![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
'Line of Separation' and learning German
If you want a recommendation for a really good German-language (with subtitles) TV programme, then try this recommendation by londonkds.
The drama is called 'Line of Separation' and is on channel 4 iplayer.
It's set just at the end of WW2 and it's pretty harrowing. Definitely not for children. Well acted.
My grandparents lived through being bombed, but they never had to live through occupation - for which I am very grateful.
I'm teaching myself a little German at the moment, partly because I'm not too well at present (costochondritis). I tire easily and can only do a limited amount of computer work before my ribs start hurting.
There's only so much TV one can watch before brain rot sets in - sitting down with board game rules in German, and a dictionary and grammar to hand, at least ensures that the brain is engaged.
There's nothing quite like trying to work out the correct ending for an adjective when used before a feminine noun in the accusative case to force you to have to think...
And if anyone can tell me why it's "keinen Dank" - Ah, just got it. Dank is spelt the same whether it's singlar or plural (half the online dictionaries don't tell you what the plural is, which is a right pain). Thus, "no thanks" and keinen with 'en' is correct for mixed declension plural before a masculine noun. (I wanted something to distract me from stress, there's nothing like tables of endings...)
Why, why, why do languages have genders?
What's the point?
English is good in that regard, but has its own quirks. eg. "I hit him" - is that present or past tense? I never noticed before, until I was looking for simple sentences to translate and realised that I didn't know what tense to use in German.
The drama is called 'Line of Separation' and is on channel 4 iplayer.
It's set just at the end of WW2 and it's pretty harrowing. Definitely not for children. Well acted.
My grandparents lived through being bombed, but they never had to live through occupation - for which I am very grateful.
I'm teaching myself a little German at the moment, partly because I'm not too well at present (costochondritis). I tire easily and can only do a limited amount of computer work before my ribs start hurting.
There's only so much TV one can watch before brain rot sets in - sitting down with board game rules in German, and a dictionary and grammar to hand, at least ensures that the brain is engaged.
There's nothing quite like trying to work out the correct ending for an adjective when used before a feminine noun in the accusative case to force you to have to think...
And if anyone can tell me why it's "keinen Dank" - Ah, just got it. Dank is spelt the same whether it's singlar or plural (half the online dictionaries don't tell you what the plural is, which is a right pain). Thus, "no thanks" and keinen with 'en' is correct for mixed declension plural before a masculine noun. (I wanted something to distract me from stress, there's nothing like tables of endings...)
Why, why, why do languages have genders?
What's the point?
English is good in that regard, but has its own quirks. eg. "I hit him" - is that present or past tense? I never noticed before, until I was looking for simple sentences to translate and realised that I didn't know what tense to use in German.
no subject
Could 'gender' just be an old word for 'type'? Maybe we could have ended up calling the categories strange, charmed, down and up, like we do for quarks! :-)
no subject
cf French gendrer, engendrer
It means to produce, and specifically to produce more of your kind.
The word 'gender' also comes from the Latin 'genus', so they are related; in this case 'genus' as in 'sort or variety of'. The English grammatical usage is taken straight from Latin grammar terminology, which took the term from the Greek γένος, which literally 'means race, stock or kin' (according to Liddell & Scott) but was also used figuratively for grouping things in grammatical terms. According to the OED Aristotle dated this usage back to Protagoras, i.e. the 5th century BC - so linguists have been using it for a very long time.
(And yes, it is basically "an old word for 'type'", although the Ancient Greeks thought in terms of family networks rather than quarks!)