ich bin am gehen/duschen??
car...@hotmail.com
in my earlier post concerning "present continuous tense" in German. Oliver
suggested that "ich bin am gehen" is heard in Rhine region, right?? what does
it mean then???
my boyfriend is Swiss and he says "ich bin am duschen" (i'm in the
shower??) is that a use of PRESENT CONTINUOUS in German?? is this usage not
correct in high-German?? or sort of like a dialect which is only spoken in
Southern Germany? 9if then, can I use any VERB after "ich bin am....." to
mean something in progress?
carol
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Oliver Sieks
> dear all,
>
> in my earlier post concerning "present continuous tense" in German. Oliver
> suggested that "ich bin am gehen" is heard in Rhine region, right?? what does
> it mean then???
Ich bin gerade dabei zu gehen. For example: Bleibst du noch lange? -
Nein, ich bin schon am gehen.
But that's colloquial (and was only meant to be a remark, and not to
be taken seriously). The best will be to forget about it.
Sorry ;)
Oliver
Thorsten Mueller
> in my earlier post concerning "present continuous tense" in German. Oliver
> suggested that "ich bin am gehen" is heard in Rhine region, right?? what does
> it mean then???
==> I'm just about to leave (I regularly use it when somebody calls me on the
phone and I want to explain that I'm... well, as I said... just about to leave)
> my boyfriend is Swiss and he says "ich bin am duschen" (i'm in the
> shower??) is that a use of PRESENT CONTINUOUS in German?? is this usage not
> correct in high-German?? or sort of like a dialect which is only spoken in
> Southern Germany? if then, can I use any VERB after "ich bin am....." to
> mean something in progress?
I can't really answer your question from a linguistic point of view, but to me
as a native speaker, "ich bin am..." means something in progress, and I think it
is common to use this term in high German.
Theoretically, you can use any verb after the "ich bin am..." construction. For
example: Ich bin am nachschauen, ich bin am lernen, ich bin am essen, ich bin am
gewinnen/verlieren...
I think some expressions are more common than others, though.
Whether this is something typical from the Rhine region I can't tell for sure,
because I also live there. :)
But what I know is that this construction is not limited to German alone, it can
be heard in other languages as well. I'm not sure about modern Dutch, but in
Afrikaans (which is a sister language to modern Dutch, and thus closely related
to German as well), you will also hear sentences like:
Ek is 'n brief aan die skryf.
Ich bin einen Brief am schreiben. (literal translation)
This sentence sounds a little strange in German, but I can imagine saying it in
colloquial speech, and I don't think anybody would complain if I did. With a
slight modification, you could use this expression in high German:
Ich bin am schreiben eines Briefes.
To me this sounds like proper German, but maybe someone else has a different
opinion? Maybe it's also possible to say "ik ben aan het schrijven van een
brief" in Dutch? I'd be interested to know...
Gruß,
Thorsten
Kresimir Bakula
car...@hotmail.com wrote in message <7c8l9f$2jd$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>dear all,
>
> in my earlier post concerning "present continuous tense" in German.
Oliver
>suggested that "ich bin am gehen" is heard in Rhine region, right?? what
does
>it mean then???
>
>shower??) is that a use of PRESENT CONTINUOUS in German?? is this usage not
>correct in high-German?? or sort of like a dialect which is only spoken in
>mean something in progress?
>
No it's not present continuos !
It is
'Ich bin am Duschen'
'das Duschen' is noune!
It's something like
I work (I am working) ich arbeite
I am at work Ich bin bei Arbeit
Clear?
gek
Ik ben een brief aan het schrijven
gek
Thorsten Mueller a écrit :
> car...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> > in my earlier post concerning "present continuous tense" in German. Oliver
> > suggested that "ich bin am gehen" is heard in Rhine region, right?? what does
> > it mean then???
>
> ==> I'm just about to leave (I regularly use it when somebody calls me on the
> phone and I want to explain that I'm... well, as I said... just about to leave)
>
> > my boyfriend is Swiss and he says "ich bin am duschen" (i'm in the
> > shower??) is that a use of PRESENT CONTINUOUS in German?? is this usage not
> > correct in high-German?? or sort of like a dialect which is only spoken in
> > Southern Germany? if then, can I use any VERB after "ich bin am....." to
> > mean something in progress?
>
gek
Kresimir Bakula a écrit :
> car...@hotmail.com wrote in message <7c8l9f$2jd$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
> >dear all,
> >
> > in my earlier post concerning "present continuous tense" in German.
> Oliver
> >suggested that "ich bin am gehen" is heard in Rhine region, right?? what
> does
> >it mean then???
> >
> > my boyfriend is Swiss and he says "ich bin am duschen" (i'm in the
> >shower??) is that a use of PRESENT CONTINUOUS in German?? is this usage not
> >correct in high-German?? or sort of like a dialect which is only spoken in
> >Southern Germany? 9if then, can I use any VERB after "ich bin am....." to
> >mean something in progress?
> >
> No it's not present continuos !
> It is
> 'Ich bin am Duschen'
> 'das Duschen' is noune!
> It's something like
> I work (I am working) ich arbeite
> I am at work Ich bin bei Arbeit
Correction: Ich bin bei der Arbeit
>
>
> Clear?
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Is it so clear-cut? It looks like a gerundive to me (that is, a noun that
acts like a verb). What happens, for instance, if you use a transitive
verb (one that takes an object)? That is, can one say:
?Ich bin am Duschen [von] der Katze
Or even:
?Ich bin am Duschen die Katze
With the accusative [direct object] case? Are these sentences impossible
or just unusual?
Keep in mind that this kind of construction is the exact origin of the
English present progressive. Some rustic dialects have the prefix "a-" as
in Appalachian:
I'm a-goin'
This is a relic of the prepostion "on"; in earlier English, the usage was:
I am on going.
--
Daniel "Da" von Brighoff /\ Dilettanten
(de...@midway.uchicago.edu) /__\ erhebt Euch
/____\ gegen die Kunst!
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Oliver Sieks <si...@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de> wrote:
>car...@hotmail.com writes:
>
>> dear all,
>>
>> in my earlier post concerning "present continuous tense" in German. Oliver
>> suggested that "ich bin am gehen" is heard in Rhine region, right?? what does
>> it mean then???
>
>Nein, ich bin schon am gehen.
>
>But that's colloquial (and was only meant to be a remark, and not to
>be taken seriously). The best will be to forget about it.
Sometimes I think the Germans are second only to the French in their un-
willingness to teach people how their language is actually spoken. I re-
cently read a sociolinguistic text from 1990 that lamented the fact that
it was impossible to find a German textbook for English speakers that ex-
plained such things as the non-emphatic use of the relative pronoun as a
personal pronoun (e.g. "Die Jungs? Die sind nicht gekommen.") or the
failure to use the genitive with certain pronouns (e.g. "[von] wegen
mir"). Things have changed some, but not enough.
Why shouldn't the colloquial be taken seriously? Sure, someone who just
wants to know enough German to read Nietzsche's aphorisms or von Hofmanns-
thal's libretti in the original isn't going to need to know much about it,
but anyone who wants to interact with a real living German--or even watch
a recent tv show or movie--is.
There's this odd idea that once one knows the formal grammar, one can then
easily pick up colloquialisms along the way. I think that argument works
both ways--if one knows the colloquial grammar well, it shouldn't be dif-
ficult to learn a few formalisms for the rare occasions (e.g. an applica-
tion letter, a college essay) when they're actually required. After all,
isn't that the way 80 million native speakers have gone about it?
João Luiz
>
> I can't really answer your question from a linguistic point of view, but to me
> as a native speaker, "ich bin am..." means something in progress, and I think it
> is common to use this term in high German.
>
> Theoretically, you can use any verb after the "ich bin am..." construction. For
> example: Ich bin am nachschauen, ich bin am lernen, ich bin am essen, ich bin am
> gewinnen/verlieren...
> I think some expressions are more common than others, though.
>
> Whether this is something typical from the Rhine region I can't tell for sure,
> because I also live there. :)
I don't think it is typical from the Rheinland, for I don't live there and
am not even a German, but I would say it like that.
But what comes after "ich bin am..." is not a verb, but a noun (as implied
by the "am = an + dem".)
Then, with capitals: ich bin am Lesen, ich bin am Duschen, ich bin am Schreiben
usw.
JL
carol chung
concerning the sentence: "ich bin am Schreiben eines Briefes" Why do I need
GENITIV here? i'm interested to know why, please help again
carol
Thorsten Mueller wrote:
> car...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> > in my earlier post concerning "present continuous tense" in German. Oliver
> > suggested that "ich bin am gehen" is heard in Rhine region, right?? what does
> > it mean then???
