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The Awful German Language (1880)

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Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#211

Post by yorwba »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #191
InternetOfStuff wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Khmer is sure to have its own oddities. I learned Thai, which shares Khmer's refreshing simplicity, like not having tenses. However, it has "classifiers", which are used when counting things. In English, you might say "Three children", in Thai you would say "Children three persons", where "person" happens to be the correct classifier for children. Makes sense in that case, but in general it's weird (and somewhat come…

Yeah, it's weird, Thai and Khmer are very similar, and share some words, but also very different. Khmer isn't tonal, and has really simplified grammar. They used to share an alphabet, too, but the Thai opted to simplify it (westernise it) while the Khmer opted to keep their original alphabet. Written Khmer is hard for us westerners to deal with because of this. They have lots of vowels and consonants that we don't ha…

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Khmer the language does seem to have some fun sounds.

But English has a consonant between 'b' and 'p' ('pʰ' in IPA) as well. Just consider the difference between 'ban', 'span' and 'pan'. The 'p' in 'span' is not as forceful as the 'p' in 'pan', and they're actually different consonants.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#212

Post by robaato »

this_user wrote: post #96
krylon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a German, allow me to respectfully disagree. I think English is far easier to learn. I often find it easier to express my thoughts in English than in German. I do agree that German is a beautiful language, though, and highly recommend reading Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra to anyone who does or does not agree with me on this one.

One thing that I have noticed about English is that it seems to be more concise. There are things that can be expressed much more elegantly and with fewer word in English, while saying the same thing in German may require a mid-sized sentence.

Having been involved in writing internationalised software, you can get into trouble if you don't leave enough space for your labels, button captions, messages etc to be translated into another language which may requires 10-50% more space.

An example: https://medium.com/dropbox-design/design-for-internationaliz...

From what I can see guidance is that Finnish and German are typically quite a bit longer than English...

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#213

Post by robaato »

wirrbel wrote: post #151
delib wrote: post #143

I think an overlooked aspect of the German-English comparison is the system of tenses. In German, you can get by with basically just two tenses: the present and the perfect. The past tense can almost always be replaced by the perfect when speaking. When you want to express something that lies in the future, you can just use the present and it will in most cases be clear from context. Compare that to English, where th…

I agree. I'd add that a lot of people overlook the complexity of English idioms and vocabulary. It is easy to pick up the basics of English, it is much more difficult to get to proficient level for writing a book for example. Imho as a native German I have the impression that with German it's the other way around. In the beginning it's hard. But once people attain a basic level there is not much to learn anymore.

Absolutely. When I was at school the only grammar I learnt was in Latin, French or German - wasn't taught in English. But as native speaker you read or listen and absorb the "rules".

Had a French girl friend for a time who was studying English and linguistics at Agrégation level (masters) - she would sometimes ask me was it better to say X or Y in English. I would usually prefer one because "it sounded right" but often couldn't come up with a reason as to why. Then she might tell me the rule according to her professor - and I almost always found them very convincing!

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#214

Post by FabHK »

coldtea wrote: post #204
zvrba wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never understood the need for noun genders As a native speaker of Slavic language, I've never understood the need for differentiating between "THE table" and "A table". It's useless and clear from the context what is meant (note that both are different from "THIS/THAT table", which I do NOT deem useless.) For English and Norwegian, I've learned grammatical rules that cover ca 80% of use-cases, the rest is gues…

> "THE table" and "A table". It's useless and clear from the context what is meant "Bring the table", "Bring a table". Do I ask you to bring some table we've already talked about or I can expect you to remember the reference to, or do I ask you to bring any table because any table will do? "Clear from the context" is a low bar. In languages, as in parsers, we should avoid it if we can.

Careful what you wish for. Many languages are much more specific than English, but you don't think that English has a problem there, do you?

For example, why not introduce gendered nouns - they often help to clarify references? "The door and the window are open." - "Well, close es (=das window)" vs "Well, close sie (=die door)".

Other languages indicate evidentiality (that is, how a speaker learned about something) by a verb suffix, eg Eastern Pomo:

* -ink’e (nonvisual sensory), * -ine (inferential), * -·le (hearsay), * -ya (direct knowledge)

Now, I might say, in English that is clear from context, or expressed in some other way, but according to you, "we should avoid it if we can". Thus, better learn Eastern Pomo?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#215

Post by hannasanarion »

liftbigweights wrote: post #203
lolc wrote: post #182

As a native speaker I can confirm the observations of Mark Twain. What is ignored in such humorous tirades is that every human speaker will push information density to the very limit of understandability. In every language. They will use all the tools available. Sure, the German case system is getting weaker as the centuries go by. And in some situations you will wonder why it's used still. But that doesn't mean the…

> It amazes me how many people claim English is easy to learn People think english is simple because we don't have the gender+conjugation+declension system of many languages. So initially, english appears simple. A boat is a boat is a boat. But everywhere else - from spelling to grammar to phonetics, english is irregular and has so many exceptions that it really requires effort to become native or even fluent. One co…

"simple" is not synonymous with "easy to learn".

