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[CodeCat]

The Brits say the same about American though. And let's not get started on Afrikaans. 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!

[Apheler]

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?

[Shazomei]

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.

[CodeCat]

When does a language variety become a dialect? And when does a dialect become a new language? There's no clear divide really.

[whitewulfe]

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. ~_^

[Barney]

...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...

 

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... 

I must make a mental note:

lesson: No drinking while reading EF forum...

 

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!

[GreyLion]

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 :-)

[TheSonicGod]

"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 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.

[Onkel Kage]

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?

[CodeCat]

Poison: The best way to please a friend!

[KryoMouse]

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? >:|

[Zefiro]

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*

[CodeCat]

Jij denkt? >:|

Dus ik besta.

[Onkel Kage]

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?

[KryoMouse]

Jij denkt? >:|

Dus ik besta.

Don't quote Descartes at me young man.