>
> ==> I'm just about to leave (I regularly use it when somebody calls me on the
> phone and I want to explain that I'm... well, as I said... just about to leave)
>
> > my boyfriend is Swiss and he says "ich bin am duschen" (i'm in the
> > shower??) is that a use of PRESENT CONTINUOUS in German?? is this usage not
> > correct in high-German?? or sort of like a dialect which is only spoken in
> > Southern Germany? if then, can I use any VERB after "ich bin am....." to
> > mean something in progress?
>
> I can't really answer your question from a linguistic point of view, but to me
> as a native speaker, "ich bin am..." means something in progress, and I think it
> is common to use this term in high German.
>
> Theoretically, you can use any verb after the "ich bin am..." construction. For
> example: Ich bin am nachschauen, ich bin am lernen, ich bin am essen, ich bin am
> gewinnen/verlieren...
> I think some expressions are more common than others, though.
>
> Whether this is something typical from the Rhine region I can't tell for sure,
> because I also live there. :)
George F. Hardy
> concerning the sentence: "ich bin am Schreiben eines Briefes"
>Why do I need GENITIV here?
"The writing of a letter" uses the "genitive" word (of) in English.
I am a letter is insane, so it is not nom. or acc. Not "to a letter",
either.
GFH
João Luiz
>
> hi Thorsten,
>
> concerning the sentence: "ich bin am Schreiben eines Briefes" Why do I need
>
> carol
Because when you have two substantives and one "belongs" to the other, use
genitive.
Just like in English: I am too busy with the writing of a letter.
(Maybe not the best way to say it in English, but an equivalent expression.)
JL
Claudia May
Dear Carol,
You hear it quite a lot in spoken German (especially in the Rhein/ Ruhr
area - that's where I'm from), but it's not " proper" German. In German
there is not really a grammatical difference between the simple present and
the present cont. It's more context-related. You often find the word
"gerade" to imply that you are doing something at the moment. So in your
case you could say "ich dusche gerade".
I hope this helped a bit.
Regards
Claudia
car...@hotmail.com wrote in message <7c8l9f$2jd$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>dear all,
>
> in my earlier post concerning "present continuous tense" in German.
Oliver
>suggested that "ich bin am gehen" is heard in Rhine region, right?? what
does
>it mean then???
>
> my boyfriend is Swiss and he says "ich bin am duschen" (i'm in the
>shower??) is that a use of PRESENT CONTINUOUS in German?? is this usage not
>correct in high-German?? or sort of like a dialect which is only spoken in
>Southern Germany? 9if then, can I use any VERB after "ich bin am....." to
>mean something in progress?
>
Fux
[schnipp]
> It looks like a gerundive to me (that is, a noun that
> acts like a verb). What happens, for instance, if you use a transitive
> verb (one that takes an object)? That is, can one say:
>
> ?Ich bin am Duschen [von] der Katze
>
> Or even:
>
> ?Ich bin am Duschen die Katze
>
> With the accusative [direct object] case? Are these sentences impossible
> or just unusual?
First of all, "duschen" is not a <very> transitive verb, i. e. it is hardly used
with a direct object, although it is not wrong.
Although I also live in the Rhine-region, your sentences sound strange to me. I
would say (in colloquial speech):
"Ich bin mein Buch am Suchen".
Sometimes you even hear the following (dialect-) construction: "Hilf mir mal mein
Buch am Suchen!", which is equivalent to "Ich bin mein Buch am suchen, bitte hilf
mir dabei!".
Both examples with the object in front of the "am Suchen" tend to be considered
as non-standard, I guess...
--
Gruß, Fux
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Fux <fuch...@mail.uni-mainz.de> wrote:
>"D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff" schrieb:
>
>[schnipp]
>
>> It looks like a gerundive to me (that is, a noun that
>> acts like a verb). What happens, for instance, if you use a transitive
>> verb (one that takes an object)? That is, can one say:
>>
>> ?Ich bin am Duschen [von] der Katze
>>
>> Or even:
>>
>> ?Ich bin am Duschen die Katze
>>
>> With the accusative [direct object] case? Are these sentences impossible
>> or just unusual?
>
>First of all, "duschen" is not a <very> transitive verb, i. e. it is hardly used
>with a direct object, although it is not wrong.
Stimmt, but I was trying to build on the example given.
>Although I also live in the Rhine-region, your sentences sound strange to me. I
>would say (in colloquial speech):
>"Ich bin mein Buch am Suchen".
Excellent! This is definitely a gerundive. Syntactically, it's being
treated like a verb: It takes an object in the accusative and it appears
where you'd expect the unconjugated verb to be in a complex predicate.
>Sometimes you even hear the following (dialect-) construction: "Hilf mir mal mein
>Buch am Suchen!", which is equivalent to "Ich bin mein Buch am suchen, bitte hilf
>mir dabei!".
>Both examples with the object in front of the "am Suchen" tend to be considered
>as non-standard, I guess...
I couldn't find any mention of the gerundive taking objects in Duden,
which considers "beim Suchen" and "im Suchen" the only standard forms, so
I think you must be right.
("im Suchen" strikes me as very odd; I don't recall hearing it, though
both the other possibilities are familiar.)
Andy
>dear all,
>
> in my earlier post concerning "present continuous tense" in German. Oliver
>suggested that "ich bin am gehen" is heard in Rhine region, right?? what does
>it mean then???
>
> my boyfriend is Swiss and he says "ich bin am duschen" (i'm in the
>shower??) is that a use of PRESENT CONTINUOUS in German?? is this usage not
>correct in high-German?? or sort of like a dialect which is only spoken in
>Southern Germany? 9if then, can I use any VERB after "ich bin am....." to
>mean something in progress?
>
>carol
reply to hang it on!)
I have a book which I (and my former teachers) find both useful and
authoritative. It is Hammer's German Grammar and Usage, second edition
(there's a third; most of the changes are the new spelling). Pub Arnold.
ISBN 0-340-50129-4. Section 14.6 says, paraphrased:
There are no progressive tenses in German. However you may need to say
you are dealing with a continuous action... examples:
###Use an adverb:
Ich schreibe eben Briefe - I'm writing letters
Sie kommt gleich - She's coming
###Use gerade dabei sein .. zu.. :
Gestern war er gerade dabei, 'Krieg und Frieden' zu lesen - Yesterday he
was reading War & Peace
###Use beim with an infinitive noun:
Als seine Frau zurueckkam, war er beim Kochen - When his wife returned,
he was cooking
###Use am with an infinitive noun:
Wir sind am Arbeiten - we're working
In Koeln ist es immer am Regnen - its always raining in Cologne
This last type is qualified thus: used in the North West & Rhineland.
Its an *infinitive noun* (hence the capital!). It is regional and
colloquial, and DUDEN (1985) says its non-standard.
###Use a noun with a prepositional phrase:
Wir sind an der Arbeit - we're working
Er liest in der Zeitung - He's reading the paper
###Use a different verb - eg
Sie erstiegen den Berg - they climbed the mountain
Sie stiegen auf den Berg - they were climbing the mountain (and hadn't
yet reached the top)
--
Andy
For Austria & its philately, Lupus, & much else visit
http://www.kitzbuhel.demon.co.uk
Wayne Brown
>Sometimes I think the Germans are second only to the French in their un-
>willingness to teach people how their language is actually spoken.
Hurrah! I have printed that out and enlarged it in 100 point Gothic to frame
and hang all along the wall over my computer! Reading this news group and
others, I have thought that more times than I can count.
A discussion not so long in this news group really brought that home. An
American beginner had asked for a few tips from genuine Germans about how to
use "du" and "Sie." A simple question from a learner who speaks a language
in which "you" is a neutral word, conveying neither respect nor familiarity.
German contributors, who answered the American naturally in English, must
have been aware of that.
The Germans' answers turned into the most convoluted conglomeration of
comments on usage that I would be interested to know whether an American
beginner in German was able to made heads or tails out of the suggestions.
We saw explanations from one German who said he never used "Sie" to anyone;
another one seemed to be bragging that all his colleagues at work were
switching to "du"; yet another said only old people used "Sie" etc.
No one seemed able to give the poor American a simple rule of thumb on the
usage to get him started as a beginner, leaving all the many, many fine
points, with explanations of German society, to some later point when he
had learned a few basics of the language.
Regards,-----WB.
