Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Awful German Language (1880)

faculty.georgetown.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 258 posts

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#51

Post by imtringued »

forinti wrote: post #17
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,…

If you look at an eggplant in its early stages, you will understand the name.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v9hvK3rdxA

So nope, not "an" eggplant, some eggplants, and those only may look like eggs in their early stages. They may also look like plums. Do we call the purple eggplants plumplants because they resemble plums at some indeterminate stage in their growth?

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#52

Post by sorokod »

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,…

and books, e.g. "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue"

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#53

Post by imtringued »

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

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.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#54

Post by merb »

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…

> And yet, every German speaker seems to be able to remember this, without evidence of them being better at memorization than others?

actually we don't the system is so stupid that we try to remove the gender altogether or try to make stupid words like "der Student"/"die Studentin" because Mark Twain tought it is only a linguistic gender, but unfortunatly a lot of people do not think that our gender is only linguistic, that's why we try to re-gender a lot of words. sometimes by splitting it into two, sometimes by using special characters. Our language reforms do not make it easier, they make it worse.

to make it easy, for us we learn "der tisch" and not just "tisch" so the noun is learned aswell.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#55

Post by nine_k »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #34
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,…

>boxing rings are square They used to be round!

But now they are box-shaped!

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#57

Post by dang »

One past discussion:

The Awful German Language (1880) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18147467 - Oct 2018 (311 comments)

But there are plenty of other threads where commenters have referenced it. For fun here are some:

Ghoti - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23581841 - June 2020 (239 comments)

On Truth and Lying in the Extra German Sense - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20232136 - June 2019 (52 comments)

German for Programmers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19109371 - Feb 2019 (253 comments)

Shavian alphabet - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17844526 - Aug 2018 (113 comments)

English is weirdly different from other languages - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14450379 - May 2017 (115 comments)

Why the German language has so many great words - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11266465 - March 2016 (158 comments)

How language gives your brain a break - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10002595 - Aug 2015 (40 comments)

Why God Hates German Words - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2826507 - July 2011 (66 comments)

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1097258 - Feb 2010 (69 comments)

Writing English as a Second Language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1055465 - Jan 2010 (26 comments)

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#58

Post by dang »

gweinberg wrote: post #36

The article seems to miss the point that Twain was a humorist trying to be funny, not a linguist trying to write a serious criticism of a language's defects.

We've since changed the URL. A Wikipedia article about another article that's easily available is not a good HN submission.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27177026

Side note - in all the many times Twain's essay has come up on HN (partial list at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27177031), I don't think I've ever seen a case of a German speaker taking offence at it or even reacting defensively. That's impressive! That is not how flamebait usually progresses. In most cases, the title would be enough to get hostile reactions, and the text too, despite that it's obviously in good fun and that only a serious student of German (and master humorist) could have written it.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#60

Post by dang »

mplanchard wrote: post #15

This has always been a favorite. I also enjoyed this one about Chinese, which my wife sent me recently: http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

Ah yes - also one with some HN history:

Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard (1992) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18670031 - Dec 2018 (49 comments)

Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard (1992) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7622432 - April 2014 (294 comments)

Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1280348 - April 2010 (5 comments)

Why Chinese is so damn hard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176498 - April 2008 (2 comments)

Post reply on HN