Living in Germany is great, and I would recommend it to anyone. Speaking German, on the other hand, is terrible and it should be avoided at all costs. In fact, Mark Twain warned us way back in 1880 in his essay The Awful German Language not to bother with this language. There are countless reasons not to learn German, so let’s discuss a few:
- The German language is, in fact, impossible to learn unless you begin learning it as a baby. Starting to learn this language is impossible if you start later, because your brain will lack the capacity to learn so many senseless details, such as the different forms of the word “the”.
- You probably know in German there are three different genders der, das, and die. So for every single noun out there, you need to memorize a gender as well (the are some rules for determining gender, but for every rule there are just as many exceptions as examples that fit, so you still have to memorize every single one individually). But you also need to change the article, based on the case that you are using the noun in. Let’s see what this looks like in German:
|
German |
| Nominative |
der |
das |
die |
die (pl.) |
| Accusative |
den |
das |
die |
die |
| Dative |
dem |
dem |
der |
den |
| Genitive |
des |
des |
der |
der |
Now let’s translate that table into English:
|
English |
| Nominative |
the |
the |
the |
the (pl.) |
| Accusative |
the |
the |
the |
the |
| Dative |
the |
the |
the |
the |
| Genitive |
the |
the |
the |
the |
Do you really want to learn a language that has 16 ways to say the word “the”? And it doesn’t stop there, you need to learn 16 ways to say “a” (in English 2), and 32 ways to change adjective endings (in English we have 0). And you want to try to do this in real-time in your head while trying to carry one a conversation… forget about it.
- In English, when something is plural we just add “s” to the end. In German you add an “s”, an “e”, a couple of dots somewhere in the middle, an “er”, an “en”, or just do nothing at all and the word becomes plural. Also be careful what case you are talking in, because that changes the plural form again, should you use the dative case.
- For every verb you learn, you must learn to conjugate it for I, you, You, they, he, she, it, and ya’ll. You’ll also need to learn them in present tense, past tense, perfect past tense, and subjunctive. Oh, and having one subjunctive case isn’t good enough for Germans. Germans need two subjunctive cases, because they deem it necessary to designate hearsay grammatically.You will never learn all this, so don’t bother trying.
- No matter how good your German gets, most Germans will speak English much better than you can speak German. Let them do the work in learning your language, since they have to do it anyway to talk with the rest of the world. The British have figured out you can live in Germany with no problems without speaking a word of German, so just follow their lead.
- Use your lack of German speaking abilities to your advantage in the workforce. For every professional job in Germany, English is a required skill. So by default, any professional working in Germany who doesn’t speak English fluently either lied to get the job and/or is incompetent. Forcing these people to speak in English gives you an unfair edge in order to dominate negotiations. Try negotiating in German and you have the exact opposite situation… don’t set yourself up for a weaker position by learning enough German to get you into trouble.
- It makes business meetings more entertaining, because when you show up to the meeting and say you can’t speak German, the meeting has to be conducted in English to accommodate you. This will slow down the pace of the meeting considerably, because you are forcing the majority of the people to speak a foreign language, but Germans love to discuss things so much, that they will take up all the allotted time for the meeting either way. You might as well do this to make it more fun, because it’s really entertaining to watch people who agree with each other fight each other. Since the Germans in the meeting will be so busy trying to figure out how to say what they want to say next in English, they won’t have any chance to pay attention to what the other person is saying, so a heated argument will always ensue, even when the participants completely agree with each other. Sit back, drink some excellent European coffee, eat some Keks and enjoy, cause you wouldn’t be going home soon anyway.
- You will never learn how to say ö or ü.
- Germans will change their spelling system as soon as you learn it. By the time you learn the difference between das and daß, daß doesn’t exist anymore, and in its place you have words like Schifffffahrt.
- Tokio Hotel records English versions of their songs, so you have that angle covered as well.
deutsche Übersetzung für Astrid ein/ausblenden
Hi, Astrid,hier die Übersetzung:
Lernen sie nie im Leben Deutsch
In Deutschland zu leben ist toll und sehr empfehlenswert. Deutsch zu sprechen ist andererseits fürchterlich und sollte auf jeden Fall vermieden werden. Sogar Mark Twain hat uns schon im Jahre 1880 in seinem Aufsatz “The Awful German Language” davor gewarnt, uns nicht mit dieser Sprache herumzuschlagen. Es gibt unzählige Gründe dafür, nicht deutsch zu lernen, lassen Sie uns ein paar davon diskutieren:
- Die deutsche Sprache zu lernen, ist definitiv unmöglich, es sei denn, Sie beginnen damit als Baby. Später mit dem Lernen dieser Sprache anzufangen ist unmöglich, da Ihr Gehirn nicht groß genug ist, um so viele unnütze Details wie all die verschiedenen Formen von “the” zu lernen.
Sie wissen wahrscheinlich, dass es im Deutschen 3 verschiedene Geschlechter gibt, der, die und das. Also müssen Sie sich für jedes einzelne Nomen ein dazu passendes Geschlecht merken (es gibt einige Regeln, um das Geschlecht zu ermitteln, aber es gibt mindestens genauso viele Ausnahmen von der Regel, so dass Sie sich trotzdem jedes einzeln merken müssen). Sie müssen den Artikel dann auch noch, bezogen auf den Fall in dem Sie das Nomen verwenden, ändern. Schauen sie, wie dies im Deutschen aussieht:
|
Deutsch |
| Nominativ |
der |
das |
die |
die (pl.) |
| Akkusativ |
den |
das |
die |
die |
| Dativ |
dem |
dem |
der |
den |
| Genitiv |
des |
des |
der |
der |
Nun lassen Sie es uns ins Englische übersetzen:
|
Englisch |
| Nominativ |
the |
the |
the |
the (pl.) |
| Accusativ |
the |
the |
the |
the |
| Dativ |
the |
the |
the |
the |
| Genitiv |
the |
the |
the |
the |
Möchten Sie wirklich eine Sprache lernen, in der es 16 Arten gibt “the” zu sagen? Und hier hört es noch nicht auf, Sie müssen auch noch 16 Arten lernen “a” zu sagen (2 im Englischen) und 32 Möglichkeiten Adjektivendungen zu wechseln (auf Englisch gibt es 0). Und dies wollen Sie in Echtzeit versuchen hinzubekommen, während Sie an einer Konversation teilnehmen…vergessen Sie es.
Bei der Pluralform hängen wir im Englischen einfach ein “s” an das Wort. Im Deutschen hängen Sie ein “s”, ein “e” ein paar Punkte in der Mitte, ein “er”, ein “en” an oder Sie machen einfach gar nichts und schon wird das Wort zur Pluralform. Achten Sie ausserdem darauf, in welchem Fall Sie sprechen, denn das ändert die Pluralform noch einmal, falls Sie den Dativ verwenden.
Bei jedem Verb das Sie lernen, müssen Sie sich merken, wie es für “Ich, Du, Er/Sie/Es, Wir, Ihr, Sie” kunjugiert wird. Sie werden diese Verben ausserdem noch in Gegenwart, Vergangenheit, Perfekt und Konjunktiv lernen müssen. Oh, und eine Konjunktivform zu haben ist für die Deutschen nicht gut genug. Sie brauchen zwei Konjunktivformen, da Sie es für nötig halten, das Hörensagen auch grammatikalisch zu kennzeichnen.
Sie werden dies nie alles lernen können, also versuchen Sie es erst gar nicht.
- Egal wie gut Ihr Deutsch sein wird, die meisten Deutschen werden trotzdem besser Englisch sprechen als Sie Deutsch. Lassen Sie sie sich doch die Mühe geben, indem sie IHRE Sprache lernen, da sie dies sowieso tun müssen, um mit dem Rest der Welt zu kommunizieren. Die Briten haben bereits herausgefunden, dass man ohne Probleme in Deutschland leben kann, ohne auch nur ein Wort Deutsch zu können, folgen Sie einfach ihrem Beispiel.
- Nutzen Sie Ihre mangelnden Deutschkenntnisse zu Ihrem Vorteil bei der Arbeit. Für jeden kompetenten Job in Deutschland ist Englisch eine Grundvoraussetzung. Nach dem Ausschlußprinzip ist also jeder Fachmann, der in Deutschland arbeitet aber nicht fliessend englisch spricht, inkompetent oder hat gelogen, um den Job zu bekommen. Indem Sie Verhandlungen auf Englisch führen, sind Sie dabei automatisch in einer stärkeren Position. Auf Deutsch zu verhandeln bringt Sie in die umgekehrte Situation… bringen Sie sich nicht selbst in eine schwächere Position, indem Sie gerade genug Deutsch lernen, dass Sie sich Ärger einhandeln könnten.
- Es macht Geschäftstreffen unterhaltsamer, denn wenn Sie eintreffen und sagen, dass Sie kein Deutsch sprechen, wird die Besprechung zwangsläufig auf Englisch geführt, um Ihnen entgegenzukommen. Dies wird die Geschwindigkeit der Besprechung erheblich verlangsamen, weil Sie den Großteil der Teilnehmer dazu zwingen, eine Fremdsprache zu sprechen, aber Deutsche lieben Diskussionen so sehr, dass Sie die angesetzte Zeit für die Besprechung sowieso komplett in Anspruch genommen hätten. Sie könnten dies genausogute tun, um mehr Spaß zu haben, denn es ist wirklich sehr unterhaltsam, Leuten beim Streiten zuzuschauen, die eigentlich einer Meinung sind. Da die deutschen Gesprächsteilnehmer so sehr damit beschäftigt sind, zu überlegen, wie sie den nächsten Satz auf Englisch sagen, haben sie keine Möglichkeit mitzubekommen, was die anderen Personen beitragen, so dass immer eine hitzige Diskussion entstehen wird, sogar wenn die Teilnehmer komplett einer Meinung sind. Lehen Sie sich zurück, trinken Sie einen köstlichen europäischen Kaffee, essen Sie ein paar Kekse und geniessen Sie, denn Sie kämen sowieso nicht so schnell nach Hause.
- Sie werden nie lernen, ö oder ü auszusprechen.
- Die Deutschen werden ihr Rechtschreibsystem ändern sobald Sie es gelernt haben. Wenn Sie den Unterschied zwischen das und daß gelernt haben, gibt es daß schon nicht mehr und stattdessen gibt es nun Wörter wie Schifffffahrt.
- Tokio Hotel nimmt nun englische Versionen ihrer Lieder auf, so dass es hier auch kein Problem gibt.
Hab eine schöne Woche
John
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May 12th, 2008 at 5:49 am
Thanks for another brilliant analysis! Being a German living in Prague (and learning the local tongue), I feel compelled to add my two cents:
If you think that the few German cases are difficult then never try to learn a slavic language. In Czech, we not only have the 4 cases above, but also one for “in something” (locative), “with something” (instrumental) and, yes, an extra case just for saying hello! (vocative)
By the way: An American just last month explaned to me that they also have different cases: his/hers and him/her. Granted, that’s not too much to learn by heart. Is there *any* language in the world that has a simpler grammar than English and that native English speakers can learn easily? I would be surprised if this is the case.
May 12th, 2008 at 6:38 am
I remember some american who always tried to learn german… but all the time they had problems to say “rechts” (right) and “links” (left). It sounded like “reckts” and “lianks”.
Maybe you are right, but there are languages who are more difficult to learn (for example the chinese or the indonesian language).
Why the the most germans can speak english? It´s easy: In the most countrys you can find somebody who can talk with you in english. Next reason is that Germans learn english from the beginning of Junior High (in Germany it is the 5th class, after the elementaryschool).
Okay, there are still some other reasons… but i have to hurry up…
Cu later
Greetings,
Rockige
May 12th, 2008 at 6:53 am
How did you come to the idea, that “daß” does not exist anymore? It’s just spelled “dass” now.
I enjoy your weblog pretty much, but some of your posts just seem extensively ignorant to me. (Especially the propageting of not learning a countrys language, cause the others will damn well fit to you anyway… and then mocking about the way they do? That just sounds so stereotypically american.)
And anyway, if German would be easy to learn, it would be english.
(Try Latin, you won’t have problems with german afterwards, or french, or italian.)
May 12th, 2008 at 7:08 am
Perhaps your next post should be on the inability of some Germans to recognize humor?
My husband, the German, laughed out loud when I had him read this. Keep up the good work!
(And, PS, I took 4 years of Latin and 4 of French and still think German is very difficult- although, I am sure, not as much as Chinese.But I don’t need to learn Chinese.)
May 12th, 2008 at 7:32 am
Funny you mention Tokio Hotel. I was soo scared seeing them on Canadian television. I hoped this shame would never go global…
But come on, with more grammatical complications you’ve more possibilities to express yourself!
May 12th, 2008 at 7:43 am
In fact, I agree with you, you will more or less well get through Germany without speaking a word of german. But.
1. It is far more polite if you try at least.
2. I hate Americans (same for British, French, no matter) who step up to you and don’t even ask “Excuse me, do you speak english?” before beginning to talk. Sure, most young people speak the language, but still…
May 12th, 2008 at 8:01 am
Schifffahrt.
Schiff + fahrt.
Easy - isn’t it?
May 12th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Guys, take a chill pill, its not as if this all is meant serious.
May 12th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Being able to get around in Germany without any German at all also depends on the region you are going to.
In a university town like Heidelberg it’s no problem at all since most people are students here anyway and were required to take English in High School for several years.
However, if you go up north to the area around Wilhelmshaven for example (there are probably more areas like this), it will be much, much harder to find people able to understand English who can give you a reply that you will understand and be able to make sense of.
I don’t like people either who just assume that in Germany everybody speaks English and start speaking English to you without asking.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:08 am
I must be one of those rare Americans who have learned German and speak it better than most Germans do English. Contrary to popular belief, German is not a very difficult language to learn and it’s a lot easier than English.
One thing I HATE is when Germans insist on speaking English as they somehow think that if English is your first language that you must somehow be too stupid to know how to speak German.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:54 am
I’m from Germany and I know a guy who moved from the USA to Germany 1 year ago and under these circumstances his german is just perfect.
Of course, he mixes “der, die, das” up and also his “rechts” sounds like “reckts”, but at least he tries to speak german and everyone here in Germany understands him.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:58 am
As an American living in Germany I took the time to learn the language fairly well - though I’m sure I made plenty of mistakes. What I found though was that it was so obvious that I was American when I spoke that the people I talked to often requested that we speak English so that they could practice. Here I had taken the time to learn their language and no one wanted me to speak it to them. I’m still glad I learned to speak German though and I still love to hear the language even though it has been a long time since I’ve been there.
May 12th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Und wir fühlen uns geehrt, dass Du dir diese Mühe gemacht hast
May 12th, 2008 at 11:14 am
First point: I agree with some of the comments above that everyone should at least try to learn the most common phrases when visiting a foreign country. When I went to France last spring I approached the French with an “Excuse me, I am foreign. Could you please help me?” in French (I just can’t spell it anymore). They were delighted I at least tried to speak their language and in the end we used English (as it is the most commonly spoken language) and got along just fine.
Second point: The side effect of our overly complicated language (and it really is complicated, even Russian is easier to learn!) is that the German law is probably the most detailed and clearly formulated law in the world. I won’t say that this makes it more understandable, but it leaves little room for interpretation. I mean, after WW2 a certain country with no love for Germany had its own founding contract and reparation articles spelled out in German rather than English because our language is more precise.
Unfortunately, this makes the German language very unimaginative in my eyes. Subtle points or hidden humor are a lot harder to convey than in English. So, ours is the working language, yours is the fun language
May 12th, 2008 at 11:25 am
german is a great language, it is possible to bolt multiple words together and it still makes sense:
Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft
(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizit%C3%A4tenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft)
May 12th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
1. Ziemlich platter Artikel. Sollte wohl lustig rueberkommen, ging aber eher nach hinten los.
2. Woher kommt eigentlich der Glaube, dass man sich auf deutsch genauer ausdruecken kann als auf englisch?
May 12th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
If you’re complaining about the complexity of German grammar, you should try to learn Lithuanian (my girlfriend’s native tongue). Lithuanian grammar is much more complex than German, even more complex than Latin.
Besides, contemporary English is derived from old Anglo-Saxon, which was about as complex as German still is today - but in the time of Middle English, more and more complex forms got lost and replaced by simpler ones. Early modern English (the language of Shakespeare) still had a few of those forms, but today, they’re all but gone.
The more complex the grammar, the less words you need to say something - sentences get longer as language get simpler. And since the words themselves carry less information, the order of those words in a sentence becomes more and more fixed, so that the position of a word can be used as an information carrier. So in English it’s always S-P-O, while in German, there are more possibilities, and in some languages, like Latin, you can virtually put the words in any order you like, because the form of every single word determines its grammatical function - which also means that you can play around with the order of words to add some subtle meaning between the lines…
May 12th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I could write a similar statement about how difficult it is to me to learn the Englisch language… terrible.
May 12th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
How do you say German for “lack of any sense of humor?” Take it easy everyone! Great post/blog!
May 12th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Dirk: try Afrikaans. They’ve got hardly any inflection at all. Verbs aren’t conjugated except for a perfect marker (ge-), nouns only have plural markers which are rather straight-forward (not as simple as in English, but then again also English has got irregular forms). Plus, the syntax is neat.
By the way, hilarious article.
May 12th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Try Latin for a difficult grammar or Chinese for impossible pronounciation.
Great blog btw.
May 12th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
@ palndrom23
The word you’re looking for is “Humorlos” (humorless)
May 12th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
You are hilarious, and I really love you and I’m wondering if I could marry you. You might not want to, though, because I’m German and I can open bottles in all the ways you described, but Jeez, you got it all covered!
May 12th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Was seid ihr denn so unentspannt, der Jung hat recht, es ist schwierig.
Aber richtig knifflig wird erst bei Finnisch(wohl schwerste Sprache der welt), ungarisch und japanisch.
Wie kommt ihr Amerikaner eigentlich mit den verschiedenen Dialekten klar die darüberhinaus überall noch gesprochen werden? DAS stelle ich mir wirklich schwierig vor…
May 12th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
I suppose learning Dutch would be a good start for a naitive English speaker before messing around with German — only two gender forms or so (depending were you are and, in theory there are also three…) , grammar has been simplified and it sounds funny for both, Germans and Britons
But German & Dutch have one advantage over English: a lot is written the way it is pronounced/spoken!!! Why is English (& French) fixed to such an archaic spelling even when people decided to make one or two vowel [shoots] etc. every now and then?! GHOTI, GOTHI, GOTHI O:-)
Editor’s Note: My mom reads this.
May 12th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
I´m german too and I love this blog!! =)
You should just laugh about it and be proud that we know how to use this difficult german language
I really enjoy this blog, don´t stop doing this!
May 12th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Americans often say that Germans lack any sense of humor. This is certainly not true (http://andrewhammel.typepad.com/german_joys/2006/11/my_dear_krauts_.html) but it is true that we have a different sense of humer, especially when it comes to sarcasm.
But if you laugh about us having no sense of sarcasm (and hence not understanding a part of anglo-saxon culture), we could also say that you don’t understand ours, as you’re somehow not able to accept the fact that we can be happy the way we are.
So if you write an ironic (for an American) article about our language, you should be aware of the fact that some Germans might feel offended. If you can’t understand that, you understand our culture just as little as we understand yours.
May 12th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Stefan, to be honest, I am surprised that I have gotten very little negative feedback.
In fact, not one single email has been sent to my email account setup for criticism of this site. I was looking forward to posting a section filled with angry emails. Oh well, we can’t be a successful as we hope all the time.
May 12th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
German at least has a consistent pronounciation. The way the word is written, it is pronounced. Not like English were you have up to 4 different ways of pronouncing the same syllable. Though, through, bough, tough — madness!
May 12th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Twain’s text is real fun with a hard but small core of realism in it. My favorites are the paragraphs about rules and exceptions, the thousands of meanings of “Zug” and very long compound words.
But honestly, German propably is only terrible from the view of someone whose mother language’s Grammar is as simple as the English one. Four cases? Pah! If you want a real challenge, try learning Finnish!
May 12th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
I am German, but I still don’t get the “Neue Rechtschreibung”.
With the “die”,”der” and “das” - well, if you learn French, Spanish or Italian or……. you also have to learn all these funny articles. And in French the moon would be “la luna” - so female and in German it’s “der Mond” - so male. Also confusing for us, but that’s the way it is.
So don’t feel bad.
May 12th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Oh…getting around without any German is kind of difficult in some areas in Germany. In The Netherlands it’s easier than in Germany. My husband is American and had a rough time without any knowledge of German when we visited my parents. The people especially in the smaller towns and villages are shy to use their English. So it really depends in which part of Germany you are to survive without using any German.
May 12th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Yeah, thanks to the neue Rechtschreibung, I can’t even spell English words in German anymore, i.e. Tipp!
May 12th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
German really isn’t that hard. Sure, you got the inflections and conjugations, but its the same in french or spanish.
English has its hard parts too, pronounciation has tons of completely nonsensical exceptions (bomb, tomb; read, read; anything ending with -e), the progressive tenses, etc.
Regarding the neue Rechtschreibung, the ss/ß-rule actually got more intuitive with it. At least we have a definite way of spelling this, whereas English changes constantly.
May 13th, 2008 at 5:54 am
Come to Switzerland and enjoy a simplyfied German. Most cases lost, present, future and past tense. And even they aren’t real conjugations, because its just a gehen and a “go” (some weird leftover) and the Indikativ.
E.g. I gang go ässe - I’m going to eat. Nice, isn’t it?
(ok, dear, there it is, a ä. sorry, but you just have to learn the umlaute)
May 13th, 2008 at 10:48 am
I think you should be glad that you are not learning Irish Gaelic. They conjugate the prepositions, too. Yep. They do:
at = ag
at me = agam
at you = agat
at her= aici
at us = aigibh
at you (pl) = aiginn
at them = acu
For every preposition. And they inflect both nouns and adjectives (and whatever they can find) both at the end and at the beginning of the word - which makes it darn difficult to use a dictionary.
Yep. I think you should be glad it’s only German. We are economical enough to make do with four cases - Russian has seven. And we are not fussy about word order: just put every important bit at the end and you’re about right. (Or use Yoda grammar) And we do have regular verbs. OK. Not many. But we do try.
Oh, and I know a Canadian guy who learned German as an adult and speaks it better than most Germans I know. So, it’s possible. Of course, he might just be a genious.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Wir lernen Englisch zwar in der Schule, aber 80% der Leute verlernen es nach 1-2 Jahren. Für heutige Berufe ist natürlich Englisch Voraussetzung, aber nur in denen International gearbeitet wird. Der Bäcker oder die Verkäuferin an der Kasse benötigt kein Englisch.
Hinzukommt, dass die Aussprache des Englischen der Deutschen meistens grausam klingt, da sie den deutschen Tonfall benutzen.
Translation:
We learn english in school, but 80% of people forget the vocabulary after 1-2 years. Today it’s very important for business to speak english, but only for those they’ve international contact. A baker or a till girl doesn’t need English.
An other point is that the pronunciation of germans in english sounds awful, because they use the german accent.
May 13th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Well, as soon as you learned to speak german (yes, you will), try to learn french. I’m forced to learn french for 4 years now and I still have no idea on how to express myself without using german or english
So we seem to have something in common.
Quote from Rockige:
Next reason is that Germans learn english from the beginning of Junior High (in Germany it is the 5th class, after the elementaryschool).
I think nowadays you have to learn english as soon as you enter elemtary school? Though I still think it’s an extremly idiotic idea…
May 13th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
[…] Nothing for Ungood benutzt das inoffizielle Pronomen um zu erklären, warum Angelsachsen nicht Deutsch lernen sollen (Hervorhebung hinzugefügt): For every verb you learn, you must learn to conjugate it for I, you, […]
May 14th, 2008 at 1:11 am
In Germany small children learn German and master it eventually. This blog entry makes me think Americans get more stupid the older they grow, hence these language problems.
At lest in German you can tell how a word is pronounced when you see it, as opposed to English. Compare lead (noun) to lead (verb).
May 14th, 2008 at 8:04 am
@Martin: My kids already learn English in Kindergarten and I think it is a very good idea, because they now don’t learn it analytically but just as natural as everything else they learn.
Though there is something: When my wife and me now want to talk about something they should not know immediately, we have to use French. And je nix gut parles pas Fronßäs.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
* If you want to learn an easy language learn Esperanto! The only problem with that is that there are so vew speakers.
* As a native german speaker, I need to say that you are right: german grammar is way more complicated than it would need to be.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Lucky me:
I’m a halfbreed German-American (or American-German?), I grew up bilingual and beat all of you! lol
Lustig wird’s immer dann wenn ich Deutsch plapper und in der Nähe sind irgendwelche “It’s better in the states”-Touristen, die denken das sie sowieso niemand versteht, denen ich dann unverhofft was in feinstem General American vor den Latz knall. Die Gesichter sind, nunja, “priceless” ^^
May 14th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Nichtsdestotrotz empfehle ich jedem hübschen Fräulein, die Sprache der Dichter und Denker zu lernen. Es geht Nichts über einen jungen Mann, der in romantischer Manier in der deutschen Sprache jede Menge Süßholz raspelt
May 14th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Es ist interessant zu lesen, was Amerikaner und Engländer über andere Sprachen denken. Dass Ihnen bei einer solchen Einstellung nur wenig Sympathie entgegengebracht wird, sollte sie nicht wundern.
Man kann zwar in in anderen Ländern halbwegs problemlos auf Englisch eine Tasse Kaffee bestellen, aber die Herzen der Menschen erreicht man damit nicht - will man vielleicht auch garnicht.
Wer das nicht glaubt, fahre mal durch Lateinamerika und versuche sich mit Englisch/Amerikanisch durchzuschlagen. Er wird ans Gringo eingestuft und entsprechend behandelt.
May 15th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
@Nils: Hi m8! But “So in English it’s always S-P-O” - not quite, and it’s “S-V-O”. But the difference is that in English, you *can* divert from that rule for aesthetic purposes, whereas in German in some cases you *have* to divert from it to S-O-V.
“You will never learn how to say ö or ü.”
The “ea” in “earl” (the aristocratic title) comes pretty close to “ö” in sound. But unfortunately, the phonetic similarity is only superficial; “ö” is a front vowel, the sound seems to originate between your lips, which are held puckered. Sound silly, and indeed it is.
“Keks”
Interesting one. It’s apparently a literal transcription of “cakes”. 100 years ago, they still wrote “cakes” in German. I have no idea if that’s the reason why we write “Keks” today; maybe because “cak-” in German is too damn close to “Kack-”, which is not something you’d want to eat.
Back then, German also used the genitive apostrophe-s frequently, which today is called “Deppenapostroph” (”dimwit’s apostrophe”). See for example: http://www.springerlink.com/content/k56462032426n214/
May 15th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
When you started off with the infamously unfunny Mark Twain article, I thought that boded ill for the post, but thanks, this was actually one of the funnier articles.
It’s always struck me as particularly rude behaviour to talk back to people trying to speak German in English. Just think, fellow countrymen and - women, how deflated you feel when that waiter in a bar in Rimini answers you in German when you’ve just tried to order “due expressi”
May 16th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Congratulations!
I’m a german guy and I visited several times the USA.
So I can compare both sides of the medal.
Great blog!
I never was so amused reading so many preconceptions at a time.
:-)))
But they are all true!
So I’m out for revenge for this. I’m thinking about writing a blog:
“How to survive in America as a German.”
Greets,
Manni
May 17th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
German is a wonderfull language for literature because every aspect of information in every single word changes the way of seeing the world.
So every language offers a different way of understanding your environment and that is the interesting aspect of the variation of cultures.
May 17th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
@Stefan: Hilarious post, dude! Keep it up!
May 18th, 2008 at 8:28 am
This article is hilarious! Loved it.
May 18th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Deutsch ca. 350.000 Worte - Englisch ca. 750.000 Worte
Deutsch: Aussprache sehr regelmäßig von der Schriftform abzuleiten.
Englisch: Lerne die Aussprache von allen 750 T Worten einzeln, weil keinerlei Systematik.
Und Du jammerst über die paar Artikel?
PS. Warum kann man hier nicht auf Spanisch kommentieren? Immerhin 2. Amtssprache in großen Teilen der USA?
Spanisch: Aussprache noch regelmäßiger, weil 100% von der Schriftform abzuleiten!
¡Hasta luego!
May 19th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Allgemein:
1. Chinesische Grammatik ist sehr einfach - die Schrift ist schwierig zu erlernen.
2. Indonesische Grammatik ist sowieso leichter, als die europäischer Sprachen (Dass sie schwer sei, wurde oben fälschlicherweise behauptet).
3. Ob eine Sprache nun wirklich “schwer” ist, hängt meiner Ansicht nach vielmehr davon ab, wie leicht (oder schwer) sich der Erlernende damit tut, insofern er nicht gerade Latein lernt oder andere ähnlich komplexe Sprachen (z.B. gibt es am Amazonas und in Südafrika sehr viel umfassendere, umfangreichere Sprachen in Sachen Grammatik, als europäische Sprachen).
4. Der Artikel ist ganz lustig, fußt aber auf komischen Unterstellungen, Begründungen und vereinfachten Darstellungen.
Zur Sprache:
1. Die englische Schreibung hat wohl ein Legastheniker entworfen?
2. Die deutsche Grammatik mag zwar etwas umfangreicher sein als die englische - dieser scheinbare Makel wird jedoch durch den unendlichen englischen Wortschatz in Sachen Schwierigkeit in der Gesamtbilanz wettgemacht. Von daher kann man bei diesen beiden Sprachen nicht von einer einfacheren und einer schwierigeren reden.
3. Wenn dir die deutschen Artikel nicht passen, schau dir die Nominalklassen im Suaheli an.
4. Deutsch ist – trotz deiner fragwürdigen Argumentation, warum man sie nicht lernen sollte - die dritt meistgelernte Sprache der Welt.
5. Die deutsche Rechtschreibung beherrscht ohnehin fast niemand 100 %-ig richtig – was soll’s?
6. Sowieso beherrscht niemand seine Muttersprache perfekt, das unterstelle ich nun der Menschheit
Fazit: Lernt Deutsch, eine tolle Sprache :-)!
May 22nd, 2008 at 7:55 pm
great article.
One more reason not to learn german: English is often just more exact and uncomplicated. I used to talk english with my american boyfriend (who could speak german fairly well) because i couldn’t stand his painful expression when he tried to follow longer german sentences (schachtelsätze) plus whatever you want to say, in english you need 1 sentence when you need 2 to 3 in german.
For all those who still want to try, here’re some tips for german pronounciation:
1. when you want to pronounce ü, say a long eeeeeee (i) and then slowly without changing the postion of your tounge round your lips.
2. the same works for ö but starting from the german e-sound (which i can’T recall in any english word at the moment). it’s the e in the words Esel or eben.
3. To pronounce the german r. Germans claim that there r is formed as a trill in the back of the mouth. actually most germans don’t really articulate the r-sound at all. So if you want to articulate a german r just don’T try and say a german a instead.
so dont say wurst, but wuast, not aber, but abea, not sturm, but stuam.
it gets more difficult though when the word is starting with an r or the r comes after another consonant. but also in this case germans don’T pronounce an r but a soft vocalized hissing sound which is indeed pronounced in the back of the mouth.
the mean thing is that this sound is really close to the german ch-sound which i’ve heard no american pronounce correctly by now.
and to destroy all hopes for those seeking to learn the german language and to pronounce it correctly.
there are in fact three different ch-sounds in german articulation.
one is the ich-sound. this ch is articulated as a hissing sound in the center of the mouth. the ach-sound is articulated in the back of the mouth and the so called r-sound is articulated also as a voiced hissing sound in the back of the mouth.
If you want to learn about phonetics of speech in different languages visit this page http://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/ipa-lab.htm
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:49 pm
an simi1983: wieso sollte Englisch oft genauer sein als Deutsch? Und wenn es so wäre, wieso sollte es ein Grund sein, nicht Deutsch zu lernen?
Das Englische hat auch seine Nachteile (siehe enormes Vokabular z.B.).
Es ist schon tückisch, wie viele Deutsche ihre eigene Sprache herunterreden, obwohl sie gar nicht mal “schwer” ist, wenn man sich an ein paar Regeln hält. Kenne genug Leute, die Deutsch lernen, die Sprache schön/toll/wunderbar finden und weitgehend keine Probleme damit haben, sich verständlich darin auszudrücken.
Das mit den 3 deutschen Sätzen für einen englischen verstehe ich ebenfalls nicht.
Sehr eigenartig, wie Sie versuchen, den Leuten klar zu machen, sie sollen nicht Deutsch lernen. Hegen Sie einen Groll gegen die Sprache?
May 25th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
What this post illustrates the most to me is that regardless of which language is preferable, people really have problems with different sense of humour and sarcasm. Illuminating. My own experiences are more from British black humour and self-mockery, which is also something I haven’t come across in Germany a lot: tough when you’re a German in the first place.
May 25th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
@ peter:
Mein Statement über Deutsch kommt daher, dass ich in meinem Studium bis jetzt mit 7 verschiedenen Sprachen zu tun habe. Die Sekundärliteratur zu meinem Studium ist entweder Englisch, Deutsch oder Französisch. Die Primärliteratur ist in Sanskrit, Hindi, Kannada und Bengali.
Wenn man sich mit so vielen Sprachen beschäftigt, fällt einem früher oder später unweigerlich auf, dass manche Sprachen eine besonders schöne oder “anregende” Grammatik haben, dass manche Sprachen weniger Zweideutigkeiten zulassen als andere und dass manche Sprachen Kniffe haben, die besonders “elegante” Formen der Ausdrucksweise erlauben. Als Deutsch-Muttersprachler und als jemand der seine wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten in Deutsch schreibt (was nicht selbstverständlich ist) habe ich nichts gegen die Deutsche Sprache. Rein objektiv gesehen ist Deutsch aber im Vergleich zu vielen anderen Sprachen “schwerfällig”.
Ich merke das, wann immer ich Fachliteratur in deutscher Sprache lese. Hier ist es tatsächlich so, dass Ideen, die in einem englischen Aufsatz ohne jede Zweideutigkeit in einem Satz gesagt sind, in 2 bis 3 Sätzen ausgedrückt werden müssen.
Aber klar hat Englisch auch seine Nachteile (z.B. für Legastheniker, oder wie erklärt man eine Regel für die Aussprache von -ough- in verschiedenen Wortkontexten).
Du hast in einem deiner Comments geschrieben, dass die “Schwierigkeit” einer Sprache oft beim Lerner selbst liegt. Das stimmt meiner Meinung nach nur Teilweise. Wenn man sich einmal angewöhnen musste, dass Sanskrit Formen wie den Aorist kennt ist unabhängig von der Sprachbegabung froh zwischendurch mal Hindi sprechen zu können (hier wird nur ein Verb und zwar “sein” komplett durch konjugiert). Außerdem kann ich hier durch Partizipien mit einem bis zwei Worten sagen, wofür ich im Deutschen einen ganzen Nebensatz bräuchte.
So, nun nochmal genauer zur Frage: Sollten Englisch-Muttersprachler in Deutschland Deutsch lernen oder nicht?
Als Student der interkulturellen Kommunikation kann ich natürlich nur JA antworten, denn erst die Sprache eröffnet einem einen Zugang zur Kultur eines Landes. Um aber in die Kultur eines Landes einzutauchen brauch es vor der Sprache ein weiteres: den WILLEN dies zu tun. Und das ist doch eine Frage der persönlichen Entscheidung.
Und die Moral von der Geschicht’, die weiß ich nicht! :p
Ich konnte dennoch immer besser in Englisch streiten als in Deutsch (vor allem weil ich im Streit gern in die Umgangssprache rutsche die für meinen Ex, der ja Deutsch konnte, trotzdem oft eher komisch war).
Ein letztes an Alle: Herrgott, nehmt’s doch net alles so ernst! Das ist ja schrecklich. wenn ich das blog hier richtig verstanden hab ist das doch lustig gemeint. man kann auch da probleme schaffen wo keine sind.
May 26th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Ich frag mich ja immer, wie den Kindern in englischsprachigen Ländern in der elementary school zum allerersten Mal die Buchstaben und ihre Lautbedeutungen nahe bringt.
im Deutschen ist das ja relativ einfach, abgesehen natürlich von ein paar Sonderregeln wie beim z. B.eu oder sch:
Das A spricht man wie folgt aus. *a-Laut aussprech*
Das B spricht man wie folgt aus. *b-Laut aussprech*
usw…
Und wenn man dann die ganzen Buchstaben-Symbole und ihre assoziierten Laute gelernt hat (bei Konsonanten meist im Namen enthalten, bei Vokalen IST das der Name!!), kann man schon lesen!
Im Englischen aber ist das nicht so einfach…
May 27th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
an simi1983:
Zuallererst:
Statement = Aussage, Standpunkt, Stellungnahme, …
Comment = Beitrag, Kommentar, …
Wollt ich Ihnen nur mal nahe legen, da Sie ja meinten, die deutsche Sprache zu mögen
Es ist sehr bemerkenswert, dass Sie so viele Sprachen erlernen und anwenden. Meine Hochachtung. Auch ich finde es schön, neue Sprachen zu erlernen. Vor allem Sprachen, die sich nicht durch Kolonialwahn und Imperialismus beispielsweise ausgebreitet haben.
Mir macht es darüber hinaus ebenfalls Spaß, auch mal auf anderen Sprachen zu reden, da ich zum Beispiel Dinge anders darstellen kann und es für mich ebenfalls sehr interessant ist, andere Grammatiken, Wörter, Laute, usw. zu erlernen und zu praktizieren. Das Deutsche als meine Muttersprache ist jedoch meine unangefochtene Lieblingssprache, da ich finde, dass man seine Kultur und vor allem Sprache stets wahren und vorrangig behandeln sollte (meine Meinung).
