4 ms·

As a german: No. German is a little oddly rigid due to being more tied to legislation and has a few weird corners like "ei". However in the big picture and on t

As a german: No. German is a little oddly rigid due to being more tied to legislation and has a few weird corners like "ei". However in the big picture and on the scale of fucked-up-ness it's not even in the same order of magnitude as english. You have a german username so i guess you're german too. Try to point out what's as weird in german as having to wonder in english how to even write a word just from the sounds.

kaffeemitsahne 9y ago
Good guess, but I'm Dutch :) Let's see what weirdness I can come up with. A thing that's often noted about German and Dutch is how you can string words together without spaces (kindercarnavalsoptochtvoorbereidingswerkzaamhedenplan). In Dutch we have the "g" or "sch" sound that almost noone else can pronounce. As you can see, "g" and "ch" are sometimes pronounced the same. In Dutch it's quite a problem for some people to determine if the perfect tense of a verb should end with "d" or "t". A common mistake (do mistakes count?) is to use the possessive "hun" (their) in places where you should say "hen" or "ze" (they). Some articles online remark on the large number of consonants that can be grouped together in a single word (e.g. "angstschreeuw"). There are no clear rules on whether nouns should be preceded by "de" or "het" (the or it), for example you say "het huis" (it house) but "de fiets" (the bike). Confusing these is a hallmark of beginner speech. Whether a word goes with "de" or "het" also determines how you should spell adjectives ("deze fiets" but "dit huis"). Another article (1) noted that the two parts of a separable verb can be very far apart in a sentence: “I _want to go_ to the park tomorrow” becomes “Ik _wil_ morgen naar het park _gaan_“ Although I'm not quite sure how strange this is. (1) https://novemberfive.co/blog/learning-dutch/ https://novemberfive.co/blog/learning-dutch/
- talideon 9y ago
  > A thing that's often noted about German and Dutch is how you can string words together without spaces (kindercarnavalsoptochtvoorbereidingswerkzaamhedenplan). You can do that in English, it's just that we choose not to and introduce spaces between the unbound morphemes. Imagine: kinder carnavals optocht voorbereidings werkzaamheden plan If Dutch were written more like English, that's what that word would look like. The dutch 'g' isn't really all that strange. What's strange is how prevalent the sound is in the language. English has phonological abominations like 'strengths', so can't really complain about complex consonant clusters. :-) 'de' and 'het' is just a historical thing: gender is just as difficult in other languages that have it, and it just happens that in the Romance languages, the sound changes have mostly conspired to leave pretty decent markers as to the grammatical genders in a lot of cases. Your 'separable verb' example isn't: Dutch is a V2 language, meaning that there has to be a finite verb in the second slot in a sentence. 'wil' in this case is a finite (auxiliary) verb, where as 'gaan' is an infinitive, and thus goes at the end of the word. This whole thing is a consequence of the Germanic languages once having been verb final, but later the finite verb moved up to where it presently is in most of the Germanic languages. English is now a notable example of a Germanic language (mostly) without this, but you still get remnants of V2 word order here and there. The term 'separable verb' is more apt for the likes of 'aankomen'. English has these too, it's just that the separable bit is typically written afterwards as separate word rather than prefixed as in most other Germanic languages.
  - jdmichal 9y ago
    I would say that English has broadened the V2 transformation into a fully SVO language. While German is still SOV with an exception for V2. My reasoning being that this interpretation results in a smaller rule set than calling it V2 with exceptions for SOV. (But it's not like I would take a hard line on it has to be interpreted as SOV.)
jdmichal 9y ago
I minored in German, so why not I'll have a go: How about verb placement? Second position! Oh, except for questions and commands, then it's first position! Oh, except if you have a question word, then it's second again. Oh, but it's last in subordinate phrases. And I haven't even touched modal constructions or separable prefixes yet! Let's just put pieces of the verb all over! And, of course, ablaut preservation in strong verbs: "singen, sang, gesungen". English somehow managed to preserve this particular barrel of fun. Gender and plurals? Does it really make a difference whether I have to memorize how a word is spelled vs memorizing which gender and plural pattern it uses? Let's also talk about weak vs strong endings. "Ein gutes Bier" but "das gute Bier". And, of course, Mark Twain famously took an attempt at this also: https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html

