7 Things I LOVE & HATE About German
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ก.ย. 2024
- The German language is beautiful and complicated and amazing and frustrating!!! Here are 7 things I love and hate about the language.
So my question for you is: How do you feel about these thing, and what do you love & hate about English or German or any other language you've learned?
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"die der das" sounded weird to me since in German we always list it as "der die das" ...actually such pointless note but it's always listed that way 😂
Der die das, wieso weshalb warum, wer nicht fragt bleibt dumm. :D
Natalie Barnes Hab ich mir auch gedacht. Aber das ist auch bei anderen sachen so. z.B. Bei der Tastatur sag ich immer "W,S,A,D" und wenn dann das jemand anders sagt ist das auch komisch
Natalie Barnes Ja! Stimmt total!
"die der das" ist halt die feministische Variante. ;)
Guido Na dann sag ichs ab sofort auch so! 🤓
When I was in the USA on student exchange I tried teaching my class counting in German:
Me: "Eins"
Class: "Eins"
Me: "Zwei"
Class: "Sssswei"
Me: "Good enough, drei"
Class: "Durrei"
Me: "Good enough, vier"
Class: "Fear?!? D:"
Me: "Fünf"
Class: "Funf"
Me: "Fünf"
Class: "Funf"
Me: "FÜNF!!!!!"
Class: "Fuuuuuuuunf"
Me: "I can't deal with this..."
:D
Also, Donna... Does Mr. German-Man sometimes just screw with you by breaking into Kölsch? :D
RoonMian - Dana's the name... 😉
UssiTheGrouch Hoppla. Sorry.
My class always pronounced 'vier' like the English word 'veer', it was so annoying
RoonMian I tried to get my brother to say fünfundzwanzig.
foof un swansig.
The only thing tricky for me is the German "z" sound. The way it is explained here is a "z" sounds like a "ts" which just can't come out of my mouth.
As a native german speaker I don't even know most of the grammar rules, I just do them.
Same for english actually. I just go with what "sounds" right.
What I really hate about the German language are the words "Sie" and " Du". It's way better to just use "you". Especially in work life it's always such a pain.
Thou shalt not dumb down language whilst ignoring ye other language subtleties!
First off, "you" is "sie", not "du". When you look into a King James bible, you'll find "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour" ("Du sollst nicht falsch Zeugnis reden wider deinen Nächsten").
And even with only the "you", the English language does makes distinctions in rank/familiarity between people. For example, some people are called "Mister" or "Miss" or "Mrs" while others are addressed by their firstname. Others address each other by their lastnames (just think of "Castle" and "Beckett" whose names actually are Richard Castle and Kate Beckett).
DJDoena
Well "thou" is pretty archaic and not used in daily life. It's more simple to just use a single word instead of "Du" and "Sie". And by the way even in huge companies with more than 50k employees all over the world it's pretty common to use the first name with all colleagues even the CTO etc. That's what I experienced in my real work life. No clue about your tv show stuff tho.
Sie and du is not that complicated, if you want to be formal and respectful use Sie, otherwise use du
Sie for people you treat with respect.
Du for your friends.
easy solution....
That is not so hard. "Sie" is always for persons you dont know good and you would not speak about private things. "Sie" is also always used in business emails and letters.
"Du" is for friends, family and people you like.
one good tip for all learners:
compounds always get the gender of the LAST word.
der Nachbar + das Haus => DAS Nachbarhaus
das Kaninchen + der Bau => DER Kaninchenbau
das Auto + der Reifen => DER Autoreifen
also when the compound has three words in it:
der Wind + der Schutz (=> DER Windschutz) + die Scheibe => DIE Windschutzscheibe
das Eis + die Kunst (=> DIE Eiskunst) + der Läufer => DER Eiskunstläufer
das Auto + die Bahn (=> DIE Autobahn) + das Kreuz => DAS Autobahnkreuz
and so on...
There's a simple trick to learning how to correctly pronounce Ü: Just say "eee" (English pronunciation) and while saying it, slowly form your lips as though you were kissing. That should make you say "ü" by default.
Wow, this is perfect! Hope she'll read this comment : )
+PotterheadGeeK7 That's a really awesome tip!!! Thanks for sharing it :D
You say numbers backwards in English as well: Namely the the number 13 to 19: You say "Fourteen" and not "Teenfour", so a little rest of this reverse rule is still present in English. But in German, we also do this only for the ten's and one's digit: We say "Einhundertundfünf", and not "Fünf und Hundert". So the same rule which is valid in English for 13 to 19 is applied in German for 13 to 99. Interesting.
very interesting - never thought of that.
Yes, she most likely is referring to numbers such as 21 and higher and also more of the way you SPEAK numbers rather than write them. Below that yes, numbers are said in the same sequence as German. Fifteen or Fünfzehn are essentially the same but for both the 1 comes before the 5 when written. The opposite when spoken for every number above 12 until you get to 100.
Yes, as I said: We use it for the one's and tens's digit, which also includes numbers with more than two digits. So we also say: "Eine Million Einundzwanzig", but we never say "EinundzwanzigHundert".
Heinz Kessler Bei Jahreszahlen und Geldbeträgen hört man aber oft "Im Jahr Achtzehnhundertvierzehn (1814)" bzw. "Elfhundert Euro". Vielleicht ist das mit dem Geld auch nur ein Phänomen im süddeutschen Sprachraum wenn man zB 100er-Scheine zählt...
Bei Jahreszahlen bis 1999 ist das die offizielle Aussprache (abgesehen vom 11. Jahrhundert, das Jahr 1066 ist tausendsechsundsechzig, nicht zehn(hundert)sechsundsechzig). Bei Geld ist es an sich falsch bzw. Umgangssprache, aber in der Tat für Beträge zwischen 1100 und 1999 Euro weit verbreitet.
Our way to say numbers might not be the easiest but French is definitely worse, I rly hate it 😂
99 = quatre-vingt-dix-neuf, which basically means:
four-twenty-ten-nine. Because: 4 x 20 + 10 + 9 = 99 😂
80 is quatre-vingt, so 4x20. Every time I have to read out a number higher than 80, it takes me several seconds to find the right word.
In fact it already gets complicated over 70 because there's no word for 70, but it is soixante-dix, so 60+10. You go further with 60+11, 60+12, 60+13 and so on until you reach... well, 4x20 :') Why didnt you just invent a word for 70, 80, 90 frenchies?? 😭😭
DasPikachu in the French-speaking areas of Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, they say septante (70) and nonante (90) and in Switzerland even huitante (80).
SimonHellinger
I know :)
Benedicte Hamilton mille neuf cent nonante neuf
This made me smile. Thanks, DasPikachu! You just made me like German more.
