Lilalaunebaer
Member
If you´re recommending Helge Schneider, you should recommend the ultimate tribute to the Euro struggle sandwich.
Käsebrot
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Trying to learn German. Please save me.
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If you´re recommending Helge Schneider, you should recommend the ultimate tribute to the Euro struggle sandwich.
Käsebrot
Japanese is very alien to us (both in its terms and symbols) but has a very simple grammar so it's mostly memorization.
Holy shit, this is depressing.I've always wanted to tackle German and I recently started working for a company that has their HQ in Germany (and will have me traveling there a couple times per year.) I recently discovered duolingo and was going to add it to my list of usual suspects: Living Language, Pimsleur, etc. But the way everyone makes it sound, seems I'd be better off not even bothering and just stick to the other languages I already know fairly well. (55% French fluency rating in duolingo after taking the initial eval test, sweet!)
there's a guy from Colorado in my extended family who's perfectly fluent in German, Spanish and Polish at the age of 28. He picked up Polish and German while staying in the those countries as a language teacher for two years, respectively. Currently lives in Berlin and you can't even tell he's an American when he talks. So yeah, I'd say learning German is doable, it just won't be easy
to be fair, the Danes don't understand each other either
Palculator
Unconfirmed Member
Oh man, this is fucking hilarious.
eot
Banned
German is by no means a trivial language, but it's not up there with the most confusing / time consuming languages either. You don't learn the genders separately from the nouns, if you know a noun you should know its gender. If gendered nouns are you bar for what makes a language hard then you underestimate the difficulty of learning any foreign language.
If you´re recommending Helge Schneider, you should recommend the ultimate tribute to the Euro struggle sandwich.
Käsebrot
No matter how often you US users repeat the lie, bread with toppings still isn't a sandwich and, more importantly, isn't supposed to be a sandwich.
I love how easy Japanese pronunciation is for a native German speaker.
Thank you.
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
If we're just gonna recommand good german music might as well throw this in there
Kraftklub - Schüsse in die Luft
And if you already learned german and want to be utterly confused
Seiler und Speer - Ham kummst
Lilalaunebaer
Member
I´m from austria lol. Just having a laugh.
IrgendwasmitRot
Member
Man, I'm a native speaker und when I began to study linguistics I learned how fucked up this language can be.
Are you one of those guys that orders a Tüte on the checkout? I dare you.
TBH, i don't think so. The hardest thing is getting the characters down. After that, it's mostly vocabulary, memorizing kanji and the proper way of agglutinating along the tenses/politeness (like if there are that many in japanese lol). Don't want to say japanese is easy by any means, but you just have to adjust the agglutination in variable situations.
Palculator
Unconfirmed Member
Dude, don't. DeutschGAF already established him as Staatsfeind #1. Don't let it spread to Austria.
Excuuuuuuuuuse me.
My bad. But there's always room for change.
We need some education asap!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcHi7V7ioO0
Aaronology
Member
Ha, condescending much? Fact is, what one considers difficult about learning any tongue will largely depend on what their first language is. You say "try learning Japanese" but doing so is likely less of a task for a native Cantonese speaker.
English is probably the easiest language to learn because there are more resources devoted to teaching English in the world than any other tongue, by far, and many more people have exposure to it than "Japanese or Arabic". It is not easy on account of being simple, however. By most accounts it's confusing and difficult as hell. Despite having no gendered nouns, rudimentary grammar and having largely abandoned cases, English is insanely vast in its vocabulary and full of both contradictory rules and nonsensically inconsistent pronunciation that regularly diverges both from those rules and historical spelling. It's a Germanic tongue that's a patchwork of Middle French, Greek, Latin and Anglo Saxon and borrows seemingly at random from all its roots. Or, "Why is English so weird? Because it beats up other languages in dark alleys and rifles through their pockets for loose grammar and spare vocabulary."
Tough, bough, cough and dough. None of those words rhyme, but pony and bologna do. I can imagine the frustration encountering stuff like this is for new speakers of English. Also, look, tumblr agrees!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcQPkg8fY8E
oh god kill it please
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJGwu6m-01I
oh god kill it please
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJGwu6m-01I
D
Deleted member 518153
Unconfirmed Member
To be honest I would love to learn old Greek
You poor, doomed soul. I'm a "native" German, and to be honest, the only times I have ever encountered proper grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary was when I talked to those who learned it as a second or third language. For the most part, us native speakers just go with the flow and indulge in our local dialects. It gets to the point of absurdity, really.
Anyway, seeing as you seem tohave a strong masochistic streak genuinely wish to learn our great language, I think it's always best to start with kiddie stuff.
