I never tried to learn German but if you spend some time in Germany, you just start to make sense of the words after a bit because it’s so close to English. If it weren’t for all the damn Germans trying to practice their English on me, I’d probably have gotten reasonably fluent in a couple months.
As someone learning German right now, I guess it’s hard to argue with relative terms but I find the German language to be built with a ton of traps and abnormalities for seemingly no explicable reason.
For instance we conjugate every verb but we maintain the subject, unlike in Spanish where we would conjugate and drop the subject. I don’t see any reason why we would do that except to make the language less efficient and more obtuse.
That being said, it hasn’t been too hard and I agree with the general sentiment that learning any language is a good hobby to have so I don’t want to discourage anyone.
From my German perspective I often think the same about time forms in other languages. For conversations you can for the most part get by knowing the present tense and the “Perfekt” past tense. The other forms are important to know down the line but in day to day German those are the one’s you’ll hear the most. And then there’s English. Simple Present, Present Progressive, Simple Past, Past Progressive, Present Perfect, Present Perfect Progressive, Past Perfect, Past Perfect Progressive, Will-Future, Going to-Future, Future Progressive, Future Perfect, Future Perfect Progressive. And apart from maybe 3 or 4 they’re all in daily use.
Most “tenses” in English are not about tense, but about aspects like perfective, progressive, intentive or stative.
In German we use modal particles and auxillary words to express aspects and modality. The “classic” tenses we learn at school are an artificial grammar modelled after latin, not the grammar we use in everyday life. The grammar of actual spoken German is far richer than the school grammar.
Especially modality is a nemesis for German learners, as most languages to not implement modality. Modal particles are these tiny words like aber, auch, bloß, denn, dann, noch, doch, eben, eigentlich, etwa, halt, ja, mal, nur, schon, vielleicht, wohl, and more, that are strewn around almost every sentence
Just try to translate ich mach’ das aber|auch|doch|eben|halt|ja|mal|nur noch|schon|dann wohl into English or explain the difference in meaning.
This is definitely something that has left me confused. My past comments have been replied to with the explanation that written German is so precise but verbal German, because of the lack of precise tenses, often leaves me having to make assumptions. I chalk it up to my elementary understanding of German, but you explaining the difference a bit helped me pin point what I mean.
German isn’t overly precise to be honest. It’s kind of a “primal” language. We use a tiny active vocabulary and juggle it around to mean completely different things (that’s probably a thing a beginner will struggle with, every word in a sentence could potentially be a context clue that changes the entire meaning). English for example has way more unique words. Often texts become noticeably shorter if translated from German to English. I think that rules out precision 😅
That’s how I felt/feel, but couldn’t/can’t refute a native speaker because I just don’t know enough. Thanks for the comments!
Sure. Feel free to ask if there’s anything else. I could chat about languages all day 😄
Don’t worry about the formalities too much. Read lots of German, listen to lots of German, try to find people to speak German with, and it’ll come to you naturally. Especially don’t try to be too perfect. Spoken German is way more lax than the rules for written German. High German, as it is written and taught, barely exists out there as a spoken language in its pure form. The German language area has a plethora of different regional dialects, which will sneak into the spoken German of even the most fervent formal high German speaker.
I recommend Sachgeschichten from “Sendung mit der Maus”. It’s a kids show that explanes the world and how stuff is made. The advantage here is that you can see what is happening while it’s being explaned in simple vocabulary. Also it’s really interesting.
Oh! Vielen Dank! This is exactly the kind of content I’m looking for.
Oh yes, definitely. Die Sendung mit der Maus is a national treasure.
Much appreciated. I’ll do my best! I want to be here for life, so I need to learn.
Absolutely this. However all the different forms of dialects may cause additional confusion if you care about learning how to write German correctly.
Don’t complain about perceived randomness in German grammar when you come from a language with random pronunciation 😃
I don’t know if I’d say I’m complaining, and I’m definitely not rating the languages against each other. But to be clear German also has variable pronunciation and loan-in words that are pronounced differently. They also have dialects and I have struggled to get consensus on several language related topics with small groups of native speakers before - so like… It is for sure random in many ways, including pronunciation.
Again, no issue with the language any more or less than others. I personally all wish we could like scientifically conlang our way into a less obtuse communication medium. But I’m also a DM so like of course I would like someone to make a conlang for humanity :D
I did it as a toddler, how hard could it be for adults?
Knowing German can give you a competitive edge with employers and even boost your salary prospects.
Wo mein geld?
