Wer spricht hier deutsch?

ShaylaElla

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Guten Tag!

Phew, I think I got that one right... I just wanted to shout out here and say hi! I'm a newbie, I'm Canadian and I've been teaching myself a bit of German for the past year or two. I get hung up all the time on sentence structure, and the masculine / feminine stuff confuses me like crazy. Another odd thing, I grew up learning French as well (bilingual country and all) though I'm barely conversant in it. Yet I find myself mixing up the bit of French I know into the German I'm trying to learn. Weird.

Oh well. That's my piece. See you around!
 

Alexandermerow

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Ich kann ein bisschen schlecht Deutsch sprechen (und auch schreiben)... Ich habe vier jahren studiert wann ich war im Gymnasium, aber ich habe, vielen jahren später, viele Deutsch vergesst (ersten Grammatik, zweiten Vokabeln). Jetzt spräche ich mit English Grammatik und denkt: “du bist schlau, Deutsche Leute, finden Sie es heraus.”

Nice! (Süß!) Right now, I am translating my books into the English language - and this is really funny, and hard! :) Nevertheless, to learn German must be much harder because of the grammar etc. Don`t give up! Kopf hoch!
 

Robbert

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Glassfingers Artikel vor allem. Die/der/das/ eine/einer/einem. Finde ich so was von schwierig.[/QUOTE said:
Ja, das Problem kenne ich sehr gut von meinen zwei Kindern: sie sind in England aufgewachsen und haben die deutsche Sprache nur von mir gehört/gelernt, aber immer auf Englisch geantwortet. Wenn wir dann z.B. zu Besuch in D.land waren, wurden deren Fehler offensichtlich, Artikel an allererster Stelle.

My daughter once pointed out, that if a language uses a variety of different definite articles, then how come, the girl = das Mädchen (...instead of 'die' which is feminine)?
 

aruna

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Ja, das Problem kenne ich sehr gut von meinen zwei Kindern: sie sind in England aufgewachsen und haben die deutsche Sprache nur von mir gehört/gelernt, aber immer auf Englisch geantwortet. Wenn wir dann z.B. zu Besuch in D.land waren, wurden deren Fehler offensichtlich, Artikel an allererster Stelle.

My daughter once pointed out, that if a language uses a variety of different definite articles, then how come, the girl = das Mädchen (...instead of 'die' which is feminine)?


That is easy -- because of the suffix/diminutive "-chen", which is always neutral. For instance, you'd also say Das Maennchen.

That doe snot however explain "das Weib"!
Also, in every language, the sun is masculine and the moon is feminine. So why "die Sonne" and "der Mond"?
 

Priene

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Das Messer, die Gabel, der Loeffel. Whichever way you look at it, genders in German make no sense.
 

Vomaxx

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If you want to read something funny, type "Mark Twain German" into Google and read his article The Awful German Language.

Among his examples, on the German gender topic:

"Where is the turnip?"
"She is in the kitchen."
"And where is the beautiful English girl?"
"It has gone to the opera."

And he's priceless on separable prefixes and the game of "finding the verb."
 

Robbert

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That is easy -- because of the suffix/diminutive "-chen", which is always neutral. For instance, you'd also say Das Maennchen.

Well, thanks for that! Unfortunately, learning the exceptions to the rule never worked for me. There are just too many, never mind which language we're talking about. Hang on, no, Esperanto, which is all based on logic, would be an exception to...
 

Xelebes

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That is easy -- because of the suffix/diminutive "-chen", which is always neutral. For instance, you'd also say Das Maennchen.

That doe snot however explain "das Weib"!
Also, in every language, the sun is masculine and the moon is feminine. So why "die Sonne" and "der Mond"?

In Germanic mythology (English, Saxon, Norse), Moon is a guy and the Sun is a woman.
 

Jstwatchin

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That is easy -- because of the suffix/diminutive "-chen", which is always neutral. For instance, you'd also say Das Maennchen.

That doe snot however explain "das Weib"!
Also, in every language, the sun is masculine and the moon is feminine. So why "die Sonne" and "der Mond"?

