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The Awful German Language (1880)

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Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#121

Post by lemoncucumber »

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…

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 exactly why.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#122

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

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…

Your examples are participles, not gerunds.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#123

Post by msrenee »

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.

Big pink riding elephant would be the more natural sequence to me if there are any non-native speakers who are curious. I know there's an established order of types of adjectives. However in this example, it's more of a part of speech order issue to my ear. With riding being both an adjective and a verb, it feels like someone named "pink" is riding a big elephant when the words are in this order. This may be due to the fact that we don't have much for case indicators. So the adjective "pink" is indistinguishable from a guy whose nickname is "Pink". "Riding" as in a riding animal vs a pack animal is identical to "riding" the verb. All you're missing is the artical "a" before big elephant and it could very well be a sentence fragment.

"Fred, riding a big elephant, burst into the arena" substitutes "pink" for a more common name and adds the article and a prepositional phrase and... some grammar that I can't put into words right now and makes it a full sentence.

I guess what I'm trying to get across is that without the adjective order being in line, it's hard to work out the sentence structure which is extremely reliant on word order in lieu of inflection.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#124

Post by meowface »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #114
quercusa wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Well... not that the advice isn't solid, and she's a good teacher for driving this point into the programmer student's minds. But saying no sign is a bit extreme, there is some level of design in any natural language. Icelandic has a committee that decides on new words. Instead of using foreign loan words they largely make up their own new Icelandic words when needed for new concepts. In German the spelling is centra…

>In German the spelling is centrally planned and gets reformed every other year. Which is why German words are mostly spelled as they're pronounced, as opposed to English.

As a native English speaker, this is definitely a big plus. I've had German friends who've regularly expressed frustration that there's often no real rhyme or reason or pattern to either English spelling or pronunciation; you just have to memorize it. (Though I could largely say the same of German and French noun genders, even if there are some patterns that are somewhat [but not entirely] consistent.)

Meanwhile, spelling and pronunciation in German seems to be pretty bijective. If you know how an unfamiliar word is pronounced, you can generally accurately know how it's spelled, and if you how an unfamiliar word is spelled, you can generally accurately know how it's pronounced.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#125

Post by geoffmunn »

joefourier wrote: post #118
stan_rogers wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, no. It's a nice folk etymology, though.

Are you saying mince pies didn't traditionally contain meat? Recipes up to the late 19th century include meat, and even today I can find some that do, although very rare - usually beef suet is the only remaining animal ingredient.

Mince pies are definitely a thing in New Zealand (and Australia to some extent).

They come in all sorts of varieties - plain mince, mince and cheese (yum), steak and cheese, mince and potato, and then some exotic varieties like butter chicken pie.

They're typically cheap and made from bad quality ingredients, but you can get very good quality mince pies if you know where to go.

If you're a hungry teenager and you need a snack - nothing beats a mince pie.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#126

Post by wizzard »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #122
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…

Your examples are participles, not gerunds.

That’s how I learned it too, but apparently that is “traditional” grammar. In “modern” grammar any verb with the -ing ending is a gerund now according to Wikipedia.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#127

Post by Mandatum »

geoffmunn wrote: post #125
joefourier wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying mince pies didn't traditionally contain meat? Recipes up to the late 19th century include meat, and even today I can find some that do, although very rare - usually beef suet is the only remaining animal ingredient.

Mince pies are definitely a thing in New Zealand (and Australia to some extent). They come in all sorts of varieties - plain mince, mince and cheese (yum), steak and cheese, mince and potato, and then some exotic varieties like butter chicken pie. They're typically cheap and made from bad quality ingredients, but you can get very good quality mince pies if you know where to go. If you're a hungry teenager and you nee…

Mince & cheese with a can of V. Lunch of tradies all over this part of the world.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#128

Post by mbg721 »

geoffmunn wrote: post #125
joefourier wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying mince pies didn't traditionally contain meat? Recipes up to the late 19th century include meat, and even today I can find some that do, although very rare - usually beef suet is the only remaining animal ingredient.

Mince pies are definitely a thing in New Zealand (and Australia to some extent). They come in all sorts of varieties - plain mince, mince and cheese (yum), steak and cheese, mince and potato, and then some exotic varieties like butter chicken pie. They're typically cheap and made from bad quality ingredients, but you can get very good quality mince pies if you know where to go. If you're a hungry teenager and you nee…

Anything in America called a "mincemeat pie" is a million miles removed from this; it's going to be something syrupy and a little bit lumpy with cloves and dried fruits. Mince to us is "ground beef"; if you asked for a pound of mince at the supermarket, you'd be directed to the aisle with the Mentos.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#129

Post by chihuahua »

stan_rogers wrote: post #98
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,…

Of course there's no ham in hamburger - it's a hamburger steak sandwich, where "hamburger" means "of Hamburg" or "Hamburg style". The generic "burger" is a back-formation from hamburger and is the thing that makes no sense.

It's a coincidence that the word "Hamburger" contains the English word "ham". But it's an odd coincidence:

After some brief research, it seems that both the English word "ham" and the name of the town of Hamburg have their origin in the Old High German word "hamma" which means "hollow or bend of the knee".

In the case of ham, it refers to part of the leg of an animal. In the case of Hamburg, it got its name from Hammaburg, which was the original fortification where the town was founded. In this case, "hamma" refers to some kind of feature of the piece of land, which was on a bend of the river.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#130

Post by irrational »

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…

> 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 que haber estado vigilada.” I know Spanish well enough to know that is hilariously incorrect, but not well enough to know the correct translation.

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