Oliver Gassner
<A_Wayn...@csi.com> wrote:
[Du & Sie]
>No one seemed able to give the poor American a simple rule of thumb on the
>usage to get him started as a beginner, leaving all the many, many fine
>points, with explanations of German society, to some later point when he
>had learned a few basics of the language.
Well: _Is_ there one?
There are general suggenstions that vary extremely with surroundings.
It's like the question in which surroundings to use which four-leter
words in the US.
It's just 'not that easy'.
OG
--
[x] 42 I Home:
[ ] ADD ME (tm) I http://www.carpe.com/
[ ] *PATSCH* I Literatur am Draht:
[ ] *PLONK* I http://www.carpe.com/lit/
João Luiz
>
> D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff schrieb in Nachricht ...
>
> >Sometimes I think the Germans are second only to the French in their un-
> >willingness to teach people how their language is actually spoken.
> American beginner had asked for a few tips from genuine Germans about how to
> use "du" and "Sie." A simple question from a learner who speaks a language
> in which "you" is a neutral word, conveying neither respect nor familiarity.
> No one seemed able to give the poor American a simple rule of thumb on the
> usage to get him started as a beginner, leaving all the many, many fine
> points, with explanations of German society, to some later point when he
> had learned a few basics of the language.
>
As a non German, I can answer this without looking like I'm defending myself. :-)
The question is that, as you could see from all those answers, THERE IS NOT
just an easy rule of thumb for the usage of Du and Sie.
It depends on the environment you are in and the kind of interaction you have
with the people there, and this has everything to do with the fine points of
the german society.
As far as I noticed, everybody tried to shed some light on the specificities
of his own environment and show that differences on this regard exist every-
where, so even a rule of thumb won't be valid as a rule of thumb.
If the question is just for a universal rule of thumb, then follow this one:
*call everybody Sie till they say "we can call each other Du!"* They will see
you're a foreigner and hint you about that.
If you want to be per Du, use the method I developed myself: call "accidentally"
people during the conversation Du, then apologize and correct to Sie, like:
"Was denkst du über...? oooch, 'tschuldigung, was denken SIE d'rüber?"
I think all the times I did that, the answer was it was fine "to duze" each
other. Well, this a situation where you can take advantage of being a foreigner,
for a German could never commit this faux-pas and people believe it was really
a faux-pas.
It is a fine way of getting the same result without formally asking people,
which could be a painful thing for both if they don't want to be by Du with
you. (For my ausländische sensitivity it will remain forever a comic situation,
people formally agreeing in calling each other Du.)
If they act like they didn't hear your correction and don't say it's fine with
the Du, then you got the message.
JL
Ingmar Greil
>If the question is just for a universal rule of thumb, then follow this one:
>*call everybody Sie till they say "we can call each other Du!"* They will see
>you're a foreigner and hint you about that.
yes, good advice.
"Sie" always implies some sort of respect, of yourse. it is therefore OK
to "duze" people that are clearly your peers (eg., fellow students.)
with "Sie" you're always on the safe side though, as has been suggested.
heck, *we* natives sometimes are unsure which form to use.
one more thing: it is custom du "duze" on another in the german speaking
parts of usenet. (ie de.*, at.* and others)
ingmar
--
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
-- Ursula K. LeGuin
Kai Henningsen
> In article <wk3e3cv...@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de>,
> Oliver Sieks <si...@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de> wrote:
> >car...@hotmail.com writes:
> >
> >> dear all,
> >>
> >> in my earlier post concerning "present continuous tense" in German.
> >> Oliver
> >> suggested that "ich bin am gehen" is heard in Rhine region, right?? what
> >> does it mean then???
> >
> >Ich bin gerade dabei zu gehen. For example: Bleibst du noch lange? -
> >Nein, ich bin schon am gehen.
> >
> >But that's colloquial (and was only meant to be a remark, and not to
> >be taken seriously). The best will be to forget about it.
>
> Sometimes I think the Germans are second only to the French in their un-
> willingness to teach people how their language is actually spoken.
[...]
> Why shouldn't the colloquial be taken seriously? Sure, someone who just
> wants to know enough German to read Nietzsche's aphorisms or von Hofmanns-
> thal's libretti in the original isn't going to need to know much about it,
> but anyone who wants to interact with a real living German--or even watch
> a recent tv show or movie--is.
>
> There's this odd idea that once one knows the formal grammar, one can then
> easily pick up colloquialisms along the way. I think that argument works
> both ways--if one knows the colloquial grammar well, it shouldn't be dif-
> ficult to learn a few formalisms for the rare occasions (e.g. an applica-
> tion letter, a college essay) when they're actually required. After all,
> isn't that the way 80 million native speakers have gone about it?
There's a problem here you don't seem to have considered. We have here a
difference in understanding German, and speaking German.
That is, it's certainly true people should understand what it means when
someone says "ich bin am Essen". OTOH, it is *also* true that it is
usually a bad idea to actually *say* "ich bin am Essen". *Most* Germans
will feel that this is rather bad, or even wrong, usage.
Yes, there are situations where this might actually be appropriate. But
it's hard for a non-native-speaker to recognize, and the alternatives are
almost always better even if that form *would* be appropriate.
That said, "ich bin am Essen" is best translated as "I am eating". I
believe it's exactly the same meaning. Just keep in mind that you should
handle this as a one-way translation, only.
Kai
--
http://www.westfalen.de/private/khms/
"... by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it."
- Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu)
Kai Henningsen
> D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff schrieb in Nachricht ...
>
> >Sometimes I think the Germans are second only to the French in their un-
> >willingness to teach people how their language is actually spoken.
>
> Hurrah! I have printed that out and enlarged it in 100 point Gothic to frame
> and hang all along the wall over my computer! Reading this news group and
> others, I have thought that more times than I can count.
>
> A discussion not so long in this news group really brought that home. An
> American beginner had asked for a few tips from genuine Germans about how to
> use "du" and "Sie." A simple question from a learner who speaks a language
> in which "you" is a neutral word, conveying neither respect nor familiarity.
> German contributors, who answered the American naturally in English, must
> have been aware of that.
>
> The Germans' answers turned into the most convoluted conglomeration of
> comments on usage that I would be interested to know whether an American
> beginner in German was able to made heads or tails out of the suggestions.
> We saw explanations from one German who said he never used "Sie" to anyone;
> another one seemed to be bragging that all his colleagues at work were
> switching to "du"; yet another said only old people used "Sie" etc.
>
> No one seemed able to give the poor American a simple rule of thumb on the
> usage to get him started as a beginner, leaving all the many, many fine
> points, with explanations of German society, to some later point when he
> had learned a few basics of the language.
But that is because there *is* no simple rule. I believe I mentioned at
the time that even Germans often get confused about it.
Just because you pose a simple question, does not mean there actually is a
simple answer. Not even an approximate one.
Sometimes, answers are complicated because the subject matter is
complicated.
If you want a simple answer on where to use "Sie" and where to use "Du",
all I can give is "it depends".
I'll turn 39 this year, I've lived in Germany all my life, I believe I
speak extremely good German, and I *still* have difficulties with Du&Sie.
Kai Henningsen
> concerning the sentence: "ich bin am Schreiben eines Briefes" Why do
> I need GENITIV here? i'm interested to know why, please help again
Nobody would say that. It's a mix of an extreme colloquialism (the "bin
am" stuff) with an extreme formalism ("eines Briefes").
"Ich bin einen Brief am Schreiben" or probably just "ich schreibe [gerade]
einen Brief" would be used, the latter for any formal settings.
Michael Pronay
<7CnXG...@khms.westfalen.de>...
>
>"Ich bin einen Brief am Schreiben"
I beg to differ. At least in Austria no one would use this
sentence sounding extremely wrong to my ears.
>or probably just "ich schreibe [gerade] einen Brief"
That's it. Or, colloquial: "Ich bin grad dabei, einen
Brief zu schreiben."
Michael
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Kai Henningsen <kaih=7CnXG...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote on 11.03.99 in <F8GAG...@midway.uchicago.edu>:
>
>> In article <wk3e3cv...@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de>,
>> Oliver Sieks <si...@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de> wrote:
>> >
>> >Ich bin gerade dabei zu gehen. For example: Bleibst du noch lange? -
>> >Nein, ich bin schon am gehen.
>> >
>> >But that's colloquial (and was only meant to be a remark, and not to
>> >be taken seriously). The best will be to forget about it.
>>
>> willingness to teach people how their language is actually spoken.
>
>
>> Why shouldn't the colloquial be taken seriously? Sure, someone who just
>> wants to know enough German to read Nietzsche's aphorisms or von Hofmanns-
>> thal's libretti in the original isn't going to need to know much about it,
>> but anyone who wants to interact with a real living German--or even watch
>> a recent tv show or movie--is.
