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On March 18 2011 06:35 MoltkeWarding wrote:This is also ungrammatical AFAIK. Den/Das/Die kenne ich, you would say in proper German.
So it is correct to say den kenne ich?
lol nice
What about:
Sie ist die beste Fraulein der Welt!
vs
Die ist die beste Fraulein der Welt!
I better stop asking questions now as I have the potential of turning this into a comprehensive guide to German (and increase the typing speed of our fellow German natives to over 200 wpm)! Hahaha.
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It's das beste Fräulein
Grammatical gender trumps natural gender. Anything with a diminutive suffix, either -lein or -chen will
1) Turn the word to neuter
2) Add an umlaut to the first vowel in the word. so long as it's an a, o or u.
As Mark Twain observed, in German married women have sex, while unmarried ones don't.
Although these days all German women are Frauen. Moral decline is reflected in vocabulary, I guess.
As for
Das ist das beste Fräulein vs
Die ist das beste Fräulein
I'm as befuddled as you are. My instinct tells me that both are acceptable, although in civilized conversation, I should think that neither are.
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On March 18 2011 06:05 EsX_Raptor wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2011 05:39 heishe wrote:On March 18 2011 05:32 EsX_Raptor wrote:
I have been learning German for almost a year and, during this time, have encountered a lot of things in it that make no sense, are inconsistent or both.
For example, the most used verbs tend to be very irregular; pure memorization is the key to being able to use them correctly. It is often impossible to know the case a verb's object takes (direct/indirect, etc) and those reflexive verbs are also a bitch. Accusative, dative, two-way and genitive prepositions are enough reason to drive you nuts at times. I cannot, to save my life, memorize the genders of nouns I will not use on a regular basis either. For some reason, I tend to forget adjective endings and screw up those of uncountable nouns. The definite and indefinite articles, coupled with their thousands of inflections and inflections of inflections, are actually okay. That is, when you leave relative pronouns out of the equation. Furthermore, the German word order and sentence structure changes a lot depending on the conjunctions one decides to use.
But if I managed to get this far with it, I'm sure you can also. In fact, we should become language buddies as well as anyone interested in jumping in! Could you make some examples of words which you find inconsistent or that give you a hard time understanding the grammar behind it? That would make it a lot easier to explain them and the principles behind them (and maybe also some tricks to memorize them) The first thing that pops into my head are the following two expressions: Der kenne ich. (1) Ich kenne ihn. (2) I've heard both being used by native Germans before. Perhaps these are just two different ways of expressing the same idea. It would, however, be a lot easier for us foreigners to learn the language would someone care to kindly explain the intentions behind their use! I'm guessing (1) is used when the subject of the sentence has been previously mentioned and (2) is used as a general statement about somebody.
The first one is grammatically incorrect, I guess it's supposed to say "Den kenne ich.", which is indeed just a more informal version of (2). The word "den" literally means "that one" in english. (1) would be "I know that one" (mostly used when referring to something that's not a person, a joke for example), (2) literally is "I know him" in English.
I don't know if there's a grammatical principle behind being able to use (1) instead of (2) [other than normal changing around subject verb and object], but "den" und "ihn" simply have different literal translations in English.
Notice that "Ich kenne den" and "Ihn kenne ich" are perfectly correct grammatically as well, but since for whatever reason nobody says it that way it sounds incredibly odd. That is indeed one of the things that you just pick up by hearing people say it a lot.
In my opinion that's a problem with how languages are tought on a beginners level in general (I noticed it a lot when having English classes, too). Literal translations are not embraced enough (instead "get the meaning of the sentence right"-type of translations are preferred), when in fact they'd make a lot of things a lot easier to understand.
On March 18 2011 06:05 EsX_Raptor wrote:
Additionally, notice the word "nicht" in these two sentences:
Ich werde um fünfzehn Uhr zum Büro nicht fahren. (1)
Ich werde um fünfzehn Uhr nicht zum Büro fahren. (2)
I was told (1) is incorrect and with no explanation as to why because she couldn't tell me (a German friend). So she corrected me with (2). Do you, or anybody else happen to know the logic behind this one?
