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“Similar to research in language: To recognise the universal mechanisms of processing language we also cannot limit our research to German." As an American liv

“Similar to research in language: To recognise the universal mechanisms of processing language we also cannot limit our research to German." As an American living in Germany who taught English between IT jobs, I’ve come to describe spoken English as playing jazz, and German as performing classical music. Sure, you can put some personal touches on spoken German, and new expressions do crop up, but there’s a lot more latitude for improvisation in English, and the catchy improvisations are more likely to be picked up by other English users and become part of the language. I thought this was my bias as a native speaker of English and very academic learner of German, but my German colleagues agree with the comparison.

chopin 9y ago
As a german native speaker I'd tend to disagree with this. German for example has a lot more leeway for word order in its grammar than English.
- craigsmansion 9y ago
  I agree with you. Thanks to a multitude of cases in German one can jumble words around without losing their intended function within a sentence. English can be more fun because of the inherent ambiguity, but any parallels to jazz and classical music are a little far fetched.
Stratoscope 9y ago
> there’s a lot more latitude for improvisation in English Lately I've been hanging out on the English Language Learners Stack Exchange. It can be a discouraging place. Too many people answer simple questions with complicated explanations of English grammar, when the real question they should answer is "How can I say this the way a native speaker would?" An example: https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/152764/is-this-sentence-correct-make-vs-made/152787 https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/152764/is-this-sente... OP wanted to know if this sentence was correct: "Your kindness has (and will continue to) made a difference." The top-voted answer explains that "This sentence is an attempt at parallelling, where a sentence branches into two or more parts. In this case, it also rejoins at the end. The parallelled part must join on to the common part in the same way." And that's just the beginning. The answer goes on to explain about "eliminating the duplicated word sequences" and finally arrives at this sentence: "Your kindness has made, and will continue to make, a difference." That's grammatically correct, but hardly any native English speaker would ever say or write it. In fact, someone commented that the sentence "sounds more German than English to me." My zero-rated answer was "I like to find the simplest way to say things. You can thank a person for their past, present, and future kindness all at once: 'Your kindness always makes a difference!'" I don't care much about the votes, I'm just a bit sad that so many of the high-rated answers on ELL seem to answer the technical questions of grammar instead of helping people sound like native English speakers.
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
  I suppose in the context of this post it's similar to asking "How can I sound like Mozart" and expecting an answer along the lines of "press these keys in this order" rather than any technical information about scales, progressions and dynamics. The end result may sound the same but there will be no actual understanding of the "why".

chopin 9y ago

As a german native speaker I'd tend to disagree with this. German for example has a lot more leeway for word order in its grammar than English.

craigsmansion 9y ago
I agree with you. Thanks to a multitude of cases in German one can jumble words around without losing their intended function within a sentence. English can be more fun because of the inherent ambiguity, but any parallels to jazz and classical music are a little far fetched.

Stratoscope 9y ago

> there’s a lot more latitude for improvisation in English Lately I've been hanging out on the English Language Learners Stack Exchange. It can be a discouraging place. Too many people answer simple questions with complicated explanations of English grammar, when the real question they should answer is "How can I say this the way a native speaker would?" An example: https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/152764/is-this-sentence-correct-make-vs-made/152787 https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/152764/is-this-sente... OP wanted to know if this sentence was correct: "Your kindness has (and will continue to) made a difference." The top-voted answer explains that "This sentence is an attempt at parallelling, where a sentence branches into two or more parts. In this case, it also rejoins at the end. The parallelled part must join on to the common part in the same way." And that's just the beginning. The answer goes on to explain about "eliminating the duplicated word sequences" and finally arrives at this sentence: "Your kindness has made, and will continue to make, a difference." That's grammatically correct, but hardly any native English speaker would ever say or write it. In fact, someone commented that the sentence "sounds more German than English to me." My zero-rated answer was "I like to find the simplest way to say things. You can thank a person for their past, present, and future kindness all at once: 'Your kindness always makes a difference!'" I don't care much about the votes, I'm just a bit sad that so many of the high-rated answers on ELL seem to answer the technical questions of grammar instead of helping people sound like native English speakers.

SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
I suppose in the context of this post it's similar to asking "How can I sound like Mozart" and expecting an answer along the lines of "press these keys in this order" rather than any technical information about scales, progressions and dynamics. The end result may sound the same but there will be no actual understanding of the "why".