Traditional objectification of the female maybe?
 

Commutinggirl

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Hello :) I speak German (with a thick French accent though...) Started learning the language back in High School, studied and taught German in the US and now married to a German guy, living in Germany...
 

EmmLLore

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Hallo! Ich spreche auch Deutsch! Ich war aber nur 4 Jahre alt wenn wir nach Neuseeland gezogen sind, so mein Deutsch ist nicht so sehr gut. Ich spreche es noch mit meiner Familie, aber ich weis dass es nicht immer richtig ist, und sie korrigieren mich immer. :p

Jetzt wo ich lange nicht mehr mit meine Eltern wohne uebe ich ja kaum noch.
 

SaronaNalia

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Hallo! Ich lerne Deutsch.
But I'm not very good at it yet. I've just moved to Germany from America though, so hopefully I'll be learning very fast.
 

aruna

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Christmas in Gerlish

When the snow falls wunderbar
And the children happy are
When the Glatteis on the street
And we all a Gluehwein need

Then you know es ist soweit:
She is here, the Weihnachtszeit!

Every Parkhaus ist besetzt
Weil die people fahren jetzt

All to Kaufhof, Mediamarkt
Kriegen nearly Herzinfarkt.
Shopping hirnverbrannte things
and the Christmasglocke rings.

Merry Christmas, merry Christmas,
Hear the music see the lights,
Frohe Weihnacht, Frohe Weihnacht,
Merry Christmas allerseits

Mother in the kitchen bakes
Schoko- Nuss- und Mandelkeks

Daddy in the Nebenraum
Schmuecks a Riesen-Weihnachtsbaum

He is hanging auf the balls,
Then he from the Leiter falls

Finally the Kinderlein
To the Zimmer kommen rein
And es sings the family
Schauerlich: “Oh Christmastree!”

And a jeder in the house
Is packing die Geschenke aus.

Merry Christnas, merry Christmas,
Hear the music see the lights,
Frohe Weihnacht, Frohe Weihnacht,
Merry Christmas allerseits!

Mama finds unter die tanne,
eine brandnew Teflon-Pfanne,
Papa gets a Schlips and Socken,
everybody does frohlocken.
Presiden speaks in TV,
All around is Hatmonie,

Bis mother in the kitchen runs:
Im Ofen brennt the Weihnachtsgans.

And so comes the Feuerwehr
With Tatue, tata daher,
And they bring a long long Schlauch
And a long, long Leiter auch.
And they schreien “Wasser Marsch!”
Christmas in now ganz im Eimer.

Merry Christnas, merry Christmas,
Hear the music see the lights,
Frohe Weihnacht, Frohe Weihnacht,
Merry Christmas allerseits!
 
Last edited:

JustLooking

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Brilliant, aruna :)

Scary thing is: that's so similar to how we speak in my family!

By the way, welcome back to Baden-Württemberg. Hope the move went smoothly.
 

aruna

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Oh, I should say, I didn't write it myself. A friend (who speaks like that) passed it on to me and I loved it -- but it's already all over the interwebs. I immedaietly passed it on to all my gerlish friends! We all speak like that.
 

Sky au Lait

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Servus, allerseits!

Ich komme aus Österreich und zwar aus dem wunderschönen Wien - die Stadt der Liebe. Ich behaupte jetzt einfach einmal, dass es die Stadt der Liebe ist, so wie Paris, oder Venedig, oder Rom, nun, in meiner Welt ist es halt Wien. Wenn irgendjemand Fragen zur deutschen Sprache hat oder einen deutschen Text geschrieben hat, kann er (oder sie) ihn mir gerne schicken :)

(Servus, everybody!
I'm from Austria. Precisely, I'm living in marvellous Vienna - the city of love. I'm just going to claim for now that Vienna is the city of love, like Paris or Venice or Rome, well, in my world, it's got to be Vienna. If anybody has questions regarding German or has written a german text, he (or she) can always send it to me for correction :))


Phew, it's pretty hard to translate stuff o_O