Persian(Farsi) also doesn’t have a word for “The”. We just say the word. There’s also no gender prefixes. The whole language is gender neutral.
Our ancestors were really up to something thousands of years ago.
And it kinda has me thinking what all of that extra fat really does for a language. I never feel confused about meaning when speaking Persian, so the the/he/she/it/they/them really can’t be doing that much heavy lifting if you can just completely ignore it and have a perfectly functioning language without it.
Let’s add dialects to the mess:
While not written in “book” German*, colloquial German may feature des, dat, det or dit instead of das, shorten der to dr or elide parts (like the French l’, except it may be attached to the previous word): Das ist das Problem mit der deutschen Sprache -> Des isch’s Problem mit dr deutscha Sproach
(“That is the problem with the German language.” Bonus: notice how the demonstrative pronoun “that” is also
das? Just in case you were hoping it was restricted to “the”…)* Hochdeutsch or Standarddeutsch (“High German” or “Standard German”), originally a written form slowly evolved over centuries to be most widely understood and has since been formalised. Informally, the term is also used for a spoken counterpart properly called Bühnendeutsch (“Stage German”), which isn’t always quite as “pure”, hence my distinction.
I bloody love my language.
I don’t get it, is Russian the worst here? I understand Finnish and Polish are pretty difficult in terms of these things as well (?).
There is no word for ‘The’ in Russian
Is it done in Russian by prefixes or suffixes or something else, or do they just not have that form for nouns?
English acting like it’s not a fucked up language where “the big, red, round, wrapped box” is fine but “the wrapped, round, red, big box” is wrong.
Yeah… English is a frankenstein language…
Also the adjective order is fucked…
Oh, we know it’s fucked up. I still can’t spell recieve and receipt and I have to look up pretty much every single new word I learn to find out how it’s pronounced.
I still can’t spell recieve and receipt
Hey, you got one of them right!
I thought through it and I’d wager a stiff draught that it ought not be so rough, though as I’m taught, it’s nothing to cough at that a sturdy, taut bough would snap under the weight of its idiosyncrasies.
I haven’t had a proper crush in over a decade, but I think that sentence just might make it. That is beautiful, and thank you for sharing it.
It sounds unnatural to me as a native speaker, but I don’t know that it’s “wrong”. Even the Germanic languages as a family don’t consistently have the same order for words like that, which is neat.
I know it’s not wrong, but it would definitely give one away as a non-native speaker and come across very awkwardly.
It’s only wrong in how it makes your soul feel. Gramatically, it’s okay.
Oh, no, it’s wrong grammatically too, they just don’t teach this unless you study linguistics. Most of all languages with fixed word order and some others have a natural order of adjectives. Tom Scott has a great vid about it.
Yes, Russian has an adjective order too. “A big old blue car” would be «большая старая синяя машина», saying «синяя большая старая машина» implies that “big old car” is a specific term.
I think this is the first time I’ve seen this meme format with more than two panels.
I’ts great work)(whoever actually came up with it!)
Wait till you hear about Chinese measure words. Check out that table.
w.t.f.
thanks for the link though, the pīnyīn overview page on that site is pretty nice
I understand all of these languages.
but I also never have sex.
life is full of trade-offs.
How do I unlearn languages?
I know Hungarian, English, and a very little Japanese. I feel really lonely.
You need to reach like 6 or 7 language before you can experience fifo overflow
6 or 7
ahajjahajajakaka
6 or 7
🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
Yeah but I have you tagged as manosphere, so that is probably a you problem.
oh and how do you label yourself then?
I have them tagged as judgmental lmao
Where are all these labels coming from? I don’t even see an option to tag individual users across the platform with labels.
Edit: Typed that all out, then hit the settings button, and what do you know, it’s right there.
Me? Thanks.
I can’t keep track of who is who without notes
Gwa.
(There are whole books written about the usages, but this is far from the worst thing to get wrong if you’re new to Japanese so don’t worry).