"Die Sendung mit der Maus" is a show targeted towards young'uns. It explains day to day stuff like "how does the internet work?", or "the inner workings of a touchscreen". As you can see from the two examples, it's a long-standing series. Rather charming IMHO, but I guess that's because I grew up with it. Still, it never hurts to learn about trivial day to day stuff while battling the German language. That way, when you eventuallygo insane master it, at least you'll have learned something meaningful.
Anyway, seeing as you seem to
"Die Sendung mit der Maus" is a show targeted towards young'uns. It explains day to day stuff like "how does the internet work?", or "the inner workings of a touchscreen". As you can see from the two examples, it's a long-standing series. Rather charming IMHO, but I guess that's because I grew up with it. Still, it never hurts to learn about trivial day to day stuff while battling the German language. That way, when you eventually
D
Deleted member 518153
Unconfirmed Member
I want to stay productive, du weißt...
If you just want to learn to speak the language, big tip: don't sweat the gender too much. And don't accentuate it when you speak, I noticed most people learning the language do that. Just do it like germans: pronounce it unintelligibly, people won't care anyway (and I'm pretty sure a lot of native speaker don't know the proper gender anyway).
German is great for one thing though, which makes it (for me) one of the easier language to learn, as I'm bad at memorizing: just slam two words together, and you have a new one that most people will understand. Makes learning vocabulary a lot easier.
German is great for one thing though, which makes it (for me) one of the easier language to learn, as I'm bad at memorizing: just slam two words together, and you have a new one that most people will understand. Makes learning vocabulary a lot easier.
I'm giving that duolingo app a go at the moment, going to Hamburg in May and I want to have at least a little converstational German ready this time. Went to Berlin with the same group of friends last year and we basically had to rely on the 1 guy out of the 4 of us that could speak any useful German to get us around.
huh, most people in Europe (the younger generations, anyway) can speak at least some English. I don't think you ever have to speak German as a tourist unless you go to a really rural part of the country, maybe
AnotherDayAnotherDollar
Banned
Interesting. Wonder how useful this is, will check it out at the library.
franbatista123
Member
I just wish they reformed the language a little bit. Like for example, make it so that words that terminate in a certain way are always masculine, or always feminine, or always neutral, with room for a few exceptions of course. While there are tendencies, it's still a bit too "random".
We already got a reform a couple years ago, the country wouldn't survive another one
We already got a reform a couple years ago, the country wouldn't survive another one
maybe we should add "daß" to our repertoire
Art Teitlebaum
Member
The 1901 reform was already a mistake. Thür, Thor, Epheu und Shawl forever!!1!
Not sure if serious
Ernsthaft. Ich weigere mich zu glauben, dass Leute tatsächlich diesen Satz benutzen würden: "Ich hatte ihm geschrieben gehabt." ~ Jeder Deutschlehrer würde dir das in der Schule anstreichen. Was soll dieses zweite "haben" überhaupt bewirken?
6th grade Gymnasium: Plusquamperfekt was Pflicht im Deutschunterricht. Still don't know why I should use it though...
I speak seven frickin languages and I don't know how to grammar. I listen and copy paste it to my repertoire. -.-"
Also: Die Nutella and Die Cola
Palculator
Unconfirmed Member
I support this. Although I didn't know Cola had a gender dispute going. Good thing I always used "die" anyway.
What? Some people that live in Berlin don't even speak German...
I support this. Although I didn't know Cola had a gender dispute going. Good thing I always used "die" anyway.
Austrians say "das Cola". There seems to be a dispute about the Austrian youth using more and more "Germany-German" such as "die Cola" instead.
franbatista123
Member
Yeah i don't understand him either, i was in Berlin in the past summer for 3 weeks and you can get by just fine with English.
Austrians say "des" (pronounced "deeees") to absolutely everything. Austrians have very little time or patience for silly gender articles
lrt75914
Member
Am Arsch na isch d'Kuah fedd! Dei Geseir machd me ganz schallu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF2djJcPO2A
Aaronology
Member
Sound like my type of people.
cloudwalking
300chf ain't shit to me
This morning I was reminded of this rageguy comic and thought it would be a good fit for this thread considering the topic turned to dialects...
For the most part we had no problem speaking english as we expect, though we still tried to use German here and there just for practice. You know the usual we speak German, rthey pick up that we're english and speak english to us, we continue to fumble our way through German anyway... Weirdly it was taxi drivers where we needed the german speaker to help us out, had to get one from Schonefeld and he spoke very little english which surprised us all.
When I travel and I know I have to take a cab I always write the address down so I can show it to them.
The other two things that are hard are native only transportation schedules and restaurant menus. Like in japan I hardly knew whether I ordered something sweet or savoury.
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