English language got it backwards. German is correct.
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The real trouble with learning most languages outside of English, is in English, we have a very casual way of approaching our own language. No one speaks with perfect grammar, and slang is extremely commonplace. This is great for English learners, because as long as you get most of the words out, everyone will understand what you meant. In German, if you don’t speak it with utmost clarity and if you don’t 100% nail the word order, people will look at you as if you have a learning disability.
German actually has more freedom in word order within a sentence.
Ich gehen nachher noch zum Laden.
Nachher gehe ich noch zum Laden.
Zum Laden gehe ich nachher noch.
Zum Laden gehe ich noch nachher.
And slang, like every language has slang. “Kommst du Fußball?” Some people will sneer at it, some use it every day. Or the shortening of word endings (neben ->nem’)(kannst du -> kannste)
Quick Google shows English changed it at some point. From Middle English wer, were, from Old English wer (“man”), from Proto-Germanic *weraz, from Proto-Indo-European *wiHrós (“man, freeman”).
For me it was der, das, and die
I don’t care what that stupid green owl thinks, I’m not gonna learn three different words for “the”
The right order is: der, die, das :p
trällert Wieso? Weshalb? Warum?
Wait until you hear about dem, den, des, dessen, deren, denen
Wait until I don’t, catch me learning Español instead
You dropped this ñ
I am still learning
I learned Dutch before I started learning German (having lived in The Netherlands for almost a decade) and they’re quite close as languages go (at least for somebody whose mother-tongue is a romance language) so that was pretty useful, but the one thing that really got me a lot in the beginning is that in German, “wie” means “how” but in Dutch “wie” means “who” (and both words sound exactly the same), so I would hear the very common German greeting “wie geht’s” (how’s it going) and would translate it as “who goes”, and even after knowing the meaning properly it would trip me since the mental “circuitry” doing the translation seemed to be the instinctive one I had developed for Dutch.
“Halt! How’s it going?”
Ah yes, the cursed Germanic loop:
who (EN) translates to wie (NL)
wie (NL) sounds like wie (DE)
wie (DE) translates to hoe (NL)
hoe (NL) sounds like who (EN)
Who’s before hoes
It also helps if one doesn’t try to pronounce German as if it was English 😈
Works ze ozer way around, zo
This is why I was confused and didn’t understand the joke. Danke.
Warum? WARUM?*
deal with it, English speakers friends.
Wieso/Weshalb/Warum = Why
That’s why
Isn’t wieso more like ‘How come’? I mean, yes, it also means ‘why’, but so does ‘how come’; but I guess they are more like an equivalent to each other than to ‘why’. I know less than zero about weshalb, though.
Wieso is easy too, it sounds like “why so?”
Can’t forget that
wasmeanswhat!Was ist das?is one of the few phrases I can remember from my two semesters of German approximately 20 years ago.French - dessous (below) and dessus (above). Utterly indistinguishable for a non-native of course
It’s not that hard, though. The difference is about the same as the one between “moot” and “mute” in English.
It’s the same in both languages - both words spoken by an articulate older gent - no probs mate
Both words spoken by your average teenager - might as well be Swahili
Dunno if someone already mentioned it, but good luck with “umfahren”. Depending on the pronunciation you either mean drive over someone/thing or drive around someone/thing lol.
Hmmmm weird, I know both languages but I never considered that. The See/Meer being Lake/Sea situation is much more confusing to me, especially since it’s the inverse in Dutch.
Ja, ik moet ook altijd twee keer nadenken voordat ik door heb of ze het over een zee of over een meer hebben
The Proto-Germanic words these both derived from are hwar (where) and hwas (who). English clearly stayed closer to hwar, but both neither English nor German kept close to hwas.
You could actually argue English might have stayed close to hwas if you consider starting a question about someone with “who was…?”
Apparently words just kinda break bits and pieces off each other some times
Wos hoast g’sacht?