Ah yep I know, had to read out my birth date often in school! :D And the ones who can say "deux mille" have such an easy life haha
I'm a nativ German speaker, but the german way to say Numbers from 13-99 Drive me crazy. I prefer the English way, because my qay of thinking, the first digit that Pops into my mind is the first one I Read or heard, so it Can happen that I Tell you a number digit by digit because I often confuse the 20/30/.... with the 1/2/3/... part in Numbers when I can't See them
So what comes into your mind when saying nineteen? German language just doesn't stop it with numbers over 20
Kaze Mizu but 10-19 are atually very similiar in German and English e.g.: "ten|zehn" "eleven|elf" "fifteen|fünfzehn"
Yeah but the thing is that "neunzehn"/"nineteen" has a little different feeling because there is no "und"/"and" in there.
It confuses me a lot of times too. Especially when switching between english and german and suddenly you have to switch your numbers around again and WHAAA WHYYY.
Compared to other languages, the german number system is super easy. If you want to say 97 in french, you say "quatre vingt dix-sept" which translates to "four times twenty plus seventeen"
So true.
I hate that when someone calls out numbers for you to write down you have to turn them around first.
So just tell me 2 4 6 5 instead of 24 65.
I really like your Videos about the german Language. They show me sides of it, that I, as a German, never recognized, and make me love the Language even more.
There is one word, that my sister and I ever gave the wrong gender noun to, when we were Kids. And that is "der Krake". We always said "die Krake". I think that happend, because most words, that end with an "e" are feminin. Even today "Der Krake" still sounds kind of strange to me, although I'll get 36 years old next week ^.^
Nireigam ich glaube man kann beides sagen
Nireigam www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Krake
Nireigam Sag doch einfach "Tintenfisch"!!!😂
the Pudo
Hmm OK, mein Rechtschreibduden sagt nur "der".
Aber auf der Seite steht ja, dass es sich bei "die Krake" um Umgangssprache handelt. Sprache verändert sich halt. Und wenn etwas oft auf eine bestimmte Weise falsch gesagt wird, wird das irgendwann auch offiziell übernommen... und somit wird es dann richtig :)
*****
Das könnte ich natürlich tun. Aber Kraken sind ja eine bestimmte Gattung der Tintenfische. Das wäre, als würde ich einen Orang-Utan einfach Menschenaffe nennen, oder eine Ratte Altweltmaus :)
About the numbers bit: English is a germanic language, so one can assume that in the past they shared grammar and structure.
yap and it makes all of this family easy to learn for us =)
You mean "part" of the English language is Germanic. Mix in Latin and Celtic and BOOM, you have the English Language. But yes, since most of the English population is Anglo-Saxon, which is derived from the Angles and the Saxons, which were Germanic tribes.
Heresor languages will be put into this scales. I hate it too... but it's how language scientists do it...
the same is for french, but their they say its latin, but it has nearly the same structure than English...
All that counts for me: *FRENCH, ENGLISH, GERMAN, DUTCH* are one big, happy and great family. I can read or listen and understand all of them without hard training. So I love *this family* :D
Don't forget to mix in French for modern English you wouldn't have the weird spellings without it.
Yes, the French influence in English produces some quite weird words, perhaps because it was a rather old kind of French. Try reading an official blazon (the description of a coat of arms): "Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or armed and langued azure." That's the Royal Arms of England.
I love German language so much Because it is so logical in its own way :)
no German language is totally illogical and i say this as a native german. Also french is pretty bad in that regard, lots of exeptions in their grammar rules. Nearly more expetions than rules...
English is relative easy to learn, italian even more...
then you were born in a part of germanic lands, where the logic was not developed? :O
German is total logical... French is total logical... English is total simple. :D
All 3 languages are just great.
Daniel Reick no my mothertongue does not even belong to indo european language family haha
MongolordD I am not native but i take it as a foreign language class. I like the compound words etc :)
you must be new to german then, there are so many exceptions to every rule it's almost as if it were completely random and you would have to memotize dozens of words that dont follow that one particular rule
It's really interesting to see what kind of problems people have with their own language.
Some americans seem to have problems with your and you're, while a LOT of germans have problems with das and dass.
WormyMasterTV It actually makes me furious when I see people writing 'denn' instead of 'den'.
Ferry and fairy.
seid and seit is way more funny issue. :D
I personally don't really think "das" and "dass" are the biggest problems. I think "seit" and "seid" is the way bigger epidemic in German.
Finkel - Funk hey! thats what I said :D
German is my native language but I hate numbers in German. It's awful, who thought that was a good idea?!
me
the saxons, it was their way to count. and as major germanic culture group and conquerors of England and parts of scottland, their way of counting has made it in the languages.
I'm just glad it's irregular (That's something i thought i'd never say)
Imagine 8125 was fünfundzwanzigundeinhundertundachttausend...
darkerarius its just the last two digits, which makes it even more ridiculous
darkerarius well the saxons never counted far. so the rest was build by writting logic to make it more efficient, I guess.
Here's a fact about numbers: Many languages have individual words for
numbers up to 12. And even English uses the 5-and-10 system up to
nine-teen.
Why 12 you ask if we have 10 fingers and nowadays we use the decimal system?
Because 12 is what is called an anti-prime. A prime, if you remember your school days, is a number that can only be divided by itself and 1, for example 19 or 47. An anti-prime has loads of divisors. 12 has 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12. 10 has only 1, 2, 5 and 10. 12 items in German is a "Dutzend", in English a "dozen". A dozen dozen in German is a "Gros", in Enlish a "gross". 144 has the following divisors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 16, 18, 24, 36, 48, 72 and 144.
The reason for this is because it easy to use these numbers in trade. You can order a dozen, half a dozen, a quarter dozen and so forth. To this day most cakes get cut into 12 (or 16, but not 10) pieces. That's why our clock has 24 hours to the day (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 and 24) and 60 minutes to the hour (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30 and 60).
And that's why in most languages all numbers up to 12 (and not 10) have individual words for them.
This was SO interesting! Thank you.
DJDoena Wow, I never noticed that before. Thanks very much!
Never used and heared of 1/4 dozen, but 1/2 dozen often, for eggs f.e.
"Anti-Prime"? Did I just find another Numberphile viewer? :D
About the "word constructing". I often watch american TV shows (but dubbed 'cause I'm lazy), and sometimes people have an argument in which someone says something and the other side replies "That isn't even a word", or so. And I always think, what does that even mean? Not a word? He said it, so he constructed it, so it obviously is!
I have definitely heard numbers said like that in period dramas and books/movies set in about 1800s England. For example, in Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth says she is "not more than one and twenty" years of age (or something like that), saying she is not yet twenty-one years old.