Zum Thema.
Bitte hören Sie auf, Ihre persönliche Meinung als allgemein gültig festzulegen. Meiner Ansicht nach rücken Sie Ihre persönliche Meinung viel zu sehr ins Zentrum Ihrer Argumentation. Ich wiederhole es nochmals: Mir sind viele Menschen bekannt, die Deutsch lernen und keine Probleme mit der Sprache haben, insofern sie sich verständlich darin auszudrücken wissen. Es kann sein, dass es hier und da Sprachen gibt, in denen man dies und jenes leichter auszudrücken vermag, als im Deutschen. Doch werden Sie, da bin ich mir sicher, im Deutschen gleichfalls Vorteile finden, im Bezug auf jedwede andere Sprache.
Und selbst wenn es nicht so wäre, sind genug Personen zu nennen, die sich durch die deutsche Sprache einst Rang und Namen verdient haben – oder unter Verwendung dieser - und selbst damit zu Weltgeltung kamen (Goethe, Nietzsche, Schiller, Tokio Hotel (leider schreiben sie nun auch englische Texte, allerdings nicht mein Geschmack), Hegel, Kant, Schopenhauer, usw.). Also kann man doch höchst zufrieden sein als Deutscher, eine Sprache zu sprechen, die gleichfalls nebenbei die dritt meistgelernte der Welt ist, was unter Anderem diesen Deutschmuttersprachlern zu verdanken ist. Das soll nicht heißen, dass ich Sprachen mit geringerer weltlicher Geltung herunterreden möchte. Im Gegenteil. Je mehr Sprachen es auf der Welt gibt, desto spannender und aufregender, finde ich.
Dass viele Menschen gereizt auf das Thema reagieren, ist wahrscheinlich daran festzumachen, dass der Artikel bei vielen einen markanten Nerv trifft. Es ist nun mal wirklich so, dass die deutsche Sprache durch ihre Verwender unnachhaltig behütet und gehegt wird. Mir ist nämlich nur von diesem einen (Deutsch-)Land bekannt, dass die eigene, innewohnende Sprache einerseits Opfer derartiger Amerikanisierung ist, wie es sonst nirgends der Fall ist und andererseits - was mir auch oft unterkam – ein Großteil der Deutschen beispielsweise auf Menschen nichtdeutscher Herkunft, die leichte bis schwerwiegendere sprachliche Schwäche im Deutschen haben und sich in der deutschen Sprache versuchen, einfach auf Englisch einreden, was wiederum meiner Meinung nach sehr diskriminierend, richtig peinlich, äußerst schade und einseitig ist. Auch ich fühle mich dadurch, das gebe ich offen zu, sehr gestört. Insofern ist es schon ein Problem und diese Plattform dient der Thematisierung dieses Problems, da es sonst nicht ausreichend thematisiert wird.
Dass es für Deutschmuttersprachler nicht üblich ist, wissenschaftliche Arbeiten auf Deutsch zu schreiben, ist meiner Meinung nach ebenfalls sehr traurig und zeugt von wenig Selbstbewusstsein.
Stellen Sie sich vor, Sie gehen in ein anderes Land, freuen sich darauf, die neu erlernte Sprache zu sprechen und finden dann überwiegend kulturlose Sandsäcke vor, die nicht einmal vor sich selbst, sprich; ihrer eigenen Kultur, Achtung haben – wären Sie nicht schockiert und niedergeschlagen?
Das sind nun ein paar Anregungen um die Befürchtungen, Ängste, den Ärger, Kummer, usw. vieler Menschen zu verstehen, die diesem Problem anhängen.
Nun kann man sich auch denken, was ich mit jemandem tun würde, der sich verhält wie der obige Ersteller des – naja - ganz netten Beitrages
Ihr Privatleben geht mich zwar nichts an, aber: Tut mir Leid mit Ihrem amerikanischen Freund, doch geben Sie es zu – er konnte sowieso nicht richtig Deutsch
- also, was soll’s!
May 28th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Here another point of view. For this author we have not enough words:
“For instance, the same sound, SIE, means you, and it means she, and it means her, and it means it, and it means they, and it means them. Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six — and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that. But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey.”
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html
Is it possible that we do anything right?
May 28th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
@Maren:
you = du, Sie, ihr, dich, euch, man
Even again!
May 29th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Brilliant article. I nearly pissed my pants. I am German and I love my language but I agree: it’s very hard to learn for a foreign adult.
BUT I have to say, that a LOT of Americans or British speak German very well. Never mind the genetiv and “dem, deren, dessen” stuff - that’s really not important to say something precisely.
May 29th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Not speaking German properly can even lead to fame and fortune!
http://nothingforungood.com/2008/04/23/open-letter-to-bruce-darnell/
June 4th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I just found the blog, and I can’t stop laughing. I’m an American living in Germany (currently Oberfranken, but I’ve lived in Nordrhein-Westfalen and Baden-Württemberg), and I love some of the quirks, similarities, and differences between US and German culture (yes, we do have some culture - kitschy at times, but it is one :P). The reference to “The Awful German Language” is fantastic, and describes the challenges I’ve had in learning the language since I got here. My favorite bit? When Twain makes a point about some the idiosyncrasies between English and German:
Gretchen.
Wilhelm, where is the turnip?
Wilhelm.
She has gone to the kitchen.
Gretchen.
Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?
Wilhelm.
It has gone to the opera.
Oh, for the people pointing out the nuances in English, George Bernard Shaw summed it up in one word: ghoti. For those unfamiliar, it’s pronounced “fish.” You know, “gh” as in “tough,” “o” as in “women,” and “ti” as in “nation.” Simple, ain’t it?
June 6th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Btw. Chinese would be really easy if there would not be these impossible tonations ant the completely outlandish writing system.
So, despite the fact that chinese is just terrible for these reasons, the grammar and the way to use and combine words ist just great.
June 7th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
I find quite a few of these points incredibly amusing. Firstly, German is not “impossible” to learn. It is a language, and just like any other language, it can be learned given enough time, desire, and discipline. Just because a bunch of Americans start crying the moment they encounter something as “novel” as masculine, feminine and neutral pronouns or the genitive cases does not make German “impossible” — it only makes certain people impossible.
The second point smacks of ignorance and arrogance, a deadly combination. Again: just because some people seem to have some kind of inexplicable malfunction when it comes to mastering certain sounds (give me a break — after an entire year, there is no reason you should not be able to properly pronounce the ‘r’ in ‘rechts’ or the ‘ch’ in ‘ich’ unless you are challenged in some way) does not mean Germans will “always speak German better.”
Less than three years after I began learning the language German speakers would have to talk with me at least ten minutes until they began suspecting it was not my native language. Even then, the only thing that gave it away was that I would sometimes pause to search for pertinent vocabulary when discussing complicated topics.
You sound lazy, arrogant, and ethnocentric. You should just leave Germany if you don’t love it and have no plans to integrate. The States is a great place for that type.
June 7th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
“Btw. Chinese would be really easy if there would not be these impossible tonations ant the completely outlandish writing system.”
Wow, I guess ignorance attracts ignorance.
The “tonations” are NOT ‘impossible,’ you’re prbably just tone deaf. There are only FOUR of them. How incredilby challenging can this possibly be for you? Ma1, ma2, ma3, ma4. Just practice for half an hour every day for two weeks, you’ll get it. You are either stupid or lazy or both.
But the real icing on the cake is you referring to the eight thousand year old writing system as “outlandish.” What are you, some kind of freak that just crawled out from under a rock? How can you make such an imbecilic comment? You sad fool. Again, you are probably either spacially challenged, lazy, stupid, or any combination of the three.
Start with five characters a week and write each one ten to thirty times a day, taking care to use the correct number of strokes and stroke direciton and you’ll get it eventually. How ironic you’d call it “outlandish” when, in fact, fifty years ago the PRC even SIMPLIFIED it to make it as idiot proof as possible. But I guess you won’t be satisfied until they give up on their “outlandish” writing system and start using the Latin alphabet, eh?
Morons leading morons.
June 9th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
First of all, please forgive me if my spelling sucks (I’m German).
Now to the things have the need to say:
1. Alle Deutschsprachigen, die sich über diese Webseite oder ihren Inhalt aufregen, sollten sich die Mühe machen die einleitenden Sätze zu lesen (85% Wahrheit und 15% Unsinn, Halbwahrheiten, Falsches) und/oder sollten vielleicht nochmal in den Keller gehen, um ihren verloren geglaubten Humor rauskramen.
2. All native English speakers which take an offense if unasked talked in (D)English to: Don’t take it. Those people just try to make your stay more comfortable.
3. German words alone are pretty easy to learn. But be warned: The grammar will be killing (at least 1 exemption to every rule, at least 2 ways to build a sentence, 3 differently expressed genders, 4 cases) That’s why German is listed as one of the hardest to learn languages.
4. Whoever said English is easy to learn, should try to express “a group of certain animals”. Just a few examples:
- a HERD of horses
- a FLOCK of sheep
- a PRIDE of lions
- a LODGE of beaver
- a MURDER of crows
And there are a lot more!!!
Finally: This website was made to get a few laughs out of the oddities of German language and behavio(u)r and I got quite a few reading the stuff above the comments. Good work!
——
The horizon of most people is a circle with a radius of zero. They call it their point of view. (Albert Einstein)
June 24th, 2008 at 1:15 am
Einfach köstlich dieser Artikel und das Blog im Allgemeinen. Eigentlich müßte ich schon längst schlafen, aber ich habe mich hier festgelesen.
Lassen Sie sich bloss nicht irritieren durch humorlose Kommentatoren, denen der Feinschliff ihrer Artikel, sprich die Satire, entgeht.
Liebe Grüße
Manuela
June 27th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) has a simpler grammer than English.
Want to make a noun plural? You say it twice!
June 29th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Very. Funny. Thanks.
July 3rd, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Well I guess Sebastian can add “successfully fails to detect irony or sarcasm” to his modest CV!
July 4th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Ich find den Artikel hamma…wieso sollte man nicht über sein eigenes land lachen können…die sprache selbst..naya is eig. ganz einfach , nur die grammatik und ihre 10.0000 Regeln ist echt zum kotzen..
July 30th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
You forgot to mention that English is an elegant blending of old German and old French and has evolved march farther beyond its simpler root-languages than their own modern versions hve, and English is therfore superior and should be used by everybody, especially the Germans and the French.
July 30th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
I’m laughing out loud here! As someone who has started to learn German as a teenager (with the exception of one or two swearwords picked up from Dad) I can agree with most of the difficulties expressed in the blog entry and comments. German IS one of the more difficult languages to learn.
Speaking of difficult-to-learn languages, I have studied some Japanese (still working on kanji, I’m only up to a 6th grade level at the moment) and am in the process of studying Chinese, and both are much easier to me than German even though I’m older now. Chinese to me is a very musical language where a word or sentence structure often just has to “sound right” to be right, in my opinion. I’m learning Mandarin Chinese, by the way, since I’m not so sure whether my ear can distinguish between nine or even more tones of some other dialects. Japanese is a very “logical” language, pronunciation-wise somewhat between French, German and English.
My major problems with German were with the pronunciation, as noted in John’s blog entry, “ö” is almost impossible to do right if you’ve not had a similar sound composition ingrain itself in your speech apparatus while you were still developing. It is somewhat irksome to me that even after six years of actively speaking and using German I’m still incapable of speaking accent-free unless I concentrate very much.
Building vocabulary is just about the same for me in every single language- I’ll have to say that I’m someone who learns best if wholly immersed in a new language, without recourse to familiar fields and without grammar or vocabulary lists. The only language where I had to use SOME grammar lists was German since- I’m very, very sorry to say!- it seemed to neither have a “logical” rhythm nor a melody I could follow (e.g. like French). I know that case-wise it is still in the lower field- what are four against Latin’s six (if you don’t count the different ablatives as separate cases), or Finnish’s thirty-somethings? Latin I studied, Finnish I’m happy to leave to the native speakers (too many “ö” sounds in there for me, too, sorry!)…
I guess the human brain can process anything as long as it really wants to- but I’ll say that German is doing its d*mn best to make that rather difficult.
August 28th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
So you think German is a difficult language? Lucky guy, you never had to learn trillions of phrasal verbs like “put off” “put down” “put aside” “put forward” “put in” …
English might seem to be an easy language at the first glimpse, but when it comes to details you will realize that it is the most difficult language in the world!
August 28th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
einsetzen, aussetzen, absetzen, versetzen, entsetzen, übersetzen, ansetzen, aufsetzen, nachsetzen…
Point not taken.
August 28th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Hinlegen, weglegen, beiseitelegen, vorlegen, ablegen, umlegen, verlegen…
The English language is not alone with this.
September 1st, 2008 at 3:21 pm
You are absolutely right. If I wasn’t a native speaker I would never learn it myself. But only because I am lazy.
There is really to much unnecessary grammar in our language. Unfortunately we first realize when it comes to learning English. That’s why it is not introduced until 5th grade. Otherwise German children would refuse to learn German grammar
But anyway, there are people who like the language, me for instance. In comparison to English you have the possibility to express things in an much more accurate way. My Canadian roomate even called it “much more sophisticated”.
So everyone, if you want to be part of this sophisticated-speaking world, dare to learn it!
September 1st, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Hi Marius,
nice to hear that you like German (you’re the only one I’ve ever met in my life)
I don’t think that we can express things more accurately, we just do it in a different way. I think the most complicated thing in English is the vast amount of words and synonyms and as a non-native speaker you’re very likely to choose the wrong word in the wrong moment ;-O)
Cheers
September 9th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Only short comment:
I really liked that article, I laughed a lot, in a positive way of course, on reading the part with the business meetings : ]
September 20th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
ha! i can’t believe you keep saying “don’t bother” “you will never learn this” and so on!
your nice. not.
it really depends on the person, talent, practice, and how long you have been learning and speaking the language and how long you have been living in the country.
yes it is difficult for english speakers to learn german but you can’t say it’s impossible. i know americans how speak perfect german! very very few mistakes every now than but that is normal!
what do you think? bis du verrückt?
September 28th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
@kk: He’s just joking!! This blog is nothing but fun, you needn’t take this too seriously.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:39 pm
You’re a [jerk]
1. other languages are hard to learn, too. Americans are just plain lazy to get used to another language or culture.
2. see 1.
3. did i already mention you’re a [jerk]?
4. In that case you’re surprisingly right. But being productive means something different.
5. plain wrong. I have an american exchange partner who is not someone into languages, more science. But he speaks ä and ö exzellently. As well as the articles, btw.
6. looking for well-defined systems is important. At least the enhancement is meant for making it easier to learn German for other people
7. tokio hotel sucks.
Editor’s note: Personal attacks on me are fine, but please at least keep the language to a standard the FTC would accept. Thanks.
October 24th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Dirk: There are a few languages areound that are simpler than engish, but they are usually only spoken in teh jungle (indoesia for example). There are languages with no cases, no time, only verbs and nouns.
October 27th, 2008 at 7:24 am
Ladies/Gentlemen, To point out - I agree that German is difficult, especially the grammar. I am from India and my partner is a german national and so are my children. German grammar is terrible and I think even the Germans have not mastered it - not to generalize - I should say most of the germans.
The 2nd part is I always say this to my partner also - That Germans have a bit of complex problem or they are not confident that “Die Englisch” they speak is good. I would like to say this to ge Germans - drop it and start talking - just as I have done and I bet that they speak better “Englisch” den meine Deutsche.
October 27th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Ein wunderschöner Artikel
Ein excellenter Blog!
Ich werde deine Artikel mit Freude weiter beobachten!
October 27th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Great article. And true, amazingly. But German to English is a ridiculous easy challenge. You are looking for the real thing? Here it is - Finnish.
“Good morning” in English translates to “Guten Morgen” in German. Not to far away, I say. But in Finnish, it’s “Hyvää Kuomenta”. Obviously.
Riding a public bus is risky, as long as you won’t travel through Finland’s south. Why? Well, would you press a button labelled “Pysähtyy” to drop of the bus?
Finish is an associative-free language which truly is impossible to learn. Even Japanese or Chinese is much more easier to learn.
The good part is that Finnish is very easy to pronounce: Always emphasize the first syllable. And pronounce every single letter. That’s all. You can read of the newspaper accent-free without understanding one single word. Oh, and the Finnish are very polite and friendly. Plus, they speak a clear English with a scandinavian accent - very easy to understand.
Greeetz, Thomas
October 29th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Hmm. I am learning spanish these days. I have learned english, russian and french. I can say => english is the most primitive language. thatswhy it is so easy to learn. but sounds it nice?????
October 29th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
No! French sounds very well, and it has even more times. But that the typical problem, there is no better way proofing your´re an “alien” than using a 100 per cent correct grammar.
Things like “Future II”: Ich denke, dass es nächste Woche erledigt sein wird!
Germans use only (max.) three “Zeiten”.
Past: Ich ging
Present: Ich gehe
Future: Ich werde gehen
most common:
Past: Gestern ging ich
Present: Heute/Jetzt gehe ich
Future: Morgen gehe ich
October 29th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
I loved your piece. I’m living in Austria, and trying to learn German. Not only do I have to get to know German, but also the Austrian dialect, and then, because I’m in the Salzburg region, some very strange pronunciations. Sometimes the wheels in my head spin so fast and then just grind to a halt.
October 29th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Well, actually, Germans hardly use simple past / preterite (Präteritum). It would be correct, yes… but we mostly use perfect (Perfekt).
“Gestern bin ich gegangen.” is much more common in spoken language than “Gestern ging ich.”
However, there are many different levels of language depending on situation, whether it’s spoken or written language and so on… but I think that’s something most languages share with each other.
November 1st, 2008 at 1:50 pm
I also think Americans are just too lazy to learn foreign languages.
When you have persons in a meeting which don’t understand German can be a big advantage. You can talk German with your neighbours and can be shure that the persons who only speak English have no idea what you are talking about.
If you only speak English, you will also get big problems in countries like the Czech Republic because you will find more people speaking German than English. It’s because they think it’s better to learn the language of the neighbour country than a third language that nobody except the americans speak perfectly. And even when they speak English, they often speak German much better than English.
They have no problems with the various german cases because their language is even more complicated! The Czechs are also wondering about the english writing because if you can not be shure how to pronounce an english word if you read it.
Because of this they take english words and change the writing:
team -> tým, cowboy -> kovboj, engineer -> inženýr
If you can understand German you also have advantages understanding other germanic languages: e.g. Dutch, Norwegian or Swedish
The sole reason why so many people speak English is because the grammar is easy. But it’s also ambiguous that’s a big disadvantage when you write a contract in English!
By the way:
English is an antique germanic language!
German is a much more modern germanic language.
Most Germans think that the NASA was never on the moon because Americans are much better in creating big Powerpoint documents than in building technical things. You only have to look at their car industry:
Heavy, high consumption and bad electronics.
Übersetzung:
Ich glaube auch, daß die Amerikaner einfach zu faul sind eine fremde Sprache zu lernen.
Es kann ein großer Vorteil sein, wenn man in einer Sitzung Personen hat, die nur Englisch sprechen. Man kann sich mit seinem Nachbar in Deutsch unterhalten und kann sich sicher sein daß die nur Englisch Sprechenden
kein Wort verstehen.
Wenn man nur Englisch kann, hat man in einigen Ländern wie Tschechien in ernste Probleme. Man wird mehr Leute finden, die Deutsch sprechen als Englisch. Die Tschechen meinen es ist besser die Sprache des Nachbarlandes zu lernen als eine Dritt-Sprache, die sowieso nur die Amerikaner perfekt sprechen. Und sogar wenn die Tschechen Englisch sprechen können sie zumeist Deutsch viel besser als Englisch.
Die Tschechen haben auch keine Probleme mit den deutschen Fällen weil Tschisch noch viel komplizierter ist! Die Tschechen halten auch von der englischen Schreibweise nicht viel weil die Betonung aus der Schreibweise nicht klar hervor geht.
Deshalb nehmen sie englische Wörter und passen die Schreibweise an:
team -> tým, cowboy -> kovboj, engineer -> inženýr
Wenn man Deutsch versteht hat man es auch leichter mit anderen germanischen Sprachen: z.B. Niederländisch, Norwegisch oder Schwedisch.
Der einzige Grund warum soviele Leute Englisch sprechen ist weil die englische Grammatik einfach ist. Aber die englische Sprache ist auch nicht eindeutig. Das ist ein großer Nachteil in Verträgen in Englisch!
Außerdem:
Englisch ist eine altmodische germanische Sprache!
Deutsch ist eine viel modernere germanische Sprache.
Viele Deutsche denken daß die NASA niemals am Mond war.
Amerikaner sind viel besser beim Erstellen von großen Powerpoint Dokumenten als im Bauen von technischen Dingen.
Man muß sich nur deren Autoindustrie ansehen:
Schwer, hoher Verbrauch und miese Elektrik/Elektronik
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:44 am
http://www.vistawide.com/german/why_german.htm
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
It definitely is possible to learn German. I have a friend who went to a college in London where they can teach you to speak in it in a weekend. If I can ever dig up or find the details I’ll post them here.
November 4th, 2008 at 6:27 am
When you really want to learn german perfectly,
i would recommend an exchange to germany.
that would be the best i think.
November 4th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
I totally disagree.
German is not at all illogical and difficult. I have learned it as a foreign language and I speak it fluently. I bet the writer of this piece of text is someone who stood up one day and decided “I’ll learn German” but he didn’t commit himself to it. Learning ANY language requires many efforts and immersion, including getting to know the culture.
Being a linguist, I can tell that there is no such thing as “easy languages” or “difficult languages” … sure, depending on your native languages you will learn some languages quicker than other ones, I agree! But if you really WANT it, nothing is too much. Anyone can produce any sound of any language, you just need to put in some effort.
The German language has fewer irregularities than French and English! (look it up if you do not believe me) yes, I know, the case system requires some time to get into but once you’ve made it it sounds natural. Many specialist agree with me. German is more difficult in the beginning than most other languages, but the more advanced you get, the easier it becomes… whereas languages like English are easy to pick up for trivial conversations, but if you really want to reach a certain level… it is very difficult. If you are honest and objective about all those non-native speakers of English claiming to speak it well… you will have to admit that many of them - if not the majority - suck and will only survive in easy, trivial no-nonsense conversations.
At least in German you can be nearly always sure the spelling corresponds with the pronounciation! When we speak of English… the most inconsistent dumb spelling ever invented!
Kind regards
Thomas
November 5th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
This is soo hilarious, schon lange nicht mehr so gelacht. Wir haben eine Amerikanerin bei uns im Büro, die gerade alles erleidet, was hier angesprochen wird. Vor allem die deutsche Unart, sich ständig zu bekämpfen auch wenn man sich eigentlich schon einig ist.
Really fun to read, keep it up!
November 11th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Ich finde diese Seiten hier sehr amüsant und bildend zugleich.
Außerdem plädiere ich für die Entwicklung einer Weltsprache.
Allerdings halte ich nichts davon, einfach zu sagen, wir könnten doch Englisch zur Weltsprache erklären.
Man sollte schon eine Sprache kreieren, die für alle Völker einfach erlernbar ist.
Ich hörte mal, dass bspw. die Malayische Sprache sehr einfach zu erlernen sei… korrigiert mich, wenn das nicht stimmen sollte.
Oder wie wäre es mit Tagalog?
Salamat Po.
November 13th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
whoever tries to think if it’s right or not right what is said on this website, did not really get the point of this awesome website.
the author took facts and just carried them to excess. so not every single fact mentioned in this blog must be right.
November 15th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Hello,
thank you, brilliant piece. A question: can you get a job as a programmer in Austria without speaking German well, only English? In other words do the Austrians speak English as well as the Germans?
November 15th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Hi Miklos,
Germans and Austrians in the software industry will generally have a good command of the English language, and you could probably get by speaking only English there. It would certainly make it tougher to get a job when you don’t speak German though, because everyone would have to start speaking English just for you in the meetings, or write internal documentation in English, etc.
I met plenty of people in Germany in the software industry who didn’t speak German, but they mostly worked for big, non-German companies. Same rule of thumb would probably be true in Austria.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Of course, if you just compare grammar with other languages, english almost always comes out on top. Then again, to really MASTER english just have a look at at the Oxford dictionary and you will note the vast amount of words there really is.
In German, you conveniently tie two nouns together to express something new and everybody will understand you even if that word is made up. But then again, there are so many irregularities in writing and pronounciation, it can make the effort dauting… but that problem also exists in english.
Merry Christmas, Hoe Hoe Hoe!
November 17th, 2008 at 4:47 am
Another “good reason” for the proliferation of the modern uneducated “English speaker” (I use the term loosely) , and their arrogant “they should learn my language” attitude.
Germans are much smarter than Brits/Yanks/Aussies because they actually learn another language in school, and I admire that.
I’m sorry to inform you that “Like you know” and “cool dude” don’t actually count as a second language.
Westerners are generally too scared of failure to even try learning a second language, hell most can’t even speak English properly.
Anyone who can speak a second language is in my opinion “better” than one who can’t. Even if you can’t speak a second language fluently, you should at least try.
I also love the German computer keyboard, it is designed to be used by educated people, you get simple things like: ° (for the Windows users, that is a degree symbol), ¼ (quarter), ½ (half), and my favourite for talking about electronic components, the µ symbol (micro), as in 100µF Capacitor.
Try doing that with the standard US keyboard!
If you live in a foreign country, have the decency to learn the language, it is common courtesy and the polite thing to do.
November 17th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Thomas said: “Being a linguist, I can tell that there is no such thing as “easy languages” or “difficult languages” … sure, depending on your native languages you will learn some languages quicker than other ones, I agree! But if you really WANT it, nothing is too much. Anyone can produce any sound of any language, you just need to put in some effort.”
Oh. Are you not possibly being a bit hard on foreigners trying to learn German here and finding it diffucult?
I have a number of friends who have tried it or are in the process of learning and I cannot but feel sorry for them. The German grammar to my eye seems much more complex than the English one. I never had to learn it the hard way but all I can say is that I do not exactly envy people who learn it as a second language.
And don’t ever get them (English speakers in particular) started on the genders either. Always fetching hearty laughs is this one: try to explain to foreigners that in German girls (Maedchen) are of neutral gender whereas e.g. spiders (Spinnen) are feminine. This one confuses not only the English speakers of all four corners of the world but also French, Spanish and Italians for example (who do seem to have the gender as a linguistic concept). Ach, I say it confuses them? It is actually so absurd that it becomes easily remembered.
Mit lieben Gruessen
Herr B.
November 17th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
John,
thanks a lot. Actually your blog is very useful to extend my vocabulary - I’m just too lazy to go through a German novel with a dictionary (that’s how I learned English), but reading a bi-lingual blog is OK, because I can convince myself I’m actually having fun and therefore it feels less like work. Can you perhaps recommend some more interesting bilingual websites?
thanks,
Miklos
(I’m a Hungarian in the UK, wondering about moving closer to home, Vienna sounds just about right.)
November 17th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Another question, if you don’t mind: how horrible are the Austrian dialects?
When I arrived to the UK - to the West Midlands - I was pretty confident I won’t have any language problems. This confidence had instantly evaporated when the first Brummie greeted me as “O’rooyt, mooyt!”. The second shocking encounter was the same in an Asian version, as most shopkeepers are, so the above greeting in Chinese-Brummie is something along the lines of “O’hoy’,mho!”. Even after two years it happens regularly that when I ask for a ticket to Stafford, I get one to Stockport, because in Brummish Stafford is “shtoffd” while Stockport is “shtopfro” and apparently my pronounciation - which unfortunately isn’t quite RP either - was closer to the second one. Is there anything as bad as this in Austria?
November 17th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
BTW can Germans correctly pronounce the difference between “boat” and “bought”? This is one thing we Hungarians just can’t get, that how on Earth can two differents ways of pronouncing a “b”, an “oa”, and “t”
November 17th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
I can. At least I hope so…
Well, the classic English o, as in boat, seems closer to the Northern German o. Where I live, the exclamation “Oh!” sounds almost exactly like the English o. I would almost write it “Ouh!” instead.
The other o, as in bought, taught, caught … to me sounds closer to a long version of the short German o as in Bord, Nord.
I think it’s not too difficult to learn for us, after all. Escpecially as German is full with short and long vocals + ö, ü, ä (which exist long and short, as well).
About the Austrians:
They pronounce most things different, but when they try to talk Hochdeutsch, most of it is easy to understand. Same goes with most dialects in Germany. The local dialects in their pure form are always difficult to understand for people from other areas. As I said, most people are indeed able to speak something that “resembles” Hochdeutsch.
The Austrians, however, have some differences in vocabulary even if they’re talking Hochdeutsch. But I think it shouldn’t be that hard to get used to it. It’s mostly dominant concerning food (fruit, vegetables etc.).
November 18th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Thank you for your reply, Herr B
Of course, it was not my intention to be hard on foreigners trying to learn it. I just wanted to explain that German is not as difficult as many people (of whom many just give up after days or weeks without even trying properly!) claim. Perhaps I should have mentioned that this blog is in large part about native speakers of English. Most of them are not all used to learning another language, but I actually like Eisenadler’s comment. The “you’d better learn English”-attitude is very arrogant if you go to other countries and definitely if you envisage to live there.
Regarding German language: like I said. In the beginning it is a lot of work and you don’t immediately get the result you would wish: 3 genders and getting through the case system. I did not deny that
neither did I say German was easy. But what I said was that German is overestimated in terms of difficulty. Irregularity makes a language difficult to learn. German language has fewer irregularities than for instance English or French. I’m talking about grammar. I speak French too so I can tell. Once you have acquired the German case system there are very few exceptions to it so you can be nearly always sure what you say will be correct if you know the cases. Mmm, I’m a bit annoyed at not finding a link at the moment to enforce my statements. If you look a bit for linguistic forums (not just forums with language questions as smalltalk) you will find quite some people that in the end German was easier than they thought.
I remember at school (the interpreter’s section) we discussed the topic “which language is the most difficult? English or German?”. All of the students took these two subjects at a high level. Of more than 40 students nearly everyone agreed that although they first thought English was easier, German turned out to be much easier and English very difficult. English is, however easer to begin with, because there isn’t any gender to learn. But the never-ending wort lists, never-ending range of expressions, the lack of a spelling-pronounciation correspondance and so much more makes English a difficult language if you want to master it as a foreigner. (I have not even mentioned pronounciation of English itself… how many Europeans can properly say the “th” sound? Very few!)
Friendly greetings
November 18th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
“how many Europeans can properly say the “th” sound? Very few!”
That’s because our moms hit us over the head as children when we lisped. For learning english we would have to be un-conditioned but Germans are naturally resistant to changes.
November 18th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
I love languages. If a language is hard to learn - so be it.
Languages are living things (except latin & Co.), and if one of them has developed 10000 rules evolutionarily, I assume it must be a really rich and colourful one. Don’t eradicate or change it by harsh human intervention, just to make it easier to learn. You wouldn’t cut the hand off of a living person only because some people are too stupid to shake it properly, wouldn’t you?
(Germans discussed such a change, the famous Rechtschreibreform, for 1 decade, and for another decade launched it, discussed it, changed it, re-launched it and so on. With a great result: Nobody knows how to write and spell correctly anymore, probably except pupils of the primary school and their teachers.)
And for English: Ever tried to pronounce “months” without spitting?
@john: What do you mean by “FTC” - related to swear words? Certainly not the federal trade commission?
November 18th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Lieber Michel,
Months is nothing.
My favourite home made tongue twister is “square four sixthousandths of a second, then subtract seven threehundredths of one”. Should it work once, please repeat a few times. Easy math. Reading it gives you the much loved tongue cramp, though.
Whereas the above one I carefully crafted myself, here’s more of a classic: “The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick.”
On the side: just googled tongue cramp and people seem to actually suffer such conditions. Poor souls.
Es gruesst
Herr B.
November 18th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Thomas wrote: “Mmm, I’m a bit annoyed at not finding a link at the moment to enforce my statements. If you look a bit for linguistic forums (not just forums with language questions as smalltalk) you will find quite some people that in the end German was easier than they thought.”
Uuuh! Should you come across such evidence you are mentioning I would be very interested in hearing it.
You see, on a daily basis my friends are giving me an awful lot of grief complaining about how difficult and inadequate our beautiful German mother tongue is and what a bunch of weirdos we Germans are altogether.
So I need stuff answer them. As for the weirdo thing, I feel I am on rather lost ground. But with a little help I might be able to get something going on the language front.
Es freut sich schon
Herr B.
November 20th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Many Germans do indeed insist on inflicting their English on you even if you speak German better than they speak English. It seems to be hard-wired into their brains! It’s pretty insulting sometimes, depending on the situation.
Small tip, pretend not to understand a word they are saying in English and they will soon lose their over-confidence and revert to German!
G
November 20th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
So, ScotsmanInGermany, we’re out on a mission to seed a bit of a flame-fest, aren’t we?
May the games begin!
Hochachtungsvoll,
Herr B.
November 20th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Hilarious: The Scot backbiting the Germans about their English.
What comes next? An Italian teaching us orderliness?
November 21st, 2008 at 4:24 am
The reason why Americans in particular don’t learn german is because most are lazy Lahmen enten.
I have of spanish and german ancestry, but I grew up with only English.
Today I speak german English and Spanish Fluently and pronounce recht echt and Ich as well as any German (unless I am in berlin, where I say eeeka).
Americans grow up thinking that everyone owes them something just because they are “Americans”. swedes came to the US and in 3 years one cannot tell that they are foreigners.
So this blog post is anoying to me, even though I know that it was written tongue in Cheek in part.
Ps- If you want to learn how to pronounce “recht” just listen to a lot of Rammstein, lol.
November 25th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Well, German may be difficult to learn. But, go through the net and find out that you cannot screw up any language as easily as English.
November 25th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Yes, but… well … german has some advantages too. First: when you learn english you have to learn a lot more words. English has a third more words, because historically it consists of many languages mixed into one.
Second: When you see a word in writing, you can never guess how it has to be pronounced.
Funny thing is, few germans can handle both, oral and written english. I’m a good example: I read english novels no problem, but I relie on subtitles whenever watching british or american movies.
November 25th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Great post. The table of definite articles made me laugh so hard I cried.
I couldn’t help but notice an error in your English statistics though. We actually do have adjective endings; consider borED, borING, tallER, tallEST. With -ed, -ing, base, comparative and superlative adjectives, we technically have 5 adjective endings.
v.G. aus Karlsruhe
November 27th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Never learn English! Go to the States or GB and just tell everybody they have to speak German! Sounds funny? It is, indeed. Vice versa it sounds ignorant and arrogant and won’t make you friends.
Never learn English! Because it is impossible that you will ever master it to its full extent. Their spelling has stopped evolving in the 13th century. Unlike their pronounciation, which leads to the effect, that you have to learn by heart every singles word pronounciation and can not deduct it from the spelling. You need an example? They have 6 different ways to spell “ough”! You don’t believe me? Do you know how to spell all these words? Read them aloud!
Bough, cough, thorough, thought, through, rough!
All of them have an “ough”, but no one is like the other. There is no rule, you have to lean it by heart.
Next point: They have a sheer incredible number of words in their language! The extra large dictionary of the German language, the Duden, counts 200.000 words. The English language counts more that a million words! If you manage to learn 20 words per day and never forget a single one, you will complete your task of learning English after 140 years.
One more thing which makes it hard to learn all these words is the fact, that English native speakers speak a rather primitive English. They use few words. Written English is so complex, that even native speakers have look for words in the dictionary from time to time.
Next point: Grammar is not standardized. Some books tell you this or that is correct, another grammar book tells you the opposite. Depends on the author. If you ask native speakers, you have the same effect. If you ask a British, an American, an Indian and an Australian, you will get at least 5 different answers. Which has the negative effect, that you can learn you grammar by heart, but talking to a native speaker he will often tell you that your English is not correct. And native speakers are always right. Right?
The next horror already waits for you! Ever heard of “phrasal vers”? That’s a verb plus a particle linke ad adverb or preposition. They have thousands of it, and you also have to learn these by heart. Even worse makes it, that the combination of these words do often have nothing to do with the meaning of the verb alone. Want an example?
Run is a simple word. But running across…
- run across
- run after
- run against
- run along
- run away
- run down
- run for
- run in
- run into
- run off
- run on
- run over
- run through
- run to
- run up
- run up against
- run up on
- run with
…
will make you feel stupid to learn all that.
Next point: Every country speaks “another” English! British grammar is different from the American grammar (in fact, many Americans don’t care about grammar), and Australians and Indians are even worse… You want the amount of work to learn 4 languages at the same time, with the vocabulary of five languages? Lear English! You will have fun! Or not?
November 28th, 2008 at 2:38 am
This is somewhat amusing. Why would a Yank bother learning German? At this point we’d all better be learning Mandarin.
Oh, and Eisenadler, it’s because of people like you that I’ve had a nice hobby over the last decade: I give the worst directions I can muster when dealing with Europeans in my city. Generally they end up in the worst part of town and I end up with a very big smile on my face. I can just imagine what happened to that last group of Dutch tourists I sent to gang banger alley. I’m pretty sure they were used to the drugs and hookers, but I’m not so sure they were all that accustomed to gunfire.
November 30th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
John, good post, I really identify with you. @Thomas: I’ll bet the writer of this piece DID commit himself to learning German, but still asks himself “why?”. For example, when he sees non-German speaking coworkers not only getting along just fine, but even having the upper hand in conversations while he’s committed himself to speaking German.
Why are we bickering about how difficult our languages are? It’s not as if any of us is sitting here trying to decide whether to learn English or German. I think John’s point #2 here is key- Sure German is difficult, but what really kills me is the lack of return on my investment. If a German learns English, they can communicate with hundreds of millions more people in the world. They improve their professional perspectives. So even if it’s extremely difficult, it is probably well worth the effort. What does an American get for the trouble of learning German? A tiny dent in our reputation for being too lazy to do it? How many more people can I communicate with? I also experience Germans speaking English to me when I speak German. I would venture to say that this is an experience unknown to Germans. Or did you have a bunch of Americans speaking to you in German in the States? If you did, and I mean often, might you not think, “What the heck? Why did I bother with all these tenses if everybody here is so keen on speaking German?” I know people aren’t trying to be arrogant or put me down.
Günther- this is really the point that you’re missing, too. It’s not about coming to Germany and telling everybody they need to speak English- they already do! So why bother? I love improving my German, but I’ve come to accept it as a hobby of mine, and after a few years here, I’m forgiving now of Americans here who only learn some basics.
December 1st, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Very funny post.
Should you try to learn German nevertheless check out my site: http://www.german-flashcards.com/
December 4th, 2008 at 9:54 am
I’m American and have lived 3 years in north Germany. I have passed the immigration class, but never really did well with learning or using the language. Usually when I’m aproched by someone speaking german, I say in German that Im sorry but I understand very little german. So they are warned and can try English or we can try to struggle with my bad German language skill. As for my English, Some Germans say they understand me better than most english speakers, and others say they have problems with my slang. It took me some time to understand what they ment by slang, because I use very little slang words in my speach.
Then I realized it was my gramatical errors that they were calling slang.
I speak normal everday working man’s English. And not the gramaticaly perfect textbook English. I thought that was interesting as most of us are just working class people. I do make some effort to use correct grammar but it was never of great importance to me, I know some people think it’s everything. I believe that my attitude towards grammar could be the main problem with me learning and using German.
I came to Germany because of my German wife, I must say its been a disaster. I’ve been here 3 years without a job and no hope in sight. So now I plan on returning to the states were I can find a new job with no problem. My advice to anyone continplating on moving to a foreign country is to learn the language first. You will have enough other things working against you without the disadvantage of not being able to communicate well.
December 9th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Zontal: the reward is that you get to talk to blonde goddesses from Germany (see link) in their native language.
http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/2007/04/on-streetthe-very-personification-of.html
This would be only for the purpose of asking for directions of course.
December 10th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
You forgot to mention the difference between DUzen and SIEzen.
Btw: People who try to learn german should read the book “Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod” by Bastian Sick as well.
December 10th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Never mind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ29F_rlzRI (especially at about 4:50 it’s getting … funny …)
December 13th, 2008 at 11:31 am
German language> nothing for stupid DUMMKOPF
December 15th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
When I was in the Army in Germany I did translations of documents from various German offices. Some where travel reports of what people saw in east block countries. There were two offices with an ongoing competition to see who could say the most while still saying the least. I remember one document that I foolheartedly translated almost completely only to discover that the people doing the reporting saw absolutely nothing. To make things worse, this document filled an entire A4 page (’bout an 8.5×11″). The icing on the cake was that it was one single sentence!
December 26th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Now listen hear ! I am German and what you wrote is unbelievible . I am very rich you know and I will make you take it of this Website if you do not do it by yourself ! And so that you believe me I will write some more in German : Ich spreche gerade Deutsch . Mach was ich dir gesagt habe und ich muss nicht zu dir kommen .
December 31st, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Latin does not use at the article, they’ve simply omitted it completely.
December 31st, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Oh, and Americans in any Music History program such as I are *EXPECTED* tp learn German, as all of the source material is written in it!
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:35 pm
I’m so sorry, but I completely disagree with this article. First, the author doesn’t have enough knowledge to say if someone is able or not to pronounce some sounds in German. It is like “ão” in Portuguese. Besides, Portuguese language is much harder so nobody should learn Portuguese then. If I prefer to communicate in English, good for me, but what about reading, huh? Listening? You feel awful when you don’t understand what other people say. German is far from being an “impossible” language to learn.
January 5th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
ach — wunderschön gemacht — ein Mark Twain fürs neue Jahrtausend. Bravo.
It’s funny. (German is incredibly easy to learn (it’s just you have to learn a bunch of rules up front — but they don’t change — ask anyone who speaks Spanish and German which language is easier (exceptions in conditional forms in Spanish are the rule).
Some Germans think that you should speak exactly like they do — even if they don’t speak with the standard accent — this trait is even worse for Slavic speakers (trying learning Czech)
Some Germans who can barely speak English will try to speak it with you once the find out you are American and even if you German is so good that they would not have known unless you told them. It’s something funny that they do.
January 6th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
you, sir, are a [not very cool guy]. good day.
Editor’s Note: You, nobody, are a potty mouth.
January 8th, 2009 at 11:46 am
right, german is damn difficult to learn. i had to learn it when i moved to germany… and now, 15 years later, i still have some problems with some prepositions…
January 9th, 2009 at 7:57 am
[…] Ich hab auf dieser Seite diesen Beitrag gesehen und dachte mir: Da surfste mal hin. Also ab zu http://www.NothingforUnGood.com und mal ein bisschen rumgelesen. Klingt echt nicht schlecht was die gute Person da schreibt. Ich musste schon ein paar mal schmunzeln. Zu empfehlen: Don’t learn german […]
January 13th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
[…] Don’t learn german (The German language is, in fact, impossivle to learn) […]
January 20th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
sooo good!! very very funny and i guess the author exaggerated to make it that humours. but i have to say that any language but english is pretty hard to learn - no offense! i can speak italian and french, too and they have their own specialties to make it difficult!
January 28th, 2009 at 3:30 am
I think it’s holarious the way you describe the Germans but I agree that a lot of languages are hard to learn. But I also think that german is probably especially hard to learn but that does’t make the germans bad people
February 3rd, 2009 at 12:13 pm
hey Guys,
of course this is disputable as well, but i would say that Bahasa Indonesia is by far the easiest language. no tenses, no cases, no change of meaning by change of pitch, easy pronunciation b/c vowels and consonants always alternate (unlike e.g. German, where you say things like “jetzt, krach, etc.” Indonesian doesn’t even sound a bit like chinese or vietmanese or thai…
February 4th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
I have been living in a small bavarian village for over ten years and although my german is good I still have difficulties understanding people here (bavarian dialect) and I don´t know if I ever will.
I first came here speaking not very much german. I had two kids in kindergarten and nobody made an effort to explain, help me understand. People would smile but communication was pretty much null. Soooooo I would meet up with some english friends, with kids which suited me just fine. I read Parenting magazines in German and graduated to newspaper articles.
I´m still much better at understanding written german than speaking and writing german.
I remeber going to neighbours for cafe klatsch and everyone would carry on in german,again not explaining or helping me. These situations were always stressful, uncomfortable for me. There was noone interested in English and willing to slow down, explain, and help.. I still kept reading and trying to speak german. I know it takes a long time to learn a language buttttt basically noone was interested, too busy. I have a nice neighbour and she is the only person who spoke to me in an understandable, relaxed, reasonable pace. She was my saviour.
To this day she is my favourite german here. What a wonderful person who took some time, made some effort to help someone. I was making a big effort too. I still had my english friends, thank god.
Anyway, I am still learning german but now that my kids are older I teach english two days a week in a company.
My attitude now is that I don´t teach anyone english unless I get paid for it. Not very many people here wanted to help me so I don´t help anyone either. Sorry, but it´s true.
I think bavarians need to learn alot about helping people intergrate. They don´t do it very well. They need to have a genuine interest in other people, nationalities otherwise it doesn´t happen.
I still prefer people who make an effort to speak english and let me speak german too. These people are where I work or at an English Stammtisch I go to once a week. Would germans have a german stammtisch to help
integrate people here. I haven´t seen it yet.
A new neighbour lived in Vancouver for 10 years and guess what? We get along great. ( I come from Toronto, Canada)
I can´t believe you haven´t even really started to learn german, communicate with people, understand the newspaper. My God, you have to start. I now know that it will never end but it´s a challenge, I can follow what my kids are doing in schoool and communicate better with more people. A life worth living is one where you overcome challenges. I´m more confident, I´m bilingual and I won´t get alzheimers. I now go to Italian class and I keep my german active as well.
I find people who are interested in languages more open and interesting and easier to get along with. It´s not so onesided.
Get off your high horse, make some effort and face the challenge. I know it gets frustrating, difficult and you don´t always understanding everything but you´ll be a better person if you do.
All the Best
Fiona
February 4th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Bavarians are really a kind of their own.
Come on, they even treat other Germans as strangers.
February 5th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Fiona, I understand how you feel as I am in a similiar situation. Hang in there and all the best to you too.
February 26th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Well, I did say I’d get back to you with the name of that school. Think I promised this all the way back in Novemeber.
Well, they dispel the myth that German is difficult and get people speaking the language in two days. This includes declining cases and the like. As I say, a friend of mine went there. And, if there’s one place out there that can do this, surely there’s another!?
Anyway, here are the details as promised. The school that teachers German in two days - The Paul Noble Language Institute, London. http://www.paulnoblelanguages.com
See what you think, is it possible? My friend says it was…
February 26th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Hard to judge without having met someone who learned it there.
I’d say I have doubts about it, but you can never be sure…
March 4th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Oh what the hell…I loved the post! Made me laugh out loud a few times. Very true, very true. Albeit, I am still going to attempt to learn it. Partially at least
March 6th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
>Tokio Hotel records English versions of their songs, so you have that angle >covered as well.
That is a reason to never learn englisch
March 24th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
[…] Die 10 Gründe kein Deutsch zu lernen: Don´t learn German […]
March 30th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
I have just read about the “Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz”. It is the “short” title of the “Gesetz zur Übertragung der Aufgaben für die Überwachung der Rinderkennzeichnung und Rindfleischetikettierung” (Cattle marking and beef labeling supervision duties delegation law)
:D
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rindfleischetikettierungs%C3%BCberwachungsaufgaben%C3%BCbertragungsgesetz)
Greets from Germany
April 29th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Author and translator Jonathan Franzen has something to say about the “Die verdammte Frage der Geschlechter”, the pitfalls of the German language & ethnic regionalism in American English as opposed to geographical regionalism / dialects in the German speaking countries.
The interview was conducted in English but published in German.
May 3rd, 2009 at 6:52 pm
The most difficult language to learn is “Suomalainen” (Finish).
It has 6 cases.
Unless you’re 4-5 years old don’t even try it.
Kuinkavoitte? Kiitos oikein hyvin. = How are you? Thanks, very good.
yksi, kaksi, kolme, nelja, viisi, kuusi, seitseman, kahdeksan, yhdeksaen,
kymmenen = 1 thru 10.
Finish has a distant relationship to Hungarian but otherwise is not related to
any other languange in the world. The same goes for Basque.
May 3rd, 2009 at 7:56 pm
If you think this is special then have a look at Welsh!
For example at the longest town name in the World: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. It’s single word and means: “The church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio’s of the red cave”
May 3rd, 2009 at 8:32 pm
And I have even been there once.
Which is why I have visited that website before and even memorized how to pronounce it. Thanks for bringing that one up
May 3rd, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Ouch… I just read along and well… there are even longer town names! Like… for example… Krungthepmahanakornamornratanakosinmahintarayutthayamahadilokphop
nopparatrajathaniburiromudomrajaniwesmahasatharn
amornphimarnavatarnsathitsakkattiyavisanukamprasit…
May 7th, 2009 at 5:22 am
We’ve all heard about these (for us) insanely long town/village names in Wales, but that does not imply Welsh is more difficult to learn than Suomalainen. To learn Finish you gotta be a mini Einstein.
May 29th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Next [innovative derogatory term for an American] who I know for sure has lived in my country for an extended period to speak to me English on the basis of refusing to learn my language will get a punch in the mouth for disrespecting our hospitality and taking the piss.
Editor’s Note: Your warning has been duly noted. Please do not use foul language.
June 4th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
German is not difficult to learn but like any second language it’s difficult to speak perfectly - in spite of the emphasis on English in Germany, relatively few Germans speak it without any mistakes. German pronunciation is very easy (much easier than French) and very stadardised - once you learn a sound that’s it, none of our numerous cough/bough/bought/drought-type problems.
As for the case system, of course it’s more difficult than just ‘the’ and ‘a’, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. When I started German many years ago we were given the der-die-das and ein-eine-ein table on Day 1 and learnt it by rote, (very old-fashioned but it did work), then we just referred back to it as we progressed. It soon becomes second nature and anyway in speaking or writing the odd mistake isn’t the end of the world. What made it easier to grasp the cases was having learnt Latin a year before - after Latin’s 6 cases 4 seemed straightforward.
Although this issues of difficulty is greatly overstated I do have sympathy with the poster who talked about getting less of a return on investment for learning German, compared with Germans learning English. I still think the pleasure of being able to converse in two or more languages is worth the effort.
June 7th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
[…] hab mal die Seite verlinkt, auf der erklaert wird, warum man die deutsche Sprache meiden sollte Nothing For Ungood Blog Archive Don?t learn German __________________ The mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work unless it’s open in der Sig […]
June 15th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Yeah, English is sooooooooooo easy, especially the plural forms of child or wife, and don’t forget, no trouble pronouncing or recognicing if somebody talks about suing or sewing….
June 17th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
[…] Read this and have fun. […]
June 18th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Hm. I am learning German at the moment, and yes I am American. I must say it gets harder by each lesson. Although reading this does not make me want to stop. It only makes me want to accomplish what others say cannot be done
Go ahead and think the worst of me, though. If I try and fail, that only means I will try once more. And who knows how long that will be until I succeed, or if I ever find success.
I’m just looking to get at least a small bit and maybe more of the language down.
June 19th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
In latin you must also learn what gender the word has.
But you have 12 tenses - pretty much!
June 19th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Schiff + fahrt is logically
Schifffahrt
No word has more than 3 similar lettery in one row.
The longest German word with each letter only occuring once (it’s a fantasy word) is:
Heizölrückstoßabdämpfung - try to say it
July 5th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
You can learn german if you live in Germany for a year, do courses and be exposed to the german language every day.
July 7th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
it s a pity
and language learning is good for the brain,
better do with it, find corners and let doors open for you that remain closed otherwise,
and your very own spelling preserves german writing
it gets a little more shakespear like with thy and thou hast (du hast) in german, but you will strengthen the bonds with your own languages history and obain a deeper understanding of some etymology.
gh eiGHt in german the /x c/ sound aCHt weiGHt gewiCHt allways written “ch”
you preserve the spelling even if not pronounciated anymore!! Why if not for learning German.
probably no other language will be as easy to learn for someone with english as his/her mothertongue, no celtic, no romanic. Maybe Dutch as it has not 16ways to say the but only 3 or 4 and only 2 articles de and het
or maybe Nordish, Norwegian, Swedish or Danish,
but c’mon Suaheli has 16 classes or even more
well ok, French will be easy too, but you will have to learn the right pronounciation much harder than other people, as the french use the exact same beautiful spelling for the exact different pronounciation as english does in its romanic vocabulary and grammar structure is different.
you re right with the “as soon as you learn it it will change” Die Rechtschreibreform war Bullshit.
you see i can’t but try to know better
July 27th, 2009 at 11:33 am
German is nothing for stupid people.
Typical Anglo-Saxon arrogance……
August 4th, 2009 at 2:47 am
[…] http://nothingforungood.com/2008/05/12/dont-learn-german/ […]
August 7th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Just for the fun of it:
Try tomakean english speaking person say: “Streichholzschächtelchen”
It’ll break some tongues
August 7th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Have you ever thought on how simple the German tenses are? English is the hell on earth when the talk comes to tenses. for every fuckin situation relatet to one two or more situations in the past, presence or future you have to use a new tense. wth??? This is way way easier in German. I have a vague guess… you are just to lazy to learn other languages, you jerk.
August 7th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Hehehe
Very nice article.
And some pronomen orthography is changing depending on if you write it with or without preposition.
I am a Czech girl and i speak German and English as well.
I studied english for 3 years and it was enough to be able to speak even with native speakers kinda nicely. for German it was 8 years. But hey I made it, I can say ü and ö ! And if you think German is difficult, you should really try Czech ;).
Germans can go around with nominative, acusative, dative, genitive. Thats 4. But hey, we have 7 of them! And we declinate. So not only the word the/a changes but also the substantives. So every substantive here has at least 14 forms (plural/singular).
The adjectives? They are declinated as well plus you have to know in which one of the 3 cathegories they belong to, so you can write them correctly. Plus my favy.. even i do mistakes in that, while making adjective from a substantive, sometimes letters get doubled.
Pronomen? Now this is funny. We have 7 kinds of them. They are declinated AND they have differend forms for he/she/it and also in plural. We have 3 ways to say they
Numeralia. Now this is boring. Only 5 kinds of them, differend forms for she/he/it sometimes and we have something called “dual” which is numeralia used for things that exist in pairs. Like eyes and ears.
Verbs. Now thats funny again. There are the differend forms for she/he/it again.. but what is really interesting.. there are veery complicated rules for where to write i/y/a in them. Even most of the native czechs cant d it right. Every verb has 6 forms for one tense. There are 3 tenses and 3 moduses that also modify the word as well as the 2 aspects that we have do.
Most common issues in czech language are the dilemas in writting i/y, b?/bje, m?/mne, where to write comma in the sentence, wheather to write kamenný/or kamený, ?/ú, where to write big letter and where small…
But thats written language. Lets talk the spoken one.
There is one letter thet is unique in the world ?. To be honest. Even I can whisper it right. But I can say words like krk, vlk, prst, smrt or a sentences like: Strc prst skrz krk. Nenaolejuje li t? Julie, naolejuji t? já . Can you?
And now tell me German is difficult
Well, but still… our language is absolutelyy beautiful. Yes, very difficult, but wonderful. So many words and ways that give you the possibility to express yourself very precisely ^^
August 7th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
@palndrom23 You might wanna say “Ihr habt doch alle nen Stock im Arsch!”
August 8th, 2009 at 7:35 am
How to say “ü” ?
Make a mouth as you wanted to say “u” , but then try to say “e”.
It is easy, isn’t it?
August 8th, 2009 at 8:42 am
@ pascal: That hits the point! I break together
That beats the barrel the bottom out! huhuhu…
Sorry, guys. Just kidding.
By the way: don’t learn Dutch before learning German. it will only confuse you because the languages seem to be very similar, but have some inherent differences, esp. in the vocabulary. I’m a native German speaker and do speak Dutch, too, and I already confused Dutch with German words.
August 8th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
[…] Hier übrigens noch mein Lieblingseintrag -> klick […]
August 8th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Learning german was easy as pie and I learned it in one year after coming to Germany.
Now I speak german fluently without having problems.