This article seems to be targeted at brits but nevertheless, learning languages is good for many reasons. It’s also fun as long as it’s not something that happens under pressure.
Wo mein geld?
Was letzte Preis?
1 euro gib oder nimm
Ich schick mein Kuseng der holt das ab der ist dumm.
Super, heute abend möglich meierstraße 123
doesn’t pick up and never answers again
Sorry, die Oma der Tante meines Kusengs ist beim Angeln auf einem Aal ausgerutscht und er musste Sie ins Krankenhaus fahren.
Edit: honestly I don’t know how to answer this in german, haven’t learned how to express my condolences.
Wo mein geld?
Well, missing pronoun, ignoring capitalization… actually you owe us 10€. Haha! Nobody expects the German inquisition!
Wo Geld
Scheiße :(
missing pronoun
It’s missing the verb and I’m not sure which pronoun you’re missing.
Grammatically correct would be “Wo ist mein Geld?” The “mein” is The missing pronoun.
But the “mein” is there and I wouldn’t call it a pronoun in this case. If it’s used before a noun like in “mein Geld” then it’s just a possessive determiner.
Since I have no clue what the latter is I sadly can not say if this is the case or not.
Determiners are a more general class of words that include for example articles. Mein is not acting as a pronoun in the example sentence but more like an article.
German has the cool feature of just cramming a bunch of words together to make a new word. That’s about the only thing I know about it as someone who’s just interested in language as a concept.
For people interested in language who speak English, I will recommend this book, which kinda blew my mind explaining why my native tongue is so stupid for good reasons:
It’s really not that different.
German: Dampfschiffkapitän
English: steam boat captain
German, if compound words worked like in English: Dampf Schiff Kapitän
English, if compound words worked like in German: steamboatcaptain
Sadly, for some Germans it does
English isn’t stupid. It’s organic. Just like any other language. Two native English speakers can communicate with each other clearly and easily, which is the point of language. Saying a language is stupid because it is difficult to learn by non-native speakers, or because it is easy to get your wrist slapped by a hard-nosed grammarian is just hand-wringing.
Learn about the Great Vowel Shift and how the timing for it, as well as the timing of the printing press, created a mess of a language with few consistent rules. It’s a stupid (written) language because history made it that way.
I mean, you are kind of missing my point. Native English speakers (or writers) can communicate easily with each other. That is literally the only thing that matters in a language. The consistency of grammatical rules is irrelevant.
I didn’t miss your point. You missed mine, which I clarified by adding (written) to make it clear that I wasn’t talking about spoken language. We can speak. That’s fine. The book that I initially referenced is about the written language and I made an effort to clarify that. You didn’t pick up that I was only calling the written language stupid. But I also talked about the introduction of the printing press relative to the Great Vowel Shift, and you missed that too. It was always about writing, spelling, pronunciation, and grammatical rules: things that don’t matter in spoken language.
German and English both belong to the Germanic language family and have a shared history. This means that there are many “cognates” (words that are historically related and therefore similar). These are often easy to guess for English speakers, particularly once you are familiar with some of the patterns.
However, my experience of teaching German at British universities has shown me that German is much more accessible to English speakers than some might think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages
The Frisian languages are the closest living language group to the Anglic languages; the two groups make up the Anglo-Frisian languages group and together with the Low German dialects these form the North Sea Germanic languages.
I bet West Frisian’s easier!
EDIT:
Has anyone really learned Frisian because it was the closest to english?
Not exactly what you’re asking for, but actor/comedian Eddie Izzard, who had studied Old English, decided to find out whether Old English and Frisian were as close as linguists said they were. He went to an area where Frisian was spoken and tried to negotiate the purchase of a brown cow, speaking Old English to a farmer who spoke only Frisian. Here’s the video; it’s pretty entertaining if you’re into languages.
as someone who only speaks German and English, this is fucking hilarious.
Frisian and Low Saxon should be practically the same to English speakers, Frisian being more closely related to English is more of a technical thing than a practical one: In practice English uses a gigantic amount of Romance words and is not mutually intelligible with either, while Low Saxon and Frisian do have a decent amount of mutual intelligibility… you can always cherrypick something mutually intelligible, of course, but knowing Low Saxon Frisian is easy to wrap your head around once you decode the accent. Difference like RP vs. Scots I’d say.
Here’s the video; it’s pretty entertaining if you’re into languages.
Bujen? I don’t speak West Frisian but dictionaries spit out keapje. Kuupe for North Frisian (mainland), in Low Saxon it’s köpen or kopen. Half of the difference there is spelling the other half the exact vowels/dipthongs. The Low Saxon ones are actually diphthongs they just get analysed as long vowels.
