The antišŸš«-derailmentšŸšƒ & threadšŸ§µ hijackingšŸ”« threadšŸ§µ ā‰

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getting a badge for bragging about getting a badgeā€¦ thatā€™s a new one :stuck_out_tongue:

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Thatā€™s badge-ception

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Dutch is German without the crazy declensions - and with one handy consonant to clear your throat while you speak depending on which part of the country you live in :slight_smile:

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Iā€™m currently trying to learn Dutch (yeah, non-professional way with a smartphone app :wink: ), and I think it is relatively easy for me, as a native German speaker. I think the grammar is actually pretty similar - good for me, Iā€™m terrible at learning grammar - and lots of words have at least some resemblance. Still, it is a language of its own and not some ā€œdialectā€ of German or suchā€¦ one could as well say that German is a dialect of Dutch :smile:

The second language Iā€™m currently learning is Icelandic - the most unchanged nordic language of all, as far as I know, and thatā€™s really hard for me. Grammar is so different from what I know, and if you think Dutch has some funny-sounding consonants, there is a lot more of that in Icelandic :smile:

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From what Iā€™ve heard itā€™s far easier to go from German to Dutch, than the other way around. The main reason Iā€™ve heard is that German has 4 cases, while Dutch just sometimes has genitive.

This makes learning Dutch grammar not very hard for a German speaker, but the other way around is rough (just as rough as learning German as an English speaker :cry: ). The extra cases are awful.

I definitely meant Germanic as far as origin (rather than implying it was a dialect), and itā€™s generally seen as so due to what I mentioned. Dutch originally had the same 4 cases as modern German, but theyā€™ve disappeared over time, leaving Dutch as simplified compared to the shared ancestor of Dutch and modern German.

That was the way I understood you, donā€™t worry :wink:
It just happens frequently that people just say that Dutch is so similar to German that is has to be ā€œjust a dialectā€ of it (even in Germany -.- ), so I was more aiming at ā€œthose peopleā€, not at you :smile:

Honestly, I wouldnā€™t understand my own language if I had to learn itā€¦ German is just terribly complicated, at least it looks like that for me.
A friend of mine is studying German, and we recently talked about how stupid some words here are - for example, the word for ā€œto drive around sb.ā€ is literally the same word than the word for ā€œto drive over sb.ā€. Itā€™s both ā€œumfahrenā€ - in the first case you stress the second syllable, in the other case you stress the first. But the meaning is exactly the oppositeā€¦ :exploding_head:

I first knew I was in trouble when my high school German teacher showed us this chart the first week of class:
Mowt8AXcei9Ham..Qg3ZaQ

That class was all downhill from thereā€¦ (just kidding, I really loved learning German, I took 3 years of it, and it was a highlight of my high school experience). Ich liebe Deutchland :heart:.

Yeah, and thatā€™s what I meant - I can speak German ā€œinstinctivelyā€, because it was the first language I learned and because I am always surrounded by it, but if I had to learn it as a second language, I would totally fail :wink:
To be honest, people who have to learn German might end up with a better understanding of this grammar than native speakersā€¦ :smile:

Try Finnish case endings sometime :wink: German looks positively simple compared to that.

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Not necessarily.
I learned it enough to get myself a passport and I still couldnā€™t tell you why i say the stuff I say how I say it. Guess cause I never took classes or learned the grammar but just parroted after other people and mumble through my word endings.

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Thatā€™s totally legitimate! :wink:
And actually, Iā€™m fine with the general article of ā€œdeā€, considering lots of (especially younger) Germans already use it that way :rofl:

Mind to show some examples? (yeah I know weā€™re totally derailing this again, but languages are such an interesting field! :wink: )

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Well, Iā€™m not saying it was Roscoā€¦even though his was the first post in the splitā€¦:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Actually, I was probably the instigator of that one, Just Roscos was the more natural split point

Agreed

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I studied German for a few years in college from a Bavarian instructor and later learned that he taught us some strange stuff LOL He was a crazy old man but it was fun.

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Sure. Hereā€™s a simple example sentence to translate into Finnish: ā€œThere is no sauna room in your German houseā€.

