December Talking Meme: English versus German

[selenak]

Or rather, to quote the exact prompt: Frustrating things about English that you think German does better. And vice versa.

Well, first of all, English is far easier to learn, which is why I'm lucky to have German as my native language. English has this nice gender neutral universal "the", whereas German is gender specific with its nouns: a word is either a der, a die, or a das. Which means if you learn it, you have learn two words for one, effectively. (Mark Twain ranted about this and other problems when learning German to great hilarity.) Also, if you write in English, you can disguise the gender of a person for dramatic revelatory effect if necessary, which I needed to in the fifth of the Five Things Which Never Happened To Warren. You can't do that in German.

On the other hand, German allows you to signal various degrees of closeness and distance in relationships in a way English can't, simply because we have "Du" and "Sie" as modes of address, and you have abandoned "thou". Mind you, in the internet - say, Facebook - it's by now customary to call everyone "du" these days, but outside of the virtual world, you call adult strangers "Sie". Also people older than yourself unless they're related or offer the "Du". Offering "du" outside of the virtual world isn't something you do immediately, or at least I don't, because to me there is a fakeness about this, presumating an instant "buddy buddy" relationship which doesn't exist (yet).

(Another thing: I'm 43, but when I meet some of my former teachers, who knew me in school, I would never call them "Du" or address them by their first name, which is why I always had an amused jolt of recognition when Jesse Pinkman kept calling his former chemistry teacher "Mr. White" through five seasons of Breaking Bad.)

There are words in English which don't have a German equivalent, like "haunting", and anything derived from "to haunt", and I love that word; conversely, there are some German words which don't exist in English, though you've generously adopted them, like "Schadenfreude", Gemütlichkeit", "Weltschmerz", "Lausbub", or the ever popular "Angst". It fascinates me to find words in either language without an exact equivalent, as it always makes me wonder why that is, and whether knowing both languages changes one's thinking.

Something very frustrating in English which isn't the fault of English: we have by now words in German which are sort of English only they aren't, they were made up, and if you switch into English you have to remember that. Like "Handy", which means "mobile phone". And there are words which mean something completely different yet sound very similar. A "slip" in German means panties, whereas slippers in English are what we'd call "Pantoffel". "Chips" in German means "crisps" in British English, because "chips" in British English means french fries (which is "Pommes Frittes" in German because the French introduced them to us first).

Lastly: there is sex. I'm a gen writer mostly anyway, but I have written the occasional sex scene. Which for some reasons feels far more awkward to do in German than in English. Ditto, by the way, for reading sex scenes in either language. With exceptions, always. But we can't all be Goethe writing the Römische Elegien and celebrating des knarrenden Bettes lieblichen Ton. Mind you, sex scenes in either language often read involuntarily absurd because they're lacking a sense of humour and instead go for gymnastic competitions, but even though - they're easier for me in English.

Comments

[lonelywalker]

if you write in English, you can disguise the gender of a person for dramatic revelatory effect if necessary
I hadn't considered this! I wonder what book translators do with this problem...

[ratcreature]

I think far worse than the three genders for learners of German must be the mess with the plural forms. I mean, there are so many possibilities and so little logic and quite often words have two or even three different ones. Even native speakers don't agree which one is favored, or whether it is regional variations or such, so there is no way you could guess as a learner. For some words I use two different plurals (like for Balkon I say both Balkone/Balkons)... That seems quite nightmarish to learn.

With English I'm really frustrated that you can't combine words as easily as in German. Useful words like verschlimmbessern aren't something you can construct in English. (Hence they had to import Schadenfreude, Weltschmerz, Zeitgeist and such, I guess.)

Also that English lacks "man". I really miss having an impersonal, generic pronoun. Using a generic you is just not as clear, and saying "one" is contrived.

The grossest sex-related thing in German was when I found out that talking about penises and "grower vs. shower" in German you have "Blutpenis vs. Fleischpenis". Which I guess is descriptive enough in a way, but still. Eww.

[katta]

This was very interesting! As an ESL speaker, I recognize some of it but not all. (We don't use feminine and masculine nouns much, but we have two neuters, which makes no sense whatsoever.)

we have by now words in German which are sort of English only they aren't, they were made up, and if you switch into English you have to remember that.

This cracked me up, because it's true in Swedish as well. Although the example that immediately comes to mind is out of fashion now: for some reason, a Walkman was called a "Freestyle" in Swedish.

[m_nivalis]

A similar thing occurs in Swedish, where you have to specify what side of the family the aunt/uncle/niece/nephew/grandmother/grandfather is from (literally: father's sister, mother's mother etc). I know someone who had to translate the blurb to the bookshop website, and ended up having to contact the publisher to see if the uncle was maternal or paternal, as the book wasn't out yet.

[lonelywalker]

Oh wow. I can certainly see that happening with characters whose relationship may never be detailed in the book - "Uncle Bill"... As a result, does Swedish not have the English-language tendency to have children call non-related family friends "Uncle" or "Aunt"?

[lonelywalker]

Using a generic you is just not as clear, and saying "one" is contrived.
I work with a native German speaker who uses "one" all the time, which winds up sounding very archaic/aristocratic to me. Whereas "man" never does in German, which is handy.

[thirdblindmouse]

Yes! Gender is a common linguistic feature that language learners must resign themselves to if they are going to study many languages (especially European ones), but irregular plural forms are the purest of evil.

