Arr, ****in' German...

I have been trinke Wein, so excuse me, but we decided we're off to Bavaria in a few weeks so I thought I'd cram some German before we go, and bloody hell why are all European languages so stubbornly different to English?

Actually, given that English is derived (mostly) from Latin, French and Saxon, why do we not have the concept of gender applied to nouns? And given that it works just fine for us, why does the rest of Europe still concern itself with how masculine a computer is? Indeed it seems Germany and Austria can't even agree on the gender of some inanimate objects. Why not just stop trying to sexualise fruits and vegetables?

I've always admired the way German speakers can compound nouns until they are so long that they break websites designed by English speakers, but that was before I had to worry about which article to use before those nouns. Which part of the compound gives us the gender? Here in the western world, we get by with just 'The', and in spite of this, some quite well-regarded literature has managed to be written in English. Perhaps you don't need ten different words for 'The'?

I do like the way German sounds, and I will probably stubbornly persist with it purely on that basis, but your grammar is a load of shit just like the Spanish and the French. To be honest we only chose Bavaria because it's closest to ****ing, Austria.

I'll just leave this here

by grammar in other languages being a load of shit you mean unlike english they actually have grammar?

Damn, I remember learning German, it was a real pain, okay, can deal with words and the articles, but the verbs and the forms of the verbs....
I remember having a textbook, that had the verbs in it.
I learned german for like 5 years, now I remember nothing.

Don't worry, even we get a lot of stuff wrong on a daily basis. As long as you don't mess up the basic structure of a sentence you should be good .. then again you go to Bavaria, and us Northerns can't even understand those right

On your compound nouns: Its the last noun that decides its gender.
Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitän
Donau-dampfschifffahrts-kapitän, Kapitän is male, so is the whole word

Quote from Gerdoner :

I'll just leave this here

Challenge accepted.

And I think Finnish might be even worse with more cases & stuff.

iirc Portuguese is also quite bad....

Quote from Flame CZE :

And I think Finnish might be even worse with more cases & stuff.

You bet it is! It's not like in other languages as we don't separate masculine,feminine etc. and they come to the end of the word. But still it's total nightmare for Finns too

Just speak loudly and slowly, and whatever you do, don't mention the war.
I did once, think I got away with it.

I've always wondered...

Let's say something 'new' is invented. Perhaps the internet. Or a new type of fluid container that works in some completely different way to cups and bottles etc.

Who decides if it's a boy, a girl, transgender, a eunuch, or genderless??? Is there a group of "Very Special People" that decide it based on some logic? Are all the languages decided together, or do the Germans decide independantly of the French?

What if you learn of a new thing. How can you tell if it's a boy or a girl? Presumably you can't lift up your... mousemat or whatever, and look to see if it has balls?

If there was logic behind it then I think I could grasp it, just about. I know English is very peculiar, but generally there are some rules, and other than some words being used for very different things with different pronunciations it's a fairly logical language. I think. But I'm biased as I've never had to learn it as a foreign language.

Quote from ACCAkut :

Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitän

Words with three consecutive consonants? Because **** you, that's why.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

Words with three consecutive consonants? Because **** you, that's why.

I count six?

Quote from tristancliffe :

If there was logic behind it then I think I could grasp it, just about. I know English is very peculiar, but generally there are some rules, and other than some words being used for very different things with different pronunciations it's a fairly logical language. I think. But I'm biased as I've never had to learn it as a foreign language.

English is in fact a textbook example of a language that doesn't adhere to grammar rules very well. Sure, the rule set is simple but with that comes a whole bunch of exceptions to those rules.

It is also not very elegant either. While you may see it illogical to divide words into masculine and feminine, a person speaking a finno-ugric language like I do has trouble understanding why you need articles in the first place.

Quote from Flame CZE :

And I think Finnish might be even worse with more cases & stuff.

Well not really. Nouns aren't actually that bad in Finnish. A noun has only 15 (actually 17 or 18 but 15 are the common, accepted amount) different conjugate forms. Or 30 if you count the plural forms too. Or 6*30 if you take into account possessive forms (okay this is splitting hairs but all conjugates do add up!).

I like verbs more. Verbs control the flow of a sentence. A punchy verb is always better than a lame noun. Also, in Finnish one verb can actually form a sentence all by itself.

So verbs: Finns conjugate their verbs too, one form for each of the six pronouns. Then verbs also have four modal forms and four temporal. Notice how it only has four grammatical tenses as opposed to five in German or English. It's already much simpler!

Anyway, so one verb has 6 personal, 4 temporal and 4 modal forms, ie. 1*6*4*4 = 96 in total. Because **** you, that's why.

Quote from Shotglass :

by grammar in other languages being a load of shit you mean unlike english they actually have grammar?

You shouldn't take a look into Japenese if you think English has no grammer While you still need a book for English grammer you could put that on a brochure!

German is horrible. I even found French more enjoyable at times, yet it is totally rusted.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Who decides if it's a boy, a girl, transgender, a eunuch, or genderless??? Is there a group of "Very Special People" that decide it based on some logic? Are all the languages decided together, or do the Germans decide independantly of the French?

