Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
213,684
edits
German Language/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions
{{trope}} -> {{Useful Notes}}
(clean up) |
({{trope}} -> {{Useful Notes}}) |
||
| (5 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{
== Grammar ==
* The German language has different articles for masculine (der), feminine (die) and neutrum (das) nouns. So why does it employ masculine and feminine articles for things and ideas that cannot have a gender? Why is it "die Zeitung", "die Politik", "der Bottich", "der Nebel"? What makes a newspaper and politics feminine? What makes a vat and the fog masculine? Logically, the article should be DAS in all those cases! Also, the other way around: why is it "das Fräulein" and not "die Fräulein", when "Fräulein" clearly refers to a woman? The same for animals: why is it always "der Hund" and "die Katze"? It should be "der Hund" and "der Katze" if you talk about a male dog or cat; "die Hund" and "die Katze" if you talk about a female dog or cat!
Line 39:
== Misc ==
* What's with capitalizing the first letter of every noun?
** Can't give you a scientific answer (or an answer based on real linguistics), but there are many homonyms... Look at this nominal clause (written without any capitalization): "der junge, der floh und die stadt erreichte. Once you read the verb at the end, it's clear that this clause means "the boy who fled and reached the city". Before you reach the verb, however, it could also mean "the boy, the flea and the city", which might make a nice novel title. So imagine you first read 'floh' as the noun 'flea': once you reach the verb, you have to go back to read the clause again to get the actual meaning. Knowing about capitalization of nouns, you instinctively read it as a verb in a normal, capitalized German text that would look like this: "der Junge, der floh und die Stadt erreichte". [https://web.archive.org/web/20110514072029/http://zion-net-worx.de/iceweb/?p=52 It might even get naughtier than you wanted.] Oh btw, the feeling of having to go back in the sentence/clause to get the meaning once you reach the end can also be provoked by "The horse raced past the barn fell." in English!
*** Exactly. Germans can feel infinately confused when reading certain english sentences, and many students learning English will re-read lots of sentences because their meaning is not immeadiately clear to them. That leaves less room for [[Double Entendre]], but not having to puzzle out sentences is handy when reading something aloud (and having to get the stress right) or when sentences get convoluted.
** Also, there has been research into reading speed that showed that german capitalizing actually makes it easier to read fast, because your brain can categorize words easier that way.
| |||