English language got it backwards. German is correct.
SPRECHET
DEUTSCH
KARTOFFEL
The real trouble with learning most languages outside of English, is in English, we have a very casual way of approaching our own language. No one speaks with perfect grammar, and slang is extremely commonplace. This is great for English learners, because as long as you get most of the words out, everyone will understand what you meant. In German, if you don’t speak it with utmost clarity and if you don’t 100% nail the word order, people will look at you as if you have a learning disability.
Probably doesn’t help English is a lingua franca. It’s not just the native English speakers that use and change the language, especially in the age of internet, but everyone that knows it as a second language, which includes a significant chunk of the human population.
German actually has more freedom in word order within a sentence.
Ich gehen nachher noch zum Laden.
Nachher gehe ich noch zum Laden.
Zum Laden gehe ich nachher noch.
Zum Laden gehe ich noch nachher.
And slang, like every language has slang. “Kommst du Fußball?” Some people will sneer at it, some use it every day. Or the shortening of word endings (neben ->nem’)(kannst du -> kannste)
Quick Google shows English changed it at some point. From Middle English wer, were, from Old English wer (“man”), from Proto-Germanic *weraz, from Proto-Indo-European *wiHrós (“man, freeman”).
For me it was der, das, and die
I don’t care what that stupid green owl thinks, I’m not gonna learn three different words for “the”
The right order is: der, die, das :p
trällert Wieso? Weshalb? Warum?
Wait until you hear about dem, den, des, dessen, deren, denen
Wait until I don’t, catch me learning Español instead
You dropped this ñ
I am still learning
It’s not that hard the article corresponds to the gender of the noune like “der Mann” for male, “die Frau” for female or “das Brot” for neutral. Oh and there are 500 exceptions to that rule, because why should natural be easy and follow a comprehensive set of rules.
Most confused words: “der Bus” (the bus, clearly male…) and “das Mädchen”(the girl, because girls are definitely not female…)
Das Mädchen is actually easy as it is a diminuitive which are always neutral (granted, no one uses the root word anymore so that may be hard to identify in this case).
Outside of rare cases like that there are no actual rules, only things that can help guess, and anyone saying otherwise is simply wrong.
Wait until day 2 of German class.
You mean like “he, she, it”? ;)
No, because those are pronouns. Why is an apple male while a banana is female? Why is maiden neuter?
Why is maiden neuter?
That one’s easy, actually. “Mädchen” is the diminutive form of “Magd”, signified by the -chen suffix. Diminutive form is always neuter.
Because it “sounds better” and makes sense when it’s spoken and written.
Many languages have this, including my own. I do understand the frustration though for people who aren’t used to it.
What’s the logic behind these gender things? How to make sense out of it?
This is called grammatical gender. The articles as redundant information are quite useful when there is noise around. Even if you catch parts of the article and the noun, you can eliminate a bunch of similar sounding words due to the partial information (eg in this thread about See being lake or sea based on gender)
This is found in several sibling languages of German and the evidence for it is quite strong for PIE (4.5k-2.5k BC). It could have started with just slight changes (noun inflections) to signify information for clarification or redundancy which then got formalized over time due to natural language development.
Even old English had grammatical gender, and the gender neutral ness is a recent development (as compared to evidence of grammatical gender). We have holdover words from Old English where we don’t see the absurdity because of the loss of gender during the Middle English (probably due to incorporation of different dialects in cities like London and gender less appearing novel and thus cool to speak), eg: wife and woman have similar but differently gendered roots (wif (neuter) and wifmann))
Thank you. So it has some uses Think it’s a quirk from latin or something.
Tldr is that when you hear/read just the noun or verb itself you can already infer a lot of information about who is doing the act and what is the act being done to.
For more informaion feel free to read about conjugation and declination.
Yes, it gets pretty complex.
Sure, but when I’m looking at a lady, I know it’s she, when I’m looking at a man I know it’s he, and when I’m looking at an apple I know it’s it. No reason why apple, flower, and water should all have different thes
I learned Dutch before I started learning German (having lived in The Netherlands for almost a decade) and they’re quite close as languages go (at least for somebody whose mother-tongue is a romance language) so that was pretty useful, but the one thing that really got me a lot in the beginning is that in German, “wie” means “how” but in Dutch “wie” means “who” (and both words sound exactly the same), so I would hear the very common German greeting “wie geht’s” (how’s it going) and would translate it as “who goes”, and even after knowing the meaning properly it would trip me since the mental “circuitry” doing the translation seemed to be the instinctive one I had developed for Dutch.
