![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Learning German
After a break, caused by problems in the way Duolingo interacts with Chrome on my elderly computer, I'm back learning German again.
It's complicated and difficult enough to help me focus on something other than trying to sell my mother-in-law's house and other things with high stress factors.
However, sometimes German can be illogical enough to make even me tear my hair out.
'Ihr' is the most crazy word I've yet come across. What kind of language has the SAME word for 'she', 'your', and 'theirs' ?
When you're already juggling three genders and four cases, and the fact that a simple word like 'the' can be spelt in half a dozen ways depending on which combination you have, 'ihr' is pretty much the last straw.
Mind you, there are compensations. Some German words are glorious and just make me laugh out loud. One of my favourites is 'Krankenhaus' - 'hospital', or 'Schnurrbart' - 'mustache'.
I find transliteration often helps me remember a word - I look up part words in dictionaries. eg. 'Schnurrbart' is nothing to do with snoring in spite of the sound, it means 'string beard', which makes sense.
'Schwiegermutter' is the German for mother-in-law. It transliterates as 'silent mother'. Sort of an unseen family member, but one who is still part of the family. All in-laws are schwieger something.
Although I'm still using Duolingo, I'm branching out into a number of other German-teaching sites. They all have different pros and cons. Few of them are good at teaching grammar - I think they're afraid of scaring people away. I'm using a book from the library as my main grammar guide.
If anyone would like a list of the sites I've found so far, just ask.
BTW, if you're not a native English speaker (and I know at least two of you aren't) do feel free to point out the most crazy things in the English language!
It's complicated and difficult enough to help me focus on something other than trying to sell my mother-in-law's house and other things with high stress factors.
However, sometimes German can be illogical enough to make even me tear my hair out.
'Ihr' is the most crazy word I've yet come across. What kind of language has the SAME word for 'she', 'your', and 'theirs' ?
When you're already juggling three genders and four cases, and the fact that a simple word like 'the' can be spelt in half a dozen ways depending on which combination you have, 'ihr' is pretty much the last straw.
Mind you, there are compensations. Some German words are glorious and just make me laugh out loud. One of my favourites is 'Krankenhaus' - 'hospital', or 'Schnurrbart' - 'mustache'.
I find transliteration often helps me remember a word - I look up part words in dictionaries. eg. 'Schnurrbart' is nothing to do with snoring in spite of the sound, it means 'string beard', which makes sense.
'Schwiegermutter' is the German for mother-in-law. It transliterates as 'silent mother'. Sort of an unseen family member, but one who is still part of the family. All in-laws are schwieger something.
Although I'm still using Duolingo, I'm branching out into a number of other German-teaching sites. They all have different pros and cons. Few of them are good at teaching grammar - I think they're afraid of scaring people away. I'm using a book from the library as my main grammar guide.
If anyone would like a list of the sites I've found so far, just ask.
BTW, if you're not a native English speaker (and I know at least two of you aren't) do feel free to point out the most crazy things in the English language!
no subject
"Ihr" isn't "she", though, it's "Her"/"Their" and, in baroque, no longer spoken German, a formal mode of adress, i.e. Faust to his adlatus Wagner, "Wenn Ihr's nicht fühlt, Ihr werdet's nicht erlernen" ("if you don't feel it, you won't learn it". "She" is "Sie", which however is also the formal mode of adress (in practice today, and it started to compete with "Ihr" in the late 18th century), i.e. if I speak to a teacher, I call them Mr./Ms and "Sie", not "Du".
no subject
I've found that Duolingo is useless on adjectives. It likes to give you phrases, but doesn't help you learn the rules, and adjectives are very messy.
I've just found a good library book and am struggling with direct and indirect objects that thus mean the adjectives take different endings for accusative and dative cases.
Do German children soak all this up automatically? The different endings really are a complicated set to memorise.
I see my three year old granddaughter gradually mastering irregular verbs in English. I never notice them in daily life until she gets one wrong.
I have no real idea how many there are in English as they now come automatically so I never think about them. I suspect there are a lot, but I really don't know.
A third of my library book is devoted to German irregular verbs...
We're fish in water when using our native tongue.
no subject
no subject
This week's favourite is Bustkorb (rib cage), which transliterates to 'lust basket!'
no subject
"Ihr" and "Euch" (the oblique form) are the pronouns you'll practically never come across in practice and whose verb-forms you can get away without knowing -- I've only met them in Christmas cards sent to the family.
One of my favourite words is "Nacktschnecke".
Schnecke = "snail"
Nacktschnecke = "naked snail", i.e. without a shell -- "slug"!
no subject
Funnily enough, then I grew up in the Faroes, and Fareose has a similar grammar to German, so it's less confusing to learn. (And yes, you just absorb the grammar without thinking as a child.)
no subject
I never realised the Faroes had their own language. Is it most similar to Norwegian or Danish? (I just had to add Faroes to my dictionary - that's a bit sad that it wasn't there already)
I imagine it may be surviving better than many minority languages purely because of the isolation factor.
What was it like growing up somewhere that remote? Or is it just like everywhere else now?
no subject
Well I did it for 3 years. The first 2 we had a terrible teacher and learned next to nothing. The final year we had a brilliant teacher and began to get the hang of it. But that was 20 years ago...
I never realised the Faroes had their own language. Is it most similar to Norwegian or Danish?
Lemme do a scale, from most unchanged to most evolved:
Old Norse - Icelandic - Faroese - Norwegian/Swedish - Danish
Faroese is not *quite* as close to Old Norse as Icelandic, but it's on that side of things. (Danish is... almost like English, it's changed almost out of all recognition from its original roots)
I imagine it may be surviving better than many minority languages purely because of the isolation factor.
Oh yes, very much so. And people are very protective of it. Plus, the culture is thriving and all-encompassing. Books, music, plays, etc etc. It's a tiny place (50 thousand ppl), but very active.
What was it like growing up somewhere that remote? Or is it just like everywhere else now?
Well, very unique (very beautiful, very safe, very specific culture), but with cars and supermarkets and PCs and so on. Here is a lovely picture of the capital, which shows how close nature is at all times.
no subject
E.g. "Gift" in English is a present or a donation. The German word "Gift" means poison...
The English verb "become" means transform or develop into. The German verb "bekommen" means receive.
There's plenty more. :)
no subject