Quirks of English
Discussion
andy-xr said:
The German ability to build one word out of many is very efficient and quite cool when you think about it
You mean like Barbera's Rhubarb Bar? 
https://youtu.be/gG62zay3kck
EnglishTony said:
Mothersruin said:
Most other languages have basics that are a real pain. The 'sex" of a word always annoys me in some other languages. Why is 'table' a masculine word? Who made that up?
The male / female thing is down to Latin. The ancient Romans used male & female definite articles to honour their gods. Thus a table is the responsibility of a male god & is referred to as male. In Germanic languages there is also neuter as a definite article presumably it stuck despite the influence of Latin and / or some Germanic gods were neuter anyway.Which doesn't mean that English speakers can feel superior. Our 'the' is a combination of the Latin & Germanic definite articles because it was just easier than trying to accommodate all the differing views of a particular god's responsibilities. So when we use 'the' we are honouring all of these pre-Christian gods.
It doesn't stop there either. Our days of the week are named after pre-Christain gods too. Sunday is the day of the sun,Monday that of the moon. Tuesday is a corruption of Zeus'day, Wedenesday is Wodin'sday. Thursday is then Thor'sday (still to be heard in Tyneside) and Friday is Freia'sday. Saturday = Saturns'day. The same is true in most European languages.
What's more the names of the months have nothing to do with Christianity either.
king fpoing said:
Even for English speaking people it's hard unless you know what the word is meant to say. Work colleague was trying to be romantic and found a recipe (in itself a word that breaks all the rules) and went off to the butchers where he asked for a minute steak. He didn't realise it was a time minute, the butcher had a lot of fun offering him small steaks.
I recall my French teacher complaing to the class that his colleagues in the English depth.had taught us nothing about grammar.
Years later it occurred to me that effective teaching = ensuring that you know what your colleagues in other subjects are doing and working with each other as oppose to ignoring anything outside your own field.
Years later it occurred to me that effective teaching = ensuring that you know what your colleagues in other subjects are doing and working with each other as oppose to ignoring anything outside your own field.
Kermit power said:
You may be right, but why does it actually matter? Between my parents and my teachers, I've ended up perfectly able to select the correct tenses for verbs, put my adverbs in the right places and everything else required of me in the English language. I haven't the faintest idea what all the grammatical terms I deploy are called, but why would I ever need to?
I agree in part. I'm the same as you in that I have scant knowledge of the correct terms and in practice have no need to learn them. It's only when I discuss terms with a non native speaker that I realise how bad my grammatical knowledge actually is. I'm dating a Russian at the moment and she sometimes asks me questions about our language that I have never even thought about, let alone know how to answer!shirt said:
Kermit power said:
You may be right, but why does it actually matter? Between my parents and my teachers, I've ended up perfectly able to select the correct tenses for verbs, put my adverbs in the right places and everything else required of me in the English language. I haven't the faintest idea what all the grammatical terms I deploy are called, but why would I ever need to?
I agree in part. I'm the same as you in that I have scant knowledge of the correct terms and in practice have no need to learn them. It's only when I discuss terms with a non native speaker that I realise how bad my grammatical knowledge actually is. I'm dating a Russian at the moment and she sometimes asks me questions about our language that I have never even thought about, let alone know how to answer!Opel-GT said:
Rawwr said:
German is really easy to pick up. Just look at the word and think; "What does it sound like?"
Krakenwagen and Krankenhaus being two of my favourites.
Easy, really?Krakenwagen and Krankenhaus being two of my favourites.
The hard bit is the way in which they bunch up their verbs at the end of sentences, so you have to read to the end to know what they're on about. And the way they make adjectives out of clauses.
I did a small German translation the other day, and when I sent it to the client I asked her to review it because the German was "a bit complex" (read: totally impenetrable). She came back and told me that even as a native speaker of German, she had to read the text four or five times to work out what was being said.
Gassing Station | The Lounge | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff