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German for Programmers

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Re: German for Programmers

#211

Post by klmr »

allendoerfer wrote: post #198
p410n3 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that I, as a german with "Abitur", still have no idea what Akkusativ, datic and whatnbot meeans. Everything above 5th grade was reading poems and stuff, which I did great in :)

Well, Abitur from which state? Also helps if you had Latin. In Germany the value of high school degrees depends hugely on the state in which you visited school.

You’re probably referring to the fact that the school system differs from state to state rather than being organised at the federal level but I find that quality of education differs a lot more between individual schools than it does between states, and not just because of the tiered system (grammar would be elementary school curriculum anyway).

Re: German for Programmers

#212

Post by pluma »

jacobush wrote: post #164
pluma wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true but I'd say it's less about appearing lowly educated than about reinforcing your foreign-ness. A lot of Germans are to varying degrees prejudiced against foreigners, especially if you're brown or can be read as Turkish/Arabic or Eastern European. If you pass as white European you're more likely to be read as educated but still learning the language whereas otherwise your language problems are more likely…

East of France?

West of France. Spain, Portugal and possibly the Southern parts of France. But ethnic stereotypes are of course silly and somewhat arbitrary so I don't think it's possible to draw a clear line.

"Hedonistic lazy people with dark hair who steal our daughters" seems to be the general idea. This is somewhat distinct from "lazy people with light hair who steal our things", which seems to be the stereotype against Eastern Europeans.

Re: German for Programmers

#213

Post by fluffycat »

Programmers? Sure German language needs a nice round of refactoring. Remove all redundancies. It would be a huge changelist with shit ton of lines removed, and still all tests for meaning pass.

Re: German for Programmers

#214

Post by contradictioned »

aasasd wrote: post #120
contradictioned wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone else commented, > Diminutive words are always neutral And there is "die Magd", ancient expression for a young woman and the grammatical gender is female, as well as "der Bube", ancient expression (it is still used more often, though) for a young man and grammatical gender is male. Of both these words you can create the diminished versions "Bübchen" and "Mädchen" which both follow the aforementioned rule an…

My objection is not to the formulation of the rule, but to the existence of the rule―because where I'm from, a little girl is still a girl, grammatically too. (Even though I agree in general that little kids make crappy men and women.)

Ah, then maybe to clarify further: This rule applies to virtually every word. A table is "der Tisch" (male), a small table is "das Tischchen" (neutral); a tree is "der Baum" (male), a small tree is "das Bäumchen" (neutral); a break is "die Pause" (female), a small break "das Päuschen" (neutral), etc. In theory you can take every word and diminish it by appending "-chen".

You could still argue, that the "-chen"-rule should be overwritten by an "obvious-grammatical-gender"-rule.

Re: German for Programmers

#215

Post by close04 »

pluma wrote: post #79
levosmetalo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's true that people that want to understand you would understand you, even if you speak wrong, it's not something "not to worry about". Using the wrong gender or articles quickly gives a hint that you are some lowly educated factory worker living in Germany for 20 years and not caring to learn the language.

That's true but I'd say it's less about appearing lowly educated than about reinforcing your foreign-ness. A lot of Germans are to varying degrees prejudiced against foreigners, especially if you're brown or can be read as Turkish/Arabic or Eastern European. If you pass as white European you're more likely to be read as educated but still learning the language whereas otherwise your language problems are more likely…

> or Eastern European. If you pass as white European

Eastern Europeans are very much white. Their accent might give them away but certainly not the skin complexion.

Re: German for Programmers

#217

Post by aasasd »

chousuke wrote: post #140
repsilat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. In HTTP on TCP over IP? Speaking "on" English doesn't seem so strange if we can talk over (i.e. through) the radio. And English gets so much less reasonable. "Put up" is to house, "put down" is to insult, "put up with " is to suffer, "put through" is to test, "put around" is to spread, "put in" to contribute, "put out" to have sex or produce, "put over" either to delay or to decieve, "put past" to offer, "put…

As a non-native speaker, over the radio makes sense to me because in that case the radio is the medium that carries your speech. It's "in" English because that's the "encoding" of your message. You would then transmit it possibly on a vehicle at some physical location. so... HTTP over TCP over IP sounds most natural to me, though I guess HTTP on TCP works too.

Of course they sorta make sense, people wouldn't use completely bogus prepositions (at least mostly wouldn't). They're still arbitrary, though: why is it not ‘with English’ and ‘with radio,’ since both denote usage? And, as previously said, other languages have chosen different prepositions: e.g. in Russian, both happen to use ‘по’, which means something like ‘sliding along’ or ‘moving on.’

Re: German for Programmers

#218

Post by porpoisely »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #167
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…

> das Mitleid - "mit" means with, and "leid" would be related to the verb "leiden", to suffer. So you'd have "with-suffering", which makes it possible to guess the actual meaning - "compassion" That is just the same in English. Although you probably need to remember a bit more etymology, and some Latin doesn't hurt, "compassion" is just the same. "com" means with and "passion" in this context also means suffering.

And some ancient greek doesn't hurt either ( philosophy, philadelphia, telephone, etc ).

That neither latin nor ancient greek are part of the public education curriculum is a sin.

Re: German for Programmers

#219

Post by madez »

tom_mellior wrote: post #199
madez wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a defacto standard, and telling otherwise to non-speakers is just misleading. Auslautverhärtung is part of that standard. What is the ending of the pronunciation of 'und' in your region? Is it 'd' or 't'?

> There is a defacto standard Yes, for TV news announcers . > Auslautverhärtung is part of that standard. Says who? Not Wikipedia, which says that that's a regionalism and quotes sources. Where is the standard codified? > What is the ending of the pronunciation of 'und' in your region? Is it 'd' or 't'? This is a trick question: If I answer the same as you pronounce it, you'll say "see, it's standard!", and if I answ…

> Where is the standard codified?

You answer yourself:

> Yes, for TV news announcers.

> If anything, it's softened further and half swallowed to say something like "un'".

Do you have a recording of that?

Besides that, I wonder why you are so confrontative. I don't mean to.

Re: German for Programmers

#220

Post by aasasd »

Sharlin wrote: post #76
repsilat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. In HTTP on TCP over IP? Speaking "on" English doesn't seem so strange if we can talk over (i.e. through) the radio. And English gets so much less reasonable. "Put up" is to house, "put down" is to insult, "put up with " is to suffer, "put through" is to test, "put around" is to spread, "put in" to contribute, "put out" to have sex or produce, "put over" either to delay or to decieve, "put past" to offer, "put…

Yeah, phrasal verbs (verb-particle combinations) are almost entirely idiomatic. At least as a non-native learner, I've found it best to memorize them as units and not to even think about what the adposition would mean affixed to a noun, and that's how they were taught as well.

That's the only way to memorize them, since they constitute essentially new words, with distinct meanings―same as any idioms.
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