The Awful German Language (1880) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#81

Post by tralarpa » Sun, May 16, 2021, 10:32 PM UTC

yrro wrote: post #74

pmoriarty wrote: post #14

Unsurprisingly, there are many articles published about "The Awful English Language" , such as: [1], [2], [3] Some examples from [2]: Let's face it -- English is a crazy language. Besides the above, there is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet,…

Quicksand is quick in that it seems to be living. See also quicksilver, another name for mercury.

Fun fact: the words "quick" and "zoo" have the same indo-european root.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#82

Post by MatmaRex » Sun, May 16, 2021, 10:38 PM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #79

henrikschroder wrote: post #25

> Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. And yet, every German speaker seems to be able to remember this, without evidence of them being better at memorization than others? As usual, it's easy to forget how hard things are for others when…

In fact, English does something very similar. There's a bookshelf, but never a furniture - you can say a piece of furniture if you want to be fancy. There's a cow, and cows, but never a cattle, or even cattles . (What do you mean they are uncountable. They are freaking cows.) Then there are crazy stuff like a pair of scissors. (I mean, has anyone seen a scissor ?) Somehow native English speakers memorize all of this.…

That's called plurale tantum, and it appears in many European languages, including German.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#83

Post by cmrdporcupine » Sun, May 16, 2021, 10:41 PM UTC

LatteLazy wrote: post #78

pmoriarty wrote: post #14

Unsurprisingly, there are many articles published about "The Awful English Language" , such as: [1], [2], [3] Some examples from [2]: Let's face it -- English is a crazy language. Besides the above, there is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet,…

English is this way because it doesn't really exist. English started as old German. Then vowels shifted. Then the Normans arrived and added a lot of French words on top. When German grammar proved too hard for them that was simplified too. On top of all that is a bunch of Latin and Greek added when England lead the scientific and industrial revolutions (in part because English couldn't logically supply words for new…

English did not start off as "old German", that's factually incorrect. It started off as Old English aka Anglo-Saxon, that is the languages of the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes which emmigrated from the north sea and areas which are now in the Netherlands, Denmark and Schleswig Holstein. Not the same as "old German" which would be Old High Franconian, an entirely different branch of the Germanic family.

German and English have almost 2000 years of separation. More than Italian and French and Spanish.

But yes Old Norman (and Old Norse) modified the language extensively.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#84

Post by locallost » Sun, May 16, 2021, 10:44 PM UTC

As someone who's had to (or maybe wanted to) learn both english and german, I'd say german has a steeper initial learning curve, but it becomes easier later, whereas english can be easy to get going, but it's difficult to master (obviously the spelling, but also the more advanced use of tenses etc).

Regarding Twain's complaints, the biggest lesson I learned from learning german at an older age was: languages are nonsensical, illogical, and the sooner you stop trying to make sense of it all, the faster you will advance. Children do not learn languages by being analytical and by comparing to what they already know, they learn by just accepting it as it is. This leads to a funny phenomenon that foreign speakers know the actual rules of a language better than most native speakers, simply because native speakers know things are as they are, but not why. Whether adults are capable of this is a different question, but trying to find logic in a language will only lead to frustration.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#85

Post by hinoki » Sun, May 16, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #26

English pronunciation only vaguely follows word spelling and must be memorized in many cases. The classic phrase: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed." shows how the "-ough" has no reasonable rule that can be used to determine word pronunciation, despite similar spelling. By comparison, spelling and word p…

You should have used Loughborough instead of Scarborough :)

Low-barrow? Luf-baruff? I certainly had to look it up.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#86

Post by ojosilva » Sun, May 16, 2021, 10:47 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #76

pmoriarty wrote: post #14

Unsurprisingly, there are many articles published about "The Awful English Language" , such as: [1], [2], [3] Some examples from [2]: Let's face it -- English is a crazy language. Besides the above, there is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet,…

> Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. My favourite one, which I had the er pleasure of trying to explain to a vegetarian unfamiliar with mince pies; which might also be British English-specific is: - mince is meat * but mince *pies* contain no meat - mincemeat is not meat * and is the key ingredient in mince pies - minced meat is meat * and =mince * and could be used in the making…

Mincemeat used to contain beef. Now, typically, it doesn't, although I recall having mince pie with beef and brandy in Swindon in another life.

