May 23, 2003

lzch

I have a degree in Germanics and have lived in a German-speaking country for almost two decades, but the German language can still kiss my butt. Not only does my pronunciation of Rumpelstilzchen still harvest bushels of laughs from my wife and girls when I try to read the story to my kids (somehow that consonant combination totally throws me off, musically, rhythmically, and pronunciation-wise) but I cannot reliably remember the gender of nouns.

A few years ago, after years and years of deliberations and study, a committee of German language gurus instituted a reform of the German language in German-speaking countries. But rather than simplifying the grammar and eliminating genders of nouns, they adopted German phonetic misspellings of foreign loan words and moved commas around in sentences.

My gender bending does come in handy when I get flustered, but only for the rest of my family, who like to make me even more upset by correcting my errors when I'm trying to express something serious in heated discussion.

Posted by Mig at May 23, 2003 06:43 AM
Comments

I can always remember the ones that are the sex that they seem like they shouldn't be, such as mustache, beard, and one of the slang words for dick (all feminine). I admit, though, that there are plenty I just guess on. heh

Posted by: kim at May 23, 2003 10:17 AM

Genders. I survived quite well without them until I tried to learn a second language. Sure we have them in English, but they are transparent till you start learning French or German. Wrapping my head around genders is like wrapping my head around a corkscrew. If anyone knows of another language without genders, (like pig latin), that's the one I will learn.

Posted by: Roberta at May 23, 2003 03:47 PM

Maybe I don't mean genders. What I mean is verb tenses. Gerunds? I think that's some kind of small creature related to a badger or weasel, is it not?

Posted by: Roberta at May 23, 2003 03:49 PM

Heh. I studied German for 5 years in school, and to me, it was just like a theoretical puzzle. All those rules! Genders bending this way and that, and modes just to complicate things. Even though I spent time in Germany and witnessed small children speaking it freely and spontaneously, German never entered my mind as a living language - always just a mass of theory.
So to this day I remember the rules but I can't speak a word of it.

Unlike Spanish, which I learned en la calle first and then went on to get a university degree in.

And then there is my own mother tongue and first language, Norwegian -- I can speak it more or less correctly but I haven't got a clue as to Why and How, I just do it --

Posted by: Karine at May 23, 2003 09:18 PM

Genders & tenses in German? Easy stuff?!?!?
Now just take a clean sheet of paper, or a comment box like this one, and just write down the rules for building the plurals of words in English.
BTW; minimise the size of your exception tables!

Stu

Posted by: Stu Savory at May 25, 2003 06:21 PM

A great piece on the subject here: http://www.linguistik-online.de/11_02/nissen.html

As it relates to translation but relevant to the frustrations of daily (oft translated) speak, nonetheless.

Posted by: Gail Armstrong at May 27, 2003 05:06 PM

I also get genders mixed up when speaking German, and am constantly using Du instead of Sie with older Germans. Oh well. In Mongolian the words for he, she and it are the same (ter), so Mongolians always get those words mixed up in English, which i find totally endearing.

Posted by: chris at May 28, 2003 07:23 AM

In Swedish, words aren't masculine or feminine or neuter, they're either an en- or an ett- word. Which is okay, one just has to memorize them. What took me the longest time to get used to was that when using the definite article - "the" in English - they stick it at the end of the word. So, ett hus= a house; huset=the house.

But it's still the pronunciation that's the killer. There are some really weird consonents, mostly of an sh-like character but spelled numerous ways and pronounced numerous ways. But I've more or less mastered those. It's getting the vowels right, the difference between a long and short vowel is just so very subtle to an American ear, but Swedes don't understand the word if you pronounce it wrong.

Posted by: francis s. at May 28, 2003 06:08 PM