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The Awful German Language (1880)

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Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#171

Post by sfblah »

ckarmann wrote: post #163
scrollaway wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Trying to translate in French, I came up first with "Il eût fallu qu'elle eût été surveillée", but mostly because of morphological similarity (it's almost the same amount of verbs, right?). It's also just a more literary form of the simpler "Il aurait fallu qu'elle soit surveillée". That being said, I have trouble to parse the original english sentence so I may be missing subtleties.

Or just “il fallait qu’elle soit surveillée.”

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#172

Post by dataflow »

sfblah wrote: post #169
dataflow wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She would have had to have been being watched. OK, now I feel like I don't know English. Is this proper English? What does it mean? How is it different from "She would have had to have been watched"? Is the meaning clear to people? I'm scratching my head... Did you mean "She would have had to have felt like she's being watched"?

I’m a native English speaker here and it’s clear to me. I also think it’s somewhat tricky to express it more succinctly without changing the sentence a fair bit. Essentially it means “it must have been the case that, at the moment we’re speaking of, someone was watching her.” Your sentence is slightly different, in that it implies that, in general, someone was watching her during the timeframe we’re talking about, bu…

AH! Ok, I think I distilled it down to something simpler: It seems to be similar to the difference between "I would've been spoken to" vs. "I would've been being spoken to". Is that correct?

Ugh, I have to admit it seems technically "correct" after all :-) but with such a painful (and uncommon) sentence structure that it makes you question if it's right...

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#173

Post by limograf »

chddzcc wrote: post #24
turbinerneiter wrote: post #8

It's our revenge for the "th", my dear Englishman.

Is “th” the fault of Englishmen or of a German? Specifically Gutenburg and his hellish press. Before movable type English had the letter “thorn” - perhaps some of the pronunciation problems arose then? But what do I know? As a nativ spanich spikr, I rimembr bing prplexd

Yes, of the six letters lost from the English alphabet, thorn and yogh are probably the most consequential for the spelling mess. In this, though, we can safely blame the French. ;)

https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2016/12/07/episode-87-th...

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#174

Post by cycomanic »

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…

I find it weird that many English natives try to claim that English grammar is in fact complex (you are by far not the first). I think it might be because in general many don't speak another language and the most common second language is Spanish which has also a very "simple" grammar.

Regarding your example with the gerund, yes it is subtle, but similar subtleties exist in German, e.g. The difference between perfect and simple past (also exist in English), which many native speakers in both English and German get wrong as well.

An interesting anecdote (which might be related) is, that in my experience having gone to high-school in the US for a year and having done language courses with Australian teachers, that there seems to be much less education on the grammar of the language than in Germany. I often knew the "theory" of English grammar much better than the native speakers (doesn't mean I was better at applying it though).

All that said, mastering English is still difficult, just not due to the grammar. Spelling is one thing, but also the vocabulary is huge. Supposedly Shakespeares vocabulary was 60000 words, the equivalent German poet Goethes was less than 40000.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#175

Post by lmm »

dataflow wrote: post #167
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…

> She would have had to have been being watched. OK, now I feel like I don't know English. Is this proper English? What does it mean? How is it different from "She would have had to have been watched"? Is the meaning clear to people? I'm scratching my head... Did you mean "She would have had to have felt like she's being watched"?

That's perfectly normal English yes.

"She would have had to have been watched" means she would have had to have been watched at that moment (e.g. because someone was watching the area where she did whatever it was), whereas "being watched" implies that the watching was ongoing and therefore that someone was continuously watching her at the time.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#176

Post by shawxe »

sfblah wrote: post #169
dataflow wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She would have had to have been being watched. OK, now I feel like I don't know English. Is this proper English? What does it mean? How is it different from "She would have had to have been watched"? Is the meaning clear to people? I'm scratching my head... Did you mean "She would have had to have felt like she's being watched"?

I’m a native English speaker here and it’s clear to me. I also think it’s somewhat tricky to express it more succinctly without changing the sentence a fair bit. Essentially it means “it must have been the case that, at the moment we’re speaking of, someone was watching her.” Your sentence is slightly different, in that it implies that, in general, someone was watching her during the timeframe we’re talking about, bu…

> Essentially it means “it must have been the case that, at the moment we’re speaking of, someone was watching her.”

Another native English speaker here. This would be how I would parse "She had to have been being watched," but I think it's not quite the full picture in this sentence's case. It's important to note that the "would" adds the implication that this conclusion is being drawn based upon some other (possibly unspoken) observation or proposition.

I would say the meaning is probably closer to "In order for some unspoken condition to be true, it must also be true that, during the moment of time in the past about which we are speaking, someone was watching her."

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#177

Post by jamil7 »

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

This is the point I came to with German and was at a level where I could start speaking it (poorly but enough to be understood) all the time with native speakers. I read up on some things from time to time but mostly ignore a lot of the theory as a child would and just refuse to switch to English as much as possible. It's probably slower this way but it's been one of the few ways I've actually been able to be consistent with practice.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#178

Post by sharken »

lmm wrote: post #175
dataflow wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She would have had to have been being watched. OK, now I feel like I don't know English. Is this proper English? What does it mean? How is it different from "She would have had to have been watched"? Is the meaning clear to people? I'm scratching my head... Did you mean "She would have had to have felt like she's being watched"?

That's perfectly normal English yes. "She would have had to have been watched" means she would have had to have been watched at that moment (e.g. because someone was watching the area where she did whatever it was), whereas "being watched" implies that the watching was ongoing and therefore that someone was continuously watching her at the time.

Admittedly English is not my primary language, but "She would have had to have been being watched" seems to be a construct used in a class, but not something you would hear in day-to-day English.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#179

Post by bryanrasmussen »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #23
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so, German grammarians, irritated by a defect of English, debated long among themselves as to how they could mess up their own language in revenge?

Yes, sadly we lost our ability to tell jokes in the process.

I don't know, as a Dane it seems we spend a lot of time talking about the German sense of humor.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#180

Post by maxnoe »

cycomanic wrote: post #174
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…

I find it weird that many English natives try to claim that English grammar is in fact complex (you are by far not the first). I think it might be because in general many don't speak another language and the most common second language is Spanish which has also a very "simple" grammar. Regarding your example with the gerund, yes it is subtle, but similar subtleties exist in German, e.g. The difference between perfect…

German Goethe researchers claim 90.000 for Goethe im their dictionary of Goethe's work:

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethe-W%C3%B6rterbuch

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