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The Awful German Language (1880)

(faculty.georgetown.edu)
186 points nalinidash | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.276s | source
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MarkusWandel ◴[] No.44005666[source]
I grew up in Germany but haven't lived there for almost 45 years. I pride myself in still being fluent. And yet, this resonates.

Nominative--Mein gutER Freund, my good friend. Genitives--MeinES GutEN FreundES, of my good friend. Dative--MeinEM gutEN Freund, to my good friend. Accusative--MeinEN gutEN Freund, my good friend.

Typing German in an email or Whatsapp, sometimes I get these details wrong and sometimes (shame!) I have to try a Google Translate from English.

The other thing he makes fun of isn't that strange. Splitting "Abreisen" for example (to depart) is natural because it's a compound word in the first place. And more over, in the example, the admittedly funny "De .... [flood of words] ... parted" it's not even one word, it's two (reist ab). German does lend itself to gratuitous nesting of sentences, but that doesn't mean that good German has to.

replies(2): >>44006143 #>>44009695 #
1. wqpfofo ◴[] No.44006143[source]
moreover, haha.