I will ask more questions later I know will be helpful to the German learners when I get home from work!
I can't tell you how the grammatical rule is called, but as a simple rule of thumb that you can easily memorize: Always put "nicht" in front of every sub-statement of a sentence that you want to negate, with a few exceptions, of which only one comes to my mind right now.
- if "nicht" is supposed to express your dislike for something, put it after that thing instead.
For example: "Ich mag dich nicht" instead of "Ich mag nicht dich", or "Mir schmecken Bananen nicht" instead of "Mir schmecken nicht Bananen".
Again, notice that "Ich mag nicht dich" is actually grammatically correct (as is (1), by the way), but makes no real sense in practical usage since it basically says "I like somebody, but it is not you that I am referring to". Also notice that this does not mean that you don't like the person that you're talking to, you're just stating that you like somebody, but the one you're referring to is not the person you're talking to currently. You could add another partial sentence behind the statement: "Ich mag nicht dich, sondern *points at another person* dich". (I don't like you, but *points at another person* you).
Essentially, everything comes down to a few simple rules with exceptions, but I really think it's much easier to learn it if you ask for it and we explain it to you on a case-by-case basis, instead of trying to bombard you with theoretical German grammar lessons.
edit: On March 18 2011 06:16 EsX_Raptor wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2011 05:59 surfinbird1 wrote:On March 18 2011 05:46 MoltkeWarding wrote:On March 18 2011 05:39 heishe wrote:On March 18 2011 05:32 EsX_Raptor wrote:
I have been learning German for almost a year and, during this time, have encountered a lot of things in it that make no sense, are inconsistent or both.
For example, the most used verbs tend to be very irregular; pure memorization is the key to being able to use them correctly. It is often impossible to know the case a verb's object takes (direct/indirect, etc) and those reflexive verbs are also a bitch. Accusative, dative, two-way and genitive prepositions are enough reason to drive you nuts at times. I cannot, to save my life, memorize the genders of nouns I will not use on a regular basis either. For some reason, I tend to forget adjective endings and screw up those of uncountable nouns. The definite and indefinite articles, coupled with their thousands of inflections and inflections of inflections, are actually okay. That is, when you leave relative pronouns out of the equation. Furthermore, the German word order and sentence structure changes a lot depending on the conjunctions one decides to use.
But if I managed to get this far with it, I'm sure you can also. In fact, we should become language buddies as well as anyone interested in jumping in! Could you make some examples of words which you find inconsistent or that give you a hard time understanding the grammar behind it? That would make it a lot easier to explain them and the principles behind them (and maybe also some tricks to memorize them) Ich frage dichDu antwortest mirExplain that  I'm asking you. You're answering me. Isn't that just the same? What he tried to point out, with the wrong examples, was the following: Ich frage dich.Ich antworte dir.Now that one highlights the differences better. 
Can't actually help you with that one right now (maybe tomorrow). Even a lot of Germans have problems with that.
I'm very close to falling asleep right now so I'll return to this blog tom....zzzzzzzzz
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Thank you very much for the clarification, heishe!
On March 18 2011 06:59 heishe wrote:
Always put "nicht" in front of every sub-statement of a sentence that you want to negate.
I was having the suspicion this was the case!
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On March 18 2011 05:46 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2011 05:39 heishe wrote:On March 18 2011 05:32 EsX_Raptor wrote:
I have been learning German for almost a year and, during this time, have encountered a lot of things in it that make no sense, are inconsistent or both.
For example, the most used verbs tend to be very irregular; pure memorization is the key to being able to use them correctly. It is often impossible to know the case a verb's object takes (direct/indirect, etc) and those reflexive verbs are also a bitch. Accusative, dative, two-way and genitive prepositions are enough reason to drive you nuts at times. I cannot, to save my life, memorize the genders of nouns I will not use on a regular basis either. For some reason, I tend to forget adjective endings and screw up those of uncountable nouns. The definite and indefinite articles, coupled with their thousands of inflections and inflections of inflections, are actually okay. That is, when you leave relative pronouns out of the equation. Furthermore, the German word order and sentence structure changes a lot depending on the conjunctions one decides to use.
