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The Awful German Language (1880)

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Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#101

Post by wheels »

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,…

Hamburger is "from Hamburg", not "made from ham", and is borrowed from German. "Frankfurter" (from Frankfurt) and "Wiener" (from Vienna, Wien, in German) have the same etymology.

All languages have the sort of contradictions that are pointing out there, and English isn't especially bad (in fact, most of the examples there are directly inherited from German). Most of the difficult things in English come from it being a Germanic language with a bunch of French bolted onto it. That's why its spelling is so atrocious and there are a lot of duplicated words with very similar meanings in common use.

But, blessedly, English does have the simplest grammar of probably any European language. (I've occasionally heard that Swedish is the closest in simplicity, also being a Germanic language that's dropped most of the complexity, but isn't quite as inundated with loanwords.) Aside from a couple of concepts (the gerund, specifically, which isn't common in some European language families), most grammatical structures in English have direct equivalents in all other European languages.

However, going the other way is difficult: most European languages have formal and informal voices, gendered nouns, some have irregular plurals (German, notably), subtler and more verb tenses (Romance languages), and complex case structures (German and even worse, Slavic languages). If you're a native English speaker that doesn't know what cases are, for example the word for "the" in German changes based on which of the three genders the noun is and how it's used. It could be "die", "der", "das", "den", "dem" or "des", and the endings of words that need to be in agreement with it change as well.

The main reason English became the modern lingua franca is the British Empire, but it does help that it's also a very easy language.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#102

Post by jamiek88 »

hinoki wrote: post #85
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.

It’s luff-burra to save others looking!

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#103

Post by scrollaway »

andensande wrote: post #94
locallost wrote: post #84

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 nons…

The difficulty of mastering the tenses is something that I think a lot of English speakers overlook. There's a lot of really precise and difficult-to-explain subtleties in English. (Of course, English isn't unique in this regard -- but I feel like certain things are taken for granted). Something that catches a lot of English as second language people out is the correct time to use the gerund form (i.e., the '-ing' fo…

Love that last example. I think "to have been being watched" is a bit of a reach though? "To have been observed / under observation" feels more natural. When translating it to french i got to "elle aurait dûe être observée". Incidentally, French has an easier time with this, I think because we have more options there. I couldn't reproduce the quirky structure at all, the flow is just more natural in french.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#104

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

locallost wrote: post #84

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 nons…

> and the sooner you stop trying to make sense of it all, the faster you will advance.

I wish they would pound that forcefully into the grammarians torturing children in school.

I look at the grammar they teach, and I think someone got paid to make stuff up.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#105

Post by [deleted] »

MatmaRex wrote: post #82
yongjik wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#106

Post by quercusa »

locallost wrote: post #84

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 nons…

> languages are nonsensical, illogical, and the sooner you stop trying to make sense of it all,the faster you will advance.

In the first day of Koine Greek class, the instructor asked who had programming experience. She made a point of stressing, as she would again, that unlike computer languages, human languages show no signs of design, and not to spend any time looking for it. It was good advice.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#107

Post by quercusa »

User23 wrote: post #99
andensande wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty of mastering the tenses is something that I think a lot of English speakers overlook. There's a lot of really precise and difficult-to-explain subtleties in English. (Of course, English isn't unique in this regard -- but I feel like certain things are taken for granted). Something that catches a lot of English as second language people out is the correct time to use the gerund form (i.e., the '-ing' fo…

One of my favorites is adjective order. Pink riding big elephant just sounds wrong to a native speaker, but almost none could tell you why.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/...

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#108

Post by bhaak »

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…

This is Mark Twain. You can expect that he's writing tongue in cheek about things he likes.

Look at this speech he gave in Vienna (apparently completely fluent in German).

https://resources.german.lsa.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/20...

"I am indeed the truest friend of the German language - and not only now, but from long since - yes, before twenty years already. And never have I the desire had the noble language to hurt; to the contrary, only wished she to improve - I would her only reform. [...] After all these reforms established be will, will the German language the noblest and the prettiest on the world be."

It would be very strange if he learned this language for his whole life and would despise it. But Mark Twain wouldn't be himself if he couldn't mock a thing he loved.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#109

Post by mbg721 »

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.…

As Allan Sherman pointed out in "One Hippopotami", "What is half a pair of scissors?? It's a single scis!"

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#110

Post by bhaak »

wirrbel wrote: post #69
imtringued wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make sense. Typesets are just symbols carved into metal. You can just make your own typeset for your own language and in this case all it required was one more letter so the barrier to entry is practically zero.

IIRC the movable type printing press was imported from the continent when printing in England started, and by importing that includes the typesets and staff to operate the printing presses. French printers typesetting English text were not very motivated to establish extra characters. Random related anecdote: For years the Mormons would distribute their Book of Mormon in German translations but these were printed ove…

> We tend to forget living in the digital publishing age how limiting mechanical workflows can be.

This β ß confusion endured into the digital age.

For example code page 850 has a character called "Sharp s Small" but it is placed among Greek characters. And several fonts didn't display an ß but a β https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437#cite_ref-21

In this case, the double use was probably intentional (to save space in the limited character set range) but still confusing to the reader when they encountered the wrong glyph.

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