24 replies to this topic

[Mihail121]

Ok, so i finally went to the bookstore today and bough a German-German dictionary (for the people not much into learning languages, this means the meanings of the words are given in the same language).

So i took my time today to get myself good known with it and here are my first observations:

1. It contains at first look ~250, 000, which makes about 50 times more than a typical german will ever use (again, those are my observations which i've made through TV, newspapers, etc.)

2. Good hints about the pronunciation of words (given by the rules of the International Phonetic Association).

3. Extremely fast to search in.

4. Design not for Germans but for people learning German.

5. Pretty good explanations of the movement verbs in the German, which honestly are the hell itself. Minor examples are 'hingehen' (to go there) or 'herbringen' (to bring here). Of course prefixes like '(dort)hin' or '(hinter)her' are pretty easy to learn but there are many others!!!

And now some critic:

It just doesn't feel like the old english/russian (or even bulgarian) Dictionaries i have but yet again, nobody is interested in fully learning a language nowdays. The trend is to learn 100 words from some language (like 'stuff' in english. knowing that word means that you can talk english not worse than most of the english/usa people), get some diplomas and then say you're the master!

Well i guess i won't be dissapointed from this one as i was from the previous, which was a glued-together-in-5-minutes Bulgarian <-> German junk.

[NomadRock]

I find that many older people for whom english is their second language have a much larger vocabulary than I, even if their accent is horrible. Partially this is because there is just way to many damn words in the language to concern myself with. I know that German doesnt have near so many words but that it is quite a bit more than many other countries so I would guess there is a similar situation there. Most words are superflous (like that one) and so I figure you will know a great deal more words than the average German if you go through the entire dictionary. Good for you for trying though. I do notice that many younger people who take english as a second language often only learn enough to get by and so learn a great deal less than the ones I spoke of at the beginning.

[Mihail121]

As i observed (and not only i) the evolution in the last few years i can say that there is a tendency to make all languages simpler, which i don't like!

Well, it's not about knowing the words but to use them correctly, which is EXTREMELY unpossible if you've never heard them spoken from a native.

Also, you can say that the German language has infinite number of words since it's possible to combine them: dumm (stupid) + Kopf (head) = Dummkopf (bonehead)

[anubis]

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As i observed (and not only i) the evolution in the last few years i can say that there is a tendency to make all languages simpler, which i don't like!

try to write german for 18 years and you will very much appreciate every simplification :)
as for spoken languages. they change themselves over time... there is not much you can do about it. allthough i agree with you that the complexity of spoken language is going downhill. probably people don't have to tell each other much anymore ?

[Mihail121]

nah.. it's more like that the US english (once created for the colonists, law-breakers and etc. european junk) is corrupting every other language since:

Small children get adapted to this kind of english due computer/tv/songs/comics/you name it but they never achieve a high level at the language. Now just a they speak simple english they begin to simplify the other languages as well. And when they are grown up they pass this to their children.

Of course that's my explanation of what might be happening but it's seems pretty logical!

[anubis]

that's total crap... i use english words all the time and i think i still can express myself in an elaborate manner in my own language. i might not like many things in the american culture but accusing their language of making me stupid would only proof that i was kind of stupid to begin with. at least in germany the people who talk like complete morrons did so before... onyl with more stupid german words than english ones. i can't say that i care too much in what language they epxress their idiocy

[Mihail121]

Uh?? You got that wrong pal, completely wrong! I hever said anything about the language!!! BUT... the small children learn exactly english from games/net etc. and they don't bring it to a decent level.

The english language itself is good as any other languages. About the idiocity in Germany, well.... there's a logical for reason for that too but it's pretty long to list it here :) I can tell you that it's related with the ex DDR/BRD, the events after 1961 and before 1989.

And about the idiocity everywhere else, well... i guess some people are just idiots! :D

[davepermen]

mihail, don't forget anubis is from germany. he knows his idiots bether than you do, i guess..

[anubis]

dave : no, i'm doesn't... :)

mihail : the idiots in eastern in germany and say in central germany are of a different kind. most of the idiots in eastern germany for example think a) that they live in central germany (figure that one out yourself) and B) like sports, especially playing baseball... with other people's heads. the idiots in central germany on the otehr hand celebrate carnival (you are lucky if you never had to wittness this, allthough you might probably like it... you like volksmusik afterall)

[JSoftware]

well i think danish is a pretty good language! take for example german:

take away kasus
take away sex(maskulinum, femininum, neutrum..)
don't bend(?) verbs in persons..
and don't care about how your words are placed in a sentence..

you now have danish! :D

[anubis]

fantastic... a language without grammar. could you please quickly conquer the world ?

[Mihail121]

So the dänisch is a bit like the english than (almost no grammar)? I might try to learn that in .... 2 weeks ^^.

And yes i love volksmusik. Especially that cool song "Rehbraune Augen hat mein Schatz"

[davepermen]

anubis said:

dave : no, i'm doesn't... :)

mihail : the idiots in eastern in germany and say in central germany are of a different kind. most of the idiots in eastern germany for example think a) that they live in central germany (figure that one out yourself) and B) like sports, especially playing baseball... with other people's heads. the idiots in central germany on the otehr hand celebrate carnival (you are lucky if you never had to wittness this, allthough you might probably like it... you like volksmusik afterall)

germans are crazy. they even have to sort their idiots into regions, to organize them.

mad... really mad.




and, mihail. you like volksmusik? then don't go to germany, go to bayern.. *cough* :D

[davepermen]

Mihail121 said:

So the dänisch is a bit like the english than (almost no grammar)? I might try to learn that in .... 2 weeks ^^.

And yes i love volksmusik. Especially that cool song "Rehbraune Augen hat mein Schatz"

english has quite some grammar... but most don't even bother learning it and prefer to adapt the grammar of their own language (more or less similar).

bamby-brown eyes... cute .. i remember such eyes ..... damn it is a long time now.. :(

[anubis]

Quote

And yes i love volksmusik. Especially that cool song "Rehbraune Augen hat mein Schatz"

*picks up a shoe"

[Mihail121]

* opens a socket connection ready to accept shoe *

[NomadRock]

The problem with American english is that the number of immigrants is rediculously large. Each culture wants to make english take on the characteristics of their mother tongue, and what you are left with is a hodge podge of every language. Most of the words in the english language are actually from some other language not more than a hundred years ago or so. Any letter in the english language can be pronounced as it is in any other language and so it is so much more difficult to make any kind of rule system. I realize that english isn't the only language with this problem, but I think it is far worse here. I personally hate my language and I wish we could get programmers to invent spoken languages. Ones with perfect rules that could not be broken without incuring the wrath of some diabolical spoken language compiler. But this will never happen, so I can only dream.

[davepermen]

you can always take your teacher with you, to beat you when ever you say something gramatically incorrect.

or ask anubis to .. *throw a shoe* :D

[anubis]

Quote

The problem with American english is that the number of immigrants is rediculously large. Each culture wants to make english take on the characteristics of their mother tongue, and what you are left with is a hodge podge of every language.

that's actually the thing i like about america...
i don't think that you would have poetry in a world with a language that was invented by programmers, following totally strict rules. there would be no funny word games. no making fun of minorities... no wait that was a good thing. humor in general is heavily based on the shortcomings of language. if you take that away it would be a totally boring world...

[Mihail121]

*hits davepermen 2 times really hard because of two grammatical mistakes!*

1. 'when ever' should be 'whenever', obwohl es im Deutschen 'immer wenn' (also getrennt) ist

2. 'gramatically' should be 'grammatically'

let that be a lesson for you mister!