>>
>> There's this odd idea that once one knows the formal grammar, one can then
>> easily pick up colloquialisms along the way. I think that argument works
>> both ways--if one knows the colloquial grammar well, it shouldn't be dif-
>> ficult to learn a few formalisms for the rare occasions (e.g. an applica-
>> tion letter, a college essay) when they're actually required. After all,
>> isn't that the way 80 million native speakers have gone about it?
>
>There's a problem here you don't seem to have considered. We have here a
>difference in understanding German, and speaking German.
Believe me, I have considered that. There's a difference between saying,
"You'll hear X, but it's considered non-standard" and "Some people say X,
but that's not important." What people actually say *is* important,
whether one decides to imitate them or not.
>That is, it's certainly true people should understand what it means when
>someone says "ich bin am Essen". OTOH, it is *also* true that it is
>usually a bad idea to actually *say* "ich bin am Essen". *Most* Germans
>will feel that this is rather bad, or even wrong, usage.
This ties in to what I was saying earlier about Germans' rather formal at-
titude toward language. It seems to me that they a bad conscience about
the use of colloquialisms and regionalisms, particularly when compared to
Americans. Perhaps that's because the gap between the formal standard and
local forms of speech can be much greater than in the English-speaking
world and so German-speakers feel more of a responsibility to cleave to
the standard.
>Yes, there are situations where this might actually be appropriate. But
>it's hard for a non-native-speaker to recognize, and the alternatives are
>almost always better even if that form *would* be appropriate.
Subtle distinctions are always hard to recognise and I don't think we do
anyone a favour by telling them to avoid dealing with them. Certainly,
the most widespread and flexible forms should be taught (and mastered)
first, but when a learner has already encountred a colloquialism, telling
her just to forget she heard it seems rather counterproductive.
>That said, "ich bin am Essen" is best translated as "I am eating". I
>believe it's exactly the same meaning. Just keep in mind that you should
>handle this as a one-way translation, only.
That's a judgement call. If her boyfriend uses it as a matter of course,
why shouldn't she pick it up?
I do wonder about the equivalence of the forms, though. Another poster
gave "Ich bin am Gehen" as something he would say when he was *about* to
go, not while actually walking out the door. How common is that? Are
there Germans who would use "Ich bin am Essen" for "Ich esse gleich"?
João Luiz
> I'll turn 39 this year, I've lived in Germany all my life, I believe I
> speak extremely good German, and I *still* have difficulties with Du&Sie.
>
> Kai
Dear Kai, fake you are a foreigner and try my method. :-)
It's field-tested and effective.
JL
Ingmar Greil
>I do wonder about the equivalence of the forms, though. Another poster
>gave "Ich bin am Gehen" as something he would say when he was *about* to
>go, not while actually walking out the door. How common is that?
very common. keep in mind though, that "gehen" in this phrase doesn't
refer to "go" or "walk", but to "leave" instead. (bitte gehen sie - please
leave). this way it makes sense to me.
>Are there Germans who would use "Ich bin am Essen" for "Ich esse gleich"?
no.
Thorsten Mueller
> I do wonder about the equivalence of the forms, though. Another poster
> gave "Ich bin am Gehen" as something he would say when he was *about* to
> go, not while actually walking out the door. How common is that? Are
> there Germans who would use "Ich bin am Essen" for "Ich esse gleich"?
I guess I was the one who posted this sentence. I only use it though when I've just packed all my stuff (or put
on my jacket, for example), and somebody stops me and starts talking to me, or the phone rings and I decide to
pick it up although I'm already about to walk out the door.
I could imagine using "ich bin am Essen" in the way you suggested if I want to express that I don't want to be
disturbed while having my meal, even though I haven't started yet. But I guess this would rather be an ordinary
lie than a feature of the language which would have to be analysed. :-)
Thorsten
Kai Henningsen
> Kai Henningsen schrieb in Nachricht
> <7CnXG...@khms.westfalen.de>...
> >
> >"Ich bin einen Brief am Schreiben"
>
> I beg to differ. At least in Austria no one would use this
> sentence sounding extremely wrong to my ears.
You're probably outside the "bin am" region. Or do you accept any other
"bin am" construct?
That's why I told people to be extremely careful with that construct.
> >or probably just "ich schreibe [gerade] einen Brief"
>
> That's it. Or, colloquial: "Ich bin grad dabei, einen
> Brief zu schreiben."
That sounds Austrian :-) But only slightly.
Kai Henningsen
> In article <7CnXG...@khms.westfalen.de>,
> Kai Henningsen <kaih=7CnXG...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
> >usually a bad idea to actually *say* "ich bin am Essen". *Most* Germans
> >will feel that this is rather bad, or even wrong, usage.
>
> This ties in to what I was saying earlier about Germans' rather formal at-
> titude toward language. It seems to me that they a bad conscience about
> the use of colloquialisms and regionalisms, particularly when compared to
> Americans.
Well, I've seen Americans argue about such stuff just as much as Germans -
maybe more: alt.usage.english has quite a bit more traffic :-)
>Perhaps that's because the gap between the formal standard and
> local forms of speech can be much greater than in the English-speaking
> world
I think that's just wrong.
>and so German-speakers feel more of a responsibility to cleave to
> the standard.
If there's anything at all (which I'm not convinced of), it's that the
language was, some time ago, used for distinguish classes. Of course, the
same applies to the UK ...
> >Yes, there are situations where this might actually be appropriate. But
> >it's hard for a non-native-speaker to recognize, and the alternatives are
> >almost always better even if that form *would* be appropriate.
>
> Subtle distinctions are always hard to recognise and I don't think we do
> anyone a favour by telling them to avoid dealing with them. Certainly,
> the most widespread and flexible forms should be taught (and mastered)
> first, but when a learner has already encountred a colloquialism, telling
> her just to forget she heard it seems rather counterproductive.
Of course, that's hardly what I did.
> >That said, "ich bin am Essen" is best translated as "I am eating". I
> >believe it's exactly the same meaning. Just keep in mind that you should
> >handle this as a one-way translation, only.
>
> That's a judgement call. If her boyfriend uses it as a matter of course,
> why shouldn't she pick it up?
Because she might use it with people who look down on it?
> I do wonder about the equivalence of the forms, though. Another poster
> gave "Ich bin am Gehen" as something he would say when he was *about* to
> go, not while actually walking out the door.
He's actually claiming to be walking out of the door. A similar usage is
"ich bin auf dem Sprung". Or "ich komm ja schon" (while still sitting).
I'm sure you can do the same thing in other languages :-)
>How common is that? Are
> there Germans who would use "Ich bin am Essen" for "Ich esse gleich"?
No, but for "I would be eating if you weren't bothering me right now".
Kai Henningsen
> Kai Henningsen schrieb:
>
> > I'll turn 39 this year, I've lived in Germany all my life, I believe I
> > speak extremely good German, and I *still* have difficulties with Du&Sie.
> >
> > Kai
>
> Dear Kai, fake you are a foreigner and try my method. :-)
Impossible.
Michael Pronay
>>You're probably outside the "bin am" region. Or do you
>accept any other "bin am" construct?
Yes: "Ich bin am Briefschreiben."
Michael
Bjoern Zimmermann
Michael Pronay wrote:
> Kai Henningsen schrieb in Nachricht
> <7CnXG...@khms.westfalen.de>...
> >
> >"Ich bin einen Brief am Schreiben"
>
> I beg to differ. At least in Austria no one would use this
> sentence sounding extremely wrong to my ears.
>
it doesn't sound wrong.
well... it's maybe cuz I am german... but I would add the word 'gerade'
as you have done it in the other example. "Ich bin gerade einen Brief am
Schreiben."
cu
bjoern
Ingmar Greil
>> >"Ich bin einen Brief am Schreiben"
>>
>> I beg to differ. At least in Austria no one would use this
>> sentence sounding extremely wrong to my ears.
>You're probably outside the "bin am" region. Or do you accept any other
>"bin am" construct?
sure. (though i am not the original poster). the problem is ich bin +
Adj., like the mentioned example, ich bin einem brief am schreiben. "ich
bin am schreiben" sound perfectly normal to me.
ingmar
--
Pulchra enim sunt ubera quae paululum supereminent et tument
modice, nec flui tantia licenter, sed leniter restrica, repressa
sed non depressa. -- Umberto Eco, The Name of The Rose
Philip Newton
>
> pro...@teleweb.at (Michael Pronay) wrote on 13.03.99 in <1mAG2.1980$_k1....@news.chello.at>:
>
> >
> > That's it. Or, colloquial: "Ich bin grad dabei, einen
> > Brief zu schreiben."