Am I the only one who thinks Dana looks like the mom from Malcom in the Middle in this video?
No, you're not the only one thinking this :D
I think she looks like a mix of Bridget Moynihan, Kathryn Hahn, and Anne Hathaway. LOL
I applaud everyone who goes through studying German. Many Germans do not even know their own language perfectly.
Playing Scrabble in german can be tricky because you can make up your own words. You always have to discuss if you allow specific combinations...
+Justine könig oooh good point!! Hadn't thought of that. But yeah, that's definitely a game changer.
"Sing a song of six pence / a pocket full of rye / *four and twenty* blackbirds / baked in a pie."
The way we germans say numbers is annoying. Most of the times if you're telling a Friends à telephone number for example, you Tell them 21 (Einundzwanzig), they will dial/Type the 1 first. Thats why we always tell larger numbers like telephone numbers digit by digit.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Also writing down numbers by hand is annoying, because you either have to wait until the complete number was said or leave some free space in front of the first number you write down
What we call arabic ciphers 0..9 actually comes from India. But we learned it from the arabic world on its cultural height (~1200 AD).
And arabic is written from right to left. So for them it makes sense to say 9+80 because they write the 9 first and then to the left the 8 = 89.
In some cases it makes sense to start with the least significant digits. If you write numbers in fields on forms or tables it is common to write them right aligned so that digits with the same significance are written right under each other. In these cases it makes sense to write from right to left. Of course there is the question why the scheme is changed for numbers greater than 99.
when it comes to phone numbers they usually just say separate digits
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen ect. are a holdover from the time when we in English said the smaller unit before the bigger one. Teen is a bastardisation of ten. hope that helps!
+Sean Logan Good point!! I hadn't thought of that, but yeah, it makes sense.
When I studied German in high school here in Norway, I always got "die", "der" and "das" mixed up and to this day I'm still not sure when to use which one. Seeing as we don't have gendered nouns in Norwegian or English, it's not something I tend to remember very well, so if I were to have a conversation with another German in their language, I'd hope they would correct my mistake of mixing up the gendered nouns lol. What I do like about German that you also mention is the pace at which it is spoken, it is easy to follow for the most part and it's spoken fast enough for me to understand it. Spanish and most other Romance languages are spoken insanely fast, making them nearly impossible to follow but German and the other Germanic languages are all being spoken at a good pace that makes them understandable for learners on most levels.
As a German who's been studying Danish for 3 years now, I wouldn't necessarily agree with you on the pace of Germanic languages. Danish is virtually impossible for me to understand if spoken at its "regular" pace. Idk what it's like in Norwegian though, but since Norwegian is derived from Danish, I imagine it's similar. ;)
I see what you mean. I should've said that most Germanic languages are spoken at an understandable pace but of course, some accents and dialects can vary. I can see how Danish can seem too fast to understand. We had many friends from Denmark in my household when I grew up so it almost became a second mother tongue for me in a way and I did speak it fluently for a few years as a kid but it's a bit more rusty nowadays although I can still speak it well for the most part. Norwegian and Swedish both sound "clearer" than Danish and both of these languages are spoken in a very comfortable pace when it comes to most dialects but there are exceptions of course where you really have to pay close attention to what people are saying.
But you *do* have gendered nouns in Norwegian!
You have two or three of them, depending on the dialect.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_language#Nouns
That's true, we have "en" and "ei" (countables) and the suffixes "en" and "a" (masculine and feminine pronouns) but in my dialect we always say "en" (countable) and "en" (masculine for definite form) so that's why I forgot about the gendered nouns in the other dialects in our language. It's still very confusing with "die", "der" and "das" in German for learners from Norway as it seems a bit more extreme for us.
So which dialects do omit the feminine form? Been learning norsk for much of a year now and I love that you can tell where the author of norwegian scripture comes from, not just the speaker. Like with the æ instead of jeg for trøndersk. Germans tend to write high german, even if they speak in their local dialect.
Hey Dana, you can find an english occurrence of reading the numbers like this in the Lord of the Rings. And the reason the numbers are read backwards is probably because they are arabic and thus read from the right. I think that we germans stop at the hundreds' place is probably just that we have already gotten rid of that anomaly half way.
Now that I think about it I remember that in true classical arabic numbers were in fact read completely from right to left. (five and twenty and hundred) but for ease of use they have forgone that and/or adapted to western use.
An old English nursery rhyme, Dana. Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye, four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie, when the pie was opened, the birds began to sing, oh what a dainty dish to set before the king. All school kids used to learn this but I don't know if they still do.
+StumbleUK
I remember that nursery rhyme from my childhood in England in the 60s too! Wikepedia says it originates in the 18th century so it kinda suggests that the "four and twenty" may have been the way that numbers were spoken at that time in England. And at some point it got switched around!
PS Blackbird pie? I can't see how blackbirds would start singing if they were baked in a pie! Isn't it weird the stuff we used to sing about in nursery rhymes as kids! LOL!
I'm Dutch and learned English and German. I love the false friends but also words that are all the same in these closely related languages:
English: German: Dutch
sea Meer zee
lake See meer
shop Geschäft winkel
corner Winkel hoek
train Zug trein
German Deutsch Duits
Dutch Niederlandisch Nederlands
English Englisch Engels
tree Baum boom
The Der de
+Geert Omta Yeah, that is really interesting! And I learned a new German word there -- Winkel for corner. I only knew of "Ecke" for that. Thanks :D
Wanted Adventure I am german and I have actually never heard of the word 'Winkel' as translation for 'corner'. I thought the word 'angle' was the correct translation for 'Winkel'...
Lara CherryBerry yepp, Winkel is angle ;)
Wanted Adventure +Lara CherryBerry
You're totally right. I made a mistake. It's confusing but also again interesting:
The word corner (German: Ecke) and Angle (German: Winkel) are two different words in both English and German, but in Dutch there's only one word for it: Hoek.
Geert Omta thats so interesting! also that "Meer" is lake in Dutch and "Zee" is sea. What happened there? :D One would assume that it is the other way round, due to it's closeness to German.
One thing (that has probably been mentioned already in the comments): declension is for adjectives and conjugation is for verbs.
There is definitely a connection between English and German numbers. You still say the numbers between 13 and 19 backwards, just like we do.
Germans don't speak so fast? Come to Switzerland and you'll know just how fast they speak. Also, for the ü-sound just say the English "e" or German "i" and make a duck face.
Andeavor yeah, I actually thought that german was a pretty fast language (not as fast as spanish though 😅). When I was an exchange student in england I spoke german with one of my classmates and the english students just looked at us and said "wow, you're speaking really fast!" because they tried to understand what we were saying but they couldn't.
