German words are kind of sexy
in the sense that all nouns have a gender. I once got some very wise advice from a German teacher, that I regrettably did not follow.
Mit diesem Beitrag geht es um Deutsch, aber ausnahmsweise war es nicht sinnvoll auf Deutsch zu schreiben.
The advice was, when you learn a new noun, always make sure you learn it in connection with its gender. You see, in German every noun is either masculine, feminine, or neutral.
My problem was, I learned German in an intensive three month summer program as part of my master degree studies. We learned German seven hours a day, five days a week. If you didn't keep up, you would fall hopelessly behind and flunk out. For that reason I stopped worrying about gender in that competitive environment.
That decision had (and continues to have) a constant impact on my life in Germany -- virtually every time I open my mouth to speak I know I will be making mistakes. Thankfully, Germans are very forgiving -- I think they get a secret pleasure from how difficult it is for some of us non-native speakers ;-)
Giving Every Word a Gender is kind of Crazy
Honestly, the whole idea of giving every noun a gender seemed ridiculous and superfluous to me -- and my opinion has not changed in that respect.
There are some rules and helpful tips. For example, water is neutral, as you would expect. Yet most bodies of water are masculine (thank goodness for that consistency): ocean, lake, pond, river, and creek. Although the spring (Quelle) is feminine, so there are exceptions.
Luckily there are some word endings that consistently take a specific gender. For example, here's a German word most English speakers know: Gesundheit (health.) It is feminine because of the ending -heit. Any word that ends in -heit, -keit, or -ung is feminine. But for an English speaker the gender of nouns is a minefield full of potential mistakes.
German would be an excellent candidate for an international language, except for 3 things: der,die, das.
Of course the reality is that any of the major languages would be a good candidate for an international language. Why? Because children have the innate capacity to easily learn any language like a native speaker. In German they have a term "Sprachgefühl" for which we don't have an English equivalent. It is translated as: "intuitive feeling for the idiom of the language." But it is not just the idiom. They have an intuitive feel for the gender of nouns too. I've tested my wife with obscure words from the dictionary with which she was completely unfamiliar, yet she intuitively knew the gender with only a few exceptions. Thus a child prior to puberty has the potential to develop Sprachgefühl for any language.
German is easy to learn (yes there is a but coming)
The good news is that even without Sprachgefühl, German is a fairly easy language to learn as an adult. The bad news, without Sprachgefühl it is extraordinarily difficult, nearly impossible, to speak or write without making mistakes. More on that at another time, let's stick with gender for now.
A few examples of arbitrary genders
To me the gender of nouns often seems quite arbitrary. Let's consider eating utensils. They've got to be neutral right? Okay, a knife, that's pretty masculine, so we could imagine that as masculine. Well friends:
The knife is an "it"
The fork is a "she"
The spoon is a "dude."
Another example of three words based around one concept:
The room (Zimmer)
The lounge room (Stube)
The storage room (Lagerraum.)
The room is an "it"
The lounge room is a "lady"
The storage room is a "dude".
You won't believe this
Here are some examples of words whose genders truly perplexed me.
A bosom must be feminine, right? No! Of course not, it's masculine: der Busen.
A woman is a Frau which is feminine. But in the not too distant past, a wife or an older woman could also be referred to as "das Weib" which is neutral. (It has another modern slang meaning which we will ignore for now.)
Mark Twain
Mark Twain wrote a very funny essay about his quest to learn German, and I remember he mentioned the absurdity of "das Weib." Also he mentioned the fact that "the girl" in German is neutral das Mädchen. In this case, a German speaker might point out that words that end with "-chen" are always neutral. But I would counter, the Bavarian equivalent "Mädel" is also neutral.
Once you add pronouns to the mix it becomes downright absurd. Thus "das Weib" and "das Madchen" aren't "she," they become "es" "it."
In German the possessive pronouns (his or her) are either masculine or feminine. What happens to "es," the neutral form of "he/she/it"? The neutral takes the masculine possessive pronoun -- and then the fun begins :-D
To paraphrase Mark Twain's original idea, a literal translation of German could produce something like this:
Das Weib sagte zu seiner Tochter: "Wir zwei müssen die Kühe versorgen!" Das Mädchen durfte zwar seine Hausaufgabe für die Schule machen, aber danach mußte es, wie seine Mutter, im Stall arbeiten.
The wife said to his daughter: "The two of us have to take care of the cows!" The girl was allowed to do his homework for school, but afterwards it had to, like his mother, work in the barn.
Here's the surprise for English Speakers
English is of course extremely quirky as we all know, but it is also this wonderful amalgamation of languages which have influenced it. Old English was a Germanic language, but the French invasion of England in 1066 had a tremendous impact on English. Now we have a language that is Germanic in origin, but with a French substructure and vocabulary. The Norse also had an influence on English, and from what I understand it was the Norse influence in Northern England that led to them being the first to begin dropping the gender of nouns.
As you probably have heard, German like many other languages has a polite form of you (Sie), and an informal form of you(Du). The polite form (Sie) can be used for one person, or a group of people -- as in English.
English once had this too. We know from Shakespeare and the Bible, "Thou" was used for individuals, and "You" was used for more than one person. According to this source, in the 13th century people began imitating the French use of "Tu" & "Vous".
"You" was gradually considered an equivalent of the polite "Vous" and "Thou" as "Tu." So if you said "Thou" to someone above you socially, or someone on your level with whom you weren't well acquainted, there was the potential for an insult.
