4 ms·
Interesting that the Oppositional use of WID is shown as going to zero (presumably in favor of 'against' that filled that semantic space), yet that is still a r
by pge 3y ago
Interesting that the Oppositional use of WID is shown as going to zero (presumably in favor of 'against' that filled that semantic space), yet that is still a reasonably common usage in modern English. "David fought with Goliath" is used to mean "David fought against Goliath" (oppositional) or "David fought together with Goliath against a common opponent" (parallel).
In any case, the replacement of MID with WID (bringing with it some elements of 'against') explains some linguistic quirks I have noticed as a speaker of both English and German as to the differences between 'mit' (German) and 'with' (English), one of which is that 'mit' is not used to denote opposition ('gegen'='against' is used instead), while 'with' can be used that way.
- gpvos 3y agoIn Dutch (which is in some ways "in between" German and English, but usually closer to German), "vechten met" can indicate either opposition or parallelness.
- yorwba 3y agoIn German, too, "kämpfen mit" could be either ("miteinander" and "zusammen" allowing to distinguish between the two if necessary) and other verbs denoting opposition like "streiten" or "hadern" are basically always used with "mit". So GP was a bit hasty in declaring that "mit" is not used for opposition.
- pge 3y agoInteresting - has the usage of 'mit' with 'kämpfen' changed over time? I haven't lived in Germany for over 25 years, but when I first learned German, we were told very directly not to use 'mit' in that way with 'kämpfen' (i.e. that 'kämpfen mit' always meant together not against one another), and I don't remember hearing any exceptions to that when I lived there. I did notice, though, that certain English grammatical constructions were creeping into German, particularly in spoken German among young people. Is this one of those cases, or were my German teachers overly pedantic about something that wasn't strictly true?
- yorwba 3y agoIf it changed, it definitely wasn't only recently. Friedrich Schiller, Die Jungfrau von Orleans https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6383/pg6383.html https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6383/pg6383.html KARL. Hast du ihn drauf, wie ich dir anbefahl, Zum Kampf mit mir gefodert auf der Brücke Zu Montereau, allwo sein Vater fiel? Karl: "Did you then, as I bade you, Demand him to fight me on the bridge, Of Montereau, where too his father fell?" Schiller is otherwise using very archaic and/or dialectal language (anbefehlen, fodern, allwo) and yet "Kampf mit" (evidently referring to a duel, not some kind of fight together against a third party) already makes an appearance.
- gpvos 3y agoWhen some language construct is being taught as "incorrect", it often means that it's actually a natural part of the language (or maybe of a dialect) that is deemed to be wrong by so-called experts. Modern linguists are more descriptive than prescriptive, but teachers tend to keep propagating such ideas.
- User23 3y agoMy German is a little rusty, but I feel like the counterpart WIÐ has disappeared from contemporary German. It's interesting that German and English diverged that way.
- didgeoridoo 3y agoIn some similar cases, “against” would even sound odd: “I fought with my sister” is far more common than “I fought against my sister”.