>
> That sounds Austrian :-) But only slightly.
Both sound fine to me (Hamburg, north Germany). Slightly different
"feeling" for each sentence, though.
Cheers,
Philip
Philip Newton
>
> Sie stiegen auf den Berg - they were climbing the mountain (and hadn't
> yet reached the top)
Not in my speech (north Germany). "Sie stiegen auf den Berg" for me
means "they climbed the mountain". If you want "they were climbing the
mountain (and hadn't yet reached the top)", I'd use "sie waren dabei,
den Berg zu besteigen/auf den Berg zu steigen" or even "Sie waren am
Bergsteigen".
However, in my idiolect I use the imperfect fairly infrequently, so the
original sentence would become "Sie sind auf den Berg gestiegen".
Cheers,
Philip
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
>> titude toward language. It seems to me that they a bad conscience about
>> the use of colloquialisms and regionalisms, particularly when compared to
>> Americans.
>
>you're sonsidered a pedant. Since most americans try to project an
>image of informality a lot of colloquial language is thrown in where it
>doesn't belong.
>
>> Perhaps that's because the gap between the formal > standard and local forms of speech can be much >greater than in the English-speaking world
>
>more local dialects in the UK than in the rest of it combined.
Everything I hear from the UK indicates that traditional dialects are in
serious decline; they are--and have been for some time--enjoying a resurg-
ence in Germany.
In general, the longer a language has been established someplace, the more
distinct its dialects are. American dialects have had barely four-hundred
years to diverge from each other, from those of the Commonwealth, and from
their English predecessors; furthermore, the population that speaks them
has enjoyed decades of unprecedented social and geographical mobility.
Germanic has been spoken in England for over 1500 years, but in Germany
for about twice as long. I don't think you could find many who agree that
Glaswegian and Kentish are as divergent as, say, Saterlandish and Tyrol-
ese.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Kai Henningsen <kaih=7CsKD...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote on 14.03.99 in <F8K5...@midway.uchicago.edu>:
>
>> In article <7CnXG...@khms.westfalen.de>,
>> Kai Henningsen <kaih=7CnXG...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>
>> >usually a bad idea to actually *say* "ich bin am Essen". *Most* Germans
>> >will feel that this is rather bad, or even wrong, usage.
>>
>> titude toward language. It seems to me that they a bad conscience about
>> the use of colloquialisms and regionalisms, particularly when compared to
>> Americans.
>
>maybe more: alt.usage.english has quite a bit more traffic :-)
Of course! When a German has a usage question, what does she do? She
pulls her copy of _Gutes and richtiges Deutsch_ off the shelf and looks up
the answer. But for English? No comparable reference exists. There are
those look upon Fowler's as a bible and those who consider him an idiosyn-
cratic pedant of purely historical interest. So the only way to get a
solid idea of a word's or phrase's acceptibility is to consult a variety
of sources.
>>Perhaps that's because the gap between the formal standard and
>> local forms of speech can be much greater than in the English-speaking
>> world
>
>I think that's just wrong.
And you're entitled to your opinion. (Or, as we say in the local dialect
of the town I grew up in, "And you're entitled to your opinion".)
>>and so German-speakers feel more of a responsibility to cleave to
>> the standard.
>
>If there's anything at all (which I'm not convinced of), it's that the
>language was, some time ago, used for distinguish classes. Of course, the
>same applies to the UK ...
Hochdeutsch was once learned as a second language for the entire popula-
tion that spoke it! No comparable situation existed in the English-
speaking world.
>> >Yes, there are situations where this might actually be appropriate. But
>> >it's hard for a non-native-speaker to recognize, and the alternatives are
>> >almost always better even if that form *would* be appropriate.
>>
>> Subtle distinctions are always hard to recognise and I don't think we do
>> anyone a favour by telling them to avoid dealing with them. Certainly,
>> the most widespread and flexible forms should be taught (and mastered)
>> first, but when a learner has already encountred a colloquialism, telling
>> her just to forget she heard it seems rather counterproductive.
>
>Of course, that's hardly what I did.
But it is what others did.
>> >That said, "ich bin am Essen" is best translated as "I am eating". I
>> >believe it's exactly the same meaning. Just keep in mind that you should
>> >handle this as a one-way translation, only.
>>
>> That's a judgement call. If her boyfriend uses it as a matter of course,
>> why shouldn't she pick it up?
>
>Because she might use it with people who look down on it?
Nu? And what, really, is the concrete negative impact of that?
[snip]
Kai Henningsen
> Kai Henningsen schrieb in Nachricht
> <7CsKD...@khms.westfalen.de>...
>
> >>You're probably outside the "bin am" region. Or do you
> >accept any other "bin am" construct?
>
> Yes: "Ich bin am Briefschreiben."
Now that sounds wrong to me. So I guess it's rather a DE-AT difference.
Oliver Sieks
de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) writes:
> In article <7CnXG...@khms.westfalen.de>,
> Kai Henningsen <kaih=7CnXG...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
> >de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote on 11.03.99 in <F8GAG...@midway.uchicago.edu>:
> >
> >> In article <wk3e3cv...@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de>,
> >> Oliver Sieks <si...@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >Ich bin gerade dabei zu gehen. For example: Bleibst du noch lange? -
> >> >Nein, ich bin schon am gehen.
> >> >
> >> >But that's colloquial (and was only meant to be a remark, and not to
> >> >be taken seriously). The best will be to forget about it.
> >>
> >> Sometimes I think the Germans are second only to the French in their un-
> >> willingness to teach people how their language is actually spoken.
> >
The problem is that a person learning their language has a difficult
position here. A native speaker has an instinctive grip of the
language registers to use, whereas a foreigner hasn't. It can be very
tricky to decide which form to use in which circumstances and to
which partners. In general, people are quite forgiving about that
because they are taking into account the fact that they are talking to
a foreigner, but it's just as easy to stay on the safe side.
> >
> >> Why shouldn't the colloquial be taken seriously? Sure, someone who just
> >> wants to know enough German to read Nietzsche's aphorisms or von Hofmanns-
> >> thal's libretti in the original isn't going to need to know much about it,
> >> but anyone who wants to interact with a real living German--or even watch
> >> a recent tv show or movie--is.
But we aren't talking about Nietzsche here (anyway, the language he
used is a long way from what I consider as correct today's spoken
German, same with Hofmannstal). "Correct German" is, in my opinion,
the language used by the newspapers and the TV. Not because it is
"good" German in what style is concerned (mostly it isn't), but
because it is the language understood by everyone, free of
regionalisms and social groups' jargons.
And you mustn't assume that the average German uses colloquial forms
all the time. If someone talks to me using "correct" language, I am
sure I won't even notice. On the other hand, an exaggerated use of
informal language will strike me, and won't leave a good impression
behind, especially if this language doesn't go along with the person
speaking. For example, what the French call "faux jeune": talking
teenage jargon at the age of 45.
> >>
> >> There's this odd idea that once one knows the formal grammar, one can then
> >> easily pick up colloquialisms along the way. I think that argument works
> >> both ways--if one knows the colloquial grammar well, it shouldn't be dif-
> >> ficult to learn a few formalisms for the rare occasions (e.g. an applica-
> >> tion letter, a college essay) when they're actually required. After all,
> >> isn't that the way 80 million native speakers have gone about it?
> >
> >There's a problem here you don't seem to have considered. We have here a
> >difference in understanding German, and speaking German.
>
> Believe me, I have considered that. There's a difference between saying,
> "You'll hear X, but it's considered non-standard" and "Some people say X,
> but that's not important." What people actually say *is* important,
> whether one decides to imitate them or not.
But Carol actually asked if she should use the "ich bin am
[infinitive]"-form (if I remember correctly). And I simply advise
against. Because, as a foreigner learnig German (or any other
language), if you use colloquial forms, you will rather make
a fool out of yourself than pass for a really cool person. It's like
keWle writing in Usenet. I mean, you should first learn to properly
speak the language, and once you have mastered the basics (and a lot
more) and *you have continous contact with native speakers*, you can
start and pick up their habits.
If I went to France and began to talk verlan, I would ridicularize
myself quite efficiently. Or if I came to the US and spoke English
with a strong accent and a lot of rather curious constructions, but I
used "bloody fuckin'" every third word, because that's what seems to
me bein' really folks' talk.
>
> >That is, it's certainly true people should understand what it means when
> >someone says "ich bin am Essen". OTOH, it is *also* true that it is
> >usually a bad idea to actually *say* "ich bin am Essen". *Most* Germans
> >will feel that this is rather bad, or even wrong, usage.
>
> This ties in to what I was saying earlier about Germans' rather formal at-
> titude toward language. It seems to me that they a bad conscience about
> the use of colloquialisms and regionalisms, particularly when compared to
> Americans. Perhaps that's because the gap between the formal standard and
> local forms of speech can be much greater than in the English-speaking
> world and so German-speakers feel more of a responsibility to cleave to
> the standard.
I don't think that the gap is wider in German, at least what the
colloquialisms is concerned. If I read English books that try to be
colloquial, or read some English usenet postings, I have enormous
difficulties. Just understanding, not to speak of speaking. I don't
think that there are these differences in German (even parents
understand their children, most of the time!).
That's different for the regionalisms, though. The difference here is
that there *is* actually a standard German or French, and that's not
the case for English with all its British and American (and Indian and
African and Scientists') variants. Well, perhaps that is true for the
social jargons, too: people won't notice that they deviate from
standard English, just because there isn't such thing. So everyone has
the right to talk as he wants to. Hmm, I don't know how to put this -
of course everyone has the right to talk as he wants to anyway in any
language - but perhaps you'll see what I mean. Native Americans or
English often just don't know any other language than that they are
talking, whereas Germans always can switch to standard language.
>
> >Yes, there are situations where this might actually be appropriate. But
> >it's hard for a non-native-speaker to recognize, and the alternatives are
> >almost always better even if that form *would* be appropriate.
>
> Subtle distinctions are always hard to recognise and I don't think we do
> anyone a favour by telling them to avoid dealing with them. Certainly,
> the most widespread and flexible forms should be taught (and mastered)
> first, but when a learner has already encountred a colloquialism, telling
> her just to forget she heard it seems rather counterproductive.
Well, in that case you can teach it to her, but don't forget adding
"Don't use this form in Austria and never when applying for a job, at
least in Eastern or South-eastern Germany, on the other hand in the
Rhine-Ruhr area it's always fine".
In fact, I had (fist) understood that Carol hadn't already seen this
and asked only because I mentioned this. Which made me be ashamed of
my remark. ;)
>
> >That said, "ich bin am Essen" is best translated as "I am eating". I
> >believe it's exactly the same meaning. Just keep in mind that you should
> >handle this as a one-way translation, only.
>
> That's a judgement call. If her boyfriend uses it as a matter of course,
> why shouldn't she pick it up?
In that case, yes. Perhaps. But then she has a kind of control about
the registers of language, because there is a native speaker that can
correct her when she's wrong. Anyway, if you live in continous contact
with natives and use the language everyday, you will of course pick up
some colloquialisms.
>
> I do wonder about the equivalence of the forms, though. Another poster
> gave "Ich bin am Gehen" as something he would say when he was *about* to
That was me. But in this case, I use "I am going" referring to the
whole process of going away, including preparing. Perhaps it would
better be translated "I am leaving".
> go, not while actually walking out the door. How common is that? Are
> there Germans who would use "Ich bin am Essen" for "Ich esse gleich"?
Don't think so. It really is the (rhenan) continous present.
Regards!
Oliver
Oliver Gassner
<Fl...@Leginfo.LBDC.State.NY.US> wrote:
>D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>> This ties in to what I was saying earlier about Germans' rather formal at-
>> titude toward language. It seems to me that they a bad conscience about
>> the use of colloquialisms and regionalisms, particularly when compared to
>> Americans.
Probably this is an education issue. education is/was costly and a
guarantee of success. So speaking 'perfectly' is somthing that 'cost a
lot' and shows your 'value'. (Dialect is something for 'farmers' i.e.
'slaves'- historically speaking.)
>Americans have the opposite problem. If you stick to the standard
>you're sonsidered a pedant. Since most americans try to project an
>image of informality a lot of colloquial language is thrown in where it
>doesn't belong.
Just a very sketchy historical remark on that.
If you are alone in a big country (as opposed to crowded into 'small'
Europe) you tend to lose ypour distance more easily. Being 'friends with
everyone' becomes more important. In (again historical) Europe a
stranger is usually _really_ a lawless guy, i.e. a threat. Mobility
meant poverty... In the US mobility was necessary and is still more
common than in Europe.
IANAH/sociologist ;) But I guess I am not too wrong...
OG
--
> Mailadressen, die einen der untenstehenden Begriffe enthalten, werden
> von mir, weil ich keine Lust habe, Header zu lesen, beim Newslesen
> ausgefiltert: nospam - delete - dummy - spam - ...
Literatur am Draht --> http://www.carpe.com/lit/
Marion
Bjoern Zimmermann schrieb in Nachricht <36EC170E...@gmx.de>...
>
>
>Michael Pronay wrote:
>
>> Kai Henningsen schrieb in Nachricht
>> >
>> >"Ich bin einen Brief am Schreiben"
>>
>> I beg to differ. At least in Austria no one would use this
>> sentence sounding extremely wrong to my ears.
>>
>
>well... it's maybe cuz I am german... but I would add the word
'gerade'
>as you have done it in the other example. "Ich bin gerade einen Brief
am
>Schreiben."
Or better "Ich bin gerade dabei einen Brief zu schreiben."
(Ich bin am Schreiben eines Briefes is also correct.)
Marion
Philip Newton
I asked my girlfriend what she thought, and she replied that she might
use "ich schreibe gerade einen Brief" if she were called to the phone
while writing a letter, whereas "ich bin grad dabei, einen Brief zu
schreiben" is more immediate, said maybe if you're interrupted and still
have your hand on the paper. Maybe the "dabei" influences the perceived
connotation.
Cheers,
Philip
Wayne Brown
>Americans have the opposite problem. If you stick to the standard
>you're sonsidered a pedant.
Or worse. Whole strata of the population in the US just do not tolerate
standard usage. The American who flaunts peer attitudes against standard
usage often leaves himself open to peer ridicule. The situation in Germany
is somewhat different in that respect.
Regards,-----WB.
Wayne Brown
>
>Everything I hear from the UK indicates that traditional dialects are in
>serious decline; they are--and have been for some time--enjoying a resurg-
>ence in Germany.
Resurgence? Yes and no, I would say. Many Germans seem to be aware that the
disappearance of a dialect also signals a lost of a piece of German culture;
therefore, efforts have been undertaken in some quarters to preserve some
dialect or other. However, the survival of a dialect depends on the
willingness of people to use it as a daily means of communication and on the
persistence of parents in using it constantly at home in order for their
children to learn it properly. Here TV, radio and school play a big role.
Over the years I personally have witnessed the marked decline of one
dialect, that of the city of Munich. A Munich newspaper recently did a
survey in a local grade school and determined that on an average only one
child in a class of 30 could speak the dialect properly. The same paper also
interviewed a visitor, born and raised in Munich, who had not been here for
40 years. His first reaction was: "What happened to the dialect?"
Regards,-----WB.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Oliver Sieks <si...@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de> wrote:
>Hello everyone!
>
>de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) writes:
>
>> In article <7CnXG...@khms.westfalen.de>,
>> Kai Henningsen <kaih=7CnXG...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>> >de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote on 11.03.99 in <F8GAG...@midway.uchicago.edu>:
>> >
>> >> In article <wk3e3cv...@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de>,
>> >> Oliver Sieks <si...@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >Ich bin gerade dabei zu gehen. For example: Bleibst du noch lange? -
>> >> >Nein, ich bin schon am gehen.
>> >> >
>> >> >But that's colloquial (and was only meant to be a remark, and not to
>> >> >be taken seriously). The best will be to forget about it.
>> >>
>> >> Sometimes I think the Germans are second only to the French in their un-
>> >> willingness to teach people how their language is actually spoken.
>
>The problem is that a person learning their language has a difficult
>position here. A native speaker has an instinctive grip of the
>language registers to use, whereas a foreigner hasn't. It can be very
>tricky to decide which form to use in which circumstances and to
>which partners. In general, people are quite forgiving about that
>because they are taking into account the fact that they are talking to
>a foreigner, but it's just as easy to stay on the safe side.
Yes, it's tricky--and if you stick to "safe" grammar all the time, you'll
never learn the nuances. In linguistic matters, as in most, practice
makes the master. If people really are very forgiving of foreigners (and
in my experience, they are), why not take risks?