It is interesting that eventually this was dropped, but not as you might expect. We began addressing everyone with the polite form "You," which would be the equivalent of Germans using only "Sie" or the French using only "Vous."
English was dramtically streamlined and lots of its Germanic grammatical underpinnings were simplified.
Can you imagine German with only one gender -- "das"?
Can you imagine German without "Du"?
Photo labelled free use w/o accreditation PxHere
Hallo "Sie" without "you"! Was möchte mir der Autor sagen? Was darüber hinaus, daß Deutsch schwierig ist? Wie er selbst bemerkt hat, gibt es Ausdrucksfeinheiten, die Ihresgleichen suchen. Somit eine hoch differenzierte Sprache, die sowohl des Gefühls wie des Verstandes bedarf. Beklagt er, daß sie gerade dabei ist, von Anglizismen überrollt, diese Einzigartigkeit zu verlieren? Und sonst? Geschlechtslose Sprache zu geschlechtsloser Gesellschaft?
Es ist kein Zufall, dass einige der größten Denker der Welt deutschsprachig waren. Deutsch ist eine wunderschöne, elegante und präzise Sprache.
Mein erster und wichtigster Punkt war, wenn man Deutsch lernt, ist es wichtig, das Geschlecht der Substantive mit zu lernen.
Ich persönlich mag die "Verdenglischung" von Deutsch nicht.
Deutsch, im Gegensatz zu Englisch, wird glücklicherweise geschrieben wie gesprochen.
Geschlechterlose Gesellschaft? Geschlechter machen Sinn für Lebewesen, aber ich persönlich finde es überflüssig, ein Geschlecht für jeden Gegenstand zu erfordern. Eine Meinung darf man haben ;-)
Vielen Dank für die Verteidigung der deutschen Sprache. Wie ich es sehe, sind alle Sprachen ein Beweis für den menschlichen Einfallsreichtum.
Danke für die Antwort und die Erläuterungen. "Da gehe ich mit!" Geschlechtlose Wörter bei Wahrung der Geschlechter – eine Idee. Klingt für mich natürlich ungewohnt, stellt aber zum Erlernen einer Sprache eine große Erleichterung dar. Wobei durchaus dabei auch Nuancen verloren gehen können: das Mädchen und das Bürschchen senden andere Signale als die Frau und der Mann. "Sprachgefühl". So what! Danke nochmals für deine Meinung. Möge dir Deutsch weiterhin so gut gelingen!
Ebenfalls bedanke ich mich!
Natürlich Resteemed. Sehr nett. Um die Fragen zu beantworten: Nein, Nein. Haha
Ich tu mir echts schwer nicht upzuvoten, aber ich zwinge mich gerade zu eine Pause.
nein, nein, sagt meine Frau auch :-)
Das Messer, das Gabel, das Löffel -- egal, das Essen schmeckt so oder so!
Danke für "das" Upvote & "das" Resteem
Deutsche Sprache - schwere Sprache!
DAS Artikel habe ich jetzt resteemed und mit 100% ge-upvoted! 😉😃
:-D Thanks so much Patrick, I really appreciate that!
You are most welcome, my friend! :)
I hate "Der, Die, Das"... especially Akkusativ, Dativ, Genitiv... german was driving me crazy, haha!
Oh Mann, ich wusste nie was wann kommt!
Liebe Grüsse
Steemitri
You are right it's totally insane ;-)
And this kind of crazy stuff: das Ergebnis, die Erzeugnis
Thank God the English language got rid of a lot of the unnecessary stuff.
Nice post! I am so happy that I am a native speaker in german :D
I can't imagine how hard it must be to learn this stupid language. But i can tell you even a lot of german native speakers aren't able to speak without any mistake ;-)
Also with regard to all the different dialects it is hard to understand everything.
:-D Thanks man. I'll never forget, the first place I visited in Europe after my language training was Wien. I was totally demoralized, I basically did not understand anything!!!!! I was thinking about writing about the dialects too. To be fair, English is also completely crazy in so many ways too ;-)
Wien is awesome! I love this city so much - but the dialects there can be hard :D
Still very easy compared to Tyrolian and Styrian dialect ;-)
Deutsch ist glaub ich, ziemlich schwierig zum lernen.
Ich finde neue Sprachen immer mega schwer und hab mühe, sie zu lernen.
Daher habe ich grossen Respekt vor jedem der das schafft.
Liebe Grüsse
Aber fairerweise möchte ich betonen, dass Deutsch für die Anfänger große Vorteile bietet. Anders wie Englisch wird Deutsch geschrieben wie gesprochen. Deutsch ist klug, effizient und vergleichsweise regelmäßig. Aber "der" "die" "das" macht Deutsch, meiner Meinung nach, unnötig komplex ;-)
happy to get the insight...keep steeming..upvoted
Thanks for stopping by!
great post! I've learned some German years ago... and look forward to brushing it up when I go to Europe with the family in 4-5 years! (-: peace I enjoy it
Thanks, now with YouTube it is a lot easier to study foreign languages "train you ear" so to speak.
good point, I haven't even thought of that
Ach, was solls. Upvote.
@roused got you a $0.84 @minnowbooster upgoat, nice! (Image: pixabay.com)
Want a boost? Click here to read more!
This post has received a 3.75 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @roused.
This post received a 2.3% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @roused! For more information, click here!