kaffeemitsahne 9y ago

Good guess, but I'm Dutch :) Let's see what weirdness I can come up with. A thing that's often noted about German and Dutch is how you can string words together without spaces (kindercarnavalsoptochtvoorbereidingswerkzaamhedenplan). In Dutch we have the "g" or "sch" sound that almost noone else can pronounce. As you can see, "g" and "ch" are sometimes pronounced the same. In Dutch it's quite a problem for some people to determine if the perfect tense of a verb should end with "d" or "t". A common mistake (do mistakes count?) is to use the possessive "hun" (their) in places where you should say "hen" or "ze" (they). Some articles online remark on the large number of consonants that can be grouped together in a single word (e.g. "angstschreeuw"). There are no clear rules on whether nouns should be preceded by "de" or "het" (the or it), for example you say "het huis" (it house) but "de fiets" (the bike). Confusing these is a hallmark of beginner speech. Whether a word goes with "de" or "het" also determines how you should spell adjectives ("deze fiets" but "dit huis"). Another article (1) noted that the two parts of a separable verb can be very far apart in a sentence: “I _want to go_ to the park tomorrow” becomes “Ik _wil_ morgen naar het park _gaan_“ Although I'm not quite sure how strange this is. (1) https://novemberfive.co/blog/learning-dutch/ https://novemberfive.co/blog/learning-dutch/

talideon 9y ago
> A thing that's often noted about German and Dutch is how you can string words together without spaces (kindercarnavalsoptochtvoorbereidingswerkzaamhedenplan). You can do that in English, it's just that we choose not to and introduce spaces between the unbound morphemes. Imagine: kinder carnavals optocht voorbereidings werkzaamheden plan If Dutch were written more like English, that's what that word would look like. The dutch 'g' isn't really all that strange. What's strange is how prevalent the sound is in the language. English has phonological abominations like 'strengths', so can't really complain about complex consonant clusters. :-) 'de' and 'het' is just a historical thing: gender is just as difficult in other languages that have it, and it just happens that in the Romance languages, the sound changes have mostly conspired to leave pretty decent markers as to the grammatical genders in a lot of cases. Your 'separable verb' example isn't: Dutch is a V2 language, meaning that there has to be a finite verb in the second slot in a sentence. 'wil' in this case is a finite (auxiliary) verb, where as 'gaan' is an infinitive, and thus goes at the end of the word. This whole thing is a consequence of the Germanic languages once having been verb final, but later the finite verb moved up to where it presently is in most of the Germanic languages. English is now a notable example of a Germanic language (mostly) without this, but you still get remnants of V2 word order here and there. The term 'separable verb' is more apt for the likes of 'aankomen'. English has these too, it's just that the separable bit is typically written afterwards as separate word rather than prefixed as in most other Germanic languages.
- jdmichal 9y ago
  I would say that English has broadened the V2 transformation into a fully SVO language. While German is still SOV with an exception for V2. My reasoning being that this interpretation results in a smaller rule set than calling it V2 with exceptions for SOV. (But it's not like I would take a hard line on it has to be interpreted as SOV.)

jdmichal 9y ago

I minored in German, so why not I'll have a go: How about verb placement? Second position! Oh, except for questions and commands, then it's first position! Oh, except if you have a question word, then it's second again. Oh, but it's last in subordinate phrases. And I haven't even touched modal constructions or separable prefixes yet! Let's just put pieces of the verb all over! And, of course, ablaut preservation in strong verbs: "singen, sang, gesungen". English somehow managed to preserve this particular barrel of fun. Gender and plurals? Does it really make a difference whether I have to memorize how a word is spelled vs memorizing which gender and plural pattern it uses? Let's also talk about weak vs strong endings. "Ein gutes Bier" but "das gute Bier". And, of course, Mark Twain famously took an attempt at this also: https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html