Well a boy is masculine, a girl is neutrum, a man is masculine and a women feminin in official language. And while the sun is feminine in German it is masculine in French, the moon however musculine in German and feminin in French. At least French doesn't know neutrums

Quote from hyntty :

[signature]wrong coloquial German gramma my friend: subject, verb, object, insult, sexual insult, "Alter"![/signature]

Quote from tristancliffe :

I've always wondered...

Let's say something 'new' is invented. Perhaps the internet. Or a new type of fluid container that works in some completely different way to cups and bottles etc.

Who decides if it's a boy, a girl, transgender, a eunuch, or genderless??? Is there a group of "Very Special People" that decide it based on some logic? Are all the languages decided together, or do the Germans decide independantly of the French?

What if you learn of a new thing. How can you tell if it's a boy or a girl? Presumably you can't lift up your... mousemat or whatever, and look to see if it has balls?

The logic behind grammatical gender is about as logical as English rules concerning prepositions or irregular verbs. I'm pretty sure that most native English speakers "feel" the correct form whereas foreigners have to memorize a phonebook of correct combinations before they hopefully grasp the pattern and can extrapolate from it. Grammatical gender of inanimate things is no different and since there is no actual logic involved it differs in different languages (i.e. ladder is a "he" in Czech but "she" in German).

Krankenwagen!

Quote from hyntty :

English is in fact a textbook example of a language that doesn't adhere to grammar rules very well. Sure, the rule set is simple but with that comes a whole bunch of exceptions to those rules.

As a native English speaker, I dislike how inconsistent our language is. I understand why all these different rules of spellings occurred, I just don't understand why, when writing the first dictionaries, people didn't take it upon themselves to take a more consistent approach to spelling and pronunciation.

Quote from hyntty :

I count six?

I was referring to the triple 'f'.

German is not that bad really. Der/Die/Das is a bit pain in the ass, but other than that the grammar is fine.

I can't think of an english phrase you might find in a simple guidebook that is totally irregular or is a grammar exception. My english pet peeve is people who try to sound smarter or more formal by using the conditional 'had'. I'm sure this confuses foreign language speakers to no end. Daytime legal mediation shows are particularly prone to this.

"I had gone to the bank, but by the time I had gotten there, they had closed"
"I had had a bad day already, but this bank business has had me wasting gas too!"

I also speak spanish, but it is difficult to be understood because some people I speak to can't agree on which noun to use for common objects, if they don't decide to just make one up. I count at least three words for "lock" and they usually make up a noun for "storage unit" since it is a somewhat new concept.

Quote from TFalke55 :

You shouldn't take a look into Japenese if you think English has no grammer

Dunno. I would say that the particle system that can be complicated, but once you crack that, the changing word order shouldn't be that difficult to overcome because it relies on the particles. Japanese has only three time related tenses, simple plurals, no gender benders. Conjugation of adjectives and verbs isn't as hard as say, Spanish, imo.

[offtopic]Unlike some other Asian languages like Cantonese, Mandarin & Vietnamese, it's much easier to speak because of fewer pitch levels. Both kana systems can be crammed in a total of two weeks flat, and then it's "just" a matter of brute-forcing the 3-5k kanji, a lot of which are simpler than Chinese ones. [/offtopic]

ok, brb, gonna learn japanese

If u are coming to munich, and if u check in hotel IBIS , do not sing bull shit huligans songs at 3.0 when u coming back from city, or ull gonna get load of wather from my window , fakin british bstrds every night

Quote from flymike91 :

"I had gone to the bank, but by the time I had gotten there, they had closed"
"I had had a bad day already, but this bank business has had me wasting gas too!"

James, while John had had "had", had had "had had"; "had had" had had a better effect on the teacher.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Who decides if it's a boy, a girl, transgender, a eunuch, or genderless??? Is there a group of "Very Special People" that decide it based on some logic? Are all the languages decided together, or do the Germans decide independantly of the French?

the same way people come up with new words in every language? people figure out a way to say something it catches on a while later everyone says it and some time later it ends up in a dictionary
how do brits decide why multiple crows are a murder and not a gaggle?

Quote from Stig209 :

You bet it is! It's not like in other languages as we don't separate masculine,feminine etc. and they come to the end of the word. But still it's total nightmare for Finns too

luckily german only has 3 cases (nowerdays)

Quote from TFalke55 :

You shouldn't take a look into Japenese if you think English has no grammer While you still need a book for English grammer you could put that on a brochure!

i suppose thats just a natural thing for a language that comes with a writing system doesnt offer a lot of ways to modify a word

Quote from Shotglass :

the same way people come up with new words in every language? people figure out a way to say something it catches on a while later everyone says it and some time later it ends up in a dictionary
how do brits decide why multiple crows are a murder and not a gaggle?

I see. I can cope the logic of evolution, and that it's sort of made up to begin with, presumably by what sounds right.

Us Brits have a room full of old people, and they decide collective nouns for stuff. Periodically, as a joke, we contaminate their water supply, and hence end up with silly ones.