Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT 4111-4115 (October 14th-18th, 2019)
Case:
--- Quote from: cybersmurf on 23 Oct 2019, 06:21 ---
--- Quote from: Penquin47 on 22 Oct 2019, 21:51 ---Der is the article for masculine nouns in the nominative case (subject). Die is the feminine.
However, this would be dative case (indirect object). For dative case, the articles are dem (masc and neut) and der (fem). der Maschine is correct.
--- End quote ---
This is correct. While it's not that hard to make yourself understood, mastering German is a task a lot of native speakers fail.
--- End quote ---
'Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod ...' :mrgreen:
oddtail:
--- Quote from: cybersmurf on 23 Oct 2019, 06:21 ---A bunch of languages lost cases, or at least most of them.
--- End quote ---
And for most languages that retain them, there's still a tendency for cases to blend together or become vestigial and disappear. Polish technically has 7 cases, but the vocative case is scarcely used in practice (people replace it with nominative) and I imagine it will all but fade from use in my lifetime. At least two of the remaining cases are already sometimes confused for some words by a segment of the population, and the distinction between "mistake" and "language evolution" is always based on how much time has passed since the "mistake" first started happening for native speakers.
Case:
--- Quote from: Theta9 on 22 Oct 2019, 17:53 ---
--- Quote from: cybersmurf on 22 Oct 2019, 13:29 ---
--- Quote from: Cornelius on 22 Oct 2019, 08:07 ---I'm is the contacted firm of in dem, if I'm not mistaken.
--- End quote ---
That is correct. Since 'Maschine' is a female noun, it's "in der", not "in dem", that may be the issue here.
German uses (at least according to what I've heard) 'grammatical genders', things like this can be hard, especially for non-native speakers.
--- End quote ---
now waitaminute, "der" is the article used for masculine nouns, nicht wahr? So if "Maschine" is feminine, then der Maschine sounds incorrect to me; should it not be die Maschine?
--- End quote ---
Don't worry overmuch about the articles - it's pretty much expected that you'll mess them up, and you'll need years of immersion to get the hang of them. In a conversation, Germans will understand you regardless, and it's considered gauche to give a foreigner a hard time because of zeir artikelz.
Written German, otoh, is a different beast, especially in a professional setting. We use much longer-, and more complicated sentences when writing. Also, people are less forgiving about mistakes. I know a Canadian professor who is basically fluent in conversational settings, but his lecture transcripts ... are interesting!
P.S.: About ze Dialektz - No, we don't understand them, either. That's why there's standard German - otherwise there'd be hundreds different little Germanies ... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleinstaaterei and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_languages).
cybersmurf:
--- Quote from: Case on 23 Oct 2019, 10:42 ---Written German, otoh, is a different beast, especially in a professional setting. We use much longer-, and more complicated sentences when writing. Also, people are less forgiving about mistakes. I know a Canadian professor who is basically fluent in conversational settings, but his lecture transcripts ... are interesting!
P.S.: About ze Dialektz - No, we don't understand them, either. That's why there's standard German - otherwise there'd be hundreds different little Germanies ... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleinstaaterei and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_languages).
--- End quote ---
Well, German sentences can be really long. Somebody once called German "Lego for words" since you csn string almost any combination into a noun. Likewise, you can string together a life-sized fortress into a single sentence - although that monster won't be easy to follow.
As for the dialects - the closer you get to the mountains (the Alps, especially), the more unintelligible the dialects get. If you thought Austrian dialects were hard, you never heard Swiss - not even us Austrians understand that. Also, the area I live in has a variation called "Stoasteirisch" - it's basically Austrian Redneck.
Worst problem of the Alpine dialects? Where the words are stressed. My favorite example is coffee - Kaffee. In Germany, especially the further north you get, it's pronounced shorter, with emphasis on the first syllable, while in Austria it's pronounced like 'café'. Shifts like that on top of sounding different can throw you off really badly, even as native speakers. That's a reason why French and German people might have difficulties understanding each other English - one has more of a French speech pattern, while the other has a German pattern.
hedgie:
I do recall when I took German, one of the students who was struggling the most spoke it as a child in Switzerland. He frequently confused his dialect with "Hochdeutsch"
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