This isn't limited to the colloquial. If a learner wanted to be really
"safe", she would never use a word whose meaning she wasn't 100% percent
sure of. Why say "eroertern" when you're not sure if it means exactly the
same thing as "sprechen ueber"? Why attempt to say "Die Katze laesst die
Maeuse nicht" when you're not sure if that's the correct phrasing and
everyone will understand, "Das ist wie eingeboren, das vergisst er nie
im Leben."? We all know why: Because if you don't, you'll never end up
speaking idiomatic German.
Now, like I said, not everyone wants to do that. Fine--but those who do
should be encouraged to experiment and run the risk of sounding foolish.
[mehr spaeter; jetzt, Mahlzeit!]
Oliver Sieks
> >The problem is that a person learning their language has a difficult
> >position here. A native speaker has an instinctive grip of the
> >language registers to use, whereas a foreigner hasn't. It can be very
> >tricky to decide which form to use in which circumstances and to
> >which partners. In general, people are quite forgiving about that
> >because they are taking into account the fact that they are talking to
> >a foreigner, but it's just as easy to stay on the safe side.
>
de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) writes:
> Yes, it's tricky--and if you stick to "safe" grammar all the time, you'll
> never learn the nuances. In linguistic matters, as in most, practice
> makes the master. If people really are very forgiving of foreigners (and
> in my experience, they are), why not take risks?
>
> This isn't limited to the colloquial. If a learner wanted to be really
> "safe", she would never use a word whose meaning she wasn't 100% percent
> sure of. Why say "eroertern" when you're not sure if it means exactly the
> same thing as "sprechen ueber"? Why attempt to say "Die Katze laesst die
> Maeuse nicht" when you're not sure if that's the correct phrasing and
> everyone will understand, "Das ist wie eingeboren, das vergisst er nie
> im Leben."? We all know why: Because if you don't, you'll never end up
> speaking idiomatic German.
>
> Now, like I said, not everyone wants to do that. Fine--but those who do
> should be encouraged to experiment and run the risk of sounding foolish.
>
I think we are talking - aeh, wie sagt man "aneinander vorbei"? I
completely agree if you put it this way. But it is a great difference
if you live, learn and practice in the country and pick up the
language of those around you - or if you study at home and sort of
learn the colloquials or idioms by heart. And then go into the country
and proudly try them at the least possible occasions... And I think
that in such a "clinical" environment one should keep away from
actively learning jargon or regionalism (as I said, I thought that
this was the case here). The language is difficult enough - and
beautiful enough - to keep you occupied even without this ;)
Besides, it depends on the person using these idiomatics. I know some
foreigners where misplaced colloquials sound very cute, and others
where nearly the same expression just makes me sigh. Also, it is a
difference if there are some strange expressions more or less by
accident, or if there is someone who simply wants to talk Really Cool
German. And to be Really Cool on the whole. Perhaps you can trace my
problems here - perhaps it has less to do with language but with
personal liking. (No, that has nothing to do with Carol who asked
about the continous present.)
> [mehr spaeter; jetzt, Mahlzeit!]
Na, dann guten Appetit!
Viele Grüße
Oliver
Wayne Brown
>And you mustn't assume that the average German uses colloquial forms
>all the time. If someone talks to me using "correct" language, I am
>sure I won't even notice. On the other hand, an exaggerated use of
>informal language will strike me, and won't leave a good impression
>behind, especially if this language doesn't go along with the person
>speaking.
This, in my opinion, is one of the cultural differences that Americans (and
other nationalities as well) have to come to understand if their aim is to
master the German language.
Regards,-----WB.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Oliver Sieks <si...@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de> wrote:
>I wrote:
>
>> >The problem is that a person learning their language has a difficult
>> >position here. A native speaker has an instinctive grip of the
>> >language registers to use, whereas a foreigner hasn't. It can be very
>> >tricky to decide which form to use in which circumstances and to
>> >which partners. In general, people are quite forgiving about that
>> >because they are taking into account the fact that they are talking to
>> >a foreigner, but it's just as easy to stay on the safe side.
>>
>
>> never learn the nuances. In linguistic matters, as in most, practice
>> makes the master. If people really are very forgiving of foreigners (and
>> in my experience, they are), why not take risks?
>>
>> This isn't limited to the colloquial. If a learner wanted to be really
>> "safe", she would never use a word whose meaning she wasn't 100% percent
>> sure of. Why say "eroertern" when you're not sure if it means exactly the
>> same thing as "sprechen ueber"? Why attempt to say "Die Katze laesst die
>> Maeuse nicht" when you're not sure if that's the correct phrasing and
>> everyone will understand, "Das ist wie eingeboren, das vergisst er nie
>> im Leben."? We all know why: Because if you don't, you'll never end up
>> speaking idiomatic German.
>>
>> Now, like I said, not everyone wants to do that. Fine--but those who do
>> should be encouraged to experiment and run the risk of sounding foolish.
>
>I think we are talking - aeh, wie sagt man "aneinander vorbei"?
Ganz einfach: "past each other". (Oder auch "at cross purposes".)
>I completely agree if you put it this way. But it is a great difference
>if you live, learn and practice in the country and pick up the
>language of those around you - or if you study at home and sort of
>learn the colloquials or idioms by heart. And then go into the country
>and proudly try them at the least possible occasions... And I think
>that in such a "clinical" environment one should keep away from
>actively learning jargon or regionalism (as I said, I thought that
>this was the case here). The language is difficult enough - and
>beautiful enough - to keep you occupied even without this ;)
All true. (In this particular case, though, she *did* point out she had a
German-speaking boyfriend.) But a "clinical" environment is not exactly
the best for learning a language. Encouraging a learner's interest is
often more important than making sure they have a formal command of the
language. I know far too many people who dropped out of German classes
because they found the language dull and complicated and I wonder if they
would've felt this way had they learned it from Arjouni and Koenig and
Doerrie rather than Mann and Kafka and Wagner. The teachers I've known
have been a little too quick to say, "You can't say that" rather than go
into an explanation of why a certain expression has only limited currency.
>Besides, it depends on the person using these idiomatics. I know some
>foreigners where misplaced colloquials sound very cute, and others
>where nearly the same expression just makes me sigh. Also, it is a
>difference if there are some strange expressions more or less by
>accident, or if there is someone who simply wants to talk Really Cool
>German. And to be Really Cool on the whole. Perhaps you can trace my
>problems here - perhaps it has less to do with language but with
>personal liking. (No, that has nothing to do with Carol who asked
>about the continous present.)
You seem to be reacting more to an attitude that you associate with want-
ing to learn the colloquial than with misuse of the colloquial generally.
Not wanting to sound like a damn textbook isn't the same as wanting to
sound "really cool". Heck, I went through two years of language classes
without ever really practicing the verb "kriegen"!
Kai Henningsen
> Everything I hear from the UK indicates that traditional dialects are in
> serious decline; they are--and have been for some time--enjoying a resurg-
> ence in Germany.
They have? Where?
I can't say I've seen _any_ evidence of this. On the contrary, I hear a
lot less dialect these days than I did as a kid.
This may, of course, be a regional difference - I grew up in Kiel, and now
live in Münster.
What we *do* have is more publicity for dialects. But I definitely hear
less, not more, people _using_ dialects.
Kai Henningsen
> D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
> > This ties in to what I was saying earlier about Germans' rather formal at-
> > titude toward language. It seems to me that they a bad conscience about
> > the use of colloquialisms and regionalisms, particularly when compared to
> > Americans.
>
> Americans have the opposite problem. If you stick to the standard
> you're sonsidered a pedant. Since most americans try to project an
> image of informality a lot of colloquial language is thrown in where it
> doesn't belong.
OTOH, Americans have been upset when I used informal language on Usenet.
Kai Henningsen
> In article <7CsKD...@khms.westfalen.de>,
> Kai Henningsen <kaih=7CsKD...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
> >de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote on 14.03.99 in
> ><F8K5...@midway.uchicago.edu>:
> >> In article <7CnXG...@khms.westfalen.de>,
> >> Kai Henningsen <kaih=7CnXG...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
> >
> >> >usually a bad idea to actually *say* "ich bin am Essen". *Most* Germans
> >> >will feel that this is rather bad, or even wrong, usage.
> >>
> >> This ties in to what I was saying earlier about Germans' rather formal
> >> at- titude toward language. It seems to me that they a bad conscience
> >> about the use of colloquialisms and regionalisms, particularly when
> >> compared to Americans.
> >
> >Well, I've seen Americans argue about such stuff just as much as Germans -
> >maybe more: alt.usage.english has quite a bit more traffic :-)
>
> Of course! When a German has a usage question, what does she do? She
> pulls her copy of _Gutes and richtiges Deutsch_ off the shelf and looks up
Is that a real book?
In any case, the only reference I might consult is Duden: Rechtschreibung.
