The German language

i actually just quit the classes at my work. they were 90 mins twice a week, the teacher wasn't great (very limited english), and they were timetabled to cause maximum disruption to the working day on the days they happened. i'm thinking of doing 3h/day for the month of august to make a big effort to get from A2/B1 to B2.

ich finde dass schadenfreude ein sehr schones wort ist.

also, fuck capital letters. eat that. lol

i absolutely love the german language. but then i am fascinated by most languages. i love pronouncing german words like schadenfreude. it just sounds so lovely

ha i am going to starkbierfest for 14 ppl from 2pm-10pm. gonna die iirc.

with 14 ppl

i am not drinking for 14 ppl

y'r still gonna die

How stark is Starkbier?

jealous

http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/6/68694/1592764-1084633_05_super_super.jpg

this year's brew:

Stammwürze: 18,3 %
Alkohol: 7,5 %
Kalorien: 68,0 kcal/100 ml

new favourite German word: Der Voelkerschlacht. A three syllable word rendered in English as "The Battle of the Nations", another name for the memorable Battle of Leipzig in 1813.

But I don't like the way they put special endings on words for professions etc. if a woman is doing that job.

Like "comedienne" or "actress?"

yes, like teacheress and scientess and lady doctor and admin assistantrix

people don't really say comedienne irl and actress is on the way out

die Merkelerin.

OK, simple past is the single-word past tense (aka preterite?) and perfect is the one with haben/sein, right? I get confused abt the German past tenses because every grammar book I read calls them something different and we haven't done the former in class yet so the latter is just "the past tense" to us.

Which is why I am posting, because it's frustrating that at the end of my 3rd year of German evening classes we still haven't done the former except for haben, sein and "es gab", and we did the perfect in the first year.

So I'm surprised people use the simple past less in speech, because I feel so longwinded forming sentence after sentence with the other one, plus it means I can't read any books! I mean I can read books if I want to guess every time I see a verb, which mostly works, but it's just an extra layer of irritation.

It's kind of frustrating having done something for three years (ok, two hours a week for 3x6 months) and still feel so bad at it, but that is my fault for not putting the effort in, or having any motivation to, since I won't be going anywhere German-speaking in the foreseeable future.

PS I can't really read books anyway as my vocab and my patience for winding through Germanic grammatical constructions are not up to most written German, but I have a v slim "young adult" novel which looks vaguely approachable, except every time I open it I end up getting annoyed, partly at all the verbs

These days I can basically intuit how to say what I want to, but the time when I could reel off grammatical rules or explain my intuitions is long past :(

Austrians use the simple past in conversation more than Germans.

There is no present perfect tense in German -- you have to through in other little nearly meaningless words ("schon" "mal") to hint at it -- and German writings on English grammar are absolutely HOPELESS at explaining what "I've been to Spain" actually means.

I believe the official name in English for those lovely little words is "flavoring particles."

http://coerll.utexas.edu/gg/gr/mis_04.html

A lot of people learning German seem to get v excited by the exclamation "Doch!" ime.

That page looks useful, thanks!

otm

Yeah, that page has the best discussion of those that I've seen. Very helpful!

That page is awesome!!!

My cousin uses "Doch!" all the time.

doch!

I often feel this strange temptation to start all my sentences "naja", regardless of meaning

Entirely too many actual German people do the same thing. A cheesy tic. Worst German verbal tic I ever heard was a dude who began EVERY sentence with "im Grunde genommen" (which is basically "basically".)

Haha, I also had that same temptation. And the one to start any sentence I felt like with "aber."

"doch" is an awesome word.

"naja" lol yeah my family uses that one A LOT.

"also" = another "falscher Freund" for english speakers.

or, my German teacher's favorite corny joke: beware Germans bearing Gift.

In Norwegian, "gift" means both "poison" and "married," since both of these have to do with something being given.

ha I read james redd's post and was about to say "Doesn't "Gift" mean poison in German too? but then finally got Eisbaer's teacher's joke which went over my head yesterday.

The German for dowry is "Mitgift". The words for poison and for giving have a common root in Germanic languages. Dunno exactly how that is.

"lake" is der See(m), and "sea" is die See(f).
why??

http://ia600807.us.archive.org/zipview.php?zip=/32/items/olcovers662/olcovers662-L.zip&file=6623696-L.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9v2XBNVRtw

Sort of german-related Q:

My wife recently taught me two hebrew onomotopaeic words that I think are hilarious. The word for fart is "fletz" and the word for burp is "grebtz." We both guessed that they were probably of germanic origin, but google translate offers completely different german words for burp and fart. Does anyone recognize these words as German-derived?

fletz looks German/Yiddish, but it might come from Latin - isn't the Latin for fart "flattus"? Or maybe FLT is the indo-european root for flatulence that somehow made its way into Hebrew.

Oh yeah it could have been a yiddishized version of a romance language word. Yiddish got cross-polinated with all kinds of other languages.

I.e. a romance language word germanicized via yiddish.

it could also have just been a made-up yiddish word, since it's onomotopaeic

Think those words originated in a Don Martin cartoon

whoa i have the hangover gang over

The Katzenjammer Kids?

stimmt

2-week-delayed Starkbierreaktion?