The “buy” root seems to be extinct in all other Germanic languages, everyone uses the root for cheap, instead.
English does seem to drift the semantics of its Germanic roots like a motherfucker. People snicker about place names like “Quickborn” but if you weren’t English-brained it’d just mean “lively spring” to you. Speaking of fuck.
Thanks for that video. It was fun!
The irony is not lost on me, in this current timeline…
As a German, I have to say learning the grammar is pretty fucking hard. Especially the four cases. It took me years to get it right with few mistakes and I am a native. Sure compared to some Slavic languages, Hungarian, Gaelic and Chinese languages it isn’t that bad. However it is a lot harder than English, Dutch or Romance languages.
English isn’t that easy to learn either. Actually I just spent the first year crying because of how irregular the spelling was and I didn’t get a basic grasp until I was about four.
I think it was hard because we had to learn all that abstract advanced stuff (Plusquamperfekt Futur II Temporaladverbial Reflexivpronomen, all that shit) that you’ll probably not learn in a language course for non-native speakers and that you don’t need to know to speak the language in normal life.
Unfortunately, language learning in schools seems to be firmly in the hands of theoretical literature people. Of course, knowing the formal rules of a language helps with speaking it, and knowing the fancy scientific names for some linguistic constructs might even be entertaining to some, but in order to understand and speak a language, its understanding needs to be on a more personal and intuitive level you can only develop through frequent use of that language.
Still, it is super hard to get basic Deklination right. Of course people will understand you, but they will immediately notice you are a foreigner even when you speak without accent.
If you aim for a high proficiency level like C1 then yes you eventually learn all the “advanced” grammar. Especially the tense system in German isn’t even that advanced compared to basically any Romance language or the English tense-aspect system.
Practically, German has only three cases, though, even if some uptight formalists (who also likely use a pair of pincers to pull up their pants) will greatly bemoan the simple fact of life that the genitive does not exist in the wild.
But there are plenty of common expressions that use the genitive:
- Trotz des Regens gingen wir spazieren.
- Während des Essens hat er angerufen.
- Wegen des Staus kam sie zu spät.
- Außerhalb des formellen Schriftverkehrs ist der Genitiv selten.
- Ich bin mir meiner Sache sicher.
- usw.
Using the dative with “von” would just be incorrect here. I certainly use and hear the genitive regularly, at least within these expressions. But maybe I am just one of those uptight formalists 🤷 — I always thought the genitive was rather elegant.
I do admit that there are some everyday situations in which it sounds clunky though…
I use genitive all the time. Only when speaking dialect do I not need to use it “Dem Dibben sei Audo” instead of “Das Auto des Herrn” or “Des Herrens Auto” or stuff like that.
Counterpoint: Three genders.
Many languages do, German is not special
And four cases.
Ukrainian has six, Croatian has seven, Hungarian has 727266278384982*10^100
Only on paper. In practice, the genitive is virtually extinct, much to the despair of a few grossly overrated zealots.
Er wird tatsächlich oft durch den Dativ ersetzt, besonders umgangssprachlich, aber “fast ausgestorben” ist maßlos übertrieben.
Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod.
Genitiv ins Wasser weil es Dativ ist.
Naiii, kein Hochdũtsch, Schwyzerdütsch isch der Weg.
Technically Schyzerdütsch is High German (you could even say it’s the Highest German, considering elevation), while what most Germans call ‘Hochdeutsch’ is actually standard german (which, to be fair, is mostly derived from High and Middle German dialects, as opposed to Low German (and Middle German is much more similar to High German than to Low German)).
Nöd i dem Fall, nei. Ussert mer wett da ide Schwiiz go wohne, bringt Schwiizerdüütsch nöd würkli öppis. S Hochdüütsche degäge chan mer au da bruuche. S lohnt sich also viel meeh.
Mer chan ja au Schwiizerdüütsch lerne wenn mer s Hochdüütsche langsam chan. Sött denn au viel eifacher sii.
Schwiizerdüütsch lerne isch au viel schwärer ohni Immersion wills halt eifach chum Lernmaterial dezue git. Und natürlich viel weniger Regle, wenn doch Regle bim lerne hälfet. Somit dänke ich nöd, dass Schwiizerdüütsch em Titel da grächt wird.
Echli Respekt, bitte! So öppis vu verreckte Lügä klar isch Schwyzerdütsch dr Wäg i d Zuekunft, nid das komische Hochdütsch-Gemurmel!
SPRICH
/s