Andeavor Swiss aren't Germans. Heck, Swiss people are offended if you call them German.
in fact all "Germans" are offended if you call them German. because there is no German culture. there is only a germanic culturegroup a family of cultures. this family also includes dutch, swiss and austrian.
Therefor you are right Swiss aren't German, but they are Germanic, which might have been what Andeavor ment. =)
i won't work... if somebody say "iber" for "über" I'm not sure if I can prevent my laughting.
Better tipp would be to just split the umlaut off again... and make it an ue. if she tries spelling it like a german u and add the e sound in the end, she nearly have it... thats the origin how the umlauts (ä, ö, ü) were created and will work well. =)
Still no comparison to the spanish spoken in cuba or chile.'
But you have a point - the nicer endings of the words in swiss german (partly in austrian german too) allows to speak faster.
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
since you have a Czech heritage, you'd be interested to know that numbers in Czech can be constructed both ways, forwards and backwards ;) (like twenty-one and one-and-twenty) and both are correct and sound good.
Hi Dana,
There are lots of linguistic phenomena that appear in English as well as in German. For example: in Shakespeare, it was still very common to ask the question: "Would you speak with me?" which actually does not correspond to modern English "Would you like to talk to me?" but rather to "Did you want to talk to me?".
This is still the Germanic form and can be compared to modern German as in "Wolltest du mit mir sprechen?" . Even the word order of subject and verb was completely the same in German and English back in the days. And if you go back even further, there is even much more to notice about the things that both languages have in common. I really love those parallels, which is why I decided to study English and its history.
Until next time! Auf Wiedersehen :-)
then be happy for the years 462 and 1066 these explain you why all this paralells ;)
The English language has germanic roots, of course. One of those is the old Saxon, and so the leftovers of this language in The Netherlands and Northern Germany, usually called Platt", are still similar to English dialects. I met a lot of guys in Eastern Frisia, that told me, the only needed about 6 or 8 weeks, to understand and speak Platt. (Which is only helpful in the Platt spoken areas, because the "Germans" have their difficulties with it. Locals called me a "Duitsen" in Emden, which means "German" - they regard themselves as Frisian)
I loved learning Spanish at school because it's pretty simple actually but once we started with different tenses it got really tricky xD thank you for your videos! I enjoy your positive character. You always make me smile :)
As a native speaker i still mix up 78 and 87 no idea why
In Arabic it's the same way to say the numbers. I find it annoying. Especially if someone tells you a phone number. Which phone accepts the numbers backwards???
Yes, phone numbers are the worst. I always get confused if someone doesn't just spell them out in order.
oggi mog Sometimes I do it though, to get back at those people ^^
I really dislike the way most Americans pronounce German (or any other languages in general) but you seem so happy that I can't find you annoying for it. Idk why but seeing you so happy and content makes me feel very happy :) Your persistence is adorable and a very valuable trait!
Why is your name not pronounced Day-na but rather Dah-na? By the way I am Icelandic and Icelandic and German grammar is very similar so german comes relatively easy to me.
She mentioned that in a video before and I'm not 100% positive I'm correct but I BELIEVE she said it was the Czech pronunciation which is what her ancestry is?
Yep! That's the reason. I mentioned it in my Q&A video th-cam.com/video/9KL8hDXQG1g/w-d-xo.html :) Interesting to hear Icelandic and German grammar are similar! I didn't realize that.
Freyja Svansdóttir I think most Germanic languages started with a similar grammar but they changed a lot. Most notably English which got rid of most cases, grammatical gender and other features. German and Icelandic are I think both much more conservative. Perhaps due to their relative isolation
Jesus Gonzalez I can agree with you about Iceland being relatively isolated but Germany? It's literally in the middle of Europe, it borders Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, France, the Czech Republic, Lichtenstein and Poland if I am not mistaken, maybe Belgium too...
Yes, but Germany has been a political backwater for most of the last 2000 years. Unlike England where tons of invaders brought French and stuff
Yes, it is true that numbers in English were once spoken in the German way. "Four and twenty black birds baked into a pie." That is because the English language is based on German, or about 40% of it. German is also called an 'encapsulated' language because - like you said - you can make up words by chaining smaller words together, to create a word that is very specific and logical. Schaden und Freude, made into schadenfreude. English used to be like that in the 16th and 17th century. If you read Jane Austen, for instance, you can look at a page and realize that a single sentence can go on forever. However, if you read Geoffrey Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' in the original, - the first book in English - you can see how and why English is related to German in a very intimate fashion. All of it very interesting and fascinating.
not only the numbers, but the whole English language is connected to German. both are west germanic language, like 1000 years ago both languages sounded roughly the same :)
I created the most awesome sentence today in German to practice my R's:
*_"Die geförderten Lehrerinnen registrieren die Terroristen"_*
Good luck getting that one out ;)
yuffi81
Ohh, there are layers there. Are the students the terrorists? What exactly are they being registered for? And who is supporting the teachers?
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Do they teach terrorism? I hadn't even considered that. Mind blown.
Ehrlich gesagt verstehe ich den Satz nicht. Geförderten ? Von wen gefördert ? Und was hat das mit den Terroristen zu tun ? Stände da, "die geforderten Lehrerinnnen", dann würde es noch Sinn machen, denn man ist schon ganz schön gefordert, wenn plötzlich Terroristen ist der Schule rumlaufen. Aber "geförderten" macht hier im Satz eigentlich keinen Sinn.
yuffi81
_Es ist ein Satz zum Üben für jemanden, der Deutsch lernt. Und ö ist da schwieriger als o_
Genau. Der Umlaut macht das Wort viel schwieriger. Naja, für einen Amerikaner wie mich.
yuffi81
_Dein Deutsch ist schon sehr gut, jedenfalls das geschriebene :-D._
Haha... Danke, ich versuche.
Just blame Luther. I do it all the time.
Great Video, as usual.
Concerning regional pronounciation: It's always fun to listen to people phoning "home", because people can sometimes drop in a different speech pattern without even noticing it. It's even stronger when people actually visit their parents for a week or two and then return. They usually can't help it and their native accent fades out with time.
Concerning the numbers: It sometimes shows that German is one of English's closest relatives. There are a lot of words in both languages that are similar, not identical, yet you can see the connection, like brav (good, obedient) and brave (tapfer). So it would make sense to assume that German and English were more alike in the past. I know we had the TH once, but we lost it somewhere along the way.
I love German because we love to make very long words.
