and do you really need all those umlauts?

[kindkit]

Dear German language,

Why is your possessive pronouns for "hers" the same word as your ordinary pronoun for the plural "you"? Do you really believe that's a good idea?

And don't you think you're just a little overcomplicated? Three noun genders? Four declensions? Other languages get by perfectly well without all that. I mean, look at your cousin, English. It doesn't have any declensions. It doesn't even have grammatical gender! But look how successful it is.

Look at your life, Deutsch. Look at your choices.

Comments

[vilakins]

Ah, but at least it's not full of exceptions - and how to pronounce words is obvious.

In italian one addresses people formally as "she" because the pronoun goes with the gender of "excellency".

[kindkit]

*nods* I know that learning English is actually really hard for speakers of many other languages; I was just being silly and venting a little. It's been a long time since I've tried to learn a language, and I'm far from the ideal age for it, so German's complications seem extra complicated. And on Duolingo I'm simultaneously learning German for the first time and refreshing my French, so there's a huge contrast between the ease of French--which I started learning seriously at fifteen, and which I had a year of living in France to reinforce, so most of the grammar and a lot of vocabulary is still with me even after two decades of hardly using it--and the frustration of forgetting important bits of German almost as soon as I learn them.

Nevertheless, I find it strange that languages, which arise from spontaneous human activity and serve an urgent human need, become so complicated.

So, in Italian are people always addressed formally as she? French does the same thing of the pronoun following the grammatical gender of the noun--I recently read a newspaper article in which a man was referred to for several paragraphs as "elle" (she) because of some noun which I forget. It was disconcerting to me as an English speaker. But French only does that with particular nouns, not as a standard mode of address.

[vilakins]

I have to say, having lived in Germany, that the hardest thing I found was remembering which form of "you" to use as getting it wrong and being formal when people have said you can "duzen" is insulting.

Well, I was told to use the Lei address when addressing people I didn't know, and people didn't seem at all taken aback. I have no idea whether it's used for, say, employers.

The whole gendered noun thing is odd; I think German used to use the neuter pronoun for young girls because it's a diminutive and they're always neuter, just as abstract nouns are always female (in German, French, and Italian anyway). They also affect how people think of the nouns: German think bridges are beautiful and elegant and French think of them as strong. [rolls eyes at stupid gender stereotypes] Languages are fascinating though.

[cathexys]

You are correct, though at least the formal Sie is capitalized (jut to make it more confusing :)

My favorite essay remains Mark Twain's, which you probably know, And here's my favorite part (I didn't realize how much of a pain it is until I started Latin with the weird check the verb at the end of the sentence before you do anything):

The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. Can any one conceive of anything more confusing than that? These things are called "separable verbs." The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. A favorite one is reiste ab -- which means departed. Here is an example which I culled from a novel and reduced to English:

"The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself, PARTED." (https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html)

[kindkit]

*laughs* I didn't know that Twain piece, actually, so thanks. I wonder if that sentence is real or if he made it up.

[mllesatine]

You can totally get away with pronouncing "ä" like "e" which is what I and everyone speaking my dialect is apperently doing.

Anyway I think it's great that you learn German.