Dude, I’m trying to learn German and those goddamn articles are so infuriating. I wonder how difficult it would be for there to be a linguistic reform to make it simpler
I am German and can emphasize. You can do it, but don’t try to be perfect.
In my lifetime we had 2 reforms I think (1 small one big) but that didn’t make it better to be honest…
i’m doing my part. fuck grammar rules. der/die/das -> de
Then you end up with less flexibility and more fixed word order. English used to have cases though they’ve almost entirely collapsed at this point. German is fine as it is. Learn some grammar and it will become second nature.
Quite the statement for an English comment. English spelling is nonsensical and in desperate need of a major reform. RobWords even made the case for using runes again as it would probably fix a lot of issues already. The language simply isn’t made for Latin letters.
But I don’t want to make this a sole whataboutism comment. Each language poses it’s own challenges. I will say that changing how roughly 100 million speak is easier said than done and would destroy a lot of culture. It would be much easier to force everyone to speak a different language entirely.
Personally I don’t think it should or could be done at all. Unlike a spelling reform that English needs desperately and German had plenty of recently. There is nothing wrong with a language being complicated but there’s plenty wrong with arbitrary spelling if you ask me.
My native language isn’t English in case you were assuming that. I mention it because my native language has gone through a reform for the reasons of simplification. English may be shit, but it was much much easier to learn than the hell I am going through with German. Even Japanese, which I touched for a few years wasn’t nearly as bad. The point of languages it to be simple and efficient, and they should evolve to that goal eventually.
Even Japanese, which I touched for a few years wasn’t nearly as bad.
I think this is a ‘to each his own’ sort of situation. I like the idea of kanji but am terrible at memorizing them. I’ll take German grammar over kanji any day. If you specifically mean grammar, Japanese does have its own challenges as well.
The point of languages it to be simple and efficient
According to whom? The point of language is to communicate information. There are high-context and low-context ways to do this. There are direct and indirect ways to do this, all of which encode certain cultural meaning. If you studied Japanese, think about all the indirectness, honorifics, etc. that aren’t there to be simple, they’re there for cultural and societal reasons, even if mostly just historical in some cases.
The point of languages it to be simple and efficient, and they should evolve to that goal eventually.
That’s one hell of an assumption to bring to the table. There is no point to language, no end goal towards which they must, or even should evolve. They’re a natural creation of humans to facilitate communication, but coming from human beings, they’re naturally quite irregular and odd, at times.
I mean, I get it that German isn’t a cakewalk to pick up, but you’re also complaining about the unreasonable complexity in one of the less morphologically complex European languages. Take a gander at Polish, Icelandic, Basque, or Finnish, and German will probably seem quite charming and quaint with its handful of cases and corresponding forms of the articles.
They’re a natural creation of humans to facilitate communication
If a language is easy to learn and easy to use, more people will speak it. The languages that don’t adapt die with the people who still insist on using it. There is an evolution and there is a goal, as you said, to communicate. A simpler language is bound to be chosen over one that adds obstacles to communication.
In the same way evolution is mostly driven by an animal’s ability to pass off its genes, language is mostly driven by it’s ability to be used and learned.
Now I’m thinking about Esperanto, maybe that is not completely true, idk
But the point of a language is not to spread to the most people, it is for the peoples using it being able to use it in a way that makes it possible to communicate with their own in a way that makes sense within the local population, its culture and history.
Different languages have a different learning curve based on what language you grew up with. What is hard for you might be a cakewalk for someone coming from a different language, especially if you are coming from a different family of languages.
My native language isn’t English in case you were assuming that.
I wasn’t assuming that, don’t worry. That’s why I phrased my message like that.
I guess I agree to disagree here. Language is an expression of culture and heritage too. I would never speak German differently now just because of a reform. Neither would 99% of German speakers I assume. Yet we freely integrate English words into our language because it feels natural. These English words often come and go anyway so I’m not actually concerned the German language will become deluded from Internet lingo or anything.
