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The Awful German Language (1880)
- usr1106 5y agoOne of the Twain's famous examples that language is full of exceptions and hard to learn is that the word for girl is neuter. However, that shows that he didn't understand things all that well. Or the message was more important than the facts. While in general gender does indeed not follow much logic and needs to be learned by heart it's not true for this class of words. For derived words the gender is determined by the kind of derivation. E. g. diminutives are always neuter, and so is the word for girl, which technically is a diminutive, even if today's speakers don't see it like that.
- jan_Inkepa 5y agoSo right, if he knew more he could give better examples ('das Weib', a nowadays pejorative term for woman (related to 'wife' presumably) doesn't have that diminutive structure and is still neutral), but his point still stands? This feels like Gettier problem territory. :P > diminutives are always neuter I assume you mean to only talk about "-chen"-suffixed diminutives right? [ there are other kinds of diminutive construction in German that aren't neutral - e.g. -ling , Zögling, takes masculine ]
- xg15 5y ago> I assume you mean to only talk about "-chen"-suffixed diminutives right? [ there are other kinds of diminutive construction in German that aren't neutral - e.g. -ling , Zögling, takes masculine ] Which is even more fun as -ling is generally seen as more objectifying than -chen, even though -chen is neutral and -ling is male.
- wirrbel 5y agoAlso -ling is not so much a diminutive but more of a suffix for Nominalisation (Zögling stems from 'ziehen' [to raise],and refers to someone who was raised, Widerling from 'widerlich' [despicable], thus a despicable person, Schreiberling from 'schreiben' [to write], a Writer], Frühling from 'früh' early [spring]). Gives a somewhat pejorative connotation at times. The key misunderstanding here is of course that 'Genus' is not necessarily 'Sexus'.
- jan_Inkepa 5y ago[I'd like to acknowledge that my designation of "-ling" as functioning sometimes as a diminutive is a thing that might be debated for all the grounds given in this and in another comment, but I think it would make precisely nobody happy to pursue the matter further (while at the same time appreciating the points made, that do indeed give me pause)].
- usr1106 5y ago-ling is always masculine (I would not call them diminutives, you cannot form them from many words) -chen and -lein (diminutives) are always neuter, they can be formed from many nouns -heit and -keit, and -ung are always feminine I don't claim that the gender has logical meaning. But for derived words the rules typically hold (I would not be suprised if a few exceptions could be found)
- riffraff 5y agoI think your argument is somewhat invalidated by your last sentence: the world for girl is generally seen as a standalone word, and so it seems odd. Of course there is reason why is it so, but that is true for all oddities in every language: they made sense originally but as the new thing became the norm the origin of it is lost.
- kergonath 5y ago> the world for girl is generally seen as a standalone word, and so it seems odd. That’s the thing: language also change the way you see things. Native English people might find it strange for the reason you mention, but German people can find it normal, because it is a diminutive following the usual rules. It is not a “standalone word”: it is a root and a suffix. It is not an oddity at all within the framework of the language (which has its share of irregularities already).
- wirrbel 5y agoI am not sure that it is seen as standalone. Surely, one doesn't use "Maid" or other archaic terms from which "Mädchen" is the derived word. But to me I am aware that its a diminutive. If I speak dialect I also use the dialectal diminutive (Mädle). Of course to someone learning the language that level of understanding is hard to reach without immersion for years.