Other languages are more difficult
August 10th, 2009 at 7:18 am
Dear all,
as i read the article i lought a lot. My english is not so good but I want to try something to say about it.
1. When american or british try to speak english there are try the sound of german to immitate. Its sound like the voice from the history channel of the world war two. There start to scream and try the hard speaking. For example gemuesesuppe (my Nickname / called for wedge soup) its a light word, but when english speaking people try to say this word its sound like: GEMUESERSUPPPPE!!! After he is spelling out that word he look like some guy from Berlin start the war against poland.
2. The german try to translate proverbs 1 to 1 in english. For example the german proverb : “Wir sind schwer auf Draht ( It means that we are very clever).” The german say: “We are heavy on the wire!” Sounds funny? Thats the truth.
3. We have many words sounds like english but its not english. Two example: my Homepage http://www.bonelessity.de. I have a band. We want to have a cool bandname, so we say “we are bonelessity”. One day an US American told us that “bonelessity” is not a correct english word it must be “bonelessnes”. Sounds “Bonelessnes” cool? I dont think so. The second example is “Handy” do you know what a “Handy” is? Every german know the word “Handy” its sound so cool and modern. The “Handy” means the cellphone…
So take it easy, there so many funny thinks in speaking an foreign language. Try it, have fun and dont be sad when you never can speak it.
many greetings from germany, with a hard:
AUUUF WIEDARSEHN!
Gemuesesuppe
August 11th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Supercallifragilisticexpealladoscious!
August 18th, 2009 at 6:49 am
So wie ich mich durch diesen netten Blogbeitrag in einer fremden Sprache kämpfen musste, kämpfen Sie sich jetzt bitte durch meinen Kommentar
August 25th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Hey SecondAttempt, ich hab dich verstanden, aber ok, ich hab in Deutschland gelebt.
E alguém aqui consegue entender o meu comentário?
August 26th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Well… I guess it might be difficult for some people to understand sarcasm, cynicism and hyperbole. I find your essay hilarious and appreciate the way you make fun of things by exaggerating them. As to whetherEnglish is easer to learn than German, I can say from experience that it is easy to speak easy English, but that when you get into higher English, it is just as difficult as German. As for Chinese pronunciation -it is no problem at all for a German speaker. What is difficult is the writing/reading.
I did not understand the author to be advocating that people should not learn German - it was another of his exaggerations in order to make a funny point. And I ask you : why should an English speaker - and they are not only Americans, but people from all over the globe, since English has become the lingua franca - so, why should he/she ask if somebody speaks English before asking for directions or anything else ? Isn’t that a bit redundant ? If they answer, the question has been answered. But may be that is not “exact” enough….
Al in all, yours is a great blog and I enjoy it tremendously. Some people here need to chill and work on their humor gene.
Keep up the good work and thanks. With every new language you learn, you acquire a new life.
-Persian Saying.
Think about it. I have five lives andeach one of them is fun !
August 31st, 2009 at 11:39 pm
I’m sorry for all the mistakes i’ll make or I just made(only 3 years english)
:
Fiona I’m from Bavaria and I can’t agree with you.OK maybe you think it’s just because i’m from Bavaria.But I’m a person who can understand what another person want to say.But now I have to say the Bavarians aren’t unpolitly or won’t help you.Maybe it’s only the Village you learned to know.The Bavarians have many sides and it’s very important to know that Bavaria is the biggest region in Germany so you can’t expect that everyone in Bavaria is friendly.And by the way we don’t think the other Germans are strange but they alway make jokes about our dialect we’re only angry and in American movies the Bavarian cultur(for exampel the beer or the leather clothes) is alwyas used for the “German cultur”.If you have time visit Munich.Wonderful.
German IS a difficult language but it’s only the grammar.And the father language of all germanic languages(english and finnish included)and a father language must be difficult because a father language is very old and believe me German is very old!So in that time German had the chance to become more difficult .English is a very young language and so very easy.
Finnish is very difficult but it comes from German and evolved more than German did.I think no language is inpossible to learn if there’s a will to learn it.Sure, a language is very easy to learn if you’re young becuase in your brain there’s not too much space needed.But if you’re lazy there’s no will to learn and so it IS inpossible to learn it.But if you really want to learn something and you work hard nothing is inpossible
September 1st, 2009 at 12:15 am
Oh and lesi we also have three cathegories of adjektives ,we also have to know the difference between perfect you have to use “haben”(to have :just like in english “Ich -habe- etwas verloren =I -have- lost something)or if you have to use “sein”(to be).We also have 100 extra rules how to connect two words to one.For exampel we have to set an s between the two words if the first word is also a root of a verb if not it means that the 2nd word does the first word.We also have to use the plural in the acusative ,dative and genetive if the word is male and its plural ends with an “n”.We have to pronounciat an vokal in front of one consonant long and in front of two consonants we have to pronounciat it short.Also is an double z or double k inpossible.We make instead of that tz and ck.We have the chance to write insead of two Cs which one is pronounciated like a k and one like a z to writ a k and a z.And there so many extra rules …
September 2nd, 2009 at 3:06 pm
I think that German language is a very heavy language, however if one is really determined to speak this, it is also possible. it is also right that the grammar is complicated in the German very much, however, there is into languages as for example Latin, Chinese or also other absolutely an at least as heavy grammar.
Who wants to control the language, that can also learn the german language and could then talk in german in Germany in a meeting.
Even if English is / becomes an international worldlanguage, I find everybody have to learn the german language, if he is in Germany and search a work, he also have to speak the language who is speak in the country.
In my opinion, the english language should be as far as it goes kept away from germany that the mother tongue is preserved in Germany and a piece of “country” remains available, because the German one becomes slow to the German-English, nowadays so many things are already Germanized and change thus the normal German language
September 3rd, 2009 at 1:03 pm
>> I think that German language is a very heavy language […]
So, what does it weigh?
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
September 3rd, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Telling apart “schwer” and “schwer” is very heav- äh, difficult!
September 4th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
I copied something from wikipedia
Grammar
[edit] Genders
In German all of the three genders of the Proto-Indo-European language—the masculine, the feminine, and the neuter—have survived. Every German noun takes one of these genders. The grammatical gender of a German noun is not necessarily the actual gender of the corresponding real-life object. Nouns that signify a person, such as die Frau (”woman”) or der Mann (”man”), generally take the grammatical gender corresponding to their sex. However, as every German noun ending with -chen or -lein takes the neuter gender, there exist the notable counterexamples of das Mädchen (”girl”), das Weib (old form, woman), die Tunte (gay man) and das Fräulein (”miss”). Moreover, German assigns gender to nouns without natural gender. The arbitrary nature of German grammatical gender can be seen in the example of three common pieces of cutlery: das Messer (”knife”) is neuter, die Gabel (”fork”) is feminine, and der Löffel (”spoon”) is masculine.
Students of German are always advised to learn German nouns with their accompanying definite article, as the definite article of a German noun corresponds to the gender of the noun. However, the meaning or form, especially the ending, of a noun can be used to recognise 80% of noun genders[1]. For instance, nouns ending in the suffixes -heit, -keit, -tät, -ung, -ik, or -schaft are feminine. As noted above, nouns ending in -chen or -lein take the neuter. A noun ending in –e is likely to be feminine; however, this is not a universal rule: die Katze (”cat”), die Blume (”flower”), and die Liebe (”love”) are feminine, but der Bote (”delivery boy”) is masculine, and das Ende (”end”) is neuter. Similarly, a noun ending in –er is likely to be masculine (der Teller, der Stecker, der Computer); however, das Messer (”knife”) and das Wasser (”water”) are neuter, while die Butter (”butter”) and die Mutter (”mother”) are feminine.
[edit] Cases
[edit] General
Unlike English, which has lost almost all forms of declension of nouns and adjectives, German still inflects nouns, adjectives and pronouns into four grammatical cases. The cases are the nominative (Nominativ), genitive (Genitiv), dative (Dativ), and accusative (Akkusativ). The case of a particular noun depends on the grammatical function of the noun in the sentence.
* Nominative (Wer?): The subject of a sentence, the thing doing the action
* Genitive (Wessen?): The possessor of something, or the object of certain other prepositions.
* Dative (Wem?): The indirect object, as in when an object is given to someone, or the object of certain other prepositions
* Accusative (Wen?): The direct object, the thing which is directly receiving the action, or the object of certain prepositions
Example: der Tisch (engl. the table)
Singular: Plural:
Nom: der Tisch die Tische
Gen: des Tisch(e)s der Tische
Dat: dem Tisch(e) den Tischen
Acc: den Tisch die Tische
In a sentence (using only one noun for understanding purposes):
Der Tisch gab den Tisch des Tisch(e)s dem Tisch(e)
The table gave the table of the table to the table.
This sentence is an example of how cases are used in German (and in every other language with noun declension). This differs from English, where the word order in a sentence has more meaning. In German, because the function of each noun is not marked by its position within the sentence but by the declined articles — and in case of genitive and dative also by a suffix at the end of the noun itself — the German sentence could also be:
Der Tisch gab dem Tisch(e) den Tisch des Tisch(e)s.
Der Tisch gab des Tisch(e)s Tisch dem Tisch(e)
Den Tisch des Tisches gab dem Tisch der Tisch.
Dem Tisch(e) gab den Tisch des Tisch(e)s der Tisch.
Des Tisch(e)s Tisch gab dem Tisch(e) den Tisch.
etc.
Although some of these may sound exotic in modern day German, they are grammatically correct (and even rather unusual constructions are more regularly used in poetry). With a flexible word order like that it is very easy, for example, to put the most important part of a sentence in the front of the sentence.
Contrary to strongly inflected languages like Latin or Lithuanian, German expresses cases more through the word’s article than the ending of the word, though especially the difference between plural and singular is also expressed by suffixes on the words’ endings (der Tisch, die Tische). Other exceptions of a suffix expressing the case of a noun along with the article are the forms of genitive singular and dative plural. Yet, one could still say that transferring the case-information to the article preserved the German case system throughout its development from Old High German to contemporary German.
[edit] Genitive
First evidence of a decline of the genitive case can already be found in colloquial language of Early New High German (spoken from 1350 to 1650). When Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, the use of the Genitive case (along with the Preterite) was already rather unusual in most of the German dialects. Nevertheless, Luther used the bureaucratic language of Saxony for his translations which still made extensive use of the Genitive (and other “archaic” elements more usual in Middle High German than in New High German) and thereby slowed down the loss of the Genitive to a certain extent. Today the use of the genitive case is still rare in spoken language - speakers often substitute the dative case for it in conversation, quite similar to the language’s Germanic relative Faroese. But the genitive case remains almost obligatory in written communication, public speeches and anything that is not explicitly colloquial in German and is still an important part of German Bildungssprache (language of education). Television programmes and movies often contain a mixing of both, dative substitution or regular genitive, depending on how formal or “artistic” the programme is intended to be. The use of the Dative substitution is more common in southern German dialects, whereas Germans from northern regions (where Luthers Bible-German had to be learned like a foreign language back then) use the genitive more regularly. Though it has become quite common not to use the genitive case when it would formally be required, great numbers of Germans know how to use it and generally do so. Especially among people of higher education, it is considered a minor embarrassment to be caught using the dative case incorrectly. Therefore in the end it is by no means recommended to avoid the genitive when learning German, since the decline of this case, which has been going on for about 600 years, is proceeding very slowly, because the historical development of German Standardsprache has reestablished this particular case in German language to some extent, and not necessarily just in written form.
Yet, a German book called Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod (”Dative is for Genitive its death”) alludes to this phenomenon (being called “genitive’s death struggle” by the author) in its title. In standard German, the title would be “Der Dativ ist der Tod des Genitivs” (”Dative is Genitive’s Death”). As is apparent, the book uses the modern, casual way of speaking by employing the dative case instead of the genitive to poke fun at what the author perceives as a decline in the German language, since in written German a dative construction replacing the genitive is still considered a major error.
In at least one context, the use of a dative construction to indicate possession is standard. Usually with respect to a person’s body, mind, or personality, one can say, for example, “Sie gab ihm die Hand”, which translates literally to “She gave him the hand”. In English, this would always be rendered as “She gave him her hand. This is very similar to English “Look me in the eye”, which seems to be its only survival in that language.
[edit] Dative
[edit] Cases after prepositions
The case of a noun after a preposition is decided by that preposition. No prepositions require the nominative case, but any other case may follow one, for example, the preposition für (for) is followed by the accusative case, the word mit (with) is followed by the dative, and the word wegen (because of) is followed by the genitive case (although in casual speech, and with pronouns, the dative case is usually used). Certain prepositions, called “two way prepositions”, have objects either in dative or accusative, depending on whether the use implies position (e.g. in der Küche = “in the kitchen”, dative case) or direction (e.g. in die Küche (”into the kitchen”, accusative case).
[edit] Prepositions and cases
The following chart shows the cases associated with several prepositions.[2][3][4]
Accusative Dative Genitive Accusative or Dative
bis aus anstatt an
durch außer statt auf
entlang bei außerhalb hinter
für gegenüber innerhalb in
gegen mit trotz neben
ohne nach während über
um seit wegen unter
wider von jenseits vor
zu zwischen
[edit] Declension of adjectives
The declension of an adjective depends not only on the gender, number and case of the noun it modifies, but also on whether the indefinite article, definite article or no article is used with it. The following table shows two examples which exemplify all three cases:
Masculine nominative singular Feminine dative singular
definite article der schöne Mann vor der verschlossenen Tür
indefinite article ein schöner Mann vor einer verschlossenen Tür
no article schöner Mann vor verschlossener Tür
Declension of adjectives is mandatory even in proper names. The name of Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, for instance, changes into “das Kunsthistorische Museum” when predeceded by a definite article.
[edit] Plurals
The German language has twelve different ways of forming the plural. A student of German as a foreign language must learn the plural for each new noun learned; although many feminine nouns are very regular in the formation of the plural, many masculine and neuter nouns are not. For example, some plurals are formed with an “n”, some with “en”, some with an umlaut and an “e” or an umlaut and an “en”, other plurals are the same as the singular, some add “er” or an umlaut and “er”. Many loan-words borrowed from another language take a plural in “s” (eg. das Restaurant ? die Restaurants).
Although ancient German plurals called for morphologically distinct gender markings, this is no longer the case. With regard to the treatment of adjectives and articles, this amounts almost to the plural number behaving as a fourth gender. Textbooks and articles typically list the articles or adjectival endings for plurals in the next row or column where a fourth gender would be given if it existed. What this suggests is not completely true, but it is usually an effective approach for non-native speakers studying the language.
[edit] Nominal (or noun) phrases
(The content of this section is not yet applicable for proper names.)
This section requires expansion.
A German nominal phrase, in general, consists of the following components in the following order:
article, number (cardinal or ordinal), adjective(s), noun, genitive attribute, position(s), relative clause reflexive pronoun
* “Die dritte umwerfende Vorstellung des Schillerdramas in dieser Woche in Hamburg”
(the third stunning performance of the drama by Schiller this week in Hamburg)
Of course, most noun phrases are not this complicated; adjectives, numbers, genitive attributes, positions, relative clauses and emphasizers are always optional.
A nominal phrase contains at least a cardinal number, an adjective, a pronoun, or a noun. It always has an article, except if it is an indefinite plural noun or refers to an uncountable mass.
* “Die Drei” (the three of them)
* “Der große Mann” (the tall man)
* “Der Mann” (the man)
If the noun is uncountable, an article is not used; otherwise, the meaning of the sentence changes.
* “Ich kaufe billiges Bier” (I buy cheap beer)
* “Ich kaufe ein billiges Bier” (I buy a bottle/can/glass/… of cheap beer)
* “Ich habe Geld” (I have money)
* “Ich habe das Geld” (I have the money) or (I have enough money to…)
A nominal phrase can be regarded a single unit. It has a case, a number, and a gender. Case and number depend on the context, whereas the main noun determines the gender.
[edit] Genitive attribute
A nominal phrase may have a genitive attribute, for example to express possession. This attribute may be seen as merely another nominal phrase in the genitive case which may hang off another nominal phrase.
* “Der Beruf des alten Mannes” (The profession of the old man.)
* “Die Hütte des Häuptlings des Stammes” (The hut of the chief of the tribe)
(genitive phrase has its own genitive phrase). This is uncommon in modern German. “Die Hütte des Stammeshäuptlings” (The hut of the tribe’s chief) is preferred.
A direct translation of “Der Beruf des alten Mannes” would be “the profession of the old man.” “The old man’s professions” could be translated directly and correctly as “Des alten Mannes Beruf”, though this form is almost never used in modern German.
In early High German, the genitive attribute can consist of a personal pronoun in its genitive case. In modern German, this is no longer used (though it is still correct); the corresponding possessive pronoun is used instead.
OLD: “Die Gnade seiner” (his grace)
NEW: “Seine Gnade”
[edit] Position
A nominal phrase may contain a “position phrase”; this may be seen as merely another nominal phrase with a preposition (or postposition) or a pronominal adverb (See Adverbial phrases).
* “Eine Wolke am Himmel” (a cloud in the sky)
* “Der Bundeskanzler während des Bürgerkriegs im Kongo” (the Chancellor during the civil war in the Congo)
(position phrase has its own position phrase)
* “Der Regen im Dschungel im Sommer” (the rain in the jungle in the summer)
(Several position phrases)
* “Der Berg dort” (that mountain over there)
[edit] Extended attribute phrase
German permits lengthy nominal modifiers such as
“Der während des Bürgerkrieges amtierende Premierminister” (literally: the during-the-civil-war office-holding prime minister) or “Die noch zu Anfang des Kurses relativ kleinen, aber doch merklichen Verständigungsschwierigkeiten” (literally: The still-at-the-beginning-of-the-course-relatively-small-but-nevertheless-noticeable communication difficulties).
These are a feature of written (particularly educated) German. One also might hear them in the context of formal oral communications as well (such as news broadcasts, speeches, etc.).
[edit] Relative clause
A nominal phrase will often have a relative clause.
Aside from their highly inflected forms, German relative pronouns are less complicated than English. There are two varieties. The more common one is based on the definite article der, die, das, but with distinctive forms in the genitive (dessen, deren) and in the dative plural (denen). Historically this is related to English that. The second, which is more literary and used for emphasis, is the relative use of welcher, welche, welches, comparable with English which. As in most Germanic languages, including Old English, both of these inflect according to gender, case and number. They take their gender and number from the noun they modify, but the case from their function in their own clause.
Das Haus, in dem ich wohne, ist sehr alt.
The house in which I live is very old.
The relative pronoun dem is neuter singular to agree with Haus, but dative because it follows a preposition in its own clause. On the same basis, it would be possible to substitute the pronoun welchem.
However, German uses the uninflecting was (’what’) as a relative pronoun when the antecedent is alles, etwas or nichts (’everything’, ’something’, ‘nothing’.).
Alles, was Jack macht, gelingt ihm.
Everything that Jack does is a success.
In German, all relative clauses are marked with commas.
