3 ms·

let's take the verb to run in the present tense: I run, you run, he runs, we run, they run There’s also I do run, I did run, I will run, I shall run, I can run

by sethg 17y ago

let's take the verb to run in the present tense: I run, you run, he runs, we run, they run There’s also I do run, I did run, I will run, I shall run, I can run, I could run, I should run, I must run, I might run, I would run, I may run. And all their negations (“I shouldn’t run” is OK but “I mayn’t run” is not). And the special rules for conjugating them: the past tense of “I run” is “I ran”, but the past tense of “I can run” is “I could run”, not “I canned run” or “I can ran”. These are not complex to native English speakers because we learned most of them without being formally taught, but an adult learning English as a foreign language is not so lucky. (I see from Googling that German also has modal verbs; I don’t know if the whole set is easier or harder to learn than the English set, from the point of view of someone who knows neither.)

wheels 17y ago
German's use of modal verbs is almost identical to English's, in fact most of its verb usage is, with the notable exception that English prominently features a romance-language-like gerund: "I am running." The funny bit with your example? Despite the similar usage, German complicates things further by splitting the primary and auxiliary verbs, with the primary being transported to the end of the clause: Ich sollte nach Hause laufen. Literally: I should to home run. This is no coincidence, since English grammar is basically a simplified version of German grammar. There's a clear continuum from German to English via Frisian and Dutch where the grammar is continually simplified relative to its Germanic root. You can see the same sort of progression in the Romance languages. Modern Italian is pretty much uncontroversially simpler than Latin.
- Retric 17y ago
  From what I understand peoples problem learning English relates to it lacking fixed rules for most issues. Spelling being the most obvious example. A Spelling Bee would be a far more trivial exercise in Spanish or German. Granted the 988,968 words in English http://www.slate.com/id/2139611/ http://www.slate.com/id/2139611/ have something to do with that. Although the total number of words in German is larger (In the modern scientific German vocabulary data base in Leipzig (since 1.7.2003) there are 9 million words) the core vocabulary is fairly small and consistent by comparison. EX: "glove" as "hand-shoe (Handschuh)

by sethg 17y ago

wheels 17y ago

German's use of modal verbs is almost identical to English's, in fact most of its verb usage is, with the notable exception that English prominently features a romance-language-like gerund: "I am running." The funny bit with your example? Despite the similar usage, German complicates things further by splitting the primary and auxiliary verbs, with the primary being transported to the end of the clause: Ich sollte nach Hause laufen. Literally: I should to home run. This is no coincidence, since English grammar is basically a simplified version of German grammar. There's a clear continuum from German to English via Frisian and Dutch where the grammar is continually simplified relative to its Germanic root. You can see the same sort of progression in the Romance languages. Modern Italian is pretty much uncontroversially simpler than Latin.

Retric 17y ago
From what I understand peoples problem learning English relates to it lacking fixed rules for most issues. Spelling being the most obvious example. A Spelling Bee would be a far more trivial exercise in Spanish or German. Granted the 988,968 words in English http://www.slate.com/id/2139611/ http://www.slate.com/id/2139611/ have something to do with that. Although the total number of words in German is larger (In the modern scientific German vocabulary data base in Leipzig (since 1.7.2003) there are 9 million words) the core vocabulary is fairly small and consistent by comparison. EX: "glove" as "hand-shoe (Handschuh)