The Eurofurence Forum
Off Topic => Everything Else => Topic started by: Onkel Kage on 28.04.2007, 19:01:43
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"The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure in complicating it in every way he could think of. For instance, if one is casually referring to a house (Haus) or a horse (Pferd) or a dog (Hund) he spells these words as I have indicated; but if he is referring to them in the Dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessary e and spells them Hause, Pferde, Hunde. So, as an added e often signifies the plural, as the s does with us, the new student is likely to go on for a month making twins out of a Dative dog before he discovers his mistake; and on the other hand, many a new student who could ill afford loss, has bought and paid for two dogs and only got one of them, because he ignorantly bought that dog in the Dative singular when he really supposed he was talking plural..."
Written by American humorist Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) in 1880. Full text here (http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html") is.
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I'll reply with Dearest creature in creation (http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/language/poem.html)
The first lines:
Dearest creature in creation,
Studying English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
It will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Pray console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it.
CU
CJ
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That's not to suggest of course that the English language doesn't have its own ignorances.
For example, having words which imply a number of tenses, like "read." (which can be applied to past and present tense)
Or words which have multiple definitions, like "live" - as in to live in a house, or a live electrical wire.
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"but if he is referring to them in the Dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessary e and spells them Hause, Pferde, Hunde..."
Ah, but that information is from 1880 indeed... no one in his right mind uses the dative "e" today in the above example, except he wants to sound old-fashioned upper-class quote-from-bookish. I even had to think about what "Hause" means without a "zu"... See, Germans strive to improve!
(Even overlooking that you buy "den Hund" or "die Hunde" before you can give "dem Hund"/"dem Hunde" or "den Hunden" a bone or two...)
A more serious problem these days are the many words imported from English, which ruin German pronounciation rules with their spelling and are in dire need of integration: Kompjuter, Sörfbort, Mänädscher, Förri, Ankelkage... ;D
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...A more serious problem these days are the many words imported from English, which ruin German pronounciation rules with their spelling and are in dire need of integration: Kompjuter, Sörfbort, Mänädscher, Förri, Ankelkage... ;D
;D ;D ;D
Cairyn, you just become one of few furries, who owe me a new keyboard. Mine is currently sprayed with orange juice and therefore good for thrash-bin... 8)
I must make a mental note:
lesson: No drinking while reading EF forum...
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You should try learning Dutch, then. It's like German except it got rid of all those cases and different plurals and all that, which it doesn't need anyway. The only downside is that nobody can pronounce it properly, and it sounds like a throat disease.
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Wasn't Dutch considered one of the hardest languages to learn from scratch, even harder than Japanese ?
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Depends on what you speak already. It wouldn't be hard for an English or German speaker, because Dutch is closely related to both of them. But for someone speaking for example Chinese, Finnish or Zulu it can be a bit of a problem.
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You should try learning Dutch, then. It's like German except it got rid of all those cases and different plurals and all that, which it doesn't need anyway. The only downside is that nobody can pronounce it properly, and it sounds like a throat disease.
Sounds like english out here, nobody can pronounce things correctly (or spell, the silly system I live in where several styles of spelling are accepted >.>)
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Wasn't Dutch considered one of the hardest languages to learn from scratch, even harder than Japanese ?
Ever tried learning Hungarian (Magyar)? Worse than Japaneese ;)
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Forget that, try Khoisan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khoisan_languages)! :P
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Forget that, try Khoisan[url]! :P
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khoisan_languages)
Oh yeah, I always wondered what was the language XiXao spoke :D
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Sounds like english out here, nobody can pronounce things correctly (or spell, the silly system I live in where several styles of spelling are accepted >.>)
I think the stuff they speak in Quebec is worse. They claim it was French but actual Frenchpeople told me it was some abomination of francophonetic English 8)
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I think the stuff they speak in Quebec is worse. They claim it was French but actual Frenchpeople told me it was some abomination of francophonetic English 8)
OH, c'mon, it ain't THAT bad. :P
Oh wait, closest I've ever been to Quebec is Ottawa and the Rideau Canal, lol
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Well, I could understand it when I was in Montreal some years ago. So it isn't really that bad.
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The Brits say the same about American though. And let's not get started on Afrikaans. :P Languages just evolve if they get separated from their 'homeland' so to say. Rather than to say the Quebec French speaking people are messing up their language, I'd say it's actually in the process of slowly becoming a language of its own. Don't believe me? Look at what happened to Latin in 2000 years! ;)
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Oh wait, closest I've ever been to Quebec is Ottawa and the Rideau Canal, lol
Heh, let me guess. It was winter and you were skating... oops, getting off-topic. But honestly, you just need to cross the river. On the middle of Cartier bridge suddenly people forget they ever knew a word of English. Almost like nort and south of Bruxelles - any Belgian furs here to correct me? ;)
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The Brits say the same about American though.
There is no such thing as the American language. There is such a thing as Philistine-English though. :P
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When does a language variety become a dialect? And when does a dialect become a new language? There's no clear divide really.
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Heh, let me guess. It was winter and you were skating... oops, getting off-topic. But honestly, you just need to cross the river. On the middle of Cartier bridge suddenly people forget they ever knew a word of English. Almost like nort and south of Bruxelles - any Belgian furs here to correct me? ;)
Never skated the rideau canal... Was too busy getting hyper on beaver tails, and doing other silly things that we won't go into ^_^ I live in the prairies, why would I go to the capital to SKATE? Looking at buildings with a beautiful rusty roof is much more fun. ~_^
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...A more serious problem these days are the many words imported from English, which ruin German pronounciation rules with their spelling and are in dire need of integration: Kompjuter, Sörfbort, Mänädscher, Förri, Ankelkage... ;D
;D ;D ;D
Cairyn, you just become one of few furries, who owe me a new keyboard. Mine is currently sprayed with orange juice and therefore good for thrash-bin... 8)
I must make a mental note:
lesson: No drinking while reading EF forum...
