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German for Programmers

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Re: German for Programmers

#221

Post by jackewiehose »

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…

>> There is a defacto standard

> Yes, for TV news announcers.

and for everything else on TV, netflix, etc. What else would define a standard?

Re: German for Programmers

#222

Post by aasasd »

contradictioned wrote: post #214
aasasd wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

My complaint still stands, but OTOH I just realized I now have a way to turn German into English at least in one aspect.

Re: German for Programmers

#223

Post by objektif »

graup wrote: post #96
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.

I agree. People will understand you, but they will also judge you. In my experience, Germans are much more ready to notice "wrong German" than English speakers do with "wrong English". This is just a sad fact. My aunt, an American who has lived in German-speaking countries for 10+ years and can say almost everything she'd want to tells me she still gets treated less seriously because of subtle mistakes like that in h…

Why do you think Americans judge less or do not judge?

Re: German for Programmers

#224

Post by tom_mellior »

madez wrote: post #219
tom_mellior wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> You answer yourself:

No, I meant, where is the standard issued by the Kultusministerkonferenz, like there is for Standard German spelling? A convention is not a standard.

> Do you have a recording of that?

I'd say it kind of like the Swiss German speaker here: https://forvo.com/word/und/#gsw

And coming back to the original Rat/Rad distinction, https://forvo.com/word/rat/#de and https://forvo.com/word/rad/#de do sound different. The second "Rad" speaker (from southern Germany) makes almost no 'd' or 't' sound at all, but the same speaker pronounces "Rat" with a very hard and clear 't'.

Re: German for Programmers

#225

Post by lwkl »

ascar wrote: post #91
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…

It also shifts with time. 30 years back the prejudice would have been flipped. As a white immigrant you would've probably been a low educated russian or polish worker, while with a taint you would've been Italian and much more respected. It's the general bad practice of putting individuals into larger groups with a stigma based on visual appearance. I think a lot of the resentment about bad German skills in my genera…

I mean in the seventies and eighties there was a lot of racism against Spaniards and Italians. Nowadays this is gone. They are allowed to be proud of their heritage.

We also had a lot of highly educated migrants from Yugoslavia back in the seventies and they were appreciated back then. But after the Balkan wars they were suddenly the bad guys despite some of them being perfectly integrated in our society and sometimes being the third generation to live here.

It's funny how fast the perception shifts and how quickly we are to judge on the prejudices we have of a group of people and not on the individual.

Re: German for Programmers

#226

Post by indigo945 »

usrusr wrote: post #160
adimitrov wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to be recent English loan words for German dialects to make things weird. http://www.atlas-alltagssprache.de/runde-5/f15a-f/ (fyi: Butter is a loanword from Greek. I've heard "das Butter" as well.)

Kitchen terms are generally crazy. Do other languages also have hundreds of different terms for the last piece of a loaf of bread that is too thin for further slicing, but too thick to be considered a slice?

I just call that the Endstück, have never heard anything else. What other terms are common?

Re: German for Programmers

#227

Post by indigo945 »

adimitrov wrote: post #187
onli wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Funny enough I always use "der Log" and not das. People are nice to you if they don't correct that :) Das Log is pretty universal a neutrum. "Ich schreib das mal ins Log", if you are used to der Log that must be an individual mistake or a dialect far removed from Hochdeutsch.

I use der Log, as do most of my colleagues. I also say "der Blog." Duden seems to agree with you, but I'm still not convinced. It's probably a regional difference.

I absolutely agree with "der Log" as a native Ripuarian speaker.

Re: German for Programmers

#228

Post by wirrbel »

ImaCake wrote: post #109
donjoe wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, sometimes Germans themselves are not quite sure about which article to use. It differs from north to south, from east to west and depends a lot on the dialect you're used to. An (Upper-)Bavarian would for example never say "die Butter". It is and will always be "der Butter". Same with "der Radio" in the South and "das Radio" for the rest of the country. Another funny thing I stumble upon every time Oktoberfest…

I have asked multiple germans about gendered nouns and other funky grammar points. I often end up getting different answers or confusion when I relate what I learnt from a reliable source elsewhere. Honestly, despite the confusion, I love how diverse the German language is despite the relatively small range and number of speakers, but also considering it came under many of the same forces for "flattening" the rules a…

I have a weak spot with articles, i, a native speaker, have to think for long about "teller" is it "der Teller" or "das Teller". One is my local dialect the other standard German. I know which one to use by imagining how my old neighbor would talk.

Another gem is that in my local dialect the word for foot (Fuß) has an extended meaning and denotes the body part of foot and leg. There basically is not a separate word for leg (well there is but it's standard German not dialect). The standard German word for leg is "bein". Now Bein has a common ancestor with a similar word in English "bone", and indeed the dialectal version of Bein in my dialect is the word for bone. (To me that indicates that the word has made a meaning change in standard German).

Now if I don't think hard (or if I am tired) I will call my leg "foot" in English, which confuses everyone.

Re: German for Programmers

#229

Post by lwkl »

Spearchucker wrote: post #40

Got excited when I read the title but. I speak fluent German - like a native. Only after 20 years in London I cannot participate in a hard- or software-related technical discussion in German, because I wasn't exposed to that milieu in a German-speaking environment. And so I excpected something that maybe explains how you might say "inversion of control" or "edge/perimiter network" or "public key cryptography" or "tie…

If I'm talking to colleagues or making notes I just use the English words. I mean all my notes about computer related topics are in English. When I write a documentation or an e-mail for or to customers I translate everything to German. I feel this helps me to keep things simpler and makes it easier to understand.

I have to say I hate mixing languages. It makes me feel uneducated and a bit like a loss of identity. Especially German is really expressive and it shouldn't be a problem to make up the words needed to express yourself.

Re: German for Programmers

#230

Post by fileeditview »

wirrbel wrote: post #228
ImaCake wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have asked multiple germans about gendered nouns and other funky grammar points. I often end up getting different answers or confusion when I relate what I learnt from a reliable source elsewhere. Honestly, despite the confusion, I love how diverse the German language is despite the relatively small range and number of speakers, but also considering it came under many of the same forces for "flattening" the rules a…

I have a weak spot with articles, i, a native speaker, have to think for long about "teller" is it "der Teller" or "das Teller". One is my local dialect the other standard German. I know which one to use by imagining how my old neighbor would talk. Another gem is that in my local dialect the word for foot (Fuß) has an extended meaning and denotes the body part of foot and leg. There basically is not a separate word f…

There is also the German word "Gebein" which is the literal translation for bone and probably the origin of the dialect "Bein" you use.
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