- q-big 5y ago> One of the Twain's famous examples that language is full of exceptions and hard to learn is that the word for girl is neuter. This is logical: "Mädchen" is a diminutive (as the prefix -chen shows). Diminutives are always neuter. "Mäd[g]dchen" thus simply means "little maid [Magd: maid]".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- xg15 5y ago> It is a bleak Day. Hear the Rain, how he pours, and the Hail, how he rattles; and see the Snow, how he drifts along, and oh the Mud, how deep he is! Ah the poor Fishwife, it is stuck fast in the Mire; it has dropped its Basket of Fishes; and its Hands have been cut by the Scales as it seized some of the falling Creatures; and one Scale has even got into its Eye. And it cannot get her out. It opens its Mouth to cry for Help; but if any Sound comes out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the Storm. As a german, accept my apologies. Though I don't get which word for "fishwife" exactly he was referring to that has a neutral gender. Closest translations that come to mind are "Fischersfrau", "Fischerin" - or even "Fischverkäuferin" if you want to be bureaucratic. But all of these are grammatically female. edit: TIL "Fischweib" is a well-established word (and indeed neutral). Wikipedia translates it to "mermaid" though, which doesn't really seem to fit the story.
- cies 5y agoDas Fischweib Quite literally translated. "Weib" in German is more close to "broad" in English, it's often but not necessarily derogatory.
- amagasaki 5y agoPerhaps “Weib” An outdated,today slightly pejorative, word for “Frau” But to me the term “das Fischerweib” doesn’t sound familiar either, so I am not sure
- xg15 5y ago"Fischerweib" could work. Doesn't sound familiar to me either, but it's a valid compound word at least...
- tweitzel 5y agoDas Fischweib auf dem Markte, welch' Ware bietet es wohl feil?
- denton-scratch 5y agoI didn't know Weib was considered perjorative - although I've never had occasion to use the word. The English word 'man' used to mean 'person'. A female person became a 'wife-man', i.e. a woman. So the word 'mankind', for example, doesn't (or didn't) imply that female humans don't exist.
- turbinerneiter 5y agoIt's our revenge for the "th", my dear Englishman.
- coinerone 5y agoLearning the correct pronunciation of "th" was tough though. :)
- turbinerneiter 5y agoI can do it on individual words, but as soon as I speak in full sentences and with speed, it comes out however it wants. Though and tough aren't a problem though, "thinking" in the middle of a sentence is real tough though.
- advanced-DnD 5y ago1. Push your tongue against your upper inner-teeth. 2. Let out all the air out until your tongue separates said teeth
- euroderf 5y agoTry the "ll" sound in Welsh. Sounds way cool.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoso, German grammarians, irritated by a defect of English, debated long among themselves as to how they could mess up their own language in revenge?
- turbinerneiter 5y agoYes, sadly we lost our ability to tell jokes in the process.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoI don't know, as a Dane it seems we spend a lot of time talking about the German sense of humor.
- j4yav 5y agoAs a student of Dutch I empathize with some of these. Though it is pretty cool that, if you stick with it, your brain is capable of reshaping itself into these new forms. Even as an adult - I started learning it at around 35.
- greatpatton 5y agoGerman has a difficult grammar (was a real pain when learning German as a kid) but at least when reading German you know how to pronounce it, English pronunciation like German gender must be learn by heart :)
- TomAnthony 5y agoAlas, that isn't as true as German's tell me it is, I find. "Weg" <- how do you pronounce this? "Geh weg" (go away) "Der Weg ist da drüben!" (the path is over there)
- seritools 5y agoWeg != weg, so it's pretty clear. You missed "Gehweg" (sidewalk) though. :^)
- usr1106 5y agoThere are some exceptions, sure. But German pronunciation is 80% simple and regular at least whereas English is more like 80% complicated and irregular.
- pacaro 5y agoCompound words do have the potential to throw this for a loop. The pronunciation is regular if you can decompose the word, but if you miss where the word boundaries are all bets are off. For example "linkshändig"
- usr1106 5y agoThat could be true for some words, but not in your example. "sh" does not exist in any basic German word, so the boundary must be there.
- advanced-DnD 5y agoOnce you learnt the phonetics for the alphabet, you'll find German is pretty consistence. I don't know what you're trying convey in your examples though, because all the example have consistent pronunciation. Inconsistence pronunciation often because it is borrowed words from French (das Experiment (Ex-pe-ri-mo'n?)) or English (das Schedule, informal vocab.)