“Halt! How’s it going?”
Ah yes, the cursed Germanic loop:
who (EN) translates to wie (NL)
wie (NL) sounds like wie (DE)
wie (DE) translates to hoe (NL)
hoe (NL) sounds like who (EN)
Who’s before hoes
It also helps if one doesn’t try to pronounce German as if it was English 😈
Works ze ozer way around, zo
This is why I was confused and didn’t understand the joke. Danke.
Wait until you see that “see” is lake, and “meer” is sea. It gets me every time as a Dutchman. In Dutch “zee” is sea and “meer” is lake.
Not always true. Baltic sea is “Ostsee” (East Sea) and North Sea is “Nordsee”. Deap sea is “Hohe See” etc. Mediterranean is “Mittelmeer” though…
The difference being der See means the lake and die See means the sea
Obviously though
Yeah, but this distinction wasn’t given in the original comment.
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Warum? WARUM?*
French - dessous (below) and dessus (above). Utterly indistinguishable for a non-native of course
It’s not that hard, though. The difference is about the same as the one between “moot” and “mute” in English.
It’s the same in both languages - both words spoken by an articulate older gent - no probs mate
Both words spoken by your average teenager - might as well be Swahili
Can’t forget that
wasmeanswhat!Was ist das?is one of the few phrases I can remember from my two semesters of German approximately 20 years ago.Dunno if someone already mentioned it, but good luck with “umfahren”. Depending on the pronunciation you either mean drive over someone/thing or drive around someone/thing lol.
Wieso/Weshalb/Warum = Why
That’s why
Isn’t wieso more like ‘How come’? I mean, yes, it also means ‘why’, but so does ‘how come’; but I guess they are more like an equivalent to each other than to ‘why’. I know less than zero about weshalb, though.
Wieso is easy too, it sounds like “why so?”
♪ Wer nicht fragt, bleibt dumm. ♪
Wait until you get to the indefinite articles.
Hmmmm weird, I know both languages but I never considered that. The See/Meer being Lake/Sea situation is much more confusing to me, especially since it’s the inverse in Dutch.
Ja, ik moet ook altijd twee keer nadenken voordat ik door heb of ze het over een zee of over een meer hebben
Does this mean that a werewolf is just a whowolf in German?
A werewolf in German is a Werwolf. Wer from the germanic word from man and wolf.
Not to be confused with the Wehrwolf, which fights back fiercely, and the Wärwolf, which would but isn’t. The Werfwolf, while very throwable, is right out.
And the Werftwolf builds ships
And of course, who would forget the globetrotting Weltwolf
Der Werwolf
Ein Werwolf eines Nachts entwich von Weib und Kind und sich begab an eines Dorfschullehrers Grab und bat ihn: Bitte, beuge mich!
Der Dorfschulmeister stieg hinauf auf seines Blechschilds Messingknauf und sprach zum Wolf, der seine Pfoten geduldig kreuzte vor dem Toten:
„Der Werwolf“ – sprach der gute Mann, „des Weswolfs, Genitiv sodann, dem Wemwolf, Dativ, wie man’s nennt, den Wenwolf, – damit hat’s ein End.“
Dem Werwolf schmeichelten die Fälle, er rollte seine Augenbälle. Indessen, bat er, füge doch zur Einzahl auch die Mehrzahl noch!
Der Dorfschulmeister aber mußte gestehn, daß er von ihr nichts wußte. Zwar Wölfe gäb’s in großer Schar, doch „Wer“ gäb’s nur im Singular.
Der Wolf erhob sich tränenblind – er hatte ja doch Weib und Kind!! Doch da er kein Gelehrter eben, so schied er dankend und ergeben.
Christian Morgenstern
I’m over here making a " is a hot dog A sandwich ?" Comment and you’re over there taking me seriously
Sandwich is two pieces of bread. Hotdog is a hinged loaf. If anything, a hotdog is a sub.
Aren’t subs a subset of sandwiches?
I’d argue they’re a cousin
Wrong.
A hotdog is a taco. Think about it.
No. I refuse.
A submarine sandwich.
Open faced sandwiches.
Hot dog is sandwich.
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He’s obviously German so he ist korrekt.
Manwolf.
