb. Indeed, "come to town" is idiomatic, and that's lexicalized as a compound word (collocation) as seen in "homecoming". While "bring" is usually bound to "me" (or here, eventually, as the difference is minimal). It wouldn't be "table bringing". You don't address the table itself to bring itself. The table doesn't belong to the noun, the subject of the verb - not anymore. The status of the table is kind of unclear and that's the whole point. It already changed ownership as it seems, but didn't change hands yet. The "the" then is a placeholder for a qualifier. It is the most simple place holder next "a" or nothing. It should change to "my", and since we also have "(to) me" in scope, that would actually be very apt. "Bring my table". Is that one also objectionable? Diplomatically, you'd say "your table". The article is used to show that' you want to be specific, but not too specific yet. In essence, it changes only changes the scope. If it didn't and if it was clear that you have (are) the table, then it would be enough to say "you bring!" And people really do or did talk like that. "I'm hungry, cook!" "Answer! I wanna have an answer. You answer" "guard, guard!". etc. etc.

I'm just making that up. Never mind.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#280

Post by Koshkin »

yesenadam wrote: post #267
Koshkin wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.”

How is it 'the same'? I can't see it. If somehow the tree was made from your molecules, sure, there's a sense that it would be true, but how that's 'the same' or anything similar to the continuous evolution of Latin into the Romance languages, I don't know. It's more like, say, there was jazz in the 1920s, there are many types of jazz today, evolved from that early jazz but all very different from it, and different f…

Well, strictly speaking, Romance languages are not the evolution of Latin - each is a mix of (the Vulgar) Latin and a local language. For example, French has been heavily influenced by Frankish, so much so, in fact, that English, not even being a Romance language, seems closer to Latin than French does - simply because it imported so many words directly from Latin. (The closest example of a continuous and mostly unadulterated evolution of a now dead language into a modern one is Greek.)
Post reply on HN