There is some research that suggests that it is easier for adults to learn isolating languages, like English and Mandarin, than it is for adults to learn synthetic languages like German, Russian, or Arabic.

In other words, adults are better at learning lists of words than systems for constructing words. The fewer grammatical morphemes they need to learn, the faster they can reach functional fluency.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#216

Post by Lunatic666 »

lolc wrote: post #182

As a native speaker I can confirm the observations of Mark Twain. What is ignored in such humorous tirades is that every human speaker will push information density to the very limit of understandability. In every language. They will use all the tools available. Sure, the German case system is getting weaker as the centuries go by. And in some situations you will wonder why it's used still. But that doesn't mean the…

There are definitely languages which are a lot easier to learn than English or German, like Malay. It has a simple grammar and no intonations, so you should be able to speak properly after 2 months full time study. I'm pretty sure you can learn most of the language within a year, faster if you are exposed to other native speakers.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#217

Post by tormeh »

FabHK wrote: post #209
liftbigweights wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It amazes me how many people claim English is easy to learn People think english is simple because we don't have the gender+conjugation+declension system of many languages. So initially, english appears simple. A boat is a boat is a boat. But everywhere else - from spelling to grammar to phonetics, english is irregular and has so many exceptions that it really requires effort to become native or even fluent. One co…

I've seen this quote attributed to G B Shaw: "English is one of the easiest languages to speak badly, but one of the most difficult to speak well"; however, I can't find a reliable citation. At any rate, I think it captures something about English. As you say, languages like German and French take more effort to learn initially (conjugation and (in German) declension), but then there are only a few ways of expressing…

But I think this is the way languages have to work if they're supposed to be spoken by non-native speakers or just spoken by a large number of geographically dispersed people. Even German is losing a lot of its initial complexity because of the last decades of immigration. This is mostly just in spoken German for now, but the written word will eventually follow.

And all languages with wide geographic dispersion have a disconnect between the spoken word and the written spelling, the most extreme example being Chinese.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#218

Post by egeozcan »

liftbigweights wrote: post #203
lolc wrote: post #182

As a native speaker I can confirm the observations of Mark Twain. What is ignored in such humorous tirades is that every human speaker will push information density to the very limit of understandability. In every language. They will use all the tools available. Sure, the German case system is getting weaker as the centuries go by. And in some situations you will wonder why it's used still. But that doesn't mean the…

> It amazes me how many people claim English is easy to learn People think english is simple because we don't have the gender+conjugation+declension system of many languages. So initially, english appears simple. A boat is a boat is a boat. But everywhere else - from spelling to grammar to phonetics, english is irregular and has so many exceptions that it really requires effort to become native or even fluent. One co…

I always say, English is easy with the basics, yet, hard to master while German exposes all the complexity from the very beginning.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#219

Post by jfk13 »

yorwba wrote: post #211
marcus_holmes wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's weird, Thai and Khmer are very similar, and share some words, but also very different. Khmer isn't tonal, and has really simplified grammar. They used to share an alphabet, too, but the Thai opted to simplify it (westernise it) while the Khmer opted to keep their original alphabet. Written Khmer is hard for us westerners to deal with because of this. They have lots of vowels and consonants that we don't ha…

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Khmer the language does seem to have some fun sounds. But English has a consonant between 'b' and 'p' ('pʰ' in IPA) as well. Just consider the difference between 'ban', 'span' and 'pan'. The 'p' in 'span' is not as forceful as the 'p' in 'pan', and they're actually different consonants.

> The 'p' in 'span' is not as forceful as the 'p' in 'pan', and they're actually different consonants.

Yes, they're phonetically different, but in English the difference is not phonemic; they're allophones of the same consonant.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#220

Post by FabHK »

man-and-laptop wrote: post #62
Koshkin wrote: post #34

German is an amazing, beautiful language. With not much of the vocabulary borrowed from other languages, words actually make sense. From that perspective, German can be seen as the modern equivalent of Latin, and if I were to choose only one language to remain on the entire planet, it would be German (sorry English, Chinese and Spanish). Its sounds are easier for non-native speakers to pronounce - especially compared…

You could say the same thing about Russian. Like German, it doesn't borrow very heavily from other languages; and a lot of the words are simple variations of each other with different prefixes and suffixes. It was even the Lingua Franca (or "Latin") of the Communist bloc. On the other hand, Russian might be an even harder language to learn than German, given that it's Slavic and uses a different alphabet. There's alw…

> uses a different alphabet

The alphabet is trivial on the way to learning the language, constituting maybe 2% or so (unlike in Chinese).

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