;D ;D ;D
fell out of my chair laughing reading this, thus getting a bruise... ack, the happy and the sad in just two seconds... oh well, at least my keyboard stayed clean!
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Wasn't Dutch considered one of the hardest languages to learn from scratch, even harder than Japanese ?
Ever tried learning Hungarian (Magyar)? Worse than Japaneese ;)
don't forget czech and slovak :-)
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"The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure in complicating it in every way he could think of. For instance, if one is casually referring to a house (Haus) or a horse (Pferd) or a dog (Hund) he spells these words as I have indicated; but if he is referring to them in the Dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessary e and spells them Hause, Pferde, Hunde. So, as an added e often signifies the plural, as the s does with us, the new student is likely to go on for a month making twins out of a Dative dog before he discovers his mistake; and on the other hand, many a new student who could ill afford loss, has bought and paid for two dogs and only got one of them, because he ignorantly bought that dog in the Dative singular when he really supposed he was talking plural..."
Written by American humorist Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) in 1880. Full text here (http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html") is.
Ah, I remember this famous quote. When I was at my German class, I read a bit of his ranting on the German language. Everyone thought that it was funny as heck.
Learning German can be a real pain... but I think that learning English is a lot more difficult, as we have a tendency to break a lot of our own rules.
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Why is it that when you send a gift in English, you are trying to make someone happy...
...but when you send a gift in German you are trying to make someone dead?
When I, an Anglophone, say to Nightfox, a DeutschGrammophone, "Nightfox, I have sent you a gift," should he be excited or frightened?
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Poison: The best way to please a friend! ;D
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You should try learning Dutch, then. It's like German except it got rid of all those cases and different plurals and all that, which it doesn't need anyway. The only downside is that nobody can pronounce it properly, and it sounds like a throat disease.
Jij denkt? >:|
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When I, an Anglophone, say to Nightfox, a DeutschGrammophone, "Nightfox, I have sent you a gift," should he be excited or frightened?
Depends on the type of gift and your humor... but in general we are capable of understanding context, like "which language is the rest of the sentence in". We're actually trying really to improve our skills here, by creating more and more complexer getting constructs mixing German sentences with Germanized English words or English words directly.
I assume you also didn't think we wish every female noun to be dead :)
*purrrr*
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Jij denkt? >:|
Dus ik besta. :P
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I assume you also didn't think we wish every female noun to be dead :)
Do you refer to the Meistersinger that everyone wants to kill?
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Jij denkt? >:|
Dus ik besta. :P
Don't quote Descartes at me young man. :P
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I assume you also didn't think we wish every female noun to be dead :)
Do you refer to the Meistersinger that everyone wants to kill?
No, I'm referring not to any person but to our definite article for female nouns, which is "Die" :)
Usage example: Die Küchenschabe.
*purrr*
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Well nobody's stopping you from using der for them. We Dutch have been doing that for centuries! ;)
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Why is it that when you send a gift in English, you are trying to make someone happy...
...but when you send a gift in German you are trying to make someone dead?
When I, an Anglophone, say to Nightfox, a DeutschGrammophone, "Nightfox, I have sent you a gift," should he be excited or frightened?
It is one of those "unfriendly" words that got mixed up in translations. I believe that a present (to give someone a gift) is "Geschenk." Correct me if I am wrong.
Similar to how "Who" and "Where" got mixed up in translation:
Who = Wer
Where = Wo
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In case you missed my sketch on Stage Fever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ2hWeI_u60
I fucking love the english language.
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Bleah... English is like... gumbo soup. You mix just about everything that you think tastes good and you just get something that's mediocre.
German is like a show of fireworks. Beautiful and powerful. Sounds cool, too! ^^
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Well you know what they say; the grass always looks greener on the neighbor's lawn.
Both languages have their peculiarities methinks.
Personally I prefer English, but German is a cool language nonetheless. ;)
Something in between Dutch and English: ;D
Rot Young
A terrible infant, called Peter
sprinkled his bed with a gheter.
His father got woost
took hold of a cnoost
and gave him a pack on his meter.
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Ah yes, John O' Mill... ;D
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Dutch and German have common ground in the Afrikaans language, I believe...
English may be Germanic, but in English's history, it's even related to Danish and Icelandic.
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Dutch and German have common ground in the Afrikaans language, I believe...
Only Dutch. Before anyone gets hurt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaans
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English may be Germanic, but in English's history, it's even related to Danish and Icelandic.
And those are Germanic too, so it still fits. :P
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Now i know why people frome the us sometimes ask if germany is near brasil ;D
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Apparently it's not quite clear where these languages originate from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Germanic_languages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Germanic_languages)
But it looks like they're all somewhat related. :)
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Well, something simple. The Scandinavian word for "I" is "Jeg," or "Jag," which curiously sounds very similar. (The G is silent, a trait of Scandinavian and the English languages.)
In Old English, the word for "I" is "Ic." (pronounced "itch".) "Ich," the German word for I, sounds similar, and is also orthographically similar.
The word for "You" in German, in its informal form, is "du," however, is much closer to the word "thou" in certain cases. "Thou" is obsolete in today's modern English.