61–70 of 258 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
English pronunciation only vaguely follows word spelling and must be memorized in many cases. The classic phrase: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed." shows how the "-ough" has no reasonable rule that can be used to determine word pronunciation, despite similar spelling. By comparison, spelling and word p…
This is not unique to English, but I do think that English is more eclectic than most other languages.
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"
> 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…
I'm sure Twain was well aware of it, and wrote the article on the awful German language tongue in cheek for amusement, rather than as an actual complaint.
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,…
I don't understand the connotation of the word, as much as the meaning of it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So right, if he knew more he could give better examples ('das Weib', a nowadays pejorative term for woman (related to 'wife' presumably) doesn't have that diminutive structure and is still neutral), but his point still stands? This feels like Gettier problem territory. :P > diminutives are always neuter I assume you mean to only talk about "-chen"-suffixed diminutives right? [ there are other kinds of diminutive cons…
> I assume you mean to only talk about "-chen"-suffixed diminutives right? [ there are other kinds of diminutive construction in German that aren't neutral - e.g. -ling , Zögling, takes masculine ] Which is even more fun as -ling is generally seen as more objectifying than -chen, even though -chen is neutral and -ling is male.
The key misunderstanding here is of course that 'Genus' is not necessarily 'Sexus'.
One of the Twain's famous examples that language is full of exceptions and hard to learn is that the word for girl is neuter. However, that shows that he didn't understand things all that well. Or the message was more important than the facts. While in general gender does indeed not follow much logic and needs to be learned by heart it's not true for this class of words. For derived words the gender is determined by…
I think your argument is somewhat invalidated by your last sentence: the world for girl is generally seen as a standalone word, and so it seems odd. Of course there is reason why is it so, but that is true for all oddities in every language: they made sense originally but as the new thing became the norm the origin of it is lost.
One of the Twain's famous examples that language is full of exceptions and hard to learn is that the word for girl is neuter. However, that shows that he didn't understand things all that well. Or the message was more important than the facts. While in general gender does indeed not follow much logic and needs to be learned by heart it's not true for this class of words. For derived words the gender is determined by…
> One of the Twain's famous examples that language is full of exceptions and hard to learn is that the word for girl is neuter. This is logical: "Mädchen" is a diminutive (as the prefix -chen shows). Diminutives are always neuter. "Mäd[g]dchen" thus simply means "little maid [Magd: maid]".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Random related anecdote: For years the Mormons would distribute their Book of Mormon in German translations but these were printed overseas and they didn't have the 'ß' character, so they used the greek letter β to substitute 'daβ' instead of 'daß', etc. We tend to forget living in the digital publishing age how limiting mechanical workflows can be.
> 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…