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That’s horrendous and seems like bad form in any language. I was taught to write English as I speak it. If you need to pause, use a comma. If you need to breath

That’s horrendous and seems like bad form in any language. I was taught to write English as I speak it. If you need to pause, use a comma. If you need to breathe, use a period. But don’t run on sentences if you wouldn’t speak it out loud the same way.

aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> I was taught to write English as I speak it. [...] But don’t run on sentences if you wouldn’t speak it out loud the same way. This is no contradiction. In particular in formal public speaks in German it is not uncommon to use complicated sentence constructions - and the audience is expected to understand it. In other words: the difference is rather in the mentality. - The English mentality rather seems to be to avoid complicated constructions. This might be explainable by the melting pot of the United States, where you could not rely on that everybody is very knowledgeable in English. - The German-speaking world was historically much more culturally homogeneous. So you could rely on the fact that the conversational partner is pretty confident in the German language; so you could use sophisticated language constructions.
- BuckRogers 3y ago
  That’s interesting but I would still expect a German to take a breath. To your point, both the UK and US had melting pot scenarios. The former is where the vast majority of the language was defined. You may have guessed correctly that I’m American, but I speak nearly identically to my ancestors in 1776. Likely only losing some colloquialisms and picking up others. Perhaps losing Scottish, Dutch, French, German and Swiss accents. In my family, my g-great grandfather from Munich or Mecklenburg (both apply but I don’t recall which ancestor this was offhand), forbade children from speaking English at the dinner table. He thought they were making fun of him. Sometimes language is less melted and simply dies off.

aleph_minus_one 3y ago

> I was taught to write English as I speak it. [...] But don’t run on sentences if you wouldn’t speak it out loud the same way. This is no contradiction. In particular in formal public speaks in German it is not uncommon to use complicated sentence constructions - and the audience is expected to understand it. In other words: the difference is rather in the mentality. - The English mentality rather seems to be to avoid complicated constructions. This might be explainable by the melting pot of the United States, where you could not rely on that everybody is very knowledgeable in English. - The German-speaking world was historically much more culturally homogeneous. So you could rely on the fact that the conversational partner is pretty confident in the German language; so you could use sophisticated language constructions.

BuckRogers 3y ago
That’s interesting but I would still expect a German to take a breath. To your point, both the UK and US had melting pot scenarios. The former is where the vast majority of the language was defined. You may have guessed correctly that I’m American, but I speak nearly identically to my ancestors in 1776. Likely only losing some colloquialisms and picking up others. Perhaps losing Scottish, Dutch, French, German and Swiss accents. In my family, my g-great grandfather from Munich or Mecklenburg (both apply but I don’t recall which ancestor this was offhand), forbade children from speaking English at the dinner table. He thought they were making fun of him. Sometimes language is less melted and simply dies off.