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Post by Wolfgang on Jan 23, 2010 7:40:25 GMT -5
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Post by Tom/CalClassic on Jan 23, 2010 11:45:38 GMT -5
Hi, Very funny indeed. I apologize in advance for any insult that anyone may feel over it though. All I have to say is that English is worse!! When I first took German in college I appreciated that you could confidently read it out loud, since the pronunciation rules were very logical (compared to English and French). Then we got to plurals and cases, and it all fell apart.  PS. I don't remember a bit of it any more... Take care, |
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Post by jesse on Jan 23, 2010 12:03:09 GMT -5
???Ich auch vergessen mein Deutch sprechen...
Jesse
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Post by sunny9850 on Jan 23, 2010 13:18:48 GMT -5
LOL now that was an amusing read indeed. Even as a german native I have no clue as to how or why some things are one thing and not the other. The same frustrations did of course apply whenever a school teacher actually asked why. You can't really answer "because the other option sounds wrong" in that case.
As with any language I think you can only learn so much from studying the rules. You can only create a basis on which to build by going out and speaking it.
That approach worked quite well for me with english,spanish,italian and french....and for obvious reasons failed miserably with latin.
I just could not find any Roman left overs where i could apply all the individual words I learned in sentences. Veni vidi vici
Stefan
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Post by ashaman on Jan 23, 2010 16:24:08 GMT -5
I just could not find any Roman left overs where i could apply all the individual words I learned in sentences. Veni vidi vici. You could have tried speaking with a catholic priest. They use Latin to talk one with another when birth languages are different, the same way I, italian, am writing english with you, german. |
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Post by jesse on Jan 23, 2010 17:33:01 GMT -5
8-)Sabato, may I give you a tiny lesson in English. When you write and use a nationality such as yours, you always use a capital letter; i.e. Italy, Italian, German, English, French, etc. Class dismissed.  Jesse |
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Post by ashaman on Jan 24, 2010 9:47:10 GMT -5
That's because in italian language capital letters are to be used for names ( of people, nations, cars, planes, boats, and so on) and are not required for other things like nationalities. So I am italian, you are american, he is japanese...  I do know that English rules want the capital letter there too... but, to underline my far from perfect grasp of the language, I often forget. And it's not even the worst thing I forget all too often. I'll have to activate the Firefox AATCS ( Annoying Automatic Typing Correction Service) I usually keep off.  |
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Post by sunny9850 on Jan 24, 2010 19:06:50 GMT -5
As you can see in my post, you're not alone with that one Ash.
Proving only that "nonsensical" rules can be found in other languages as well as German. ;D ;D
Stefan
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Post by okami on Jan 24, 2010 19:32:57 GMT -5
Same problem here. Working in several languages at the same time - most of which (logically) aren't my native ones sometimes confuses me. And as the spelling rules of my native language have changed twice in the past decade-and-a-half (and at some points differing quite from those I got taught in basic school), I sometimes get quite confused about that as well.
And it gets worse even when I'm working in Word: its FAATCS usually starts correcting whatever I type in the wrong language - Dutch if I'm typing English, English when I'm typing French, German when it should be Danish, etc...
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Post by ashaman on Jan 25, 2010 9:57:50 GMT -5
And it gets worse even when I'm working in Word: its FAATCS usually starts correcting whatever I type in the wrong language - Dutch if I'm typing English, English when I'm typing French, German when it should be Danish, etc... I'm still bound to the old but perfectly adequate for my necessities Word 2000 myself, and it's from 2001 that I offed its SOBAATCS, only activating it for brief moments when I really am in trouble with some word. I remember that its working was maddening at best and put a heavy dent on the PC's performances making the CPU almost overheat ( I still remember that not even the 3D games of the times made that much of a difference in heating).  Ever since then, without the crutch of an automatic correction, my proficiency in grammatic has soared to new heights, but to counterbalance it, small errors find an easier way into my writ. |
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Post by thomas on Jan 26, 2010 15:09:10 GMT -5
I'm a german who grew up in South Africa. My parents were determined that I should learn german at home, (not at school), and in the words of countless immigrants: "Deutsche Sprache Schwierige Sprache".
Nevertheless, my german is quite fluent, (written and spoken) although it has a bit of a dutch accent. English is not my home language, but it is the language I'm most comfortable with by a fair margin. And it also has it's nuances and idiosyncracies - many of them!
I also speak Afrikaans fluently - by all accounts a fairly easy language; closely related to dutch and flemish.
Fortunately I learnt these three languages as a child...
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Post by simondix on Jan 26, 2010 15:18:47 GMT -5
Yes translation can cause all sorts of problems, however, it created a best selling book by a Portugese person which was full of literal translations. It was called ' English as she is spoke'
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Post by Johan Dees on Jan 30, 2010 5:37:23 GMT -5
Haha, if you think German is strange, then look at Dutch!
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Post by birdguy on Jan 31, 2010 16:20:01 GMT -5
My first two years of high school I took Latin. My last two years I took French. I didn't learn either of them too well.
Then, as a young man in the Air Force, I was sent to Japan and lived there for seven years. I found conversational Japanese much easier to learn than either Latin or French. Then I took a couple years of Japanese through the University of Maryland over there.
I quickly learned to read and write Hiragana and Katakana phonetic charcters. The Kanji pictographs took quite a bit longer. But I knew about 200 of the more common ones by the time I left.
Years later when I was working as an electronic engineer I shared my lab bench with a Russian immigrant. He tried to teach me Russian. That one was the worst of all. Noel
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Post by ashaman on Feb 3, 2010 18:41:08 GMT -5
I remember having already spoken of this here, but repetita juvant ( and this shows ALL my extensive Latin vocabulary... only some old sayings of three words length max). Schools are not the best place where to learn languages. Had I not taken up to read " The Wheel of Time" when it was not yet translated in Italian, back in the days, and then other books in English, I would still be about able to understand, write, hear and spell ( and badly at that) " the book is on the table". ;D I think the best way bar none to learn a language is full immersion. Lacking that, second best is trying to bull your way into understanding and hacking that language's literature ( the way I did learn both the little English and the little Japanese I know), but it needs strength of will and real passion to get anywhere. Schools only can teach you the basics, and some, like the Italian ones, badly at that. The rest you must do yourself. PS For the curious: The first books I read in English, The Wheel of Time, is where I took the greater majorities of my net nicknames. ;D |
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