[edit] Nouns
Main article: German nouns
A German noun has one of three specific grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and belongs to one of three declensions. These features remain unaltered by inflection but must be considered in this process. The grammatical gender influences articles, adjectives and pronouns. Note that gender and sex differ in many cases, as mentioned above.
Number (singular, plural) and case (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive) must be taken into account in the process of declension.
The declension can be more difficult than in other languages such as Latin; inflecting may alter not only the word ending, but also the root.
[edit] Articles and article-like words
Main article: German articles
The inflected forms depend on the number, the case and the gender of the corresponding noun. Articles have the same plural forms for all three genders.
[edit] Cardinal numbers
Cardinal numbers are always placed before any adjectives. If the number is not very high, it is usually not combined with an indefinite plural article like “einige” or “mehrere”. Personal pronouns of the first and second person are placed in front of numbers. Personal pronouns of the third person cannot be used with numbers.
“Drei Hunde” (three dogs)
“Die vier apokalyptischen Reiter” (the four horsemen of the Apocalypse)
NOT: “Einige fünf Äpfel” BUT: “Einige Äpfel” or “Fünf Äpfel” (some apples, five apples)
“Ein paar tausend Euro” (a couple of thousand euro)
“Wir vier” (we four)
If you use a cardinal number, you must use the plural form of the nominal phrase, in contrast to languages like Turkish.
NOT: “Zehn Pferd” (turk. “On At”)
BUT: “Zehn Pferde” (ten horses)
EXCEPTION: “Zehn Bier”, “Zehn Biere” (both possible in some cases like drinks. Though grammatically wrong, usually the former is used.)
Whereas there is a cardinal number meaning “one” in English, Germans use the indefinite article instead. The difference is expressed by the intonation.
“Ein rotes Buch” can mean
“a red book” - ein rotes Buch; or
“one red book” - ein rotes Buch
The numbers zwei (two) and drei (three) have endings for case in some cases. Where an adjective would have weak endings, numbers do not have endings. If an adjective had strong endings, these numbers may also have strong endings in the genitive case
“das Haus zweier junger Frauen” (two young women’s house)
If there is no other word carrying the strong ending of the genitive plural, the numbers must carry it.
“die Reise dreier Schwestern” (three sisters’ voyage)
If these numbers are centre of a nominal phrase in the dative plural and no other word carries case markers, they may carry dative endings.
“Ich habe zweien Bananen gegeben” (I have given bananas to two (of them))(old pronunciation)
Special case for ‘eins’ in German: It can be represented as: “eins”, “eine”, “einer”, “eines”, “einem” or “einen” depending on the sentence. This is because in German, ‘eins’ means one, while ‘ein’ (as in “Das ist ein Buch”) is the German equivalent of the English word “a” (”This is a book”).
[edit] Adjectives
Main article: German adjectives
To correctly inflect German adjectives, the case, number and gender of the nominal phrase must be considered along with the article of the noun. German adjectives normally go before the noun which they are changing. German adjectives have an ending before the noun. The ending is normally the letter “-e” in the singular form and “-en” in the plural form.
Like articles, adjectives use the same plural endings for all three genders.
“Ein lauter Krach” (a loud noise)
“Der laute Krach” (the loud noise)
“Der große, schöne Mond” (the big, beautiful moon)
Participles may be used as adjectives and are treated in the same way.
In contrast to Romance languages, adjectives are only declined in the attributive position (that is, when used in nominal phrases to describe a noun directly). Predicative adjectives, separated from the noun by “to be”, for example, are not declined and are indistinguishable from adverbs.
NOT: “Die Musik ist laute” BUT “Die Musik ist laut” ((the) music is loud)
There are three degrees of comparison: positive form, comparative form and superlative form. In contrast to Latin or Italian, there is no grammatical feature for the absolute superlative (elative).
[edit] Pronouns
Main article: German pronouns
German pronouns of the first person refer to the speaker; those of the second person refer to an addressed person. The pronouns of the third person may be used to replace nominal phrases. These have the same gender, number and case as the original nominal phrase. This goes for other pronouns, too.
pronoun [position(s)] [relative clause]
[edit] Personal pronouns
Personal Pronouns 1st sg 2nd sg 3rd sg 1st pl 2nd pl 3rd pl 2nd formal
Nominative ich du er sie es wir ihr sie Sie
Accusative mich dich ihn sie es uns euch sie Sie
Dative mir dir ihm ihr ihm uns euch ihnen Ihnen
Genitive meiner deiner seiner ihrer seiner unser euer ihrer Ihrer
[edit] Adverbial phrases
Main article: German adverbial phrases
[edit] Verbs
Main article: German verbs
Main article: German conjugation
German verbs may be classified as either weak, with a dental consonant inflection, or strong, showing a vowel gradation (ablaut). Both of these are regular systems. Most verbs of both types are regular, though various subgroups and anomalies do arise. The only completely irregular verb in the language is “sein” (to be). However, textbooks for foreign learners often class all strong verbs as irregular. There are fewer than 200 strong and irregular verbs, and there is a gradual tendency for strong verbs to become weak.
[edit] Modal particles
Main article: German modal particle
Modal particles (Abtönungspartikel) are a part of speech used frequently in spoken German. These words affect the tone of a sentence instead of conveying a specific literal meaning. Typical examples of this kind of word in German are doch, mal, halt, eben, nun, schon, eh or ja. Many of these words also have a more basic, specific meaning (e.g. ja “yes”, schon “already”), but in their modal use, this meaning is not directly expressed.
[edit] Sentences
Main article: German sentence structure
German sentence structure is somewhat more complex than in other languages, with phrases regularly inverted for both questions and subordinate phrases.
September 4th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
I just found this on http://www.lexiophiles.com/english/top-list-of-the-hardest-languages-to-learn
Top List of the hardest languages to learn
Oct 24th, 2008 | By Jonas | Category: English
1. Basque
2. Hungarian
3. Chinese
4. Polish
5. Japanese
6. Russian
7. German
8. Korean
9. English
10. Swahili
See German is on th 7th place and there’s no Czech. So Tesi that’s the prove that German is much more difficult than Czech(even english is more difficult).
September 4th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
But for Americans German is very easy to learn because many words are the same ore simmilar to English:
same or simmilar words:
Water(only North German)
Wind
Rose
Hand
Arm
Ball
Grass
Statue
Person
Haus(house)
Maus(mouse)
Fuß(Foot)
essen(to eat)
Bett(bed)
Fliege(Fly)
Feuer(fire)
Erde(Éarth)
Mann(man)
scharf(sharp)
Grund(ground)
rund(round)
Welt(world)
Zwieback(comes from German)
Kindergarten(comes from German)
Kind(kid)
Garten(garden :See Kindergarten is German and means translated kid garden)
Zwielicht(twighlight)
Geist(ghost)
schmal(small)
high(hoch)
stein(stone : Einstein means nothing els than one stone)
Wurm(worm)
Film
Wunder(wonder)
Sinn(scence)
Himmel(heaven)
Hölle(hell)
Wand(wall)
Katze(cat)
Flagge(flagg)
Kabel(cable)
sehen(to see)
tanzen(to dance)
See
Licht(light)
gut(good)
Gott(god)
Rechts(right)
links(left)
Post
Radio
machen(to make)
tun(to do)
open(offen)
Start
beginnen(to beginn)
vergessen(to forget)
Sport
Käse(cheese)
Fleisch(Flesh also meat)
Kuh(cow)
Fisch(fish)
Schuh(shoe)
Reis(rice)
Wein(vine)
Bier(beer)
dunkel(dark)
Nacht(night)
Morgen(morning and tomorrow)
Kreuz(cross)
Hut(hat)
Milch(milk)
Orden(order also Badge)
Schatten(shadow)
Kinn(cinn)
Finger
Lippe(guess what)
Was(what)
Wer(who)
Wo(were)
Wille(the will)
wollen(to want)
werden(to will)
hören(to hear)
Well.In advance it’s enough.But that’s not all.I guess 25% of the german words are simmilar ore the smae as/to english ones.
September 8th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Hey guys. I love your text. IT considers the truth about the english language.
We talked about u’r text in our englishlesson. Our class was splitted in to two groups. One group thought, the text said the truth and the other thougt the text is a big lie.
But go ahead with so fantastic examples for the “Bad, german Language”
Your ALeX
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:29 am
Very funny blog, especially because I thought it was ironic - playing the stereo-typical american …. reading it again, and reading the responses I’m not so sure anymore…
I thought I was fluent in German (read Thomas Mann in German) until I had to work in Germany … It was like everybody was talking a kind of slang … nobody used the words I learned at school, or read in books…
Took me more than a year to be able to speak this new lingo …
A good website to learn German is http://langlearner.com. Fun and very effective,
Arie
October 28th, 2009 at 9:57 am
German is possible to learn! But of course it will never be perfect which is also the case with every other language on this planet! If you can speak it you learn to appreciate it. I find that my expression of things and ideas is much more precise and to the point than in any other language. German is the language of many great writers, philosophers and poets.
November 8th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
hmmm… I am American, living in Germany since 2000. I have a hard time with stereotypes and don’t ever want to be considered a stupid American. Usually, people don’t ever recognize that I am American. But when they somehow find out, it really bothers me when some insist on speaking in English with me even though my GERMAN!!! is better than theirs.
November 17th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
[…] Thema “Don’t learn German” ein witziger Weblog-Beitrag eines Amerikaners (John Madison), der zeitweise in Deutschland lebt und […]
November 21st, 2009 at 11:54 am
[…] aus amerikanischer Sicht. Wie wäre es mit dieser kleinen Kostprobe aus dem Artikel “Never learn German“? The German language is, in fact, impossible to learn unless you begin learning it as a […]
November 23rd, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Ich kenne genug englischsprechende Leute in Berlin, die nie deutsch gelernt haben weil in Berlin fast jeder englisch kann. Aber die sind schauen dann immer ganz traurig rein wenn sie dann mal in eine Runde kommen wo sich dann doch die Gespraeche auf deutsch entwickeln und man nur am Rand mit ihnen auf english spricht. Hatte sogar mal nen Mitbewohner der nach 9 Jahren Berlin immer kein Wort deutsch konnte was ich echt ganz schoen obskur fand.
November 30th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Finally people can take things with humor! Thanks for this blog. Best since Mark Twain…
Anyhow for all those interested, the study of and about languages (Etymology/Etymlogie) is a very old desciplin. In the US Webster had done his studies, in Germany the Brothers Grimm (hmmmmm, did´nt they write fairy tales…???) did their contributions. The Grimms had been experts in language. Then allready only by language they found proof, that because of the similarities in languages, people must all have some common origin and/or ethinicity!
So between the Indian language (India/Asia) and all European Languages there is a common heritage. The Indians and Europeans belong to the Indo-European (Indo-germanic) Enthnicity. Therefore in common are words (Nouns, verbs…), and grammar too! The declination of the articles or genders is therefore a super-long history of mankind and laguages too!
So ages back allready it was clear, that once there had to have been a “connection” betweeen the people in Asia and Europe. A long time before DNA given proof to this! A very old book, a dictionary of ancient german, gothic, Sanskrit (Sanscrit), Welsh, can be seen here:
http://books.google.de/books?id=FKAFAAAAQAAJ&pg=PR25&lpg=PR25&dq=w%C3%B6rtbuch+althochdeutsch+hindi&source=bl&ots=T2M_7v-ANj&sig=rAgC2qgSe8SKvep8ZtQrd6wGJPk&hl=de&ei=4TQJS8jpAqbInAP75924Cg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CCUQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Because of the declination of the 3 genders and it´s 16 forms, along with many common words, the “movement of mankind” from Africa to other places could allready be asumed in the beginning of the 19 century (1800 …).
All the nonsense of races and such stupidities therefore are Bull…!
English is a “Young” language barely or not even quite 1000 years old yet. Therefore much easier! Since English derives from ancient german (from the Angles, Saxons, Juttes, and from the ancient French (Normandic/Northern France), it was impossible to communicate because of the differant genders! The same object is femine in one, and masculine in the other language.
By the way: During times of Robin Hood, Robin and Prince John spoke two differant languages, but definately NOT english!
And here a “typical german joke”, maybe not all will understand. It comes from the time where Helmut Kohl had been Chancellor, and Ronald reagan President (Mid 1980´s)
For this you have to know, that there are 2 forms of addressing people: the Formal “Sie” (You No. 1 in respect to elders or superiors or people who are strangers to you), and the personal and private Du (You No. 2). In english only “YOU”. It is tradition, that people after some time offer each other the “Du”. OK?
Joke:
When Helmut Kohl and Pres. Reagan met, Helmut Kohl (known to have been bad in English) said to Reagan: ” You can say you to me Mr. President”…
All those who understood this joke know German!
November 30th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
It’s really funny to see English-speaking people discussing my language. Perhabs you Americans have to think over how to teach some German people why you have to use progressive forms. No one would speak English when there were no Saxons who are Germans, too. And if you say German is difficult try to learn Russian.
But it’s also true that you mustn’t learn German because in every region the people speak different. There is no one in Germany, Switzerland or Austria who speaks German perfectly.
It’s better you come zo us and see how we life and please don’t go to Bavaria or Austria. They’re separatists.
lots of love from the wonderful Saxony
December 1st, 2009 at 1:17 am
Einmal hürte ich den Satz: English ist eine blöde Sprache. Ich mußte sie erst lernen, Deutsch konnte ich schon immer.
Ich ging nach Englend um die Sprache zu lernen und stellte fest, je mehr ich die Sprache verstand um so mehr schwanden meine Vorurteile über die Engländer. Ich glaube das ist der beste Grund eine fremde Sprache zulernen.
Die meisten Ausagen sind sehr lustig, aber wie immer im Netz (oder inder Welt) glauben einige Oberlehrer sein zu müssen:
December 2nd, 2009 at 8:02 pm
hello! I möchte Deutsch lernen und auch improve my english. If you want to learn spanish, please let me know.
florapura1952@hotmail.com
December 4th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Damn, why aren’t you joking about German number out speaking?
December 17th, 2009 at 5:45 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language
December 20th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Ich habe schon immer geahnt, dass es witzig ist in Deutschland zu leben. Vielen Dank für dieses Buch, jetzt bin ich mir sicher, dass es sogar ein Mordsspaß ist! Ich habe Tränen gelacht …
December 20th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
For the next edition of your book: The best reasons not to learn German are the comments of our saviors of the German language. Just list those comments. I wonder if the German immigration test test for anal retentivenes.
I read your book today and liked it a lot. “Nothing for ungood” is great title. Suggestion for Volume 2 “This makes me so fast nobody after”.
Does anyone have any similar Denglish-translations. I could come up with “selfunderstandably” and “sununderwalk”.
Happy holiday.
stefan
December 20th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
I like “me nothing, you nothing”.
December 21st, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Stefan W. Says:
December 20th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
I like “me nothing, you nothing”.
How I see, is your english onewallfree. I am househigh hejoyed.
December 26th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
I also like
“I made me me nothing you nothing out of the powder”
“My english is so good that makes me nobody so quickly after”
“If you want to bind me a bear on, I’ll become foxdevilwild…”
December 26th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
This entry is really sowfunny
December 27th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
my dear mr singing-club.
December 27th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Ich habe gerade die deutsche Ausgabe ausgelesen.
Amerikaner sind bekannterweise nicht nur faul im Erlernen
von Fremdsprachen, sie können auch nicht rechnen!
Der Beweis: Seite 12 heisst es:
Eine Meile besteht aus 5280 Fuß; man kann sie in exakt
eintausensiebenhundert Sechzgstel teilen.
Das ist natürlich baloney.
Richtig: 1 mile = 1760 yards = 5280 feet
Auf Seite 151 wird behauptet, man könne “convenient”
nicht übersetzen und es gebe kein Wort für”Schadenfreude”.
Wie wäre es mit “annehmlich” und “malicious joy”?
Auch das Wörtschen “doch” kann man übersetzen.
Beispiel:
“You go to bed” “No” “Yes”
Ansonsten bin ich ganz schön from the socks über dieses
Buch and I make me now me nothing you nothing out of the dust.
December 27th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Thank you for giving me a good laugh :)! And I can tell you one thing: Even a lot of German people are not able to speak their motherlanguage with all its cases, adjectives, verbs, prepositions and so on correctly.
December 27th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
ja ich hab heute langeweile.
[klugschiss-mode on] die rechnung könnte falsch übersetzt sein oder ein druckfehler den bei 1760 yards wäre ein yard ein tausensiebenhundersechzigstel meile, weswegen vielleicht nicht “tausensiebnhunder sechzigstel” gemeint sind.
convenient und annehmlich… hmmm, hab keines der beiden wörter oft genug benutzt um sagen zu können wer recht hat.
bei schadenfreude und malicious joy denke ich, dass es zwar rein “technisch” als übersetzung in ordnung ist, aber ein englischer muttersprachler nicht unbedingt mit malicious joy etwas anfangen kann (bösartige, hämische freude ist nicht exakt schadenfreude). dein beispiel für “doch” bestätigt nur, dass es keine übersetzung gibt, weil yes nunmal nicht gleich “doch”, sondern “ja” ist. der beispielsatz drückt zwar das deutsche “doch” aus, es gibt aber kein eigenständiges wort für “doch” in englisch. [klugschiss-mode off]
then i wish you all a good slide
December 29th, 2009 at 2:08 am
als eine Amerikanerin, die Deutsch gelernt hat und die Deutsch spricht (natürlich nicht perfekt aber trotzdem ziemlich verstandbar !!), ich finde diesen Artikel total blut. Man muss nur die Regeln der Grammatik mal lernen, und dann werden sie eigentlich automatisch. Schade, dass Du einfach zu faul bist.
Englisch ist bestimmt eine sehr einfache Sprache - ist ja Grund genug, um was kompliziertes zu studieren, nicht wahr?
*******
as an American who learned German and speaks it (not perfectly but nevertheless pretty good and understandable!!), I think this post is stupid. You only need to learn the rules of the grammar, and then they become automatic. Too bad you’re just too lazy.
English is certainly a simple language - isn’t that reason enough to study something a little more complicated?
December 29th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Okay, somebody help an Ami to understand “me nothing, you nothing”. It sounds like it might be very funny…
December 30th, 2009 at 12:01 am
Haha, bei ‘me nothing, you nothing’ war ich jetzt aber auch erst etwas irritiert, bis ich beim zweiten Mal überfliegen darauf gekommen bin, dass es ‘mir nichts, dir nichts’ heißt.
December 30th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Es tut mir Leid Dana, aber ich dreimal mit meiner Mauszeiger Stefan W’s Blog eintrag überwinken und streng geheim Zauberworten gesagt, wann Knall auf Fall, ich verstandet!
Knall auf Fall?…Bang to fall, hmmm.
January 3rd, 2010 at 4:56 pm
lol, ja happy new year, das streng geheime Zauberwort würde mich jetzt aber mal interessieren?
p.s. das “haha” bezog sich auf meine lange Leitung (long line?)
January 4th, 2010 at 5:21 pm
In Amerika sagen wir, “Hocus Pocus!” (mit English lange O & kurze U) Ich mag “mir nichts dir nichts” besser.
Ich denke das sie eine kurze Leitung ist! Was?!? Das gegenwort gleichfalls funktionieren nicht? Doch! Die Mutterspache macht mir einer resander Kopfschmerz!
January 5th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Thomas is entirely correct. English is treacherous: easy at the beginning, then it becomes more and more difficult, while it is rather the other way round with most other languages. Poor English is easy to learn, good English requires a lot of effort to learn. Many Germans still don’t realise that “I stopped to talk to John” means something entirely different from “I stopped talking to John”. I know I didn’t for a long time, and my school teachers failed to point it out - perhaps they didn’t realise it, either.
Native speakers of English are used to broken English, but look down on it, and it can often be a serious disadvantage when you don’t master the language well. By the time you manage to speak English well, many years have passed in which you could have learned another language just as well. It’s just that English is considered more useful - its only real advantage. Otherwise, English is just a PITA. If Finnish was the global lingua franca, people would extol its virtues, how logical and clear its structure is, how systematic and predictable its vocabulary is, how expressive and precise it is and how its words sound exactly like what they mean, etc. Latin used to praised as well - in similar ways - when it was still the lingua franca of the academia and the church.
Speakers of “smaller” languages, on the other hand, are often enthusiastic when you struggle to pronounce a few phrases in their language given that few people even bother making that effort. Why should anyone be interested in THEIRS of all languages?
That said, I wonder what associations native speakers of English have with German accents, strong, medium or weak ones, or even particular regional German accents - I think that English spoken with a Hamburg German accent sounds quite different from English spoken with a Viennese or even Swiss accent even to a native speaker. If the associations are positive, perhaps striving to get one’s English perfect (especially the pronunciation) is not even necessary.
I suspect that the fact that German has so many regional accents and variants in grammar makes native speakers more tolerant to foreign accents, in fact. While they are usually able to pick out a foreign from a regional accent (though one may wonder if many Swiss as well as some Austrians and Bavarians should not be considered second-language speakers of standard German, and handle it sometimes in rather clumsy ways, much like foreigners), pronouncing your Rs differently or failing to aspirate your stops, pronounce your schwas correctly or lip-round your umlauts, not mastering the genitive or always using the present and the perfect (the present can even stand in for the past, especially in narration - a sort of historical present), or using paraphrases with “do”, and many minor deviations may not even be noticed, because many Germans do the same. For speakers of English, it comes especially handy that Germans are so used to peppering their speech with words and direct translation of English idioms, anyway, even though I find this deplorable because the result is both poor German and poor English. And almost nobody cares about proper spelling anyway these days. Youths are known to butcher the language, even native speakers imitating the German-Turkish accent and slang in a similar manner youths imitate Afro-American English in other places. In sum: Don’t worry too much - one day, a German may remark that you actually speak better German than most Germans!
By the way, while it is true that Hungarian is distantly related to Finnish, it is not true that it is the only language to do so. Estonian is related to Finnish, and even quite closely. The similarities are blatantly obvious, in fact. Also, the languages of the Saami in Lapland are related to Finnish, and there are many small languages in Russia that are from very closely (e. g., Karelian) to very distantly (e. g., Komi, Khanty, Mansi or even the languages of the Samoyeds) related, even though it is to be expected that people who aren’t linguists aren’t aware of these.
As for Indo-European, it has to be noted that the language that all the Indo-European languages have evolved from is far from being the mother tongue of all mankind. It was probably not even spoken much longer than 5000 years ago - at the time where the Late Stone Age had already given way to the Copper Age in Europe (the advent of the Bronze Age was later), and Sumerian and Old Egyptian started to be written.
The easiest language in the world is always one’s first language, even though the grasp on the written standard language may be weak, and it is not true that one need not learn one’s first language: You just don’t really remember struggling with the pitfalls of its pronunciation, grammar and semantics. However, you had a lot of time to do so, plenty of occasion to practice and no foreign accent to distort your speech, and nobody expected you to talk like an adult or about complicated topics anyway, so it appears like it’s easy as pie for the little ones.
I know that I may seem eloquent in English, but if you have ever heard me struggling to lead a spontaneous conversation in English, you’ll realise that oral competence is a quite different beast.
By the way, it is possible to obfuscate one’s speech with big fancy words and appear to say a lot when essentially saying nothing too profound, or even not much at all, in English just as well as in German; great examples courtesy by George Orwell and Richard Feynman are quoted in the Wikipedia article about the phenomenon, which is known as logorrhoea.
Also, the inhabitants of tiny villages in Bavaria (but presumably, other places, too) are notorious for not being particularly open-minded or informed about the world - just like your average redneck from the backwoods or the Deep South.
Let’s not forget that to a monolingual speaker of, say, Irish, who starts to learn English, English is just as alien, exotic and maddeningly complicated as Irish is to a monolingual speaker of English. (A more topical example would involve Arabic. But Irish English is still stands as a testament to the trouble that the Irish have had learning the language.) However, bilingual and multilingual people are harder to scare: the more languages you learn, especially when the languages have little in common and are very different from each other, the more you get used to seeming difficulties that are often simply logical in other ways. It is also good for your brain - it has found out that bilingualism or multilingualism delays the onset of senility!
For example, once you get over its alien look, you’ll find that Welsh is not such a difficult language after all - it doesn’t even have cases, just like English. By the way, those long place names are totally unusual in Welsh too and actually quite artificial inventions. And Krung Thep Mananakhon can be called, much more simply, Bangkok.
And as Wikipedia’s article on the Finnish cases points out, Finns simply uses cases in many places where speakers of English and German would use prepositions. Learning a case in Finnish is rather akin to learning a preposition in English or German, that way. Also, there are 15 of them, not 6, but of those 15, several are rarely used.
Another point: While German is indeed a conservative Germanic language in many ways, especially grammar, the High German sound shift has wrought havoc on its consonants. It isn’t older or younger than English and not closer to the Germanic “mother language” in every way. However, it is true that older stages of English look surprisingly “German”. The point is, the Anglo-Saxons came from the continent, but they took a language with them that was already slightly different from the ancestor of High German, which was spoken more southerly, Thuringia and thereabouts. Frisian, Low German (also known as Low Saxon) and to some extent also Dutch are therefore closer to English.
Afrikaans is an interesting idea for English who want to learn a foreign language but one that seems as little daunting as possible. Other languages surrounding the North Sea: Norwegian, Danish, perhaps Frisian, Dutch of course, or Scots, for that matter, should appear rather familiar.
Perhaps Middle Low German or Dutch - or Afrikaans for that matter, which is relatively “intercultural” and neutral nowaday - would have been a more palatable global language to people. Or even some English-based pidgin language (Tok Pisin is exotic and strange in its own ways, though, but it would be equally foreign for almost everyone, without giving anyone too much of an advantage).
Or possibly something like Indian English, Singlish (Singapore English) or Hawaiian Pidgin English.
January 5th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
By the way, Günther’s mirror image of the original article (I take it to be meant in good humour) was also quite funny.
January 6th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
@Florian: One word, “Esperanto”
January 7th, 2010 at 5:57 pm
” I wonder what associations native speakers of English have with German accents, strong, medium or weak ones, or even particular regional German accents”
As far as I can tell, ze accent ve Germans have vile speakink ze English language is still often associated viz ze Nazis, unfortunately.
I think it is quite interesting to observe how an audible German accent tends to be represented in written English. That many Germans struggle with the “th” is nothing new, but why, you may wonder for a short time, (at least if you are German yourself) is it replaced here with a “z”? Then you remember that “z” is pronounced much softer in English compared to German! And then there is the whole “v” - “w” differentiation that simply doesn’t exist in German. (And apparently also not in Russian, which leads to the typical Chekov-accent.)
January 7th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Oops! Of course “v” is pronounced like “f” in many German words, so there IS SOMETIMES a difference between the German “w” and “v”. But it should be obvious that I didn’t mean it this way!
January 8th, 2010 at 3:37 am
“eat some Keks and enjoy”…that isn’t even right…the plural of Keks is Kekse…so, if you know so much about the cons of German…what an irony that you got that one wrong…;-)))
January 8th, 2010 at 4:01 pm
If some Austrian guy hadn’t start this damn WWII, maybe we wouldn’t have to learn English. Otherwise we would probably stuck with French, in this case I would rather prefer English
)
This is maybe the only positive thing of the war (wasn’t worth a war at all, but you’ve always got to look on the bright side of life
January 8th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
@Fiona:
)
Seems that you made hard experiences, but I think your hosts didn’t mean to be rude.
Maybe it has to do with the culture of different countries. While our American friends asked for every little detail, worked out every single detail on every single day (e.g. visiting towns, relatives and so on), in Germany the people are usually asked if there are any problems.
I think the “American” way of dealing with strangers is the better one, though sometimes it gets annoying when there is no time to rest. (It seems to me that they don’t spend any time alone, that would drive me crazy
January 8th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
@Bird of Prey;
I will tell you how Ami’s really hear it: I vunder vat aszociations natif schpeakers off Anglisch haf mit Cherman ahkzents!
But you bring up a curious point. When Ami’s think of “nice” Germans, we think of Bavarians and a thick, messy, rolling-your-r’s accent is okay. When we think of “bad” Germans, we think of stiff-back Prussians with clipped and precise German accents.
I had not thought about this before, but I think this image is Hollywood fostered - the bad Germans are always protrayed as hissing, insidious, skinny, clinically clean guys, and the good Germans are fun-loving, beer-drinking, overweight, singing Gemutlichers who are barely understandable.
Personally, the bad Germans are pretty scary, especially when they are dentists or the owners of multi-national corporations. I much prefer the distantly-related, midievel-city-dwelling, festival-going good Germans.
January 9th, 2010 at 9:15 pm
Ah, alright, then I’m safe with my Bavarian accent, hirsute and bohemian look, (not really, but also occasionally beer-fueled) belly that testifies to just how much I enjoy unhealthy food, addiction to silliness, disinclination to multi-national corporations, and love of music and singing and a penchant for art, culture and medievalism, and should actually cultivate the accent.
I’ll just have to remember to roll my Rs.
(But won’t that make Americans think of Rammstein? Not that I mind them, personally …)
Henning, in fact German was the lingua franca of Central, Northern and Eastern Europe 100 years ago, and German-speaking communities scattered all over both North and South America. There are still plenty of traces of the influence German has had on other languages - even Japanese! If it weren’t for the world wars, German would most likely compete with English as the global lingua franca now, and it is still going strong in Europe in fact.
In many ways, German is a strikingly conservative language indeed, especially compared to English, now that I think of it. Most regarding grammar, as mentioned, but also the largely Germanic-derived vocabulary.
It is mainly the High German sound-shift that has made a mess of the German consonants and introduced weirdos such as “pf” - but even in Northern Germany and many dialects, “pf” does not even exist (typically being replaced by “f”, as the sound is as alien to speakers of Low German as to speakers of English, but in the West of Germany, also “p” is found instead). Another example demonstrating that people should not be afraid of German - if you can’t manage “pf”, it’s not a big thing, many Germans can’t either.
John, Esperanto is suitably neutral and multicultural, but there are reasons why I do not favour it especially. Generally, I favour more naturally grown (organic
) languages. There’s a compromise-Germanic language called Folkspraak, but it looks quite similar to Dutch and Low German. There is a website that humourously advocates Viennese as world language - as good as any proposal!
But there is something to be said for Afrikaans, with its regular pronunciation, almost-creole structure and multi-continental vocabulary, with borrowings from English, German, Malay, Portuguese Creole, Bantu and Khoisan languages. Moreover, it has greatly simplified verb morphology: it is the only Germanic language to have lost ablaut in verbs. Nor is there grammatical gender in nouns.
On the other hand, Spanish has inspired creators of international auxiliary languages forever, and seems to be on the rise currently.
Bird of Prey: German (and indeed Russian, too) doesn’t have the sound that is spelled “w” in English. It has English “v” in English, but spelled as “w”. This is very confusing to Germans: When they see “w”, they will intuitively pronounce it like the German “w”, leading to pronunciations like “vinter”, but as they are taught to pronounce the English “w” at school, they sometimes tend to mix both sounds up and may end up using English “w” to pronounce a written English “v”, leading to pronunciations such as “viz witamins”!
January 19th, 2010 at 9:54 am
I haven’t laughed so hard in ages, thanks for a beautifully written article. my girlfriend Caroline is German and she sent it to me, we have very similar taste in jokes and we both laughed for ages. Any language is difficult to learn and what makes this funny is it’s the writers inability to grasp the German language. Which made me split my sides, he’s often right with what he says not because it’s the spoken truth but because he’s relating it to his inability (and mine) to comprehend, and that is what makes this hilarious!!!!!
PLEASE DON”T TRY TO CORRECT WHAT HE HAS SAID YOU SIMPLY MAKE HIS JOKES ALL THE MORE HILARIOUS, FOR INSTANCE WHEN HE TALKE ABOUT GERMAN LANGUAGE CHANGING ALL THE TIME SOMEONE REPLIED…..”How did you come to the idea, that “daß” does not exist anymore? It’s just spelled “dass” now”.
GOLD!!!
How did you come to the idea, that “daß” does not exist anymore? It’s just spelled “dass” now.
January 25th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
As for the neutral international language, I forgot that we had one for many centuries, it was called Latin.
It was no-one’s native language really, but in the Middle Ages, it was actually used actively and fluently by the educated, even as a spoken language. Medieval Latin would continually be developped to suit the changing needs of its speakers. Some think that it was the purism of Renaissance Humanist Latin that spelled doom for the continued use of Latin and eventually led to its downfall.
Latin as an “Ausbausprache” enriched with neologisms for modern life would indeed provide an excellent solution to the problem of a neutral international language for Europe and the world at large. While many language reformers and planners of international auxiliary languages in the 19th century sought to simplify Latin and get rid of its noun inflections to increase its appeal, I think they did it a disservice. Speakers of (most) Slavic, Baltic or Finno-Ugric languages do not consider the noun inflections of Latin particularly daunting as their native languages have even more cases and more complicated inflections. Even if it would seem that in some aspects, speakers of Romance languages are at an advantage learning Latin, in this respect it is not so and it is the Eastern Europeans who can be expected to find the grammatical structure of Latin, with its rich inflections and absence of articles, more familiar. And of course, the national languages not only of Europe are still replete with Latinisms of all kinds.
Given the richness of the Latin heritage and the fact that it is still comparatively well-known to many Europeans, and keeps being studied by students throughout the continent, its tremendous potential as an alternative global lingua franca deserves the highest attention.
January 26th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Oh, and Charles Widmore’s people used it to speak “in code” on “Lost”, so it could probably become “cool” too!
February 6th, 2010 at 10:37 pm
Ami beim Bäggr:
“Swei Brotschen, please!”
(Sisch komplett korrekt, mir hend koi kurzes A).
ROFL
February 19th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
Hey, guys and girls! Get serious! No foreign language is easy (once you’re past 7). Cases, plurals, syntax, non-phonetic spellings, words with multiple meanings, different alphabets (cyrillic, japanese, chinese, arabic, korean), and idiomatic expressions that are coming and going. We English speakers do have one great advantage in this world, however there are more of us than just about anybody else (the Indians and Chinese are pushing us, though!) “Moose” Amos, Severn, MD
February 22nd, 2010 at 8:42 pm
The more English I learn, the more aware I become of even quite everyday words and concepts that exist in German but are awkward or “umständlich” (cumbersome) to express in English, and may even be genuine lexical gaps. Often, it does seem that German words that have no neat counterpart in English indeed describe deeply (or at least stereotypically - but then, stereotypes often have more than a grain of truth in them, even if we’d rather deny it) German cultural concepts. For example, “Doch!” (Germans are argumentative, after all) or “zügig” (Germans are effective and disciplined - or at least expected to be effective and disciplined - not only at work but also in other areas, such as traffic).
One of the most blatant gaps, to my mind, is a proper, unambiguous expression for “scharf”, as in food. Neither “hot” nor “spicy” nor even “hot and spicy” makes the cut, since food may be fresh out of the oven, and spiced well, which should go without saying (to be honest, Germans are not known as the most creative spicers, but let’s leave this aside), without necessarily being “scharf” at all. True, “scharf” is ambiguous too (a knife can - and should - be “scharf”, as well), but not in context, as there is no way for “scharf” as applied to a meal to be misinterpreted, you see?
(On a related note, an amusing but also annoying Anglicism is when people call a person “heiß”, given how “warm” or “kalt” would not be compliments, but “cool” would be one. Of course, what they do is mistranslate “hot”, as what they really mean is “scharf”, which seems to become alarmingly rare as opposed to the blatantly incorrect “heiß”. There is even a beautiful “Steigerung” of “scharf”, namely “rattenscharf”, while I do not know of one for “heiß”. By the way, it seems that in this context, “scharf” originally referred to the onlooker’s turned-on state of mind, or rather hormonal status, whence the “rattenscharf”.)
For this reason, Germans should much more liberally borrow words into their English, i. e. simply leave them untranslated (and perhaps italicise them, which looks “très chic”, after all), whenever they stumble upon such a deficiency of the English language, once they realise that it is not so perfect after all, and it’s not their own fault that they can’t find a neat translation.
Even “Fachsprachen” (technical jargon) could greatly profit from this, for example, terms such as “Lautlehre”, “Lautung” and “Lautstand” neatly conflate phonetics and phonology, which makes them very handy whenever such a pedantic distinction is unnecessary (in this case, it is actually the English rather than the German language which is overly technical and pedantic). Of course, linguistic terminology such as “Ablaut” and “Umlaut” has already been borrowed, so precedents are well-established and it would not look out of place at all to borrow even more.
“Fach-”, by the way, is itself a useful prefix that has no unitary equivalent in English, and must clumsily be translated as “non-fiction”, “technical”, or “specialised”. Why not simply say “fach book”, for example? Moreover, at least to musicians, “Fach” is already well familiar as a Germanism.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_expressions_in_English
February 24th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Hoppla, I was conflating the prefixes “Fach-” (technical, specialised) and “Sach-” (non-fiction), since a “fach text” is a “sach text”, too.
February 28th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
I have been learning German for 25 years and still don’t speak it correctly. My lovely German teacher told me that she had been trying to learn Spanish for about as long and still couldn’t speak it correctly. She mentioned things about the horrendous number of different conjugations of Spanish verbs, the prepositions (aren’t prepositions the killer in every language?) and the fact that Spanish has two different verbs “to be”. I told her that one doesn’t have to speak Spanish perfectly to be able to communicate and make a good living. She said (jokingly?) that 80% of all spoken German can be learned in 3 minutes! It is all contained in 5 expressions:
1) Alles klar.
2) Kein Problem.
3) Kannst du vergessen.
4) Na ja!
5) Ach so!
I’ll kip learrrrning ontil Ei veinali get it rrrreit!