Reply to: Languages and the future

[Sysman]

I learned my German from "Warlord" and "Battle" - Hande Hoch Tommy!!! For you ze var is over!

The Eagle and similar for me. The big surprise for me was that you don't hear Schweinehund or Donner und Blitzen in real life.

Ooh, just come across some German Misnomers, Myths and Mistakes, including Hitler didn't really snub Jesse Owens.

Jesse Owens: “Hitler didn't snub me—it was [FDR] who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram.” - quoted in Triumph, a book about the 1936 Olympics by Jeremy Schaap

[VectraMan]

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)

But the location vs motion thing is not really direct vs indirect objects (are they both indirect in that example? Not sure). Wasn't there also a motion case that got merged into the Accusative?

In my French class recently the teacher tried to explain about direct and indirect objects, and got 14 blank looks (everyone except me). Because I've also been learning German, I understand this stuff, but nobody else had a clue despite us all using the same in English every day. And in French it's easy because the indirect objects come after a preposition.

But anyway, ich gehe in die Kneipe. Später werde ich in der Kneipe sein.

[Sysman]

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

I think you are onto something there. English has a fantastic vocabulary to compensate.

"The statistics of English are astonishing. Of all the world's languages (which now number some 2,700), it is arguably the richest in vocabulary. The compendious Oxford English Dictionary lists about 500,000 words; and a further half-million technical and scientific terms remain uncatalogued. According to traditional estimates, neighboring German has a vocabulary of about 185,000 and French fewer than 100,000, including such Franglais as le snacque-barre and le hit-parade."

[Churchill]

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.



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.

I learned my German from "Warlord" and "Battle" - Hande Hoch Tommy!!! For you ze var is over!

[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.

[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...

[Churchill]

I thought this thread was about discussing programming languages.

Does this look like an IT Contractors Forum?

[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).

[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.

[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.

[HairyArsedBloke]

On Bloomberg TV now

European Central Bank Press conference

In Frankfurt

In English.

[fullyautomatix]

I thought this thread was about discussing programming languages.

[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?

[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]

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.

Russian is like that, more complex than German even - but I find it gives it a richness and power of expression - witness the large number of literary geniuses from what is still a relatively crap country...