Spam und die Grammatik

[pne]

Eben in meinem Spamordner als Betreffszeile entdeckt: „Warum sind Sie nicht beantworten meine E-Mail?”

Meine spontane Reaktion: „Weil du nix können sprechen deutsch.”

(Meine zweite Reaktion: *ungelesen lösch*)

Comments

[pauamma]

I take it this is ungrammatical German? (Based on my collection of spam topics, I'm guessing it's trying to say "Why didn't you answer my email?")

[pne]

I take it this is ungrammatical German?

Yes, exactly. Almost certainly influenced by English sentence structure, though I’m not sure whether this is a machine translation goof or a language-learner error. (I’d place my money on the former, though.)

(Based on my collection of spam topics, I'm guessing it's trying to say "Why didn't you answer my email?")

Since “Sie sind” = “you are”, the original was probably in the present continuous: “Why are you not [Why aren’t you] answering my e-mail?”. But yeah, same difference.

[pauamma]

Makes me wonder how grammatical are the spam emails I get in German, Hebrew, and Thai. (Judging by the script, for the latter 2.)

[pne]

And my response was also in ungrammatical German, but more naturalistically: it’s the stereotypical ungrammatical German spoken by foreign beginners, with verbs all in the infinitive and with the informal nix for nichts “nothing” (used in this “dialect” also for “not”: ich nix wissen could be either “I know nothing” or “I don’t know”).

A rough translation into English foreigner-ese might be “Because you no can speak English”.

[schnurble]

LOL!