Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[//royalediting.com/possessive-nouns-essential-points via Digitalmars-d]

Germany is a wonderful country. To travel there one should speak 
the German language at least a little. Using this 
http://royalediting.com/possessive-nouns-essential-points
you can use numerous tips and pieces of advices of German 
specialists.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d]

On 05/06/2016 07:04 AM, Chris wrote:

On Friday, 6 May 2016 at 10:46:22 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

We've had several remarks at DConf that the traffic on this forum
makes it intractable. There's good information, but it's drowned by
the immense off-topic discussions.

We plan to create one more forum to address that, but one thing we
could all do to contribute is to refrain from continuing off-topic
comments, or at least mark them with [OT] in the title.


That said, [OT] comments are also important in a community as they bring
people together in a more casual way.



People may object to them, but really, I've BEEN involved in forums that 
tried hard to curb offtopic discussion because the higher-ups were so 
opposed to it, and what inevitably winds up happening is the entire 
forum/community as a whole just implodes and disappears entirely. I do 
NOT want to see D go down that route. Trust me, I've been there, I know, 
it's a mistake. It's a classic case of the cure being worse than the 
disease.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d]

On 05/02/2016 05:49 PM, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:


Of course, the other great difficulty is the [Chinese] writing system, which
requires the memorization of between 1000-2000 different glyphs just to
be able to read with some fluency.


I'd argue that's really about the same as English:

It is, of course, mostly a myth that English is phonetic (it's what I 
would call "psuedo-phoenetic"). Partly because of that (and contrary to 
popular belief) reading/writing English is done per-word, not per-letter 
(much like Chinese) and requires memorization of thousands of "words", 
each one of which realistically amounts to a complex combination of 
several basic component glyphs (much like Chinese, see next paragraph 
below). And in English (unlike Chinese, to my knowledge) there can be up 
to six different versions of each word, depending on the combination of 
cursive-vs-print and lower-vs-capitalized-vs-all-caps (and that's 
ignoring the fact that there are two different versions of non-cursive 
lower-case 'g', which is a matter of font, not specific to the word itself).


What many westerners who haven't studied Chinese (or Japanese, which 
also uses the Chinese glyphs) don't realize is that all those thousands 
of Chinese glyphs are primarily built as combinations of basic 
"radicals". And there are only around 100 common radicals. That still 
sounds like a lot, but it's really about on par with English: While 
English is said to have 26 "letters", there can be up to four different 
versions of each one (uppercase, lowercase, and print/cursive versions 
of each).


So what we have between English and Chinese writing systems is:

- Both construct words as combinations of component parts.
- Both have around 100 symbols used as component parts.
- Both require heavy memorization of what components are used to 
construct each word.
- Both have alternate ways to write many words (Chinese: Simplified vs 
Traditional. English: Lower/Capital/AllCaps/Cursive/Print)


I say English and Chinese writing systems have roughly equivalent 
difficulty.



But hey, that beats learning
Japanese, which has *three* different writing systems, all of which you
must master in order to be able to read at all!



That's not entirely true if you count English as having one writing system.

Two of the Japanese alphabets (Hiragana and Katakana) are phoenetic 
(much more phonetic than English, in fact), and while they're commonly 
called separate alphabets, it's more accurate to compare them to 
uppercase-vs-lowercase. They're exactly the same set of ~46 letters (not 
counting the ones like "d"/"p"/"b" etc that are treated more as mere 
variations on other letters), each one just comes in both a "Hiragana" 
version and a "Katakana" version. Much like how English letters come in 
an "Uppercase" version and "Lowercase" version (AND, "Cursive" and 
"Print" versions of each of those).


Granted, an alphabet of around 46 seems like a lot, but unlike English 
it has a grid-style organization (vertically: five vowels, then 
horizontally: each consonant combined with each vowel: 
http://www.textfugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/hiragana-stroke-order-chart.pdf 
). The organization makes it a lighter cognitive load than if you were 
to take English and simply toss in 20 more letters.


The only big difference here between English (upper/lower/cursive/print) 
and Japanese (hiragana/katakana) is *when* each character set is 
selected: For English, it's a matter a grammar (upper/lower) and font 
(cursive/print), for Japanese it's mainly whether the word is native or 
foreign. Note that, if anything, this makes English arguably more 
complicated, in that there's more variety in how each individual word 
might be written.


So if you want to compare to English, Japanese really comes down to two 
writing systems, not three: The phonetic "-kana"s and the Chinese set 
(And even then, depending on target audience, such as for kids, they may 
go easy on using the Chinese set or include the phonetic pronunciation 
right next to the Chinese character).



Japanese and Korean appear to be language isolates, and their respective
grammars are quite unique.


While I know nothing of Korean grammar, what I do find interesting is 
that the system of vocal sounds are very similar for those languages 
(also with Hawaiian, too): Both based largely on vowels and 
"consonant-then-vowel" combinations. I don't see that much in most other 
languages, but it appears to be a trait shared among Japanese, Korean 
and Hawaiian.


The geography suggests to me that Indonesian languages might also be 
like that, but as I have zero awareness of those, I wouldn't know.



Both [Japanese and Korean]
languages also sport a system of honorifics that mostly doesn't exist in
European languages, and may be difficult for an L2 learner to pick up --
addressing somebody with the wrong honorifics can sound extremely
insulting or needlessly polite.



True, but those are pretty 

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d]

On 05/05/2016 10:52 AM, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:

The older, more complex system preserves some of the arguably
flagrant shenanigans by ancient Chinese scribes who went overboard with
the whole derivation from radicals idea and invented some of the most
ridiculously complex characters that nobody uses. This was perceived to
be superior because, well, it was more "literary" (whatever that
means!),


Sounds like "literary" means "enterprisey".

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 01:01:25PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d 
wrote:
> On 05/02/2016 12:22 PM, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> >
> >In any case, learning any new language is hard - especially the
> >farther it is from your own (e.g. Asian languages are going to
> >generally be pretty brutal to learn for someone speaking a European
> >languages).
> >
> 
> That sounds reasonable to expect, but I'm a native english speaker
> who's (attempted to) study both german and japanese, and I found
> german considerably more difficult than japanese. But maybe I'm just
> weird.
> 
> I like to assume the reason was *because* german is so much more
> similar to english (and english makes no sense even to a native
> speaker!) The word genders didn't help, either.

Yeah, learning a related language has the pitfall of giving a false
sense of familiarity, when the correct approach is to start from a clean
slate, make no assumptions, and treat it like the foreign language that
it is.  My wife, for example, is a native Mandarin speaker, but when she
started learning Cantonese, she eventually realized that she had to stop
all attempts at generalizing from Mandarin, and treat it as a completely
new foreign language.  Otherwise she would end up like so many Mandarin
speakers who *think* they can speak Cantonese just by warping their
pronunciation a little, but actually end up butchering the pronunciation
*and* the grammar (and yes, Cantonese grammar *is* different from
Mandarin, in spite of similarities) and sounding like an idiot to a
native Cantonese speaker.  Even though Cantonese does share a lot of
common words with Mandarin, they do *not* use them in the same contexts
or in the same ways, and naive transliteration often sounds totally
weird, or outright wrong.

(Ob-ontopic) It's kinda like how you can write C/C++-like code in D, but
to a "native" D coder, your code would look pretty weird and very
un-idiomatic. (Or, as Larry Wall once said, you can write assembly code
in any language. :-P) Fortunately, in the programming world, your code
probably would still work, to some extent. But with natural languages
that may not be true. :-P  To truly learn a language well, programming
or natural, you really have to treat it as a language in its own right,
rather than just "C with classes" or "C++ with nice template syntax" or
"Mandarin with warped vowels".


T

-- 
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble 
again.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d]

On 05/02/2016 12:22 PM, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d wrote:


In any case, learning any new language is hard - especially the farther it
is from your own (e.g. Asian languages are going to generally be pretty
brutal to learn for someone speaking a European languages).



That sounds reasonable to expect, but I'm a native english speaker who's 
(attempted to) study both german and japanese, and I found german 
considerably more difficult than japanese. But maybe I'm just weird.


I like to assume the reason was *because* german is so much more similar 
to english (and english makes no sense even to a native speaker!) The 
word genders didn't help, either.


Japanese seemed a little simpler and more logical and consistent overall 
(ex: not only no word genders, but very little singular/plural, and 
answering a negative question is straightforward instead of completely 
backwards like in english[1]). But that perception could have simply 
been due to being a novice at it.


I really do think I never would've been able to learn english if it 
wasn't native to me.


[1] "Did you NOT go to the store?" If it's true that you didn't go, the 
expected answer is..."No". Really?!? Or you could answer either "Yes, 
that's correct" or "Yes, I went" which are *opposite* answers despite 
both being "yes". WTF?!? Even I often have to pause when answering a 
negative question in english. I chalk it up to too many native english 
speakers being stupid and not knowing how to answer questions sanely ;)

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, May 06, 2016 13:34:08 Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 5/6/16 1:04 PM, Chris wrote:
> > Ok, guilty as charged
>
> No need to feel singled out, most of us do this once in a while. We're
> exploring either the creation of an "internal" forum (more focused) or
> an "offtopic" forum where such discussions can go. -- Andrei

The main problem with the "offtopic" forum idea is that most of the time
when we end up with an off-topic discussion, it's because a perfectly
on-topic discussion devolves into an off-topic one. It may very well be a
good idea to create an off-topic forum, but I doubt that it'll get a lot of
traffic or that it will really fix the OT problems here aside from making it
possible to tell folks to take it to the OT forum if they want to continue
to discuss whatever OT thing they started discussing. It's actually one area
where more traditional forum software might do better, because then threads
(or portions of them) could be moved to different forums so that OT
discussions could theoretically be moved out of on-topic threads. But that
would also required increased moderation, which isn't something that we're
really looking for either.

As for a more focused forum, that probably depends at least somewhat on what
it's focused on (though any forum will likely risk some topics devolving
into OT discussions) - and we already created dlang-study for at least some
of the more directed discussions, and that hasn't really gone much of
anywhere.

I think that part of the problem is that we seem to have had fewer useful
discussions of late (for whatever reason), so the OT discussions have stood
out more, and we've gotten at least a couple that have gotten pretty far out
of hand with discussions on gender and whatnot. So, it seems like the recent
situation is worse than it's been historically. Historically, I don't think
that OT discussions have been that big of a problem, whereas recently, it's
been pretty bad.

- Jonathan M Davis

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 6 May 2016 at 11:22:41 UTC, deadalnix wrote:

On Friday, 6 May 2016 at 11:04:52 UTC, Chris wrote:
Ok, guilty as charged, but a lot of threads turn into [OT] 
threads even if they start out as being on topic. This 
particular thread was never on topic, though.




This needs to stop.


Sure, only it's hard to tell when exactly it goes off topic.

That said, [OT] comments are also important in a community as 
they bring people together in a more casual way. What I've 
learned is that people who are into D are a bit hard to tame 
anyway.




There is way too much of it.


At least we know that we have real people here.

Is it possible to mark a single post as [OT] without turning 
the whole thread into [OT]?


No. Once it goes off rail, it's gone.


Would tags help a search engine? Like so:

I'm on topic here. [OT] Completely off topic now! [/OT] Again on 
topic.


It's unrealistic to demand nobody post anything [OT] within a 
thread, and it's not the worst thing either. Small talk sometimes 
leads to big talk. Rules (like mark up) would help though. Or 
maybe have a section called "D Only" (or something) instead of 
"General". The term "General" is too general :)


Question: Is this thread on topic or [OT] now? It started as an 
[OT] thread and is on topic now, the topic being "to refrain from 
writing anything [OT]".

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d]

On 5/6/16 1:04 PM, Chris wrote:

Ok, guilty as charged


No need to feel singled out, most of us do this once in a while. We're 
exploring either the creation of an "internal" forum (more focused) or 
an "offtopic" forum where such discussions can go. -- Andrei

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[deadalnix via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 6 May 2016 at 11:04:52 UTC, Chris wrote:
Ok, guilty as charged, but a lot of threads turn into [OT] 
threads even if they start out as being on topic. This 
particular thread was never on topic, though.




This needs to stop.

That said, [OT] comments are also important in a community as 
they bring people together in a more casual way. What I've 
learned is that people who are into D are a bit hard to tame 
anyway.




There is way too much of it.

Is it possible to mark a single post as [OT] without turning 
the whole thread into [OT]?


No. Once it goes off rail, it's gone.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 6 May 2016 at 10:46:22 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
We've had several remarks at DConf that the traffic on this 
forum makes it intractable. There's good information, but it's 
drowned by the immense off-topic discussions.


We plan to create one more forum to address that, but one thing 
we could all do to contribute is to refrain from continuing 
off-topic comments, or at least mark them with [OT] in the 
title.



Thanks,

Andrei


Ok, guilty as charged, but a lot of threads turn into [OT] 
threads even if they start out as being on topic. This particular 
thread was never on topic, though.


That said, [OT] comments are also important in a community as 
they bring people together in a more casual way. What I've 
learned is that people who are into D are a bit hard to tame 
anyway.


Is it possible to mark a single post as [OT] without turning the 
whole thread into [OT]?

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

A beautiful example of how loanwords are twisted around and how 
natural languages work:


https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/crayfish

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d]

We've had several remarks at DConf that the traffic on this forum makes 
it intractable. There's good information, but it's drowned by the 
immense off-topic discussions.


We plan to create one more forum to address that, but one thing we could 
all do to contribute is to refrain from continuing off-topic comments, 
or at least mark them with [OT] in the title.



Thanks,

Andrei

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 5 May 2016 at 23:47:15 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:


Rule-based letter-to-sound systems don't work too well for 
English precisely because you have to basically reproduce 500 
years' worth of sound change plus all the exceptions introduced 
by words borrowed from other contemporous languages across the 
centuries. A rule-based system possibly could work, provided 
the rules were extensive enough (and multi-layered, to account 
for borrowed exceptions and other oddities). But there comes a 
point where even the most industrious programmer would throw up 
his hands and say, forget this exercise in futility, let's just 
have the machine teach itself instead.


It's not just sound changes, English is just weird from a 
non-native speaker's point of view. As Kurt Tucholsky, one of the 
best German writers ever, once said, English is a simple and a 
difficult language at the same time. It consists of foreign words 
that are pronounced wrongly. English pronunciation makes any 
speaker of a Latin language cringe. In many European languages, 
and certainly in Latin languages, the letter-to-sound 
correspondence is more or less one-to-one:  is /a/,  is /e/ 
etc. In English it's often /ei/ and /i:/.  is often /ai/ (of 
for f**k's sake!): "emeritus", a Latin word, is pronounced 
/e.'me(:).ri.tus/, in English it's /em@.'rai.d@s/. This just 
makes you cringe. Native speakers of English often don't realize 
how weird their pronunciation sounds to those who natively speak 
the language they borrowed the words from (around 60% of the 
words). Makes me laugh when I hear English speakers who say "Oh, 
there is no Irish word for 'afterhours'!?" - Well, what's the 
English for "restaurant", "evict", "condone", "depot", "deposit" 
... and what's the English for "language"?


Rule-based systems work better for Spanish because the 
orthography is much closer to actual pronunciation, and other 
parameters such as stress is more predictable.  I'd venture to 
guess that rule-based systems might not work as well for 
Russian, in spite of the orthography being almost 1-to-1 with 
actual pronunciation, because of unpreditable stress positions 
which can fundamentally alter vowel values. At best, you'd need 
a database of stress patterns for various words so that the 
accent would fall in the correct places. Plus a set of 
exceptions for certain archaic word combinations that have 
unusual stress.  If you had a database of English stress 
positions, I think half the battle is already won.


French would have the same problem as English, except that you 
could just do as a first approximation:


if (rand() > someFactor)
word = word[0 .. $/2];

and then touch it up with a small set of exceptions.  :-P


T


Are Russian stress-rules based on context? Long vs. short vowels, 
palatalized vs. velarized consonants etc.? If yes, you can 
program rules.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Q. Schroll via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 27 April 2016 at 03:59:04 UTC, Seb wrote:
On Wednesday, 27 April 2016 at 02:57:47 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:
To prepare for a week in Berlin, a few German phrases is all 
you'll need to fit in, get around, and have a great time:


1. Ein Bier bitte!
2. Noch ein Bier bitte!
3. Wo ist der WC!


nitpick: Wo ist _das_ WC?
In German WC we have definite articles and as a WC can be used 
by both sexes, it is neutral (disclaimer: not a rule).

However it's more common to say "Wo ist die nächste Toilette?"


Sorry, WC is neutral, but this has nothing to do with usage of 
both sexes. If you want a short explanation of where different 
(linguistic) gender come from, have a look on
http://www.belleslettres.eu/print/genus-gendersprech-v1.pdf 
(German) p. 3
In a nutshell: Connecting gender with sex is wrong. Correlation 
is not causality.


Sorry for being a smartass. I just have to.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, May 05, 2016 at 05:20:00PM +, Chris via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> As a not on the side, there are those who say that letter-to-sound
> systems should never be rule based, they should purely be based on
> machine learning.  The proponents of this are usually native English
> speakers. For English you do need machine learning. For Spanish not so
> much. If you can feed the computer the rule "ch" = /tʃ/, why would you
> want to train it :)

Rule-based letter-to-sound systems don't work too well for English
precisely because you have to basically reproduce 500 years' worth of
sound change plus all the exceptions introduced by words borrowed from
other contemporous languages across the centuries. A rule-based system
possibly could work, provided the rules were extensive enough (and
multi-layered, to account for borrowed exceptions and other oddities).
But there comes a point where even the most industrious programmer would
throw up his hands and say, forget this exercise in futility, let's just
have the machine teach itself instead.

Rule-based systems work better for Spanish because the orthography is
much closer to actual pronunciation, and other parameters such as stress
is more predictable.  I'd venture to guess that rule-based systems might
not work as well for Russian, in spite of the orthography being almost
1-to-1 with actual pronunciation, because of unpreditable stress
positions which can fundamentally alter vowel values. At best, you'd
need a database of stress patterns for various words so that the accent
would fall in the correct places. Plus a set of exceptions for certain
archaic word combinations that have unusual stress.  If you had a
database of English stress positions, I think half the battle is already
won.

French would have the same problem as English, except that you could
just do as a first approximation:

if (rand() > someFactor)
word = word[0 .. $/2];

and then touch it up with a small set of exceptions.  :-P


T

-- 
English is useful because it is a mess. Since English is a mess, it maps
well onto the problem space, which is also a mess, which we call
reality. Similarly, Perl was designed to be a mess, though in the nicest
of all possible ways. -- Larry Wall

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

As a not on the side, there are those who say that 
letter-to-sound systems should never be rule based, they should 
purely be based on machine learning. The proponents of this are 
usually native English speakers. For English you do need machine 
learning. For Spanish not so much. If you can feed the computer 
the rule "ch" = /tʃ/, why would you want to train it :)

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, May 05, 2016 at 04:03:46PM +, Chris via Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]
> I knew I'd regret it, when I wrote "as you hear it in your head". :)

:-)


> The ideal is phonetic spelling (Spanish comes quite close to it). This
> does not mean that you have a letter for each sound, or that you write
> allophones or every little local nuance. However, it is important to
> be consistent, even if the spelling system does not 100% reflect the
> spoken reality (which is the next best thing to phonetic spelling). If
> in English you wrote "nite" (instead of night), the grapheme 
> would be identifiable as the phonemes /ait/, bite, fite, lite, tite,
> although the -e is silent.

Point taken, though I think the correct term is "phonemic spelling". ;-)
Even then, there are still compromises, because not all dialects share
the same phonemes, and some dialects may consider certain words as
having different phonemes from another dialect (and not all dialects
share the same set of phonemes -- though they are close, at least as far
as English is concerned).

Another issue is that the Latin alphabet, with its dearth of vowel
letters, is really inadequate for representing the extensive English
vowel system.  Modern English has far more vowels than there are letters
to represent them, and in an ideal writing system you'd have a distinct
symbol for each of them. In current writing these vowels are
contextually represented, mostly in their historic forms, hence the
proliferation of silent e's everywhere. These were actually pronounced
as separate vowels way back when, but since then they have been dropped,
leaving behind their trace of modifying the quality of the previous
vowel. Hence in writing, these silent e's have come to represent that
modification of preceding vowel quality, rather than an actual vowel. (A
similar thing happens in old Russian orthography, with those ъ's and ь's
everywhere, coloring the previous consonant, and, by modern times, also
the preceding vowel.) This contextual representation is one of the
reasons why English spelling is so atrocious -- you're basically
replicating about 400-500 years' worth of sound change when you write
/ate/ to represent [eːt] (or [ejt], depending on dialect) as opposed to
/at/ [æt]. But, as any historic linguist knows, many sound changes tend
to be contextual, so not all final e's are silent, and not all silent
e's have the same effect on the preceding vowel. Hence the inscrutable
list of unending exceptions to English spelling "rules".


> In Irish, due to the differences between local dialects the spelling
> is somewhat conservative and doesn't reflect the phonetic reality of
> each dialect, however, it is quite consistent and everybody can read
> it using their respective pronunciation.

Present-day English dialects are probably still close enough that a
common representation of phonemes is possible, barring some minor
exceptions. Of course, good luck convincing people to adopt whatever
system you come up with. :-P  I think there has been no shortage of good
ideas in spelling reform proposals; the main obstacle is the inertia of
the status quo.


T

-- 
What are you when you run out of Monet? Baroque.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 5 May 2016 at 14:52:00 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:



[...]
But hey, it's just a coding convention. We shouldn't be too 
attached to spellings, especially if reforms make it easier to 
spell (i.e. to spell out a word as you hear it in your head) 
and parse text. It's a code to communicate, not a religion.

[...]

It's a falsehood that you can just spell out a word "as you 
hear it in your head". No writing system actually does that, 
even though some come pretty close. Almost all writing systems 
are compromises, balancing etymology, grammatical marking, ease 
of use, and closeness to actual pronunciation -- the latter of 
which is actually an extremely thorny issue due to the 
existence of myriads of dialects and personal pronunciation 
peculiarities. If you're merely talking about what's spoken in 
the Queen's court, then there's no issue, but it's a big 
problem when applied to the diverse regional English dialects 
across the globe. The way a Texan spells will be 
incomprehensible to a Briton, for example.  (But perhaps that 
would actually be an advantage of sorts, in recognizing that 
Texan is actually a different language, contrary to popular 
belief. :-P)  Or, for that matter, American vs. Australian.  It 
would cause a splintering of dialects.  Even across different 
persons within the same dialectal community, there are bound to 
be subtle differences that would make a difference in a pure 
spell-it-as-you-say-it system.


Chinese writing is actually an ironic illustration of the last 
point, in fact. Thousands of years ago everybody spoke the same 
ancestral tongue, but since then, the original ancient Chinese 
language has splintered into what's commonly called "dialects" 
today, but in actuality are completely different languages on 
their own. The distance between, say, Mandarin and Cantonese is 
far greater than between Spanish and Portuguese, for example, 
yet for some unfathomable reason we regard the latter as 
separate languages whereas the former are somehow still mere 
"dialects".  But in spite of that, the one thing they all have 
in common is a writing system understood by all -- thanks to 
the writing *not* being phonetic, which is something usually 
regarded as a bad thing. Since the writing isn't phonetic, it 
has survived as a common system of communication in spite of 
thousands of years of sound change and language drift, which in 
any other community would have caused complete breakdown in 
communication. (Of course, it's not a *perfect* common system 
of communication, because "dialectal" differences are in some 
cases big enough that one "dialect" would use characters that 
don't exist in other dialects, or some words can't be 
represented at all. But still, you can at least understand each 
other to a workable extent just by having pen and paper handy, 
which is a lot more than can be said for, say, an Englishman 
trying to communicate with a Russian, having no common writing 
system at all, even though thousands of years ago their 
respective ancestors spoke the same proto-Indo-European tongue.)


So you see, "write as you say it" isn't quite the panacea as it 
may first appear to be. Neither is "keep the ancestral spelling 
even though nobody actually talks that way anymore, just so we 
can communicate with the Russians in writing in spite of having 
completely mutually unintelligible pronunciation".  All 
real-life writing systems are compromises between conflicting 
goals. (Reminds one of programming language design, doesn't it? 
:-P)



T


I knew I'd regret it, when I wrote "as you hear it in your head". 
:) The ideal is phonetic spelling (Spanish comes quite close to 
it). This does not mean that you have a letter for each sound, or 
that you write allophones or every little local nuance. However, 
it is important to be consistent, even if the spelling system 
does not 100% reflect the spoken reality (which is the next best 
thing to phonetic spelling). If in English you wrote "nite" 
(instead of night), the grapheme  would be identifiable as 
the phonemes /ait/, bite, fite, lite, tite, although the -e is 
silent.


In Irish, due to the differences between local dialects the 
spelling is somewhat conservative and doesn't reflect the 
phonetic reality of each dialect, however, it is quite consistent 
and everybody can read it using their respective pronunciation.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, May 05, 2016 at 09:28:01AM +, Chris via Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]
> There was a spelling reform in Germany in the 1990ies. Portuguese
> spelling has been reformed several times (and there are two major
> spelling systems Brazilian and Portuguese Portuguese)[1], and in
> Spanish it has also been a to and fro (Latin America vs. Spain). All
> these languages have produced a vast body of literature too and still
> spelling reforms have been pushed successfully. So quantity is not an
> argument. First, most people don't have problems reading texts in
> older spellings, and second, it only takes one or only half a
> generation of school children to make the new spelling feel "natural".

You're quite right, of course.  A lot of it has to do with inertia.
People just prefer what they're used to, rather than what's objectively
better.  And children will just grow up liking whatever they were
taught, so the key to success really just lies with education. :-)

In the early days of the introduction of Simplified Chinese writing,
there was a lot of resistance from older educated folk, especially
Chinese immigrants overseas (such as the significant population in
Southeast Asia) who perceived it as a "denigration" of the old writing
system. The older, more complex system preserves some of the arguably
flagrant shenanigans by ancient Chinese scribes who went overboard with
the whole derivation from radicals idea and invented some of the most
ridiculously complex characters that nobody uses. This was perceived to
be superior because, well, it was more "literary" (whatever that
means!), and it shows the clear derivation of the character from ancient
constructs -- you could guess at the meaning of an unknown character
just by extrapolation from its various intricate components, obviously
very useful when you encounter an unknown obscure overly-complex
character that nobody actually uses (much less pronounce!).  Plus, it
just *looked* more artistic, nevermind the fact that the sheer number of
strokes made the writing laughably inefficient in today's impatient
world.

Well, fast-forward a couple o' decades, and now almost all overseas
Chinese populations have adopted the new system, and the present
situation is well illustrated by one instance when a child piped up one
day in class, saying that the teacher had made a mistake in her writing.
Afterwards, the teacher had to explain that it was actually not a
mistake, but an older way of writing the same character. The youngster,
of course, knows nothing but the new system, and has no reason to regard
the old system as anything other than a "mistake". Which, perhaps, it
is. :-D


[...]
> But hey, it's just a coding convention. We shouldn't be too attached
> to spellings, especially if reforms make it easier to spell (i.e. to
> spell out a word as you hear it in your head) and parse text. It's a
> code to communicate, not a religion.
[...]

It's a falsehood that you can just spell out a word "as you hear it in
your head". No writing system actually does that, even though some come
pretty close. Almost all writing systems are compromises, balancing
etymology, grammatical marking, ease of use, and closeness to actual
pronunciation -- the latter of which is actually an extremely thorny
issue due to the existence of myriads of dialects and personal
pronunciation peculiarities. If you're merely talking about what's
spoken in the Queen's court, then there's no issue, but it's a big
problem when applied to the diverse regional English dialects across the
globe. The way a Texan spells will be incomprehensible to a Briton, for
example.  (But perhaps that would actually be an advantage of sorts, in
recognizing that Texan is actually a different language, contrary to
popular belief. :-P)  Or, for that matter, American vs. Australian.  It
would cause a splintering of dialects.  Even across different persons
within the same dialectal community, there are bound to be subtle
differences that would make a difference in a pure
spell-it-as-you-say-it system.

Chinese writing is actually an ironic illustration of the last point, in
fact. Thousands of years ago everybody spoke the same ancestral tongue,
but since then, the original ancient Chinese language has splintered
into what's commonly called "dialects" today, but in actuality are
completely different languages on their own. The distance between, say,
Mandarin and Cantonese is far greater than between Spanish and
Portuguese, for example, yet for some unfathomable reason we regard the
latter as separate languages whereas the former are somehow still mere
"dialects".  But in spite of that, the one thing they all have in common
is a writing system understood by all -- thanks to the writing *not*
being phonetic, which is something usually regarded as a bad thing.
Since the writing isn't phonetic, it has survived as a common system of
communication in spite of thousands of years of sound change and
language drift, which in any other 

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 2 May 2016 at 21:49:21 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:


However, various recent attempts to reform English spelling 
have for the most part failed, mostly due to inertia and the 
presence of a substantial (and very fast growing!) body of 
literature in current spelling, which would require a 
monumental effort to respell. It's difficult to convince the 
myriad writers and publishers to adopt a new spelling system 
when the current one has been ingrained for so many centuries.  
But hey, if Chinese could simplify the original characters (at 
much protest, I must say), and if the Russians could pull it 
off in 1917, who's to say we can't do it in English too?



T


There was a spelling reform in Germany in the 1990ies. Portuguese 
spelling has been reformed several times (and there are two major 
spelling systems Brazilian and Portuguese Portuguese)[1], and in 
Spanish it has also been a to and fro (Latin America vs. Spain). 
All these languages have produced a vast body of literature too 
and still spelling reforms have been pushed successfully. So 
quantity is not an argument. First, most people don't have 
problems reading texts in older spellings, and second, it only 
takes one or only half a generation of school children to make 
the new spelling feel "natural".


The main reason why English spelling has not been reformed is the 
nasty class system that is still prevalent in GB and, albeit 
better concealed, in the USA, or in fact in any English speaking 
country. The mastering of English spelling has always been a 
social shibboleth (and continues to be), and any serious attempts 
at simplifying it are met with fierce opposition in educated 
circles. Even the few simplifications that have been introduced 
into American English, like color (instead of colour), program 
(instead of programme), or thru (instead of through) etc. are 
frowned upon and belittled by European (native) English speakers. 
The conservative spelling preserves the etymology of the word, 
they claim. This means you have to know Latin, French and some 
basic Greek to master English spelling. This clearly shows their 
bias. It is the educated elites that could bring about a reform 
of English spelling, but since they're not willing to give in an 
inch an lose some of their (imagined) superiority, this ain't 
gonna happen.


People often adopt the elites' views and oppose to spelling 
reforms, because they feel they'll "lose" what they've learned 
("it was all in vain"), and of course, what they are used to. But 
hey, it's just a coding convention. We shouldn't be too attached 
to spellings, especially if reforms make it easier to spell (i.e. 
to spell out a word as you hear it in your head) and parse text. 
It's a code to communicate, not a religion.


PS If you think that discussions about D language features on 
this forum are sometimes mad and nit-picky, you should attend a 
meeting of a spelling committee!


[1] 
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortografia_da_l%C3%ADngua_portuguesa#Cronologia_das_reformas_ortogr.C3.A1ficas_na_l.C3.ADngua_portuguesa

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Laeeth Isharc via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 3 May 2016 at 08:53:49 UTC, Claude wrote:
LOL. Well, every language has its quirks - especially with the 
commonly used words (they probably get munged the most over 
time, because they get used the most), but I've found that 
French is far more consistent than English - especially when 
get a grammar book that actually explains things rather than 
just telling you what to do. English suffers from having a lot 
of different sources for its various words. It's consistent in 
a lot of ways, but it's a huge mess in others - ...


Several years ago, I read "Frankenstein" of Mary Shelley (in 
english), and I was surprised to see that the english used in 
that novel had a lot of french sounding words (like "to 
continue", "to traverse", "to detest", "the commencement" etc), 
which are now seldom used even in litterature. There was very 
few verb constructions like "get up", "come on", "carry out"


http://isteve.blogspot.de/2012/07/norman-v-saxon-after-946-years.html?m=1

The reverberations of 1066 have not yet extinguished 
themselves...  We are in a mass democratic age and the language 
reflects that.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 2 May 2016 at 01:13:50 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:


[...]

Actually, in just about every language that makes gender 
distinctions
the choice of gender for any given noun is basically arbitrary. 
Even
languages with a common ancestor may assign different genders 
to the
same ancestral noun (IIRC in Portuguese vs. Spanish, though I 
can't

recall the specific example off the top of my head).


In Galician and Portuguese the word for `message` is feminine 
while it is masculine in Spanish (and French I guess).


a mensaxe (Gal.)
a mensagem (Pt.)
el mensaje (Sp.)

which applies to all words ending in -axe/-aje I think.

In Irish, there are words that have different genders in 
different dialects which is due to the fact that Irish used to 
have three genders masculine, feminine and neuter. Neuter died 
out and the words had to "choose" which gender they wanted to 
belong to. Hence the "gender difference" between dialects. There 
are even some words that change gender when in a different case:


talamh (m, Nominative singular) `land`
na talún (f, Genitive singular) `of the land`, `the land's`

although `tailimh` (m, Genitive singular exists too).

In Bavarian some words have a different gender than in Standard 
German, e.g:


der Butter (standard: die Butter)
der Radio (standard: das Radio)

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Claude via Digitalmars-d]

LOL. Well, every language has its quirks - especially with the 
commonly used words (they probably get munged the most over 
time, because they get used the most), but I've found that 
French is far more consistent than English - especially when 
get a grammar book that actually explains things rather than 
just telling you what to do. English suffers from having a lot 
of different sources for its various words. It's consistent in 
a lot of ways, but it's a huge mess in others - ...


Several years ago, I read "Frankenstein" of Mary Shelley (in 
english), and I was surprised to see that the english used in 
that novel had a lot of french sounding words (like "to 
continue", "to traverse", "to detest", "the commencement" etc), 
which are now seldom used even in litterature. There was very few 
verb constructions like "get up", "come on", "carry out" etc...


... though I for one think that the fact that English has no 
gender like languages such as French and German is a huge win.


Yes, I think the difficulty in english is mostly pronunciation, 
and irregular verbs (which actually many languages enjoy: french, 
german, spanish...).

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d]

On 3 May 2016 at 05:15, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d
 wrote:
> On 5/2/2016 12:09 PM, Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>>
>> For every rule, there are 101 exceptions. :-)
>>
>>
>> http://shirah-goes-again.blogspot.de/2011/01/entire-english-language-is-big.html
>
>
> What's the problem? :-)
>

You can colour me impressed if you were able to read it out loud
without stuttering to sound out a word. :-P

The last list had my partner (native Italian) throw her pen down and
give up for the day on many occasions, consider the following rhyming
couplets or same sounds.

(bough, bow), (cough, quaff), (dough, doe), (enough, stuff), (hough,
shock), (lough, lock), (plough, vow), (sough, brow), (though, know),
(through, threw), (thorough, morrow)

Though I've really noticed the difference since we first lived
together - such as nowadays she says biscuit to rhyme with kit, rather
than quit. :-)

Then again, I discovered a few years ago that I was a retroflex
speaker of English.  Which when you are non-native, I've been
frequently told is very difficult to understand, if compared to your
typical North American (rhotic) or Oxford-English (non-rhotic)
speakers that you get on news channels.  My old neighbour and friend
when I lived in the UK found that out the hard way when after three
months of talking with me on a near daily basis, thought they could
understand native English very well (they considered me a challenge).
They discovered otherwise a few weeks later trying to communicate with
locals on holiday in Norfolk. ;-)

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 5/2/2016 12:09 PM, Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d wrote:

For every rule, there are 101 exceptions. :-)

http://shirah-goes-again.blogspot.de/2011/01/entire-english-language-is-big.html


What's the problem? :-)

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Mon, 2 May 2016 21:09:41 +0200
Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d  wrote:

> On 2 May 2016 at 14:55, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d
>  wrote:
> > On Mon, 2016-05-02 at 12:18 +, Claude via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> > […]
> >>
> >> In french, there are 2 specials cases about gender. "orgue"
> >> (organ) and "amour" (love) are masculine on singular, and
> >> feminine on plural.
> >
> > Oh FFS. And they say English is a difficult language.
> >
>
> For every rule, there are 101 exceptions. :-)
>
> http://shirah-goes-again.blogspot.de/2011/01/entire-english-language-is-big.html

LoL. That's hilarious - a tad long to read though, especially since it's
practically just a long list of words.

- Jonathan M Davis

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Mon, May 02, 2016 at 06:22:49PM +0200, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d 
wrote:
[...]
> In any case, learning any new language is hard - especially the
> farther it is from your own (e.g. Asian languages are going to
> generally be pretty brutal to learn for someone speaking a European
> languages).

Every language is trivial to a native speaker.

As for which languages are brutal or trivial to an L2 learner, that
depends on whether the target language makes distinctions that aren't
present in one's native tongue.

Now, "Asian languages" as a category doesn't make very much sense,
because it encompasses far too wide a scope to be a useful category. You
have language isolates like Japanese and Korean, with rather distinctive
grammars, then the numerous Chinese "dialects" (which are properly
languages in their own right), which are part of the wider Sino-Tibetan
languages (including things like Vietnamese, Burmese, possibly Thai,
among others), the Austronesian languages, and a whole variety of
others, that have basically no resemblance with each other.

As far as the Chinese languages are concerned, one common difficulty for
foreign language learners is the tonal distinctions, which are basically
absent from European languages. Hence, a word like "ma" can mean a whole
variety of different things depending on its pitch contour, but the
problem is your typical European language speaker can't even *hear* the
difference to begin with, so it sounds almost like pulling magical
bunnies out of the air. (Some of the Chinese "dialects" sport up to 9
distinct tones -- L2 learners have enough trouble telling the 4 tones of
standard Mandarin apart, let alone the fine distinctions between 9!)
However, grammar-wise, the Chinese languages are far simpler than the
European languages; so once you get over the tonal hump, it's actually a
lot easier to learn than, say, English or French. Or Russian.

Of course, the other great difficulty is the writing system, which
requires the memorization of between 1000-2000 different glyphs just to
be able to read with some fluency.  But hey, that beats learning
Japanese, which has *three* different writing systems, all of which you
must master in order to be able to read at all!

Austronesian languages, by contrast, are almost trivial in terms of
pronunciation, and for the most part have adopted the Latin alphabet, so
reading and writing isn't hampered by the need to learn a whole new
writing system. However, the grammar, while not exactly as complex as,
say, Russian or Greek, significantly diverges from the way grammar
usually works in European languages, so some amount of effort is
required in order to get it right.

Japanese and Korean appear to be language isolates, and their respective
grammars are quite unique. Korean writing is relatively easy to master
-- it's phonetic, like the Latin alphabet, just composed differently --
but Japanese requires mastery of 3 different writing systems. Both
languages also sport a system of honorifics that mostly doesn't exist in
European languages, and may be difficult for an L2 learner to pick up --
addressing somebody with the wrong honorifics can sound extremely
insulting or needlessly polite.


On Mon, May 02, 2016 at 07:40:29PM +, Meta via Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]
> Many Asian languages are much more straightforward then any of the
> romance languages. In Chinese verbs aren't even inflected for tense,
> voice, etc., much less this silly gendered noun stuff. It's extremely
> refreshing and quite simple grammatically.

Yes, though the tonal system and the writing system are two things that
usually discourage many foreign learners from even trying.



On Mon, May 02, 2016 at 08:33:47PM +, tsbockman via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Monday, 2 May 2016 at 19:09:41 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:
> >For every rule, there are 101 exceptions. :-)
> >
> >http://shirah-goes-again.blogspot.de/2011/01/entire-english-language-is-big.html
> 
> As an educated native English speaker, I must say that poem is
> horrifying.
> 
> Clearly, spelling reform is urgently needed:
> http://www.ashvital.freeservers.com/ze_dream.htm

Spelling reforms have a spotty history... Spanish had one relatively
recently (i.e., within the last few hundred years), and is therefore
much easier to read today than back then.  Russian had a major overhaul
in 1917, which dropped a large number of silent vowels and redundant
consonants, so today Russian is also relatively easy to read once you
master the Cyrillic alphabet. (And so the story goes, this reform saved
millions of dollars (rubles?) in printing and paper costs, due to the
elimination of said silent vowels which were present at the end of
almost every word in the old spelling.) French and English are both
overdue for reform, though, their respective spelling rules having been
codified about a half millenium ago, and between then and now
pronunciation has changed so drastically that, as the above poem shows,
the current 

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[tsbockman via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 2 May 2016 at 19:09:41 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:

For every rule, there are 101 exceptions. :-)

http://shirah-goes-again.blogspot.de/2011/01/entire-english-language-is-big.html


As an educated native English speaker, I must say that poem is 
horrifying.


Clearly, spelling reform is urgently needed:
http://www.ashvital.freeservers.com/ze_dream.htm

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Meta via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 2 May 2016 at 16:22:49 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

On Mon, 02 May 2016 13:55:35 +0100
Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d  
wrote:


On Mon, 2016-05-02 at 12:18 +, Claude via Digitalmars-d 
wrote: […]

> [...]

Oh FFS. And they say English is a difficult language.


LOL. Well, every language has its quirks - especially with the 
commonly used words (they probably get munged the most over 
time, because they get used the most), but I've found that 
French is far more consistent than English - especially when 
get a grammar book that actually explains things rather than 
just telling you what to do. English suffers from having a lot 
of different sources for its various words. It's consistent in 
a lot of ways, but it's a huge mess in others - though I for 
one think that the fact that English has no gender like 
languages such as French and German is a huge win.


In any case, learning any new language is hard - especially the 
farther it is from your own (e.g. Asian languages are going to 
generally be pretty brutal to learn for someone speaking a 
European languages).


- Jonathan M Davis


Many Asian languages are much more straightforward then any of 
the romance languages. In Chinese verbs aren't even inflected for 
tense, voice, etc., much less this silly gendered noun stuff. 
It's extremely refreshing and quite simple grammatically.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d]

On 2 May 2016 at 14:55, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d
 wrote:
> On Mon, 2016-05-02 at 12:18 +, Claude via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> […]
>>
>> In french, there are 2 specials cases about gender. "orgue"
>> (organ) and "amour" (love) are masculine on singular, and
>> feminine on plural.
>
> Oh FFS. And they say English is a difficult language.
>

For every rule, there are 101 exceptions. :-)

http://shirah-goes-again.blogspot.de/2011/01/entire-english-language-is-big.html

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Mon, 02 May 2016 13:55:35 +0100
Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d  wrote:

> On Mon, 2016-05-02 at 12:18 +, Claude via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> […]
> >
> > In french, there are 2 specials cases about gender. "orgue" 
> > (organ) and "amour" (love) are masculine on singular, and 
> > feminine on plural.
>
> Oh FFS. And they say English is a difficult language.

LOL. Well, every language has its quirks - especially with the commonly used
words (they probably get munged the most over time, because they get used
the most), but I've found that French is far more consistent than English -
especially when get a grammar book that actually explains things rather than
just telling you what to do. English suffers from having a lot of different
sources for its various words. It's consistent in a lot of ways, but it's a
huge mess in others - though I for one think that the fact that English has
no gender like languages such as French and German is a huge win.

In any case, learning any new language is hard - especially the farther it
is from your own (e.g. Asian languages are going to generally be pretty
brutal to learn for someone speaking a European languages).

- Jonathan M Davis

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Mon, 2016-05-02 at 12:18 +, Claude via Digitalmars-d wrote:
[…]
> 
> In french, there are 2 specials cases about gender. "orgue" 
> (organ) and "amour" (love) are masculine on singular, and 
> feminine on plural.

Oh FFS. And they say English is a difficult language.

-- 
Russel.
=
Dr Russel Winder  t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.win...@ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: rus...@winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Claude via Digitalmars-d]

The same goes with French. e.g. body parts which one would 
think would be obviously masculine are feminine (and vice 
versa).


Funny, it's actually true. I've never figured that out... :)

In french, there are 2 specials cases about gender. "orgue" 
(organ) and "amour" (love) are masculine on singular, and 
feminine on plural.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Mon, May 02, 2016 at 02:15:46AM +0200, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d 
wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Apr 2016 08:43:52 +0200
> > Ha!  There is no logical at all behind whether a word is masculine,
> > feminine or neutral in German.
> 
> The same goes with French.
[...]

Actually, in just about every language that makes gender distinctions
the choice of gender for any given noun is basically arbitrary. Even
languages with a common ancestor may assign different genders to the
same ancestral noun (IIRC in Portuguese vs. Spanish, though I can't
recall the specific example off the top of my head).  And while one may
imagine that words of "obvious" gender like "man" or "woman" ought to
have the obvious gender, this is not always true (e.g., Russian мужчина
"man" is masculine in agreement with adjectives, but has the feminine -а
ending and declines like a feminine noun).

One linguistic theory about gender systems is that they arose as ancient
rhyming schemes, where, e.g., words ending in a particular vowel would
agree with adjectives ending in a similar vowel. Over time, of course,
due to sound change and language change these ancient rhymes are
forgotten, leaving behind a system of gender distinctions that
apparently are based on biological genders, but are actually relics of
long-forgotten, essentially arbitrary rhyming schemes. Arguably, noun
class systems such as in Swahili also arose from such ancient rhyming
schemes, but in Swahili noun class assignments don't even remotely
resemble biological gender in any way.

At the end of the day, such gender systems are essentially arbitrary and
you just have to memorize which words belong to which class.


T

-- 
Prosperity breeds contempt, and poverty breeds consent. -- Suck.com

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, 28 Apr 2016 08:43:52 +0200
> Ha!  There is no logical at all behind whether a word is masculine,
> feminine or neutral in German.

The same goes with French. e.g. body parts which one would think would be
obviously masculine are feminine (and vice versa). The insight that one of
my college professors gave on that is that it's the _word_ that has a
gender, not what the word represents. Now, that's not particularly helpful
in determining what gender a word is (you pretty much just have to memorize
it, though in French, at least, the ending of the word can give it away),
but if you think about it that way, it does help you to stop trying to
figure out the gender based on what object or concept you're referring to.

- Jonathan M Davis

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Piotrek via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 1 May 2016 at 08:30:16 UTC, jack wrote:


you keep forgetting about the english who were with the 
netherlands the largest slave traders of the world up to the 
first world war. additionally the english plundered most of the 
world f. ex. india etc.
the americans who butchered the native people and sterilized 
them until 1956. they bring us democracy and forced trade with 
wars to everyone and create along the way the islamic states.
as for the turks and arabs - nobody wants them in europe. as 
the english found out (guardian), they are a continual problem 
because of their incest marriages and therefore rapidly sinking 
iq`s.
most people would love it, if the american war mongers would 
leave europe with the turks and arabs together.


Please consider that you won't defeat evil writing such posts on 
this forum. The point is there bad and good people in all 
countries. And as I can see you indirectly insulted Ali who seems 
to be a good person.


I know what you are talking about, and believe me, I can agree 
with you in some points. But this forum is not a good place to 
start a fight on this matter, especially by accusing all members 
of a country for its history.


There are more proper ways of making this world a better place. 
For example you can give a positive example of being a good 
person. I don't mean you should be naive, but I guess you know 
that already.


Piotrek

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[jack via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 1 May 2016 at 06:24:53 UTC, Bill Hicks wrote:

On Thursday, 28 April 2016 at 06:51:04 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:


The other language that helps in Berlin is Turkish. :)

Ali


Probably because Germans and Turks have been allies for over a 
century, learning from each other and perfecting their crafts, 
such as committing genocide, stealing land and subjugating 
their victims.


you keep forgetting about the english who were with the 
netherlands the largest slave traders of the world up to the 
first world war. additionally the english plundered most of the 
world f. ex. india etc.
the americans who butchered the native people and sterilized them 
until 1956. they bring us democracy and forced trade with wars to 
everyone and create along the way the islamic states.
as for the turks and arabs - nobody wants them in europe. as the 
english found out (guardian), they are a continual problem 
because of their incest marriages and therefore rapidly sinking 
iq`s.
most people would love it, if the american war mongers would 
leave europe with the turks and arabs together.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Bill Hicks via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 28 April 2016 at 06:51:04 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:


The other language that helps in Berlin is Turkish. :)

Ali


Probably because Germans and Turks have been allies for over a 
century, learning from each other and perfecting their crafts, 
such as committing genocide, stealing land and subjugating their 
victims.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 4/28/2016 6:49 AM, jack wrote:

[...]


Such comments are not welcome here. Please stop.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Johan Engelen via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 29 April 2016 at 08:04:44 UTC, Marco Leise wrote:

Beware though that a not so cute Mädchen is NOT
"die Made" by reverse


This! Haha, genial, will try to remember and use ;-)

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Liam McSherry via Digitalmars-d]

Dies ist warum, wir können kein nettes Zeug haben.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[jack via Digitalmars-d]

well you seem to run around and chose to close your eyes to whats 
going on - just another "gutmensch" who knows whats good.


got a sister or a little brother? send have her go out these days 
alone - if you dare. moslem rapefugees and turks might get to 
know her/him very well. this is unfortunately not only happening 
in germany but also in austria "http://www.rapefugees.net/;.
well, i guess there is no such thing as as a bad islam and there 
isn't. islam is the worst of all things that can happen to any 
country. not all moslems are bad, but all terrorist are moslems 
"http://www.rapefugees.net/;. take a look at the quran and be 
disgusted about what they think of you 
"http://derprophet.info/inhalt/;.






On Friday, 29 April 2016 at 09:07:47 UTC, Marco Leise wrote:

Am Thu, 28 Apr 2016 13:49:15 +
schrieb jack :


unfortunately - too many islam and erdogan people


Great anonymous comment directed at a Turk for him to take
offense. How about you respect the constitution and ask others
to respect it, leaving religion and ethnics aside? You'll find
Erdogan supporters in every major city, just like people
supporting PEGIDA and nationalist party voters. Their
frustration with the establishment leads to the rise of people
who favor a single opinion, prejudice, distrust, controlled
press and weak courts. It might be difficult with your daily
experience in Berlin to look at the world from above, but if
you do it should become obvious looking at Turkey, Russia,
Poland, Austria and Germany's own past or Donald Trump, that
if we let these people take over, everyone loses.
So what's your way forward without becoming a nationalist,
narrow-minded society like the one you criticize?

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[QAston via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 29 April 2016 at 09:07:47 UTC, Marco Leise wrote:

It might be difficult with your daily
experience in Berlin to look at the world from above, but if
you do it should become obvious looking at Turkey, Russia,
Poland, Austria and Germany's own past or Donald Trump, that
if we let these people take over, everyone loses.
So what's your way forward without becoming a nationalist,
narrow-minded society like the one you criticize?


What a lovely broad brush you have here. It's not like anything 
else is going on in any of those countries - it's all nationalism 
and narrow-mindedness and you're so virtuous and enlightened to 
point it all out.


I'm going to speak for Poland because I live here and I've spent 
significant amount of time to try and figure out what the hell is 
going on in our politics. You know, because I actually vote here.


The goverment was changed because the last one did not deliver on 
it's promises and there were many scandals involving it. Just 
this week there was a leak with recording of past govt 
representative asking one of the richest buisnessmen in the 
country to intervene in an independent newspaper to make it more 
govt friendly. And mysteriously the head of the newspaper was 
fired after the chat took place. Hopefully with the new govt 
these things won't happen anymore, when they do it's likely we'll 
have another govt change.


The party which lost last elections still has a strong position 
in EU parlament (their representative is the president of EU 
council) and from there they make campaign about the new 
goverment to delegitimize it. Yeah, it's a shitty move, but out 
politicians can't see past next 4 years so they don't care for 
ruining reputation of the country. Ironically, this tactic was 
also used by party currently in power in Poland, but it was much 
less effective. We have really shitty politicians.


Last elections were not a result of sudden "nationalism" and 
"narrow-mindedness" emerging. The winning party didn't emphasize 
migration crisis much, they were much more focused on social 
issues. Their sollution is to redistribute money more, I 
personally disagree with that, so I hope they'll lose power in 
next elections. Still, there were parties which emphasized 
stopping migration much more, they didn't even make it to the 
parliament. Poland took refugees from Ukraine and Caucassus while 
EU didn't give a shit. Nationalism my ass.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Marco Leise via Digitalmars-d]

Am Thu, 28 Apr 2016 13:49:15 +
schrieb jack :

> unfortunately - too many islam and erdogan people

Great anonymous comment directed at a Turk for him to take
offense. How about you respect the constitution and ask others
to respect it, leaving religion and ethnics aside? You'll find
Erdogan supporters in every major city, just like people
supporting PEGIDA and nationalist party voters. Their
frustration with the establishment leads to the rise of people
who favor a single opinion, prejudice, distrust, controlled
press and weak courts. It might be difficult with your daily
experience in Berlin to look at the world from above, but if
you do it should become obvious looking at Turkey, Russia,
Poland, Austria and Germany's own past or Donald Trump, that
if we let these people take over, everyone loses.
So what's your way forward without becoming a nationalist,
narrow-minded society like the one you criticize?

-- 
Marco

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Marco Leise via Digitalmars-d]

Am Thu, 28 Apr 2016 09:15:27 +
schrieb Chris :

> Except when it corresponds to the natural gender, i.e. der Mann, 
> die Frau. It's interesting that the word for child is neuter (das 
> Kind). Looks like children are not yet considered to be of any 
> sex, which makes a lot of sense.

Child is the generic word to boy and girl. It's
   "das Kind"
 ♂♀
"der Junge" "das Mädchen"
where Mädchen is neutrum, because it is a diminuitive form.
These are used in some languages to denote something
little/young/cute/lesser. A cute, little hare (der Hase) is
"das Häschen". Beware though that a not so cute Mädchen is NOT
"die Made" by reverse, because that would be a maggot.

-- 
Marco

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Nemanja Boric via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 28 April 2016 at 13:49:15 UTC, jack wrote:

On Thursday, 28 April 2016 at 06:51:04 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:

On 04/26/2016 07:57 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
To prepare for a week in Berlin, a few German phrases is all 
you'll need

to fit in, get around, and have a great time:

1. Ein Bier bitte!
2. Noch ein Bier bitte!
3. Wo ist der WC!


The other language that helps in Berlin is Turkish. :)

Ali


unfortunately - too many islam and erdogan people


Please be civil.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[jack via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 28 April 2016 at 06:51:04 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:

On 04/26/2016 07:57 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
To prepare for a week in Berlin, a few German phrases is all 
you'll need

to fit in, get around, and have a great time:

1. Ein Bier bitte!
2. Noch ein Bier bitte!
3. Wo ist der WC!


The other language that helps in Berlin is Turkish. :)

Ali


unfortunately - too many islam and erdogan people

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[ag0aep6g via Digitalmars-d]

On 28.04.2016 11:15, Chris wrote:

Except when it corresponds to the natural gender, i.e. der Mann, die
Frau. It's interesting that the word for child is neuter (das Kind).
Looks like children are not yet considered to be of any sex, which makes
a lot of sense.


Then again Mädchen (girl) is neuter, too. There's a reason for that, of 
course: Mädchen is a diminutive form of Magd (maid), i.e. it means 
little maid. Magd is feminine as expected, but -chen forms are always 
neuter.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 28 April 2016 at 06:43:52 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:
On 27 April 2016 at 13:25, Marco Leise via Digitalmars-d 
 wrote:

Am Wed, 27 Apr 2016 03:59:04 +
schrieb Seb :


nitpick: Wo ist _das_ WC?
In German WC we have definite articles and as a WC can be 
used by

both sexes, it is neutral (disclaimer: not a rule).


There are some reasons why some words are feminine, masculine 
or neutral, but I never heard of that. (It is short form for 
English "watercloset" - which I didn't know before I looked it 
up now. :D)




Ha!  There is no logical at all behind whether a word is 
masculine, feminine or neutral in German.


Except when it corresponds to the natural gender, i.e. der Mann, 
die Frau. It's interesting that the word for child is neuter (das 
Kind). Looks like children are not yet considered to be of any 
sex, which makes a lot of sense.


Anyway, you can often deduce the grammatical gender from the 
ending (like in French, Spanish etc). E.g. -keit is feminine, 
while nouns ending in -er are masculine


die Eitelkeit (vanity)
der Fahrer (the driver)

Once you understand this, you can focus on words that give you no 
clue, like der Tag (day).


But in general there is no obvious logic as to why a word is 
masculine or feminine (or neuter). In German the sun is feminine, 
while in Latin languages it's masculine (el sol, o sol). In 
English it's neuter like most things. A neutered race :)

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Claude via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 27 April 2016 at 02:57:47 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
To prepare for a week in Berlin, a few German phrases is all 
you'll need to fit in, get around, and have a great time:


1. Ein Bier bitte!
2. Noch ein Bier bitte!
3. Wo ist der WC!


4. Ich bin ein Berliner!

That may you get free beers, if you're an american citizen and 
you manage to build a time-machine to get back to 1963 (I suggest 
using bidirectional ranges in order to return to the present, or 
a glass of fresh water).

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Shachar Shemesh via Digitalmars-d]

On 28/04/16 09:43, Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d wrote:



Ha!  There is no logical at all behind whether a word is masculine,
feminine or neutral in German.



In Hebrew, there is no such thing as a neutral noun, (though there are 
nouns that can be either male of female). When you go from one such 
language to another, it gets even more confusing because, since it is 
arbitrary for both languages, many words are female in one language and 
male in the other.


Shachar

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d]

On 27 April 2016 at 04:57, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d
 wrote:
> To prepare for a week in Berlin, a few German phrases is all you'll need to
> fit in, get around, and have a great time:
>
> 1. Ein Bier bitte!
> 2. Noch ein Bier bitte!
> 3. Wo ist der WC!

4. Zahlen bitte!

Unless you plan on making a getaway before paying. :-)

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d]

On 27 April 2016 at 13:25, Marco Leise via Digitalmars-d
 wrote:
> Am Wed, 27 Apr 2016 03:59:04 +
> schrieb Seb :
>
>> nitpick: Wo ist _das_ WC?
>> In German WC we have definite articles and as a WC can be used by
>> both sexes, it is neutral (disclaimer: not a rule).
>
> There are some reasons why some words are feminine, masculine
> or neutral, but I never heard of that. (It is short form for
> English "watercloset" - which I didn't know before I looked it
> up now. :D)
>

Ha!  There is no logical at all behind whether a word is masculine,
feminine or neutral in German.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Andrej Mitrovic via Digitalmars-d]

Back two years ago when I moved to Berlin and began my German lessons
I came up with a little haiku or singalong:

Ich möchte ein Bier!

Ein Bier für mich,
und ein Bier für meinen Freund!

Ich bin meiner bester Freund,
noch ein Bier für meinen Freund!!

On 4/27/16, Joseph Rushton Wakeling via Digitalmars-d
 wrote:
> On Wednesday, 27 April 2016 at 02:57:47 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> To prepare for a week in Berlin, a few German phrases is all
>> you'll need to fit in, get around, and have a great time:
>>
>> 1. Ein Bier bitte!
>> 2. Noch ein Bier bitte!
>> 3. Wo ist der WC!
>
> Kein Bier vor vier ;-)
>

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 27 April 2016 at 02:57:47 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
To prepare for a week in Berlin, a few German phrases is all 
you'll need to fit in, get around, and have a great time:


1. Ein Bier bitte!
2. Noch ein Bier bitte!
3. Wo ist der WC!


Kein Bier vor vier ;-)

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 27 April 2016 at 19:43:39 UTC, Chris wrote:



By the way, some people in Berlin may speak with the local 
accent (most people would speak some sort of standard German 
though, unfortunately). Some things I know of (please correct 
me, if I'm wrong):


ich = ick(e)
"s" is often "t" as in

das = det
was = wat

The dative case is used where you'd expect the accusative case:

Ick liebe dir (standard German: Ich liebe dich).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlinerisch_dialect

In German
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berliner_Dialekt


s/with the local accent/in the local dialect

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 27 April 2016 at 12:26:29 UTC, Tobias Pankrath 
wrote:


That makes cologne so tourist friendly. The waitress will 
refill your beer until you put a beermat on your glass. So only 
#3 is necessary.


You will still need #1 ;)

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Tobias Pankrath via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 27 April 2016 at 02:57:47 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
To prepare for a week in Berlin, a few German phrases is all 
you'll need to fit in, get around, and have a great time:


1. Ein Bier bitte!
2. Noch ein Bier bitte!
3. Wo ist der WC!


That makes cologne so tourist friendly. The waitress will refill 
your beer until you put a beermat on your glass. So only #3 is 
necessary.

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 27 April 2016 at 02:57:47 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
To prepare for a week in Berlin, a few German phrases is all 
you'll need to fit in, get around, and have a great time:


1. Ein Bier bitte!
2. Noch ein Bier bitte!
3. Wo ist der WC!


After 10 beers:

Wo ist hier das Scheißhaus?

No! Don't say that, it's the equivalent of "Where's the shitter?"

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Marco Leise via Digitalmars-d]

It just came to my ears that Seb was just joking about that WC
rule.

-- 
Marco

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[Marco Leise via Digitalmars-d]

Am Wed, 27 Apr 2016 03:59:04 +
schrieb Seb :

> nitpick: Wo ist _das_ WC?
> In German WC we have definite articles and as a WC can be used by 
> both sexes, it is neutral (disclaimer: not a rule).

There are some reasons why some words are feminine, masculine
or neutral, but I never heard of that. (It is short form for
English "watercloset" - which I didn't know before I looked it
up now. :D)

> However it's more common to say "Wo ist die nächste Toilette?"

Note how it is "die Toilette" because it is used by women.
But I didn't study German, so take it with a grain of salt. :p

-- 
Marco

Re: Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

[deadalnix via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 27 April 2016 at 02:57:47 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
To prepare for a week in Berlin, a few German phrases is all 
you'll need to fit in, get around, and have a great time:


1. Ein Bier bitte!
2. Noch ein Bier bitte!
3. Wo ist der WC!


Some footage of Walter's last trip in Germany: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bYMAgM42pM