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German for Programmers

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Re: German for Programmers

#121

Post by kerberos84 »

ArmandGrillet wrote: post #115
jlangenauer wrote: post #65

Having lived in Germany for 3 years now, and managed to speak German to a half-decent level (B1/B2), I offer the following observations. 1. The genders don't matter nearly as much as non-speakers think they do. If you talk to your bank, it doesn't matter if you ask about "der Konto", "die Konto" or "das Konto" (the last is actually correct), you will be able to communicate quite fine. Unlike French, there are very fe…

Could you share how you've learned to speak German during those 3 years? I have used all the common apps to learn German and reached an A2 level but going to B1/B2 is harder to achieve using only apps. Thanks!

I can suggest you to go to a course if you want to reach B1/2 levels.

Re: German for Programmers

#122

Post by spspeaker »

glastra wrote: post #113
lordnacho wrote: post #34

> The genders of individual nouns and the grammatical rules to decline articles and adjectives using those genders constitute a shared set of rules that the sender and receiver both know. It may not approach the Shannon limit, but German gendered nouns form a weird, organically developed forward error correcting code. This might be a convoluted example, but imagine trying to hear the difference between Rat and Rad ov…

A funny thing is that, in Castilian (Spanish spoken in Spain), the word "Internet" is always used without an article. We do assign the masculine gender to it when we attach adjectives to it, but never an article, which actually is a bit strange once you think about it. For example, "the Internet is full of X" is "Internet está lleno de X". To refer to a slow Internet connection, we would say "Internet va lento" or "m…

You know the reason even if you're not aware of it. It's the same reason you are using capital I for Internet and lowercase i for intranet. Internet is a proper noun, like "Laura", because there's only one. Intranet is a common noun, like "silla", because there are many. You don't attach determinants to proper nouns in Spanish.

Re: German for Programmers

#123

Post by jlangenauer »

ArmandGrillet wrote: post #115
jlangenauer wrote: post #65

Having lived in Germany for 3 years now, and managed to speak German to a half-decent level (B1/B2), I offer the following observations. 1. The genders don't matter nearly as much as non-speakers think they do. If you talk to your bank, it doesn't matter if you ask about "der Konto", "die Konto" or "das Konto" (the last is actually correct), you will be able to communicate quite fine. Unlike French, there are very fe…

Could you share how you've learned to speak German during those 3 years? I have used all the common apps to learn German and reached an A2 level but going to B1/B2 is harder to achieve using only apps. Thanks!

I paid for courses at the start, which really helped.

Beyond that, reading books in German, and dealing with German society in German (surprisingly hard to do here in Berlin, as all the locals love to speak English, Jens Spahn excepted). Watch German TV.

I’m also lucky to have a few German friends who tolerate speaking to me in German, despite the fact their English is near fluent.

Re: German for Programmers

#124

Post by arwhatever »

jlangenauer wrote: post #65

Having lived in Germany for 3 years now, and managed to speak German to a half-decent level (B1/B2), I offer the following observations. 1. The genders don't matter nearly as much as non-speakers think they do. If you talk to your bank, it doesn't matter if you ask about "der Konto", "die Konto" or "das Konto" (the last is actually correct), you will be able to communicate quite fine. Unlike French, there are very fe…

These are some of the exact same observations that I've had while learning to the 10% fluency level. German has just been a joy for learning root word associations. Learning just a few root words can yield so much (think "die dienst").

Also nice is seeing a completely new German word in writing and immediately knowing with nearly 100% confidence how it is pronounced.

Compare that to the unfortunate person learning English, which almost seems deliberately designed to trick you with seemingly arbitrary pronunciations.

Re: German for Programmers

#125

Post by nemetroid »

hutattedonmyarm wrote: post #90
jlangenauer wrote: post #65

Having lived in Germany for 3 years now, and managed to speak German to a half-decent level (B1/B2), I offer the following observations. 1. The genders don't matter nearly as much as non-speakers think they do. If you talk to your bank, it doesn't matter if you ask about "der Konto", "die Konto" or "das Konto" (the last is actually correct), you will be able to communicate quite fine. Unlike French, there are very fe…

Native German speaker: Most of the time we think it's just funny if you get the gender wrong, no harm done. As you said, there's very few instances where there are words changing meaning if you swap out the article. And even then, it's ususally obvious from context. (Der Schild => the shield; Das Schild => the sign). I do get the frustration though, I had to learn French in school and I'm currently learning Swedish (…

> I'd consider their en and ett words something conceptually similar to the gender thing

En and ett words actually are genders (or "genus"), they are known as utrum and neutrum respectively.