[selenak]

A Polish translator I know also has this problem frequently when translating from German, because in Polish they have different words for the relations in question as well.

[selenak]

Re word combinations - I wonder why they haven't imported Wutbürger yet? Especially the Americans?

I hear you on the penises. Those terms conjure up an image of the members in question being sold at a butcher's on the display table.

[m_nivalis]

It's a 50% chance, but it's so embarrassing if you get it wrong.

It's usually "tant" and "farbror", tant being a familiar term for old/older woman and farbror meaning father's brother. I never did that myself, and recall myself refusing when asked to do so by a neighbour, so I can't tell if it is or was a common practice or not.

[m_nivalis]

Several plural forms are irritating, but you can learn them as you learn the word. Personally my pet hate with German is all the different changes the genders go through depending on accusative, dative etc. Plural is usually very obvious, but I despair of the cases, sometimes triggered by prepositions. A long-standing joke in German classes is the der-die-das-den-dem-des dice.

I really agree about the lack of word combination possibilities in English.

[ratcreature]

Does this seem more random because German has collapsed quite a number of its case forms already, so it's kind of stunted and inbetween having all different forms, which would clearer, and having done away with them almost entirely like English? I mean, in Latin for example there are even more forms to learn, but I guess the structure might me more obvious.

But I have to say, prepositions never make real sense. It seems fairly random whether a verb takes a direct object or you need a preposition, and then which one a language settles on never corresponds between languages either. I'm trying to learn Spanish, which overall is quite sensible, i.e. not too many irregular verbs, spelling is regular not insane like English, but whether some verb wants a direct or an indirect object and which preposition it takes needs to be memorized.

[ratcreature]

I think Wutbürger wouldn't transfer too well, because I think it is more specific than someone angry at their government and protesting. I mean, as I understand, it means specifically protests by people who are a) fairly well-off and established (hence the "Bürger") and b) protest something having immediate impact on them in the "not in my backyard" sense, but do not want serious change on an ideological basis (like you wouldn't call the people in some Occupy Camp "Wutbürger"). Also it has the whole resonating aspect with both Spießbürger and Kleinbürger that would be missing in a simple import, but that I think is part of its rise in popularity. I guess to some extent it could fit the teaparty types with the "get the government out of my medicare" signs protesting against US health reform, because they want their privilege from government program protected against interests from other people wanting the same, but it still feels a different milieu.

Those terms conjure up an image of the members in question being sold at a butcher's on the display table.

Heh, yeah. Brings those sensationalist murder-and-cannibalism-on-request cases to mind. Wasn't there another one a few weeks ago?

[jesuswasbatman]

Oh, English plurals are just as bad as German ones.

My personal opinion about a non-derogatory neuter third-person in English is that we should stop trying to make up completely new artificial ones, tell the prescriptivists to get stuffed, and just formally allow singular "they". German gets away with using "sie" to mean three different things, anyway.

For me, the most inconvenient German vs. English issue is the position of the verb in the sentence, which means that when I'm at an event where German is being simultaneously translated it's sometimes very obvious that the translator has to wait for the end of a long sentence to start translating it.

[neotoma]

conversely, there are some German words which don't exist in English, though you've generously adopted them

More like, English stuffed those words into a sack and kidnapped them, like a thief in the night. English has sticky fingers, when it comes to other languages' words. And grammar.

[m_nivalis]

I have honestly no idea. My only other languages are Swedish and English, so I can't really compare with Latin.

[ratcreature]

But in English the plural is completely harmless. I've never hear of anyone saying that when learning English plurals were an obstacle. It's almost always -(e)s, with just a handful of irregular ones in common words still existing and those are almost all just a vowel change (goose/geese, foot/feet and such, only children seems an odd exception); then you have some remnants of Latin and Greek (thesis/theses and such), which you can't really count against English (and those mess up German even worse as well).

German meanwhile has five different plural forms which sometimes look like the singular (-(e) with and without umlaut, -(e)n, -er and -s) and it's not uncommon to have multiple plurals for one word, sometimes with different meanings to distinguish homonyms in the plural (as with Bank/Bänke-Banken or Mutter/Mütter-Muttern), sometimes with slight differences in meaning (Wort/Worte-Wörter), sometimes just for variation, often regional. And you can't tell by the gender or look of the word which plural it will have, so it's not that there just five clearly different classes of words. That seems to be far more convoluted than English.

[wondygal]

What a fascinating subject. Totally agreed on the sex scenes in English. Somewhat on that subject, I swear a lot in my head in English, but rarely in Portuguese, swear words often being sexual terms or derived from them. Hmm.

[selenak]

There was, and I had been thinking of the Tea Party people when wondering about American Wutbürger. Though you're right about the different milieu.

[lizvogel]

like "haunting", and anything derived from "to haunt"

Interesting! What is it, then, that ghosts do in German? Or are they not said to do much of anything?

[selenak]

We do have a word for the ghostly activity, but it really means only the literal thing, i.e. ghosts do it. "This place is haunted by ghosts." "Hier spukt es." "Spuken" is very similar, though not identical, to the English "spook".

However, if "haunt" is used in a metaphorical way - i.e. "I'm haunted by her face" - then you have to come up with a lame approximation in German like "I can't forget her face".

[lizvogel]

Cool. I'm not good at actually learning languages, but I love collecting linguistic tidbits like this. Thanks!