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The Awful German Language (1880)

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Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#181

Post by Xplune13 »

irrational wrote: post #130
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. Well, now I want to see how this sentence would be translated into all the other major languages! I immediately understand the meaning, but can see why it might be hard for a non native speaker to understand. Are their other languages that can say the same thing as concisely? Google Translate must absolutely butcher this sentence. I just tried Spanish. “Habría tenido q…

My native language is Marathi (India). Though it is not well known globally, it still is pretty dominant if we compare the number of people that speak Marathi (around 83 million).

Anyways, the translation would be: तिला पाहिलं गेलं असतं

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#182

Post by sharken »

lemoncucumber wrote: post #121
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…

A similar example: As a reply to the question, “what’s the most expensive car on the market?” 1) “I’m guessing it’s some German supercar.” 2) “I would guess it’s some German supercar.” 3) “I guess it’s some German supercar.” As a native speaker, the first two both sound correct to me, and essentially equivalent. The third sounds a little weird, even though it’s grammatically the simplest. I can’t put my finger on exa…

Not a native speaker, but 1) and 2) seem equal, while 3) somehow gives the impression that you don't really care about answering the question.

In danish the word "Ligeglad" is the state of mind for 3).

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#183

Post by sharken »

Talanes wrote: post #170
rsa4046 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first two seem consistent as tentative responses to a statement that might contain hyperbole, joke, play on words, double entendre, etc., by maintaining some distance with the statement of supercar-as-fact. In contrast, the third seems to accept the fact outright, and lets the accuracy of the responder assume the uncertainty.

The third reply strips so much away that the tone changes from tentative to apathetic. The third speaker is just doing the bare minimum to keep conversation moving.

My thought as well, the third gives the impression that the person answering doesn't care much for the question.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#184

Post by herewulf »

tebs1200 wrote: post #157
irrational wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One index, two indices? Huh, I do use indices for 2+ index. I guess I’ve been wrong. I’m surprised nobody has ever said anything in my nearly 50 years.

You're right to use "indices". The example is just provided to show how inconsistent plurals are in English. 90% of the time you just slap an "s" on the end of a word, but there's a crazy amount of exceptions to that rule.

It's not a native English plural, it's Latin straight from the nominative plural . You will find that is far more common in English. The supposedly "correct" plural, , is something that has to be learned through education, typically.

There are a lot of Latin/Greek terms (typically scientific) whose plurals must be similarly learned because otherwise native English speakers will use the simple plural -s suffix with no concern whatsoever.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#185

Post by Wowfunhappy »

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…

> To illustrate this -- try and gloss this sentence another way while conveying the meaning.

“Someone must have been watching her.”

I’m making some assumptions about the context of the sentence—but as long as you told me what the context was, I’m sure I could come up with an equally simple replacement.

Personally, I found the original sentence quite hard to parse, despite being a native speaker. It’s not good writing and a good editor would replace it.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#186

Post by hilbert42 »

solatic wrote: post #164
irrational wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She would have had to have been being watched. Well, now I want to see how this sentence would be translated into all the other major languages! I immediately understand the meaning, but can see why it might be hard for a non native speaker to understand. Are their other languages that can say the same thing as concisely? Google Translate must absolutely butcher this sentence. I just tried Spanish. “Habría tenido q…

One issue that prevents translation is just how much passivity is in that sentence. In other languages, more active grammar is preferred, to the point where trying to construct such passivity on purpose would be nigh unintelligible. For example, in Hebrew, I would translate the sentence as חייב להיות שמישהו היה צופה בה, which literally translates as "it must be that someone was watching her". Trying a more literal ta…

Whilst I do not know Hebrew your point is very well taken. It aptly demonstrates the sheer complexity of trying to achieve an exact translation between one language and another (in fact from my understanding of the problem an exact translation between most languages is nigh on impossible).

I both admire and pity translators who work for organizations such as the U.N. as they have to translate documents such as treaties and do so with great precision.

However, I suppose my major concern with translations is how sloppy some actually are—that is that errors in translation are not limited by structural limitations caused by differences in the languages as in your example but rather by sheer carelessness. Frankly, I'm fed up with seeing bad translation of subtitles from German into English. I'd be more than happy if I had a dollar for every time I've seen the verbs glauben (to believe) and wissen (to know) interchanged with one another during translation.

Clearly, to know something is very different to believe something but unfortunately it seems that significant numbers of translators find such precision unnecessary.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#187

Post by berkes »

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…

I'm from a small Dutch bordertown and my first language is a dialect that is part German, part Dutch (and some French) (Limburgish).

In German class, away from that bordertown, outside where the dialect is common, I never paid attentention. Teachers would require me te learn tables filled with exceptions, weird strings of words (mit nach bei..) etc. I simply refused. I often didn't bother to go to class.

Just using the Fingerspitzengefühl that comes with the part-German dialect, was adequate. 7/10 on my exams. So certainly not fluent or even good. At the diploma-handout, the German teacher told me she did not want to, but was required to give me that grade (why a teacher would disclose this to an 18/yo is beyond me, though. There certainly was spite).

Point is: even sideloading a language from a young age helps learn it. At least for n=1.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#188

Post by lmm »

sharken wrote: post #178
lmm wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Obviously the situation is fairly rare, but it sounds like a perfectly natural thing to say when it's true. I don't think it's an artificial example at all (whereas e.g. no-one actually says "buffalo" as a verb).

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#189

Post by shawxe »

irrational wrote: post #130
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. Well, now I want to see how this sentence would be translated into all the other major languages! I immediately understand the meaning, but can see why it might be hard for a non native speaker to understand. Are their other languages that can say the same thing as concisely? Google Translate must absolutely butcher this sentence. I just tried Spanish. “Habría tenido q…

My best attempt at Japanese:

その場合、彼女は監視されていたはずであろう。

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#190

Post by herewulf »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #83
LatteLazy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Englis…

So what did Old English and "Old High Franconian" (Old High German?) start off in common as, if not "Old German"? Linguists would call it Proto-Germanic though. The parent poster isn't factually incorrect though.

And interestingly, there's a significant body of research showing mutual intelligibility between Old English and Old Norse, which are less similar than than Old English and Old High German.

Old English texts have been found in (modern day) central and southern Germany (e.g.: Fulda), which implies that they were reading them there. This would be from the 7th to 10th century timeframe, IIRC.

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