Re: German for Programmers

#126

Post by DaOne256 »

Treegarden wrote: post #99
usrusr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say it exactly as you wrote, thankfully we have stopped translating that kind of term. Translations are only found at the extreme edges of the formality spectrum: in very formal writing, you use whatever is defined in the glossary of your organisation, and informal chitchat might occasionally be spiced up with ridiculous translations spontaneously made up on the spot. Even when I was a child, with no or very litt…

Man, as a native German I hate this obsession with german naming english words. Disruptive becomes "erschütternd" which is a bad translation, or how do you translate "tech-stack"? Technologie Haufen? I solve this by speaking denglish, but sometimes my fellow Germans who are less into the tech lingo complain about that. I really hate it when germans try to germanize international english words.

It is Technologie-Haufen or Technologiehaufen in correct grammar ;) See: deppenleerzeichen.de

Re: German for Programmers

#127

Post by Semaphor »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #95
jlangenauer wrote: post #65

Having lived in Germany for 3 years now, and managed to speak German to a half-decent level (B1/B2), I offer the following observations. 1. The genders don't matter nearly as much as non-speakers think they do. If you talk to your bank, it doesn't matter if you ask about "der Konto", "die Konto" or "das Konto" (the last is actually correct), you will be able to communicate quite fine. Unlike French, there are very fe…

I haven't lived in Germany, but I've travelled there for work, and I've found that getting genders wrong confuses Germans. Or at least, German waiters. Also pro-tip - when asking if a sauce is "hot", don't use "heiss" which literally means hot, the word you want is "scharf", spicy. Because "heiss" is slang for "horny" and if you phrase it wrong, you end up asking the Afghani waiter if the sauce is horny, and he looks…

I'm German and my first association if a German asked for heiße Soße, would be that they are asking about temperature, not spiciness and certainly not horniness. And as the other comment said, both heiß and scharf are slang for horny.

Re: German for Programmers

#128

Post by floqqi »

pantalaimon wrote: post #33
madez wrote: post #28

I like the analogies, but I'd like to nitpick, if I may. "While the grammar is mostly regular here, two things make this challenging: the nonsensical assignment of genders to nouns and (...)" The given examples for weird assignment of genders are inadequate because they are explained by common rules. Das Mädchen: Diminutive words are always neutral, and Mädchen is the diminutive of Magd. Die Männlichkeit: Words endin…

> the words Rat and Rad are pronounced identical, thanks to the Auslautverhärtung. Are they though? > Ich habe einen Rat für dich. > Ich habe ein Rad für dich.

As a native speaker: Generally no, but it depends.

The "t" in "Rat" is pronounced much harder than the "d" in "Rad" is. BUT: The more and more you go into the north of Germany, lets say Hamburg for example, they have a very similar pronouncing of "t" and "d". Both often sound very hard (more like an "t"). Whereas people in the south tend to pronounce both letters more soft, like a "d".

But in general they are pronounced differently.

Re: German for Programmers

#129

Post by pikzel »

maljx wrote: post #111
hutattedonmyarm wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native German speaker: Most of the time we think it's just funny if you get the gender wrong, no harm done. As you said, there's very few instances where there are words changing meaning if you swap out the article. And even then, it's ususally obvious from context. (Der Schild => the shield; Das Schild => the sign). I do get the frustration though, I had to learn French in school and I'm currently learning Swedish (…

In case no one told you "en" words usually map to masculine and feminine in German, and "ett" words are neutral.

As a native Swedish speaker, albeit with little interest in languages and grammar, I can't see how that would help anyone. How do you know if "bil" (car) is masculine/feminine or neutral (en bil, ett bil)? Open to learn here :)

Re: German for Programmers

#130

Post by Semaphor »

usrusr wrote: post #110
adimitrov wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Somehow, they tend to all place the noun in the same gender. That's not generally true, especially for German. I've heard "der Blog, das Blog," "die, das Email" "die, der, das Factory" … etc. Loan words undergo an integration process, which is more of a sociolinguistic concept, I guess. At the end of the integration process, the word becomes an integral part of the language, with a fixed gender. For example, "Manag…

Good examples for some of the different ways gender can be derived. Going deeper into blog, people who still remember "weblog" as the full form of "blog" will call it "das Blog" (because "das Log" is a well established German term, gendered from "das Logbuch" perhaps), whereas people who were introduced to "blog" when it already felt like a standalone term will tend to use "der Blog", perhaps for to phonetic similari…

That's funny because I'd say "das Blog" precisely because I remember weblogs and I'd say "das Log". Duden agrees with me [0]

Oh and "Das Logbuch" has nothing to do with "log" but everything with "Buch". When you have compound words only the last word matters for gender.

[0]: https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Log_Logdatei_EDV

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