But if I managed to get this far with it, I'm sure you can also. In fact, we should become language buddies as well as anyone interested in jumping in! Could you make some examples of words which you find inconsistent or that give you a hard time understanding the grammar behind it? That would make it a lot easier to explain them and the principles behind them (and maybe also some tricks to memorize them) Ich frage dichDu antwortest mirExplain that
Antwort means something like Gegenwort, the word that is given back or opposed to the word of the other person.
The verb one constructs from it does in my opinion describe the assembling or maybe rather delivering of the (Ant)wort. The noun Wort->Antwort clearly is more original than the verb and i don't see another kind of quality the resulting verb can have than in the direction of "giving the word".
So you see that it clearly calls for an Dativ!
.
.
I thought long about the difference to "fragen" but i could only come up with the esoteric argument that the Akkusativ feels more justified to me ( If you were to employ a similar argument with Frage and fragen like above) in a diffuse way because the much more abstract "Frage" feels less of an 'heavy weight' than the "Wort", easier allowing "fragen" to become a verb of its own right (thus the Akk.) not just a 'caster' for the noun(in the sense of"Ich stelle dir eine Frage").
I'm sure one can find a more precise argument than one based on a feeling though, it just did not get through my layer of fog, but i felt (lol) it was somewhere .
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The noun Wort->Antwort clearly is more original than the verb and i don't see another kind of quality the resulting verb can have than in the direction of "giving the word".
If Antwort has such a proximate link to its noun base (Wort) then why does the gender shift from Wort to Antwort?
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On March 18 2011 06:54 MoltkeWarding wrote:
Although these days all German women are Frauen. Moral decline is reflected in vocabulary, I guess.
As for
Das ist das beste Fräulein vs
Die ist das beste Fräulein
I'm as befuddled as you are. My instinct tells me that both are acceptable, although in civilized conversation, I should think that neither are.
First of all, the word Fräulein is rather old-fashioned. It was used to distinguish between married and unmarried women. But in recent years people seem to take offence to that and so its use was pretty much abandoned. Another problem with the word Fräulein is that you would normaly only call a young, unmarried woman Fräulein. But there's no word for older, unmarried women. And since women have a great deal more self determination beeing married isn't of any importance anymore.
Second, both sentences are actually correct. They're almost interchangeable as their meanings differ only slightly. And yes, in a normal conversation none of these would ever pop up. You would maybe find that kind of language in old chansons or something like that.
And kudos to you, Moltke. You probably know more about German grammar than I do. I have no clue what a diiii-miiiin-uuuu-tive suffix is. I know suffixes from Diablo... ;D
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On March 18 2011 07:32 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +The noun Wort->Antwort clearly is more original than the verb and i don't see another kind of quality the resulting verb can have than in the direction of "giving the word". If Antwort has such a proximate link to its noun base (Wort) then why does the gender shift from Wort to Antwort?
ant ~ gegen. Anwort- Wort has a simiar duality like Mann- Frau etc.
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On March 18 2011 07:35 surfinbird1 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2011 06:54 MoltkeWarding wrote:
Although these days all German women are Frauen. Moral decline is reflected in vocabulary, I guess.
As for
Das ist das beste Fräulein vs
Die ist das beste Fräulein
I'm as befuddled as you are. My instinct tells me that both are acceptable, although in civilized conversation, I should think that neither are.