So maybe this is not good example of English being like a Mark Twain's German schizo language. Gastro-culture changed on it and the folks at Merriem-Webster didn't get the email, that's all.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#87

Post by aspaviento » Sun, May 16, 2021, 10:57 PM UTC

kergonath wrote: post #40

henrikschroder wrote: post #25

> Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. And yet, every German speaker seems to be able to remember this, without evidence of them being better at memorization than others? As usual, it's easy to forget how hard things are for others when…

> As usual, it's easy to forget how hard things are for others when you're the expert. I'm sure Twain never thought about how ridiculously hard many English words are to spell, and how people learning English as a second language struggle quite a lot with it. Exactly. You most often cannot guess the gender of a noun in quite a lot of languages (German, Spanish, French, etc), but most of the time you also cannot guess…

> You most often cannot guess the gender of a noun in quite a lot of languages

That's far from true. In Spanish it's quite easy most of the time:

Female form (-a): casa (House) taza (cup) armadura (armour) luna (moon) leona (lioness) escritora (female writer)

Male form (-o/-or/-on): camión (truck) sillón (sofa) león (lion) escritor (male writer)

You don't even need the article to guess which one is which one.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#88

Post by memsom » Sun, May 16, 2021, 10:59 PM UTC

ojosilva wrote: post #86

OJFord wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. My favourite one, which I had the er pleasure of trying to explain to a vegetarian unfamiliar with mince pies; which might also be British English-specific is: - mince is meat * but mince *pies* contain no meat - mincemeat is not meat * and is the key ingredient in mince pies - minced meat is meat * and =mince * and could be used in the making…

Mincemeat used to contain beef. Now, typically, it doesn't, although I recall having mince pie with beef and brandy in Swindon in another life. So maybe this is not good example of English being like a Mark Twain's German schizo language. Gastro-culture changed on it and the folks at Merriem-Webster didn't get the email, that's all.

Are you sure that is it? Meat[1] used to mean food in general. In Swedish, the cognate would be “mat”, and that still means meat, much like hund (hound) means dog, and djyr (deer) means animal. I rather thought that meat in mincemeat was from “minced [sweet]meat”. Or, just “minced food”.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/meat#English

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#89

Post by ojosilva » Sun, May 16, 2021, 11:01 PM UTC

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #26

English pronunciation only vaguely follows word spelling and must be memorized in many cases. The classic phrase: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed." shows how the "-ough" has no reasonable rule that can be used to determine word pronunciation, despite similar spelling. By comparison, spelling and word p…

The irony: despite Mark Twain's vicious rant, German is quite consistent on following the spelling, just like Spanish et al.

That doesn't mean some phonemes aren't hard to pronounce for the uninitiated, nor does it exclude accents and dilects and the everyday contraptions of the language.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#90

Post by OJFord » Sun, May 16, 2021, 11:05 PM UTC

ojosilva wrote: post #86

OJFord wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. My favourite one, which I had the er pleasure of trying to explain to a vegetarian unfamiliar with mince pies; which might also be British English-specific is: - mince is meat * but mince *pies* contain no meat - mincemeat is not meat * and is the key ingredient in mince pies - minced meat is meat * and =mince * and could be used in the making…

Mincemeat used to contain beef. Now, typically, it doesn't, although I recall having mince pie with beef and brandy in Swindon in another life. So maybe this is not good example of English being like a Mark Twain's German schizo language. Gastro-culture changed on it and the folks at Merriem-Webster didn't get the email, that's all.

It continues to optionally (and traditionally it would certainly have/been very much more common to) contain suet.

If it ever contained anything one could in good faith call 'meat' (by modern definition, at least), it's news to me. [Edit below]

(The brandy however is borderline essential! Certainly a mince pie ought to be served wirh brandy butter.)

That said.. I don't think it's relevant how the quirks came to be, as in, it's no less interesting if it's easily explained away as 'oh well that used to make sense', because it's still funny/ambiguous/confusing when you take a step back and take everything at face value.

[Edit: you are absolutely right: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincemeat - it was essentially preservation by naturally sourced citric acid and sugars. News to me indeed! I stand by above though.]