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
Its the law to delegate the duty of supervising the labeling of beef. So its the Cow-meat-labeling-supervising-duty-delegating-act (hope I got that right :D)
Niklas B that's correct!
and then we make Abkürzungen ;D THW; TÜV; and many many more. In germany during nazi reign there was an award, the knights cross of the iron cros with golden oakleves, swords and brilliants. not on word, but offical term of the award :D
RflEttÜAÜG and RkReÜAÜG were the official abbreviations of the (Rinderkennzeichnungs- und) Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz :D
The cases have always been the most difficult for me, and how all the words with their proper cases go together. Such a pain when so many other aspects of the language which you mentioned are easy and fun! I love the numbers too, and if I count to 100, I can sound fluent, so I love that! LOL The pronunciation isn't so much a problem for me because I had an aunt teach me some German she learned from my Oma. Thank you for your videos, Dana. You are so sweet and fun!
One-and-twenty is like the way 21 is said and written in several other Germanic languages, German, Danish and so on. Twenty-one, twenty-two etc. is like French (vingt-et-un, vingt-deux), only the French have an additional "et" in 21. So I guess English adopted the current way of saying these numerals from French, just like a lot of the modern English vocabulary comes from (medieval) French because the Normans who conquered England in 1066 spoke French.
+Imre Hundertwasser Thanks for your take on it and the feedback! I've never studied French, but I saw a few other comments mentioning that in French there is also a pretty interesting way of constructing some numbers. "Quatre-vingt-dix-neuf" & "quatre-veint-dix sept" for example. Glad English didn't go for that construction!! :D
Imre Hundertwasser it could also be from the Scandinavian languages (from times when Vikings occupied England). In Swedish and Norwegian, you just build your numbers like tjugoett (21) or sjuttiosju (77). And notice in sjuttio that seventy is just seven and ten put together. These rules aren't the same in Danish because they do the same thing Germans do: femoghalvtreds (five and fifty). I also only gave Swedish numbers because I don't actually know the numbers in Norwegian, I've just seen them before in passing, but I speak Swedish.
What you do...I love it. You really get the idea of enrichment by different cultures and the beauty within. Let's all be one big team:D Please keep it up:)
der/die/das for sure. For so many words it doesn't make sense at all. I can't even construct a case where the gender of german words helps in a sentence to understand/differentiate something
But as someone that grew up with german as motherlanguage if there is only a single of these randomly associated genders in a sentence not used correctly, it sounds sooo wrong... Hm, I guess such a error detection has everyone for their native language in the head
- old joke -
during the day: das Korn, der Weizen
in the evening: der Korn, das Weizen
Dear Dana, always very interesting to watch you channel as a German!
Pronouncing the 'ü' you might try this: form a silent 'u' (as the german letter) with your mouth/lips, then don't change this and speak 'i' (again, as a german letter). That should sound pretty much like 'ü'...
Did it work for you?
Oh and btw. I always try to explain the ü to foreigners with the example of "lyrics". The "y" sound in there is so similar to ü
Whatsername Amerikaner denken dass jedes deutsche "u" ein "ü" ist! LOL!!!
Haha wirklich? :D Dann müssen sie wohl noch viel lernen ^^
Whatsername Ich glaub nicht, dass sie es lernen wollen LOL!
LOOOOOOL ROOOFFFLLLL
Whatsername Nun, das stimmt aber nicht. Im deutschen klingt das Y in Lyrik zwar wie ein ü, im englischen aber nicht. Das englische y in lyric ist eher wie ein kurzes deutsches i. Es gibt den ü laut in der englischen Sprache überhaupt nicht, sie müssen ihn ganz neu lernen. Genau wie Deutsche mit dem th.
Hi Dana,
only one short thing about the logical german language:
The way of counting is even more unlogical than you mentioned:
Because if you go over 100 the you start with for example dreihundert (300) + fünf (5) + vierzig (40).
And this goes on that way so the biggest part of the number you want to say is always at the start.
Excepet for two digit numbers. Sorry for my english native austrian writing here.
About Numbers: It's the stupidest thing ever! We should reform it asap. In Norway they did in 1951. So why not today?!
Basically, for the Germanic people it made sense. Because they wrote the one digits with "I's" and the two digits with "X's" (IXX=21). But then the Arabic numbers where introduced and now two systems are mixed. We are speaking the Germanic way and writing the Arabic way.
a good article about it: blog.zeit.de/mathe/allgemein/zahlen-sprechweise-deutsch-englisch/
PS. Imho the French should also reform there system. And the American should finally switch to metric!
zwanzig eins.. zwanzig zwei.. zwanzig drei.. not very elegant
only because yo are always hearing the other version.
I also think the better way would be 'zwanzig und eins' because we already always use the 'and'. That's the think we could keep. And it would go away with time, naturally :)
DanJan09 Bitte NICHT !
No fuzzing with numbers! It's so confusing! We just number out any numbers beside Count Numbers and b happy with that.
DanJan09 Definitely no to switching to metric system. I'll keep using the standard system. If it's not broken, why fix it, as the saying goes.
I am Hungarian and I learnt German for four years. What I learnt is basically how to understand it. Because I can understand almost everything, but I cannot speak it at all. However, when I was travelling in Indonesia, I met a couple of German/Swiss/Austrian travellers and I mastered a conversation with them IN GERMAN! I have started to learn Portuguese a year ago and I can say it's quite good right now. I mix Brazilian and Portuguese in both speaking and writing. Friends from Portugal say that what I speak is quite Brazilian. Because I use a lot of relative pronouns. I also learnt Chinese. It is not as difficult as people say. I can have a good conversation with Chinese people. I love both of these languages, Portuguese is a bit more difficult to learn, but more logical as well.
I hate the number thing and I am german🙈
Julia Kela Französich ist schlimmer 😰
Four-Twenty-Ten-Eight. yes, of course that's 98.
Julia Kela
Better than quatre-vingt-dix-neuf, it's french and means ninty-nine.
(I'm German too xD)
Dana, I have a sore throat for a couple of days and swallowing has been incredibly painful. I remember you when you said you couldn't speak german during this time...
Now I understand how difficult it can be, to pronounce words like "kratzen" or "trocken" when your throat is so swollen.
I really like american english. It is way more understandable than british english.
FoxMcLoud1984 I think that totally depends on the region. Some British accents are hard to understand, as are some US ones. But most of the time we get BE presented as being more clear while AE is supposed to be more mumbled which is something I found not to be true. Generally I think that the AE that is supposed to be understood by everyone (e.g. news) is easier to understand than the BE version.
Speaking of British accents , Darling Dana drops her " tt " when pronouncing " written " at 6:06 , 6:15 ,6:30 , 6:32 ,6:36 . Eigentlich ganz charmant ! Would that be a regional Brit. accent ?
