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I meant examples of expressiveness over German. Edit: You were comparing English with other languages and implied it is more or as expressive as the majority of
by eftychis 8y ago
I meant examples of expressiveness over German.
Edit: You were comparing English with other languages and implied it is more or as expressive as the majority of languages (or at least the ones you are familiar with). Thus my question.
- krylon 8y agoI cannot think of a a good example right now, but as a native German speaker, I do sometimes find myself wondering how to express a certain thought in German. English grammar feels more flexible to me than German, and English seems to be more suited for colorful idioms.
- geff82 8y agoFellow German here. From a grammatical standpoint German is a really flexible language while English isn‘t. I only recently found out about it during my Latin studies (selftaught) and comparing Latin to German and English. The problem with expressing a thought in German might be a side effect of the ubiquity of English in so many fields: we are just used to think in English terms that it becomes a second nature.
- krylon 8y agoEnglish has so many idioms that are nearly impossible to translate elegantly. "go to town on somebody", for example; a good part of learning English is not just learning grammar and vocabulary (although those are necessary), but learning all these idioms (which is kind of an open-ended process).