- pmoriarty 5y agoUnsurprisingly, there are many articles published about "The Awful English Language", such as: [1], [2], [3] Some examples from [2]: Let's face it -- English is a crazy language. Besides the above, there is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We tend to take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, two geese. So one moose, two meese? One index, two indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? [1] - https://www.angelo.edu/faculty/kboudrea/cheap/cheap3_english.htm https://www.angelo.edu/faculty/kboudrea/cheap/cheap3_english... [2] - https://neth.de/Interact/Sprachspiele/homowords.html https://neth.de/Interact/Sprachspiele/homowords.html [3] - https://ronaldyatesbooks.com/2017/03/the-awful-english-language/ https://ronaldyatesbooks.com/2017/03/the-awful-english-langu...
- forinti 5y agoIf you look at an eggplant in its early stages, you will understand the name.
- imtringued 5y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v9hvK3rdxA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v9hvK3rdxA So nope, not "an" eggplant, some eggplants, and those only may look like eggs in their early stages. They may also look like plums. Do we call the purple eggplants plumplants because they resemble plums at some indeterminate stage in their growth?
- burnished 5y ago..do you not?
- mplanchard 5y agoThis has always been a favorite. I also enjoyed this one about Chinese, which my wife sent me recently: http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html
- bombcar 5y agoIt’s interesting to compare languages on how much you can simply ignore and still communicate - for example broken English where you don’t conjugate anything can usually be deciphered and English spelled phonetically is pretty easy to read (even if all the words are spelled wrong).
- dang 5y agoAh yes - also one with some HN history: Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard (1992) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18670031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18670031 - Dec 2018 (49 comments) Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard (1992) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7622432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7622432 - April 2014 (294 comments) Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1280348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1280348 - April 2010 (5 comments) Why Chinese is so damn hard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176498 - April 2008 (2 comments)
- sva_ 5y agoSee also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18147467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18147467 (2018)
- henrikschroder 5y ago> Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. And yet, every German speaker seems to be able to remember this, without evidence of them being better at memorization than others? As usual, it's easy to forget how hard things are for others when you're the expert. I'm sure Twain never thought about how ridiculously hard many English words are to spell, and how people learning English as a second language struggle quite a lot with it. But the thing is, with practice, we do learn these things. With practice speaking German, you'll learn and remember the gender of each noun, it simply becomes part of the noun itself. And with practice writing English, you'll learn the spelling - illogical as it is, it simply becomes part of the word itself. But looking at my language, I'm not so sure how much of this is pure memory. Swedish, like all Scandinavian languages, has four genders for nouns, but only one of them stick out and modify words and sentences. Being a native speaker, I of course know the gender for each noun, and you could argue that I have memorized this. But I can also properly gender new words. I can gender words I've never heard before. I can construct new words, and gender them correctly as well, and have other Swedish speakers independently agree with me on what the gender of this new word is. So clearly there are rules, it's not the case that someone else decided the genders, and then everyone else had to memorize what this person arbitrarily chose. And I'm pretty sure German actually works the same way.
- misja111 5y agoCould you tell something or give a link about that Swedish fourth gender? You made me interested when you wrote about it but I can't find anything about it on the Internet. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_Danish_and_Swedish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_Danish_and_Swedish mentions only 3 genders, and says that in modern Swedish two of those have merged so now there are only 2?
- henrikschroder 5y agoAll four genders are listed on that page: masculine, feminine, common, neuter. The first three are grammatically identical, but the fourth one sticks out. In English, the indefinite article is either a/an, depending on the vowel sound of the noun. In Swedish it's either en/ett, depending on the gender. Examples: en mus - a mouse ett hus - a house But the grammatical gender carries and modifies more things like the definite article (den/det) and every adjective. den musen - that mouse det huset - that house en grå mus - a grey mouse ett grått hus - a grey house
- thesuperbigfrog 5y agoEnglish pronunciation only vaguely follows word spelling and must be memorized in many cases. The classic phrase: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed." shows how the "-ough" has no reasonable rule that can be used to determine word pronunciation, despite similar spelling. By comparison, spelling and word pronunciation in Spanish and Italian (and probably many others as well) match exactly. You know how to spell a word from the way it sounds. You can easily read aloud written text and have little to no idea what it means.