First of all, the word Fräulein is rather old-fashioned. It was used to distinguish between married and unmarried women. But in recent years people seem to take offence to that and so its use was pretty much abandoned. Another problem with the word Fräulein is that you would normaly only call a young, unmarried woman Fräulein. But there's no word for older, unmarried women. And since women have a great deal more self determination beeing married isn't of any importance anymore. Second, both sentences are actually correct. They're almost interchangeable as their meanings differ only slightly. And yes, in a normal conversation none of these would ever pop up. You would maybe find that kind of language in old chansons or something like that. And kudos to you, Moltke. You probably know more about German grammar than I do. I have no clue what a diiii-miiiin-uuuu-tive suffix is. I know suffixes from Diablo... ;D
5-3=2, poor five gets smaller
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On March 18 2011 07:48 aqui wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2011 07:35 surfinbird1 wrote:On March 18 2011 06:54 MoltkeWarding wrote:
Although these days all German women are Frauen. Moral decline is reflected in vocabulary, I guess.
As for
Das ist das beste Fräulein vs
Die ist das beste Fräulein
I'm as befuddled as you are. My instinct tells me that both are acceptable, although in civilized conversation, I should think that neither are.
First of all, the word Fräulein is rather old-fashioned. It was used to distinguish between married and unmarried women. But in recent years people seem to take offence to that and so its use was pretty much abandoned. Another problem with the word Fräulein is that you would normaly only call a young, unmarried woman Fräulein. But there's no word for older, unmarried women. And since women have a great deal more self determination beeing married isn't of any importance anymore. Second, both sentences are actually correct. They're almost interchangeable as their meanings differ only slightly. And yes, in a normal conversation none of these would ever pop up. You would maybe find that kind of language in old chansons or something like that. And kudos to you, Moltke. You probably know more about German grammar than I do. I have no clue what a diiii-miiiin-uuuu-tive suffix is. I know suffixes from Diablo... ;D 5-3=2, poor five gets smaller
I'm sorry, but I don't get it.
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On March 18 2011 06:28 zatic wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2011 06:05 EsX_Raptor wrote:On March 18 2011 05:39 heishe wrote:On March 18 2011 05:32 EsX_Raptor wrote:
I have been learning German for almost a year and, during this time, have encountered a lot of things in it that make no sense, are inconsistent or both.
For example, the most used verbs tend to be very irregular; pure memorization is the key to being able to use them correctly. It is often impossible to know the case a verb's object takes (direct/indirect, etc) and those reflexive verbs are also a bitch. Accusative, dative, two-way and genitive prepositions are enough reason to drive you nuts at times. I cannot, to save my life, memorize the genders of nouns I will not use on a regular basis either. For some reason, I tend to forget adjective endings and screw up those of uncountable nouns. The definite and indefinite articles, coupled with their thousands of inflections and inflections of inflections, are actually okay. That is, when you leave relative pronouns out of the equation. Furthermore, the German word order and sentence structure changes a lot depending on the conjunctions one decides to use.
But if I managed to get this far with it, I'm sure you can also. In fact, we should become language buddies as well as anyone interested in jumping in! Could you make some examples of words which you find inconsistent or that give you a hard time understanding the grammar behind it? That would make it a lot easier to explain them and the principles behind them (and maybe also some tricks to memorize them) Additionally, notice the word "nicht" in these two sentences: Ich werde um fünfzehn Uhr zum Büro nicht fahren. (1) Ich werde um fünfzehn Uhr nicht zum Büro fahren. (2) I was told (1) is incorrect and with no explanation as to why because she couldn't tell me (a German friend). So she corrected me with (2). Do you, or anybody else happen to know the logic behind this one? Are you sure what you really wanted to say wasn't Ich werde nicht um fünfzehn Uhr zum Büro fahren. (3) :-)
Both, (2) and (3) are correct imo. The second one implies that you won't drive to the office(but maybe to another place). The third one implies that you won't drive to the office at this hour(but probably earlier/later).
Or I should rather say, they can imply those things but they don't have to. If I just want to deny it and not imply something, I would personally go with (2). If you want to emphasize that you won't drive, then you can either go with (2) or (3).
Ahh, so unnecessarily complicated.
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On March 18 2011 07:42 aqui wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2011 07:32 MoltkeWarding wrote:The noun Wort->Antwort clearly is more original than the verb and i don't see another kind of quality the resulting verb can have than in the direction of "giving the word". If Antwort has such a proximate link to its noun base (Wort) then why does the gender shift from Wort to Antwort? ant ~ gegen. Anwort- Wort has a simiar duality like Mann- Frau etc.