Base forms of the words:

To be: olla
Sauna: wellā€¦ sauna :slight_smile:
Room: huone
House: talo
Germany: saksa

Now letā€™s combine things:

  • Sauna room: saunahuone
  • ā€¦ in partitive case (because there is no room, the sentence is negative and equivalent to ā€œthere is not ANYā€ - so partitive): saunahuonetta
  • in the house: talossa (-SSA/-SSƄ ending = inside)
  • in your house: talossasi (-SI possessive ending: your. The possessive ending is appended to the -SSA/-SSƄ ending because the language is agglutinative)
  • German: saksalainen (-LAINEN/-LƄINEN endind - type, kind, nature of something)
  • in something German: saksalaisessa (-SSA/SSƄ ending applies to saksalainen also - agglutinative language. But the N of -LAINEN canā€™t stay because you canā€™t have -LAINENSSA / -LƄINENSSƄ, because there are 3 consonants, so it changes to -LAISESSA/-LƄISESSƄ)
  • in your German house: saksalaisessa talossasi
  • Is (to be, third person): on. But! Here itā€™s ā€œis notā€, so itā€™s ā€œei oleā€ and not ā€œei onā€ - litterally "[third person not] [base form of ā€œto beā€]: you conjugate the negation, not the verb when the sentence is negative in Finnish
  • The ā€œthere isā€¦ā€ sentence construct doesnā€™t exist literally in Finnish. It is typically expressed by reversing the sentence: ā€œIn your German house is not any sauna roomā€

Putting it all together:

Saksalaisessa talossasi ei ole saunahuonetta.

Frighteningly logical and fiendishly clever language, only itā€™s a totally different kind of logic :slight_smile:

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Totally logical, but very complicatedā€¦ Iā€™m pretty impressed that such gigantic words can come off of such tiny little base words. I was always surprised about the length of finnish words (when I read them on food packaging or whatever), but it makes some sense that way.

Still, Iā€™m happy that I currently have no plans to learn finnish. Even less now. :stuck_out_tongue:
And yep, youā€™re right, I donā€™t have a sauna. Or a saunahuone. I mean, a saunahuonetta. :exploding_head:

And Pilgrim, as usual - thanks for splitting :wink:
kisses

Agglutinative languages lend themselves easily to all kinds of strange world records. German is semi-agglutinative, but Finnish is almost completely. But that donā€™t mean squat, because itā€™s really a lot of words and endings stuck together.

But just for shits and giggles:

  • Longuest Finnish word that has a meaning in real life: Lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas - that would be a ā€œairplane jet turbine engine auxiliary mechanic non-commissioned officer studentā€
  • Word with the most consecutive vowels: riiuuyƶaie

:slight_smile:

You should: itā€™s a really interesting pastime and it makes you more clever. Iā€™m not even kidding :slight_smile:

Agree to this - learning languages most certainly makes you more clever, especially if they are as complicated-but-consequent like your example. And they force you to change old habits, to re-think your own language and all that. I really like that :wink:
But I do not plan on visiting Finland in the near future, so it is of more use for me to learn Dutch (for my annual festival visit there :wink: ) and Icelandic (where I might be going this autumn, hopefully) - and Icelandic is pretty agglutinative as wellā€¦ their longest word is ā€œVaĆ°laheiĆ°arvegavinnuverkfƦrageymsluskĆŗrslyklakippuhringurinnā€, which is ā€œthe key ring to the tool work shed in the road works of VaĆ°laheiĆ°iā€, a mountain road in North Iceland. Yep, I copy-pasted the word. And the description, since Iā€™m too lazy to search the codes for all those wonderful characters :smile:

Damn, there goes my plan to lure you here with my clever Finnish sentence (which was actually pretty basic, incidentally) :slight_smile:

Oh thatā€™s okay then, you can still come here: I can give you a few Dutch lessons too.

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It takes me less than two hours to drive to a place with lots of native speakers of the Dutch language - the Netherlands :stuck_out_tongue:
So I think it might be a bit easier for me to go there than travelling to Finland to learn Dutchā€¦ :wink:

I appreciate your efforts :wink: