German is fun!

[pne]

(All examples from a mailing list post by Henrik Theiling.)

Compare these two phrases:

mit den Jungen
ohne den Jungen

In both cases, you have den Jungen -- but in the first phrase, it unambiguously means "the boys" (plural), and in the second, "the boy" (singular), due to the fact that "mit" takes the dative case (so "den" must be dative plural) but "ohne" takes the accusative case (so "den" must be masculine accusative singular). And this, even though the meanings are very closely related: "with" and "without"!

I immediately understand which is which, but I imagine that for a language learner, this would be more difficult, since you have to internalise which prepositions govern which case to disambiguate such homophonous articles.

Or, for a slightly more contrived example involving not only homophonous articles but words which are distinguished by gender:

Der Finne entspricht der Norm.
Der Finne entspricht der Schwanz.

The first sentence means "The Finn conforms to the norm" and the second means "The tail corresponds to the back fin".

So since "Norm" is feminine singular, "der" here must be feminine genitive or dative singular; in this case, dative, as the object of "entsprechen", so "der Finne" must be masculine nominative singular and mean "the Finn (person from Finland).

In the second sentence, "Schwanz" is masculine singular, so "der" here must be masculine nominative singular and must be the subject of "entsprechen". This means that "der Finne" must be feminine dative singular, the object of "entsprechen", and correspond to the nominative "die Finne", meaning "the (back) fin (e.g. of a fish)".

It's all quite simple really. *snerk*

Comments

[pleiades829.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's totally where I got hung up in German. I could do verbs all right, but this case stuff drove me crazy! I handled case just fine in Armenian, because all theforms are different, but yeah. Just like you said. I usually tried to cover it up by saying a French "de" and hoping no one noticed. ;)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Promise me you won't show any of this to snowy_owlet; I've only just nudged her back onto the German-learning track.

[leighbug]

I took German in high school, and a semester in college. With all that, the sixteen different ways to say "the" never failed to get me! I like English. The is the is the, and that's that! So much easier (of course, I know English, which helps!)

Except I like the way German sounds. And I actually got the rest of the grammar. Now, there needs to be a revolution of the word The, and I'll be set!

[pne.livejournal.com]

With all that, the sixteen different ways to say "the" never failed to get me!

Ah, but there's the fun part: there are only six different ways to say "the"! (der, des, dem, den, die, das)

Only those six are re-used, so each word is ambiguous as to number, gender, and case ("das", "des", "dem", and "den" have two meanings each, and "der" and "die" have four each).

Now, there needs to be a revolution of the word The, and I'll be set!

:)

[leighbug]

oh, you're just getting technical! unfortunately, when i do the grammar, i try to figure out which case it is, then go from there. which means i usually get it wrong, even with the repetition! i couldn't tell you about accusitive case and all that in English, much less another language.

although, there was a time where if i didn't know, i'd usually use die, and hope it was right. since i usually don't remember the gender of the word.

[allegrox.livejournal.com]

German really is fun (http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html)!

We haven't really covered cases yet in my German class. Hopefully we'll get to those soon. It's hard to say anything interesting when with only the nominative (and only the future tense at that).

[pne.livejournal.com]

You learned the future before the present? How odd!

[allegrox.livejournal.com]

Oops, that was a mistake. I should have said present.

[leighbug]

i live that article! so true.

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[(Anonymous)]

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Re: booite journal code

[pne.livejournal.com]

Hi -- as I just told you in email, I don't.

I have an account there but can't seem to generate any codes or access any I might have generated in the past.

[animate-mush.livejournal.com]

Ah, fun stuff. My favorite piece of German homophony is the ist~isst switch. [is vs. eats] The difference between, of course

Herr Campbell ist mein Leiblingsprofessor and
Herr Campbell isst meinen Lieblingsprofessor

displaying, of course, the importance of the fact that the copula in german is transparent to case.

There are other horribly confusing examples, but I can't remember them at the moment.