Adler H Nein, sie ist Amerikanerin. Das machen die meisten Amerikaneren / Amerikanerinnen.
Great video. The inversive merhod of naming numbers in English was alive and well up until about 1875. When you say 'fourteen', 'fifteen', 'sixteen', you're really saying 'four and ten', 'five and ten', and so forth. You remembered "five-and-twenty' as an example--you may be remembering the nursery rhyme 'Sing a Song of Sixpence', which contains the line 'Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.' Like many English nursery rhymes, this one is about a real event. It describes the wedding of Marie de Medici and Henry IV of France in 1600. Anyway, keep the great videos coming!
I actually hate the number thing 😐 once a week I help kids with there homework and they have such a big problem with it
they 47 is the 74 to them and the 69 is the 96. it's so unlogical to say the last number first and they don't really understand it for a long time.
well they must go through it. because the logic was back in ancient times. when they put down a stick to remember 10 and counted with fingers. Then they first saw their fingeres named the number and looked down on the sticks to add these.
Back then this procedure was logical. but in fact the numbers didnt get very high. But to continue the logic the highnumbers were created up to 100. after it the 100 and 1000 were added in front to make it more logical....
Maybe if you explain them how it was created they can understand it faster, don't know I'm just a crazy student at highschool which loves such stuff. but you are the teacher. :D
"Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye,
FOUR AND TWENTY blackbirds baked in a pie"
(English nursery rhyme from the 18th century)
An example of backwards numbers in old-fashioned English :)
Love your vids Dana!
I absolutely HATE the pronunciation "rules" of English. You change the first letter of a word and suddenly you have two words, that are the absolute same - except the first letter - and suddenly it's something completely different - AAAARGH! And stuff like "superfluous"! It's CLEARLY *super* *fluous*. NOT, however, suPERfluOUS. GAH"! Just ask Mr German Man, how it should be pronounced. He will agree, I bet. :p
Vortagh well German isn't any better, sure your English example is correct but the German words Laden and Baden share similar problems. They are pronounced similarly only one consonant is changed and yet when u write them in a sentence Mein Handy lädt. Mein Mann ist am baden oder badet gerade. It's not Bädt or the other way around ladet. So that's hard to remember as well and that's just one of the many examples.
On the other hand you have six cases in Russian. Ja nje ponemaju! ;-)
One thing I found interesting about Russian is that adjectives based on persons seem to be used a lot. E. g. "Pushkinskij dom", IIRC that would be the Pushkin House in English or Puschkin-Haus in German. "Pushkinskij" is an adjective however, so the literal translation into German would be Puschkinsches Haus. These adjectives based on persons exist in German too (or you can easily make them up), but they are rarely used. I guess you could make up an adjective like "Pushkinian" in English.
I also really like German. The whole "you can create new words easily" thing exists in Swedish as well, and it's one of the things I love about both languages - especially how we, despite these similarities in grammar, have used this quirk to create our own very distinct words. In how we combine our words, we create our own identities. I find that rather fascinating.
But German grammar, otherwise: yeesh. I know enough to understand written German fairly well, but I am utterly unable to create my own German in either written or spoken form. Despite having, I don't know, six or seven years of German classes in school I still struggle with a lot of it. I have a decent vocabulary, but a lot of the smaller "connecting words" (prepositions etc) still confuses me. I find them so easy to mix up with their English or Swedish equivalents. The similarities between the languages are usually a plus and have helped me a great deal in learning the general vocabulary, but I feel like there are so many false friends (or just tiny grammatical differences) in those particular words.
Still, though: cool language. I really like the flow of it, when you grasp the rhythm. Even if having the verb at the end of the sentence can lead you to having to wait for quite a while before you understand what action is actually being described.
Dana, du siehst in diesem Video besonders hinreißend aus 🙂
oooh your hairstyle looks so cute! you're looking so much different but in agood way. love your channel! have a nice pre-christmas time! greetings prof.
aaaah no one says die der das xD it's der die das xD i mean it's not wrong but it's just so.... aaaaaargh i don't know. but nice that you like so much :D
it's so, because of tradition: you name masculine, then feminime, then genderless (childish)...
der Vater, die Mutter, das Kind. ---> der, die, das.
I have to be honest, on one hand you are way to happy all the time, on the other hand you are one positive soul that should be appreciated
too bad the composites seems to become extinct especially in TH-cam-commentaries. Too many People don't bother anymore to write words together that belongs together. In Germany we have a word for it: "idiots blank" or "Deppenleerzeichen" in german
LuriTV only topped in idiocy by the Deppenapostroph...
The old English rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence" contains the words "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie".
"my die Lehrerin is better than my der Lehrherr" 😅😅😅
Hi Dana, I just stumbled over your channel and really love the videos. I am German (as you can see in the Umlauts in my name), but I used to live in the US. I haven't read all the comments, but maybe some general words on the English language (compared to the German) might help you out:
- In Europe we have a limited number of language "families" - that are languages that base on a single language from back in the days. The probably largest group are the Romanic languages (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian etc), then there are the Slavic languages (Russian, Polish, Czech, Croatian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian etc), the Finno-Ugrian languages (Finnish, Lithuanian and Hungarian - no one really knows why it is just them and why there are no familiarities to other language families), the Celtic languages (Gaelic, Irish, Welsh etc) and last but not least the Germanic languages (German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish AND English).
- Now you may wonder, why English is a Germanic language and this is - surprise, surprise - based in history. Until the 5th century A. D. the local people spoke Gaelic languages while the nobility (Roman settlers) spoke Latin (Romanic). Those were the only languages spoken on the British isles. But the Romans conquerors from Cesar's times and the Gaelic natives never really merged socially and so their languages never did. Starting with the 3rd century German tribes, the Anglos (in German "Angeln") from nowadays Schleswig-Holstein and the Saxons ("Sachsen") from nowadays Lower-Saxony, started raiding the British Isles. In the 5th century they started not just to raid but to conquer what is nowadays England and became the Anglo-Saxons - a name that should sound familiar. They through the Romans out and over time merged with the Gaelic natives. So the German languages of those tribes mixed up with Gaelic and became what is considered to be "Old English". And in Old English numbers were the same way, like they are in German: "ān and hundnigontig" means 91. Even though you might not be familiar with Old English it's not hard to read a "one and ninty" out of it. As a German speaker you might even notice the phonological similiarities of "Neunzig" (German for 90) and "nigontig". So this is porbably the connection you were looking for.
Fun fact: my grand parents lived in Angeln and spoke the local lower German dialect (Plattdeutsch). When a friend of mine from the US visited me and we decided to see my grandparents they could understand my friend pretty well - even though they have never had English in school.
- Later English was mixed up more, when French-speaking William the Conqueror conquered the isles and settled there. And the American melting pot is probably known by you.
I hope this helped you out.
Best regards
Björn
I'm a german but my Parents are polish and I sometimes have the der die das Problem 😂
There is a simple solution to this dilemma: Just pronounce the first letter "D". Talk fast and almost no one will notice.
d' Bus
d' Frau
d' Haus
if your parents are polish you are polish too my friend
+soundofeighthooves Nope, by german law you are a german citizen when you are born and raised in germany. Since 2014 you can also keep both citizenships, that might change again soon though and you'll have to make a choice when you turn 23.
_vany_unicorn _k I'm sure someone patented polish before you. ;)
Jasper Zanovich It didn't used to be this easy.
Dana, maybe I can help with the Ü. Say the English pronunciation for the letter E. Now image how you move your lips when you say "Ew", you go from open to almost closed. Now you have to exaggerate this movement. Stay with your tongue in the E-position, but close or round your mouth like you would form a German U. Then you will hear "Iiiiiijüüü" (German pronunciation). Does this help? :D maybe it helps if you look up Cardinal vowels by Daniel Jones and the German vocal chart.
Try to pronounce my last name
You spread very much joy when figuring out those little differences which make life worth living (well, as you will say: it is great in wording and performing!).
Well, I've heard - and it might be worth proofing - that the english word "mail" (that one which is carried by the postman or that one which is send via electronical standards as an email) was adopted from the German term "Meile". In former times the far distance had been measured by "Meile" all over Germany. It was, as a term, similar to the English "mile". Its' physical lenght differed on regional standards like Bavaria, Saxonia, Prussia and so on and even to the English or American mile. But long before that time the German "Meile" found its usage in English language where it was written as "mile" (funny thing: the pronounciation doesn't differ). When transporting letters in a regular way (by the 16th century) became common the term "mail" was formed because the letters covered "miles and miles" a day. They were mailed (miled). So was the say I heard. Naturally and eventually it could depend on the latin term "milia [1,000 or even 1.000]", but some say that "Meile" could be pretty much older when used in the old northern parts of Germany (long, long time before the Romans laid grip on the river Rhine; and some say when you could cover the distance to England by foot).
Wait, you are interessted in Languages, but you don't know that English is a Germanic language? How is that possible??
English was created by an Anglo-Saxon expedition. (They were warriors and freed England from the "highlanders" in 460 AC. They got not payed so they conquered England, their tongue was the germanic Anglish. In 1066 the normans (a germanic frankish tribe from Normandy, France conquered England and brought some latin influence) this made English like it is today. replacing anglish words through norman words, like rainshade (Anglish) was replaced by umbrella (latin: ombrella))
So you see there is a reason why you might have seen german numberstyle in english documents :)
Fun Fact: As native English: Germanic languages as German, Dutch, Africans and French are easy to learn. Except for German they are all listed as cathegory 1 languages by the US embassady school. If you want a challenge: Try arabic, chineese, or japaneese... they are listed as cathegory 4 and 5 languages for native English-speakers. :)
Disclaimer: I list French as Germanic, because it was way more influenced by Germanic cultures than latin ones, and has in fact only 30 % of pure latin in it. But language historians are even more inaccurate than historians, so ya keep telling people French is a latin language with that construct: 60% Germanic Frankish, 10 % Celtic Breton, 30 % latin french. ;)
www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/germanica/Chronologie/d_chrono.html and www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/anglica/Chronology/e_chrono.html
aka99 was soll das spamen? als ob die augsburger iwas wissen würden xD
spamen?? hast du mal reingeklickt? da gibt es deutsche texte und englische teyte vom 8 bis29 jahrhundert :)
Having studied Spanish has helped me a lot in being able to read and understand French, while being a German native speaker hadn't... Also, comparing grammatical structures and word roots, I would still go with the majority of linguists and say that French is clearly a Romanic language.
aka99 die sind aber uninteressant, weil du dass schon an anderer Stelle gepostet hattest. Mehrmals das gleiche posten nennt man spammen. Also pechgehabt... Und jetzt her mit meinem Dosenfleisch... :D
Wanted An Adventure, Dana, I have the example you may have been thinking about. In the nursery rhyme "sing a song of sixpence "the words go "sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye, FOUR AND TWENTY blackbirds baked in a pie". This would be an example of older English forming numbers like modern German.
So Funny for germans 😂😂
Your new hairdress is soo cute! Beautiful, Dana!
You hate it😰 du Bockwurst!!!😂
I started learning French 7 years ago, there are much more "basic nouns" than in German. So French has a bigger vocabulary to learn than German (in German "Kartoffelbrei" (mashed potatoes) is officially one word, but in French it's "purée de pommes de terre"). (that's the reason why French has "just" about 300.000 words and German about a half million. There're 500.000-600.000 words in the English language)
I appreciate every one who tries to learn German, because we were always told: "English is a world language, if you can speak English, you will find your way around everywhere". As a kid I always thought it was unfair that only we learned English and English speakers did not learn German. That's why it always fills me with joy when I hear an English accent in their voice.
So you can still try to hide your accent, but for me it isn't an issue.
In dem Sinne: Danke und viel Glück weiterhin in deinem Leben😊
Hi Dana. My biggest bug with German is telling the time. Half past eight is halb neun (half of nine). Eight twenty five is fünf vor halb neun (5 before half of nine). Eight fifteen or a quarter past eight is viertel neun (a quarter of nine) and some older people will say fünf nach viertel neun (five past a quarter of nine) for twenty past eight. I teach English part time as a foreign language and most of my German pupils agree that the English system is easier.
Generaly, in Britain both myself (born mid-50s) and my father (born mid-20s) would say "the number is twenty-five". However, when telling the time, I would say either: that "the time is one twenty-five", or "it's twenty-five past one". My father (and my paternal grandmother) might use the phrase "it's five and twenty past one", or "it's five and twenty to two". I guess it's possible that their expression comes from the Germanic roots of the English language.
I feel your frustration! Die, der, and das plus all the conjugations is super hard! I've been learning German for over 5 years now and I still feel like I have so much more to work on. I have the vocabulary of a 7 year old and I'm still stuck on grammar. And I totally get you with the R pronunciation. I love German but it is so complicated.
I am from Germany and therefor I know german very well. What I really like about my native language is the fact that there are so many options to say what you mean. Not only are there so many synonyms, but much more important is the order of the words in your sencences. You want to make a sentence somehow explodingly suprising? Put the important word at the beginning of your sencence. You want to make a sencence exiting and thrilling? Put the important word at the end of the sentence. It works in english, too, but not to a level that high.
Poems for example: You have to verses that don't rhyme at all? Then think again: It might took a bit longer to think about it, but it seems that there is nothing you cannot say in a rhyme.
Creating new words or chains of words is very useful, indeed.
I don't know if I should like this or not: But hearing people speaking or what is even more striking: Reading textes they wrote gives so much information about their intelligence. The words people use, how long they make the sencences, using passive, future or simply just the genitive tells so much about how smart they are. And as a not so smart person you can't really hide that you are not so smart. Very often people mix up words with nearly identical meanings like "als" and "wie" or "zu" and "nach" up or use akkusative, while dativ would have been right. Most of the time people making these kinds of mistakes don't know that they are making these mistakes. But on the other hand you are not allowed to correct them, because then you are either impolite or niggling (or both).
And then there are things that do not make sence in german as well: The numbers. You like them? I really don't. Why is it wise to say the last digit before the last but one? As a man who works quite a lot with numbers and listens to numbers while writing them down so often is misleading.
And the other thing that is so strange is the gender of things. In english everything seems to make sence. But in german? Just like you said: It seems so random!
"Der Kuchen" - "Die Torte" (Cake, Creamcake)
"Das Pferd" - "Der Esel" - "Die Giraffe" (Horse, Donkey, Giraffe)
"Das Gebäude" - "Der Turm" - "Die Brücke" (Building, Tower, Bridge)
I do like german, but I really do not like that the language is so difficult and the fact that so many german people don't care to make no mistakes.
But I have so much respect for people who try to learn german. I know how difficult it is. And I can't imagine how to make no mistakes if you don't speak and hear that language every day.
I never have realized that the "ü" or "r" could be a problem for english speaking people.
Seems to be the german counterpart of the english "th"
As a german guy it is interesting to hear what english people think about the german language. You might find it interesting, that I think that english sounds much cooler than german.
I am going to watch some more of your videos. And I respect it so much that you are so interested in not only german, but in forreign languages in general.
Keep it up.
"Four score and seven years ago", not exactly what you were thinking about but I always remembered that as weird for English
Hi, Dana - "... four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie" is a remnant in modern English of earlier forms of the language. Old English was very close to German, as the language(s) of the Saxons and the Angles were the precursors of modern Danish and modern German. So back in the time of Beowulf, the numbers (such as there were, anyway) were certainly spoken "backwards".
As a native German speaker I really appreciate that there is only one gender for nouns in English. And also there are no formal forms, there is just "you" and not "Sie" or "du" like it is in German. But on the other hand the word order was something I have really struggled with when I started learning English.
I was one of those lucky children whose parent was in the military and who got to live in countries other than America. From the ages of 4 to almost 9, my family lived in Germany and not in base housing but in an actual small German village. My mother and I LOVED it so much so that I did not want to come to America, Germany was my home and I've wished for nothing more than being able to go back, I miss it dearly. We were the only English speaking people but since English is taught in German schools, several people in the village did know some basic English. We learned some basic German but truly we never had any trouble communicating with our neighbors. In fact, we became very good friends with the family who lived next to us, they were the landlords, our house and theirs were at one time all one property with our house being the old family farmhouse. Being around the language so much when I was younger really endeared it to me but sadly it wasn't until college that I was able to properly study it. It has a flow that some Americans might say feels odds but to me, it's a language that flows beautifully and is quite melodic. I can't pronounce the "r" to save my life but my experience is that many native German speakers are very forgiving about things like that. It is just such a beautiful language that any minor difficulties in learning it can be easily forgiven.
Hi Dana!
Du suchst doch immer nach schönen "unmöglichen Wörtern", die wir in Deutschland benutzen.
Hier einige Beispiele, Paradoxe, die wir ohne Bedenken verwenden:
Gefrierbrand
Holzeisenbahn
Wahlpflichtfach
Doppelhaushälfte
Selbsthilfegruppe
Vielleicht kennst Du noch ein paar mehr, dass es reicht für eine weitere Sendung...!
Gruß und Kuss, Dein Julius (Ro)
In "Sing a Song of Sixpence" there are "Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie." And the Gettysburg address ("Four score and seven years ago") also puts numbers the other way round, in a way.
George RR Martin uses the "one and twenty" way of saying numbers in Game of Thrones. As a German reading the books in English this equally makes it sound antique and familiar... :)
Regarding the numbers like you would say them in German was indeed used in English in past centuries but has pretty much been replaced. So when reading old books e.g. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, you come across those wordings.
You're not wrong about numbers! The nursery rhyme that goes "4 and 20 blackbirds were baked in a pie" comes to mind 😄
The 18th century nursery rhyme "sing a song of six pence," is an example of the use of the ones number before the tens number in English:
Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened
The birds began to sing;
Wasn't that a dainty dish,
To set before the king
In the third line, it says four and twenty, rather then 24.
Hi Dana!
Thank you, your videos are, as always, a pleasure to watch!
About the numbers... I am pretty sure that the numbers are written "three-and-twenty" and so on in the novel "Rob Roy" by Sir Walter Scott.
So it might have shifted between then and now... That's really quite fascinating, and if you get any definite info about it, I'd love to hear about it!
I liked your Video a lot and also all the comments it has generated !!! Maybe more videos on Language ?
”one and twenty black birds baked in a pie" ;)
I actually kind of hate German counting... it makes me crazy sometimes because my brain gets confused. :p
I am a native German speaker but currently learning Icelandic. And it is just driving me crazy! German lost all its case-specific endings apart from the genitive "s", but Icelandic still has a different word ending for each gender AND the plural. But it does not stop there, also all the adjectives need to be declensed. So I completely feel you about the difficult adjectives and word genders. Actually, there are rules for when a word is masculine etc. like the "-heit" and -"keit" rule, but since we have so many endings it's hard to remember...
I cannot say the “german r“ (back in the throat) either, but my mother tounge is german. The thing is that people around here (I'm Austrian) say a rolling r, like Italian, or Russian. Maybe you should try this one, because I think it's common in Bavaria too. :)
Great video, just shared it and curious to see what my group has to add on the love/hate relationship with German :)
Btw. +Wanted Adventure, I think you are right about the history behind the numbers. Since, we all use the Arabic numeric system, I think historically some languages also tend to read them "backwards" (just like the Arabic language is written from right to left) :)
I love the english language! I love the sound and I love that it's easier than German xD But sometimes it's confusing, when there's an english word with more than one meaning like the word "like".
In German we have 2 translations for this. "Wie" and "mögen" and these two words have a totally different meaning!
And it's also working this way:
One word in German and 2 words with a different meaning in english. Example: "Wie" which means "How" and "like" (The "You look like your father") I hope you understood it😇😂