I alluded to a completely unrelated puzzle:
das Wort > die Antwort
The prefix gegen- doesn't modify the gender of the following morpheme, nor does the prefix an-
You would think that given the relationship of the two, the gender would remain constant.
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On March 18 2011 07:51 surfinbird1 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2011 07:48 aqui wrote:On March 18 2011 07:35 surfinbird1 wrote:On March 18 2011 06:54 MoltkeWarding wrote:
Although these days all German women are Frauen. Moral decline is reflected in vocabulary, I guess.
As for
Das ist das beste Fräulein vs
Die ist das beste Fräulein
I'm as befuddled as you are. My instinct tells me that both are acceptable, although in civilized conversation, I should think that neither are.
First of all, the word Fräulein is rather old-fashioned. It was used to distinguish between married and unmarried women. But in recent years people seem to take offence to that and so its use was pretty much abandoned. Another problem with the word Fräulein is that you would normaly only call a young, unmarried woman Fräulein. But there's no word for older, unmarried women. And since women have a great deal more self determination beeing married isn't of any importance anymore. Second, both sentences are actually correct. They're almost interchangeable as their meanings differ only slightly. And yes, in a normal conversation none of these would ever pop up. You would maybe find that kind of language in old chansons or something like that. And kudos to you, Moltke. You probably know more about German grammar than I do. I have no clue what a diiii-miiiin-uuuu-tive suffix is. I know suffixes from Diablo... ;D 5-3=2, poor five gets smaller I'm sorry, but I don't get it.
Was referring to the diminutiv. Minus is latin and means weniger. A diminutiv belittles something.
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On March 18 2011 07:59 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2011 07:42 aqui wrote:On March 18 2011 07:32 MoltkeWarding wrote:The noun Wort->Antwort clearly is more original than the verb and i don't see another kind of quality the resulting verb can have than in the direction of "giving the word". If Antwort has such a proximate link to its noun base (Wort) then why does the gender shift from Wort to Antwort? ant ~ gegen. Anwort- Wort has a simiar duality like Mann- Frau etc. I alluded to a completely unrelated puzzle: das Wort > die Antwort The prefix gegen- doesn't modify the gender of the following morpheme, nor does the prefix an- You would think that given the relationship of the two, the gender would remain constant.
I got that. What i meant was that opposing articles emphasized the opposing character of the two words (Gegenüberstelltung) which could in my imagination lead an archaic speaker to use opposing articles^^. Even then i failed to notice that it's das/die not der/die. Doesn't really help my, even in the first place, weak case.
Anyway, i just tried to find a justification, i didn't want to suggest my statements to have a factual character.
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On March 18 2011 08:22 aqui wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2011 07:59 MoltkeWarding wrote:On March 18 2011 07:42 aqui wrote:On March 18 2011 07:32 MoltkeWarding wrote:The noun Wort->Antwort clearly is more original than the verb and i don't see another kind of quality the resulting verb can have than in the direction of "giving the word". If Antwort has such a proximate link to its noun base (Wort) then why does the gender shift from Wort to Antwort? ant ~ gegen. Anwort- Wort has a simiar duality like Mann- Frau etc. I alluded to a completely unrelated puzzle: das Wort > die Antwort The prefix gegen- doesn't modify the gender of the following morpheme, nor does the prefix an- You would think that given the relationship of the two, the gender would remain constant. I got that. What i meant was that opposing articles emphasized the opposing character of the two words (Gegenüberstelltung) which could in my imagination lead an archaic speaker to use opposing articles^^. Even then i failed to notice that it's das/die not der/die. Doesn't really help my, even in the first place, weak case. Anyway, i just tried to find a justification, i didn't want to suggest my statements to have a factual character.