Gendered nouns in German are just as stupid and arbitrary as spelling in English. Why is a pencil masculine? Why is beer neutral but coffee masculine? Why is school feminine?
Would love to hear more about why English isn’t made for Latin letters
I don’t know about Latin letters more generally, but at least the issue with the default Latin alphabet, there just aren’t enough letters to represent the sounds used in English phonetically. The English language has between 14-25 vowels, depending on dialect and accent, and a further 24 consonants. When the Latin alphabet only has 26 letters, you’re naturally going to run into situations where one letter has to represent multiple sounds. With that said, I don’t see any reason, aside from the sheer cultural inertia of hundreds of years not doing so, why English couldn’t address the issue with diacritics on different letters to achieve the necessary number of unique letters to represent all of the sounds found in English.
you’d have to have case endings for all the nouns instead.
Also English: This, That, Those, These
Those are pronouns. The meme is about (definite) articles.
pronouns
insert anti-pronoun joke here
Lithuanian: “”
Ōlelo Hawaiʻi: ke / ka
Depending on the first letter of the next word.
I don’t know about Russian but at least Croatian which is also a Slavic language confuses the hell out of me (and I’m German)
Cases are what kill you in Slavic languages. Articles are a breeze though 😉
Russian has 6 cases. two more than german.
the added ones are instrumental and prepositional.
Technically it’s the other way around - the ones German lost in comparison to Russian were the Instrumental and Prepositional (Locative).
This is from the original 8 (or 9) cases in their ancestor, Proto-Indo-European: Nominative, Accusative, Instrumental, Dative, Ablative, Genitive, Locative, Vocative, (Allative).
confuses the hell out of me (and I’m German)
And rightfully so. I’m also German, I learned Sorbian (slavic minority in Lusatia), and I can very much feel your pain.
Russian doesn’t have definite/indefinite articles?
Most (if not all) Slavic-family languages do not. Neither do Japanese nor Korean. Some languages have a partial system (i.e. no a/an but the to show definiteness). Some languages have both but do it differently (Scandanavian languages suffix the definite article on nouns, but the indefinite precedes the noun like in English). Languages are messy and neat.
it doesn’t really use article at all.
it’s highly cased, the cases and inflection do all the work.
That doesn’t sound more simple.
English has strict word order and all these stupid helper words, how is that simpler?
Ok, it is relatively simple to learn for the indogerman family. And looks like, for chinese/korean/japanese as well.
Lol. English is the opposite of simple.
By being the devil we know, I guess? 🤷🏻
The case are quite complicated, yes. But not having articles is way simpler. And I can’t say it ever caused confusion growing up.
I think it’s the case with most Slavic languages. My wife’s native tongue is Serbian, and knowinf when and how to use articles was one the hardest parts of learning English for her.
And they aren’t clear when to use them either, it’s kinda cute when they look at you questioningly if they did correctly after formulating a sentence.
Neither does Polish. I know at least one polaka who confuses the/a(n) 15% of the time.
One of my Polish colleagues, who otherwise speaks pretty perfect English, seems to choose he/she/it at random when putting sentences together. Which is fine for objects, but misleading for people. “I saw a friend yesterday and she said such-and-such” for a male friend, and so on.
Slavic languages notoriously have gender for every object. In russian “friend” have two variants, one for male gender, one for female. Same at least with Ukrainian and Serbian. So when I translate sentence to English (which only have one word for “friend”) I subconsciously use default word + she/he to empathize gender.
It’s annoying habit, cause when I say or refer to “user” for example, I always assume it’s “he/him”.
Guess same for your colleagues.
…which sounds surprising to me, because AFAIK Polish also has separate he/she words (on/ona).
I assume he’s aligning the pronouns to the gender of the noun, rather than the person. “Susie is a great worker, he’s very efficient” kind of stuff.
