Languages and the future

[Paddy]

I'm amazed that anything as complicated as German survives to the modern day. You'd think over thousands of years, simplification would win out. There seems to be no reason for all those case endings, adjective endings, noun genders or even conjugations. And you might have thought somebody would have seen the way other languages put their words in the order that they're required, and thought it was a good idea.

I can't see any of it acheives anything other than making the language harder to learn.

German is an easy ride compared with Czech

Strč prst skrz krk.

[stek]

German is an easy ride compared with Czech

Strč prst skrz krk.

Is that the "skunk rolled down the hill and ruptured it's larynx" CZ tongue-twister one?

[fullyautomatix]

I thought this thread was about discussing programming languages.

[HairyArsedBloke]

On Bloomberg TV now

European Central Bank Press conference

In Frankfurt

In English.

[Sysman]

A minority language; off topic but interestingly the US navy in WW II used Navajo language to communicate between ships. It flummoxed the Germans.

I heard that in WW II British officers in the Far East used school French to flummox the Japanese. If it was anything like my school French versus the real thing I can see why.

[Sysman]

It ensures that your audience pays attention to what you are saying / writing. If you have to wait to the end of the sentence to find the verb, you need to pay attention to the rest of the sentence

It's a bugger when someone interrupts halfway through a sentence. I've noticed that native German speakers can manage to anticipate what the verb at the end will be, in a way that I haven't mastered yet. It must be practice or other cues they are picking up.

The word endings can be used very effectively to denote direct and indirect objects.

[VectraMan]

The word endings can be used very effectively to denote direct and indirect objects.

Give us an example.

In English we get along fine with something like: "I gave my wife a new car", without having to draw attention to direct or indirect objects. And if it is ambiguous you can say it the French way, i.e. "I gave a new car to my wife". No need to bother with meiner Frau and einen neues Wagen type nonsense.

(Is neues right? I can't remember anymore).

[Churchill]

I thought this thread was about discussing programming languages.

Does this look like an IT Contractors Forum?

[stek]

In Russian lang. to say I kiss you (common greeting) is (I think);

Ya tebya tseluyu, or ya tebe tseluyu, one accusative, one dative, slight diference in meaning. One say I love you, the other says kind of I love to you, subtle...

And there is a phrase 'Mne tebya po-tselovat'' - which I can't get my head round, 'To me (dative), you (accusative) on to kiss' - eh? No nominative, what the hell is going on!!??

Anyway, these extra inflections give the language more meaning, English isn't really that expressive, other than by vocab...

[Sysman]

Give us an example.

Scratches head for decent example...

Standard example from here:

Legen Sie das Buch auf den Tisch. (accusative)
Put/Lay the book on the table. (motion towards)
Das Buch liegt auf dem Tisch. (dative)
The book's lying on the table. (location)

I'll post a better example when I come across one.

In English we get along fine with something like: "I gave my wife a new car", without having to draw attention to direct or indirect objects. And if it is ambiguous you can say it the French way, i.e. "I gave a new car to my wife". No need to bother with meiner Frau and einen neues Wagen type nonsense.

(Is neues right? I can't remember anymore).

You'd be surprised how many native speakers get the gender wrong. Just last week I saw die Wort in the middle of a Powerpoint slide (just to complicate things, some words have different meanings according to their gender, but this isn't one of them).

Der Wagen, so einen neuen Wagen

The thing is, if you ask a native German speaker they often aren't conscious of the grammar rules. It's simply a matter of what sounds right.

"All your data are belong to us" - As an exercise, how would you describe the mistakes in this sentence in grammatical terms?

Language and how the brain processes it is quite a complex subject.