When I learned French I was always confused about genders. Seriously, a female table? But then I realised that the genders are just as random in German. I don't think that there are that many rules. A lot has probably carried over from Latin or got lost in the middle ages when a certain word was written or pronounced in a different way that made more sense than today's word. It all boils down to knowing the gender rather than deducing it.
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There's a rule of thumb which works most of the time in both French and German:
Any word ending on -e has a 90% chance of being feminine.
French, like German, has its gender-defining suffixes:
Generally, words ending on: -isme, -ent, -eau, -et, -ail, -al, -ier, -age, oir are masculine.
Words ending on: -e, -té, -ette, -ion, -ie, -ance, -ence, -aille, -euse, -esse are feminine.
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On March 18 2011 08:30 surfinbird1 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2011 08:22 aqui wrote:On March 18 2011 07:59 MoltkeWarding wrote:On March 18 2011 07:42 aqui wrote:On March 18 2011 07:32 MoltkeWarding wrote:The noun Wort->Antwort clearly is more original than the verb and i don't see another kind of quality the resulting verb can have than in the direction of "giving the word". If Antwort has such a proximate link to its noun base (Wort) then why does the gender shift from Wort to Antwort? ant ~ gegen. Anwort- Wort has a simiar duality like Mann- Frau etc. I alluded to a completely unrelated puzzle: das Wort > die Antwort The prefix gegen- doesn't modify the gender of the following morpheme, nor does the prefix an- You would think that given the relationship of the two, the gender would remain constant. I got that. What i meant was that opposing articles emphasized the opposing character of the two words (Gegenüberstelltung) which could in my imagination lead an archaic speaker to use opposing articles^^. Even then i failed to notice that it's das/die not der/die. Doesn't really help my, even in the first place, weak case. Anyway, i just tried to find a justification, i didn't want to suggest my statements to have a factual character. When I learned French I was always confused about genders. Seriously, a female table? But then I realised that the genders are just as random in German. I don't think that there are that many rules. A lot has probably carried over from Latin or got lost in the middle ages when a certain word was written or pronounced in a different way that made more sense than today's word. It all boils down to knowing the gender rather than deducing it.
I agree with you but i imagine that many arbitrarily seeming genders have some kind of (for example mythological for some nature stuff like 'Die Sonne') reasons.
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This is a great thread. 5/5
I learned so much already hahaha
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Just to get back to the negations with "nicht" and hopefully without adding confusion I try to recollect my knowledge of grammar.
Nicht is used in relevance to the verb. Since verbs are fickle multiparted things if you use them in different tense(future past etc.) the position of nicht also changes.
"Ich fahre nicht" - I do not drive
after the verb
"Ich werde nicht fahren" I will not drive
werde is auxiliary but still first verb.
I am pretty sure it´s always after the first verb part.
Now to recollect my own train thought, the confusion was actually about something else.
"Nicht" comes after the first verb and before the second(if there is one). If you want to negate the whole sentence, you put nicht as early as possible otherwise you put it in front of what you wanna negate:
"Ich fahre um fünfzehn Uhr nicht zum Büro" ..but maybe somewhere else.
"Ich fahre zum Büro nicht um fünfzehn Uhr" ..but maybe at some other time.
"Ich fahre nicht um fünfzehn Uhr zum Büro" ..no but I just won´t.
The exception is if there are direct objects in the sentence. Those come always before "nicht" unless you specifically negate them.
"Ich fahre dich zum Büro"
"Ich fahre dich nicht zum Büro" ..I just won´t do that
"Ich fahre nicht dich zum Büro" ..but I will drive someone else there.
Similar goes for stuff like "Ich mag Bananen nicht.".
Though there are a lot of way to say that, probably because children very often refuse to eat certain things, like spinach. Still "mögen" and "schmecken" require a direct object and usually only have one, so "nicht" usually never goes in front of that object. You could, but it sounds awful.
You could still say "Ich mag nicht Bananen, sondern Äpfel"
But that´s because "sondern" is in there, if you use "aber" it sounds silly again.
I could go on but I probably beat a dead horse right now.
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EPT