- Digit-Al 5y agoMy favourite joke about that sort of thing is how following the exact rules of the English language "ghoti" is a perfectly valid spelling of fish :-)
- rsj_hn 5y agoThe thing is, there are rules and explanations for everything, but they are not the kind of rules that would help a foreigner learn the language. They are the rules of languages and orthography being transformed as a result of waves of invasions, with each invader bringing their own language and changing the pronounciation of some of the native words, to be replaced by another invader doing the same. This is not unique to English, but I do think that English is more eclectic than most other languages.
- hinoki 5y agoYou should have used Loughborough instead of Scarborough :) Low-barrow? Luf-baruff? I certainly had to look it up.
- jamiek88 5y agoIt’s luff-burra to save others looking!
- Symbiote 5y agoI know the university, and I'm amused that they choose https://www.lboro.ac.uk/ https://www.lboro.ac.uk/ rather than loughborough.ac.uk. It is about 20km north of Leicester, which I think is the largest city with a -cester ending, commonly mispronounced by foreigners.
- snapetom 5y agoEnglish is my second language. I took German throughout middle school and high school. I did alright with it. When I went to college, I decided to switch it up and take French. I could not get it. At all. Part of it was an extremely easy first semester professor followed by an awful, hard second semester professor. However, it just never, ever clicked with me. I went back to German to satisfy my two year college requirement. Later, upon reflection, I realized that I am heavily reliant on knowing grammar rules, and French was just too much of a change from German/English. Sure, German's verb conjugations and genders were new to an English speaker. However, because of the similar grammar, German was a lot easier for me to pick up than anything I've seen since.
- wirrbel 5y agoIts funny how sometimes 'antiquated' English text uses word order that is so similar to German ('When I Was One-and-Twenty'... etc). Sometimes when I read such stuff, I get the feeling that my English teacher might have marked the sentence as incorrect or 'sounding to German'.
- holyknight 5y agoi can relate
- gweinberg 5y agoThe article seems to miss the point that Twain was a humorist trying to be funny, not a linguist trying to write a serious criticism of a language's defects.
- dang 5y agoWe've since changed the URL. A Wikipedia article about another article that's easily available is not a good HN submission. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27177026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27177026 Side note - in all the many times Twain's essay has come up on HN (partial list at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27177031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27177031), I don't think I've ever seen a case of a German speaker taking offence at it or even reacting defensively. That's impressive! That is not how flamebait usually progresses. In most cases, the title would be enough to get hostile reactions, and the text too, despite that it's obviously in good fun and that only a serious student of German (and master humorist) could have written it.
- arduanika 5y agoMaybe this goes to show the Germans have a sense of humor after all. Thanks for the link change.
- bumbada 5y agoFor those that learn a new language, it is a good idea to suspend criticism on the language while you learn it. Every language has its pains. German using Sein and haven for auxiliary verbs in the past makes things way more complicated to learn. Not to talk about the irregularities of the past participle of verbs(that are not used in speech) that makes reading and writing way harder. But if you focus your mind on that you will for sure stop learning the language because you will have an excuse. The fact is that you could learn it like Germans could too, and in the end English is part germanic. And you can cheat. I learned Mandarin very fast, simplified and traditional script, which is crazy for most people because I cheated. I created my own software tools of spaced repetition software and because as a foreigner I did not have to follow the rules like Chinese nationals do. For example, Chinese take the order of writing characters and the process itself as sacred. For Chinese there is only one way of writing a character, but it doesn't need to be that way, you can cheat and learn to identify most important symbols you find on the street fast. The order and calligraphy is secondary. Ironically, the faster you use a language and can read things, the faster you will be able to write it. Just blocking yourself not being able to read a newspaper or novel because you can not write perfectly a symbol does not make sense. The phonetics of Mandarin unless you create software to repeat and repeat and repeat every day is simply impossible for any adult foreigner, because we as children have not learned the basic sounds. German phonetics by comparison is trivial in a tenth of the time.
