4 ms·

Most Americans do in fact lack knowledge of German.

by wk_end 11y ago

wolfgke 11y ago
But why are they so fond of German words, then? Edit: And why don't they look up the transliteration rules before? I mean: I only know few words of Esperanto, but I know the transliteration rules for the letters in the Esperanto alphabet that are not ASCII characters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_orthography#ASCII_transliteration_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_orthography#ASCII_tr...
- VLM 11y ago
  We like their food, and we are never squeamish about culturally appropriating any tasty food or food terms or language in general. Everyone loves tacos, no matter their feelings on illegal immigration or whatever. Also see ancestry, there are 50M people of German ancestry in the USA, and only 80M people of Germany ancestry in Germany itself. We're a big enough fraction of the total that if we feel like changing language rules, we have enough people to make it stick, at least as a weird local dialect.
  - wolfgke 11y ago
    Changing letters without first trying to understand why they are there in German (the same holds for my Esperanto example) simply shows that one is clearly not interested in the language/culture - in other words: An utter disrespect. On the other hand: Trying to understand, but simply failing is OK (yes, conjugating and declining words is quite ugly in German; even some Germans do it wrong). > We're a big enough fraction of the total that if we feel like changing language rules, we have enough people to make it stick, at least as a weird local dialect. To be able to challenge the language rules, you first have to understand them quite a bit. It is quite a difference between challenging language rules vs. simply not understanding them.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Trying to dictate how other people use their native language seems way more disrespectful than dropping diacritics when borrowing vocabulary.
    - yasth 11y ago
      Eh you have to understand that in dealing with loan words the goal isn't to produce cognates. It is a natural well established process in English, and pointedly doesn't carry over pronunciation or diacritics. This is so that the words text is freely interchangeable as there is a long period where the term is sometimes written with diacritics (and italicized) and sometimes not. über and ueber would seem different to people and risk confusing them. I understand your concern, in German as in most languages words are being homogenized and losing diacritics, first among the youth and informal use, and then even sneaking in to ads and "real" use. It has caused a lot of concern, and a fair amount of pushback, but you can't expect other languages' systems to follow the reactionary rules or care about the internal politics.
      - wolfgke 11y ago
        To add one point: Already by the change from Fraktur to Antiqua in Germany in the middle of the 20th century lots of subtleties got lost. For example, the words Wachstube (which can either be read as Wach-stube or as Wachs-tube) are spelled differently in Fraktur (since there exists two kinds of s), but the same in Antiqua (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Wachstube.svg https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Wachstube.svg). Also some pairs of letters that form a common sound are indicated by a ligatur in Fraktur (as ch, ck, ſt and tz), but not in Antiqua (cf. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktursatz#Ligaturen_und_Trennregeln https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktursatz#Ligaturen_und_Tren...).
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
    > we are never squeamish about culturally appropriating any tasty food or food terms or language in general. Only if they're sufficiently Americanized (c.f. (a) the kind of Chinese food you get in this country and (b) Anglophones getting really fussy about sportscasters pronouncing Hispanic names using Spanish vowels)

Most Americans do in fact lack knowledge of German.

by wk_end 11y ago

Most Americans do in fact lack knowledge of German.

But why are they so fond of German words, then? Edit: And why don't they look up the transliteration rules before? I mean: I only know few words of Esperanto, but I know the transliteration rules for the letters in the Esperanto alphabet that are not ASCII characters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_orthography#ASCII_transliteration_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_orthography#ASCII_tr...

VLM 11y ago
We like their food, and we are never squeamish about culturally appropriating any tasty food or food terms or language in general. Everyone loves tacos, no matter their feelings on illegal immigration or whatever. Also see ancestry, there are 50M people of German ancestry in the USA, and only 80M people of Germany ancestry in Germany itself. We're a big enough fraction of the total that if we feel like changing language rules, we have enough people to make it stick, at least as a weird local dialect.
- wolfgke 11y ago
  Changing letters without first trying to understand why they are there in German (the same holds for my Esperanto example) simply shows that one is clearly not interested in the language/culture - in other words: An utter disrespect. On the other hand: Trying to understand, but simply failing is OK (yes, conjugating and declining words is quite ugly in German; even some Germans do it wrong). > We're a big enough fraction of the total that if we feel like changing language rules, we have enough people to make it stick, at least as a weird local dialect. To be able to challenge the language rules, you first have to understand them quite a bit. It is quite a difference between challenging language rules vs. simply not understanding them.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Trying to dictate how other people use their native language seems way more disrespectful than dropping diacritics when borrowing vocabulary.
  - yasth 11y ago
    Eh you have to understand that in dealing with loan words the goal isn't to produce cognates. It is a natural well established process in English, and pointedly doesn't carry over pronunciation or diacritics. This is so that the words text is freely interchangeable as there is a long period where the term is sometimes written with diacritics (and italicized) and sometimes not. über and ueber would seem different to people and risk confusing them. I understand your concern, in German as in most languages words are being homogenized and losing diacritics, first among the youth and informal use, and then even sneaking in to ads and "real" use. It has caused a lot of concern, and a fair amount of pushback, but you can't expect other languages' systems to follow the reactionary rules or care about the internal politics.
    - wolfgke 11y ago
      To add one point: Already by the change from Fraktur to Antiqua in Germany in the middle of the 20th century lots of subtleties got lost. For example, the words Wachstube (which can either be read as Wach-stube or as Wachs-tube) are spelled differently in Fraktur (since there exists two kinds of s), but the same in Antiqua (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Wachstube.svg https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Wachstube.svg). Also some pairs of letters that form a common sound are indicated by a ligatur in Fraktur (as ch, ck, ſt and tz), but not in Antiqua (cf. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktursatz#Ligaturen_und_Trennregeln https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktursatz#Ligaturen_und_Tren...).
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  > we are never squeamish about culturally appropriating any tasty food or food terms or language in general. Only if they're sufficiently Americanized (c.f. (a) the kind of Chinese food you get in this country and (b) Anglophones getting really fussy about sportscasters pronouncing Hispanic names using Spanish vowels)