- for1nner 5y ago> The phonetics of Mandarin unless you create software to repeat and repeat and repeat every day is simply impossible for any adult foreigner, because we as children have not learned the basic sounds. German phonetics by comparison is trivial in a tenth of the time. I'm not sure what you mean by this - that is very much person-dependent. As a primary English speaker, I was near-fluent in German before attempting Mandarin, and I found the inflection and tonal side of the language relatively trivial, whereas writing/reading (and generally rote vocabulary) have always been a struggle for me (similar experience across attempts to learn Latin, German, French, and Mandarin).
- Havoc 5y agoVery glad I learned it as a kid...
- dang 5y agoWe changed the URL from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Awful_German_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Awful_German_Language. Please don't post Wikipedia links when the original source is easily available!
- dang 5y agoOne past discussion: The Awful German Language (1880) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18147467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18147467 - Oct 2018 (311 comments) But there are plenty of other threads where commenters have referenced it. For fun here are some: Ghoti - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23581841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23581841 - June 2020 (239 comments) On Truth and Lying in the Extra German Sense - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20232136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20232136 - June 2019 (52 comments) German for Programmers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19109371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19109371 - Feb 2019 (253 comments) Shavian alphabet - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17844526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17844526 - Aug 2018 (113 comments) English is weirdly different from other languages - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14450379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14450379 - May 2017 (115 comments) Why the German language has so many great words - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11266465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11266465 - March 2016 (158 comments) How language gives your brain a break - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10002595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10002595 - Aug 2015 (40 comments) Why God Hates German Words - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2826507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2826507 - July 2011 (66 comments) Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1097258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1097258 - Feb 2010 (69 comments) Writing English as a Second Language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1055465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1055465 - Jan 2010 (26 comments)
- Entwickler 5y agoThere's a whole site dedicated to this http://www.theawfulgermanlanguage.com/ http://www.theawfulgermanlanguage.com/
- locallost 5y agoAs someone who's had to (or maybe wanted to) learn both english and german, I'd say german has a steeper initial learning curve, but it becomes easier later, whereas english can be easy to get going, but it's difficult to master (obviously the spelling, but also the more advanced use of tenses etc). Regarding Twain's complaints, the biggest lesson I learned from learning german at an older age was: languages are nonsensical, illogical, and the sooner you stop trying to make sense of it all, the faster you will advance. Children do not learn languages by being analytical and by comparing to what they already know, they learn by just accepting it as it is. This leads to a funny phenomenon that foreign speakers know the actual rules of a language better than most native speakers, simply because native speakers know things are as they are, but not why. Whether adults are capable of this is a different question, but trying to find logic in a language will only lead to frustration.
- B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago> and the sooner you stop trying to make sense of it all, the faster you will advance. I wish they would pound that forcefully into the grammarians torturing children in school. I look at the grammar they teach, and I think someone got paid to make stuff up.
- jacobr1 5y agoIn the US, my understanding is that english grammar is no longer taught in public schools.
- quercusa 5y ago> languages are nonsensical, illogical, and the sooner you stop trying to make sense of it all,the faster you will advance. In the first day of Koine Greek class, the instructor asked who had programming experience. She made a point of stressing, as she would again, that unlike computer languages, human languages show no signs of design, and not to spend any time looking for it. It was good advice.
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
- typhonic 5y agoI once listened to an audio version of this from librivox.org. It was read by someone with a German accent and it was hilarious.