If it answers questions like the above, I've yet to find out.
> >>Perhaps that's because the gap between the formal standard and
> >> local forms of speech can be much greater than in the English-speaking
> >> world
> >
> >I think that's just wrong.
>
> And you're entitled to your opinion. (Or, as we say in the local dialect
> of the town I grew up in, "And you're entitled to your opinion".)
In any case, both languages have those differences cross the
understandability border.
> >If there's anything at all (which I'm not convinced of), it's that the
> >language was, some time ago, used for distinguish classes. Of course, the
Ugh. Did I really write that?! "... distinguishing ..." of course.
> >same applies to the UK ...
>
> Hochdeutsch was once learned as a second language for the entire popula-
> tion that spoke it! No comparable situation existed in the English-
> speaking world.
That's really irrelevant. The important stuff is that, say, 100 years ago,
you could listen to someone and determine which class he was from.
Incidentally, the canonical text for this is, of course, "Pygmalion"
(probably better known as "My Fair Lady"), and it is _English_.
> >> >That said, "ich bin am Essen" is best translated as "I am eating". I
> >> >believe it's exactly the same meaning. Just keep in mind that you should
> >> >handle this as a one-way translation, only.
> >>
> >> That's a judgement call. If her boyfriend uses it as a matter of course,
> >> why shouldn't she pick it up?
> >
> >Because she might use it with people who look down on it?
>
> Nu? And what, really, is the concrete negative impact of that?
That should be obvious, no?
Kai Henningsen
> Resurgence? Yes and no, I would say. Many Germans seem to be aware that the
> disappearance of a dialect also signals a lost of a piece of German culture;
Well, it's a part of German culture I never had, so I can't very well lose
it :-)
The stuff I've lost is probably illustrated best by a story my mother
(who's from the east, not from the north - relatives in Poland and
Austria) likes to tell:
It seems we were riding a train somewhere, sitting next to a Danish couple
talking about God knows what, when suddenly I said whatever is Danish for
"I'm a little boy". Whereupon the Danish couple acted somewhat embarassed,
so mother suspects what they talked about was us.
Anyway, whatever Danish I knew I have now completely forgotten.
However, I remember that my grandfather, in his youth, fell out with his
brothers when he wanted to be on the German side of the German-Danish
border. And I'm supposedly named after some sort of wood merchant in
Copenhagen.
(Yes, Europe is just as much a melting pot as America.)
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Stephan Lehmke <Stephan...@cs.uni-dortmund.de> wrote:
>In article <F8pGy...@midway.uchicago.edu>,
> de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) writes:
>> In article <7clpak$kag$1...@news.freiepresse.de>,
>> Marion <mar...@spksuew.ron.de> wrote:
>>>
>>>Bjoern Zimmermann schrieb in Nachricht <36EC170E...@gmx.de>...
>>>>
>>>am
>>>>Schreiben."
>>>
>>>Or better "Ich bin gerade dabei einen Brief zu schreiben."
>>>(Ich bin am Schreiben eines Briefes is also correct.)
>>
>> scriptive rules were and were now discussing what people actually say.
>> Under that rubric, if these sentences are more distant from what one would
>> hear on the street, they are "worse" not "better".
>
>This is really not true, at least hereabouts.
You misunderstand me.
As I pointed out in a previous rant, I know that to the average German
"better" means "Wie es im Duden steht". Several posters have stated that
the Rhenish Progressive is dialectal and stigmatised. We don't need to
hear that repeated ad infinitum--and we especially don't need to hear at-
tempts to "correct" that "bad German" that end up producing unnatural and
unidiomatic sentences.
Personally, I find descriptivism endlessly more interesting than prescrip-
tivism. I would appreciate it if y'all could simply suspend your value
judgements about how the language should be spoken for a moment and recall
what people actually say. Some posters have managed to do that and I
thank them for their contributions, but I'd appreciate hearing more. If
there are speakers out there for whom *"Ich bin am Schreiben eines
Briefes" *does* sound natural, then I'd like to know that.
>Honestly, the "Verlaufsform" with an object ("Ich bin meine Zaehne am
>putzen") is considered unusual and low-level ("schlechtes Deutsch"),
>and outside of areas with extreme "Ruhrpott" dialect, any child
>uttering such a phrase would immediately be corrected from all
>directions.
Obviously, not all posters agree with you. At least one was uncertain
whether the form was nonstandard or not. (A Bonner friend of mine wasn't
uncertain at all: I asked him about the sentence "Ich bin mein Buch am
Suchen" and he said, "Das klingt wie ganz gewoehnliches Deutsch". Far
from having a heavy Ruhrpott dialect, he speaks with a minimum of dia-
lect-colouring.)
>Use of such a phrase by a grown-up person would at least elicit a
>smile, because it's most likely said in jest (at least in this
>academic institution; might be slightly different in a craftperson's
>workshop).
Helmut Richter
>You misunderstand me.
>As I pointed out in a previous rant, I know that to the average German
>"better" means "Wie es im Duden steht". Several posters have stated that
>the Rhenish Progressive is dialectal and stigmatised. We don't need to
>hear that repeated ad infinitum--and we especially don't need to hear at-
>tempts to "correct" that "bad German" that end up producing unnatural and
>unidiomatic sentences.
Agreed. But we should hear it at least once (as distinct from
"repeated ad infinitum") and perhaps even with an attempt of
"correction" for the following reason:
"Bad German" (a notion I would not subscribe to) is very dependent not
only on region but also on age and other factors. Unless you oversee
these factors, such language sounds like the Black English of a Jewish
Cockney Ku-Klux-Klan member - which is not at all "natural and
idiomatic". One German example of that kind is cited below.
Moreover, "bad language" is often short-lived. What sounds cool today may
sound ludicrous tomorrow.
There are a *small* number of "bad German" features that rightfully
belong to the colloquial language nearly everywhere, for everyone and
for a longer period: "wegen mir" instead of "meinetwegen", "er wuerde
kommen" instead of "er kaeme", "du brauchst nicht kommen" instead of
"du brauchst nicht zu kommen". But even for these near-universals,
you will find always people who say that they sound unnatural or
unidiomatic or belong to some (usually distant) dialect.
>Personally, I find descriptivism endlessly more interesting than prescrip-
>tivism. I would appreciate it if y'all could simply suspend your value
>judgements about how the language should be spoken for a moment and recall
>what people actually say.
So do I. But keep in mind that colloquial language is much more
difficult do describe because the description must contain the context
to be fair. If someone asks you to translate "where is the toilet,
please?" (for US speakers: the rest room) you can of course offer a
lot of sentences like
- Ich muss mal aufn Pott.
- Ich muss mal fuer kleine Jungs/Maedchen.
- Wo is'n hier das Scheisshaus?
- Wo kann man denn mal bei euch?
- Wenn Sie mir bitte die Toilette zeigen koennten?
- Habt ihr hier 'n Klo?
- Wo kann man denn hier, wenn man muss?
but it may be safe to tell people which of these to use when.
>Some posters have managed to do that and I
>thank them for their contributions, but I'd appreciate hearing more. If
>there are speakers out there for whom *"Ich bin am Schreiben eines
>Briefes" *does* sound natural, then I'd like to know that.
As another poster has already pointed out, the problem with this
sentence is *not* that it is *bad* German but that it is
*inconsistent* German, mixing colloquial (bin am ...) with stilted
(... eines Briefes) style, just like "would you be so kind as to shut
up" or "I just wanted to say hello prior to my departure".
>Obviously, not all posters agree with you. At least one was uncertain
>whether the form was nonstandard or not. (A Bonner friend of mine wasn't
>uncertain at all: I asked him about the sentence "Ich bin mein Buch am
>Suchen" and he said, "Das klingt wie ganz gewoehnliches Deutsch". Far
>from having a heavy Ruhrpott dialect, he speaks with a minimum of dia-
>lect-colouring.)
Equating dialect usage with colloquial style usage is, if I may
correct a learned linguist, probably a blunder. If there is at all a
connection, it is certainly different between High German and Low
German regions.
Helmut Richter
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Kai Henningsen <kaih=7D1Ye...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote on 15.03.99 in <F8nIM...@midway.uchicago.edu>:
>
>> In article <7CsKD...@khms.westfalen.de>,
>> Kai Henningsen <kaih=7CsKD...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>> >
>> >Well, I've seen Americans argue about such stuff just as much as Germans -
>> >maybe more: alt.usage.english has quite a bit more traffic :-)
>>
>> Of course! When a German has a usage question, what does she do? She
>> pulls her copy of _Gutes and richtiges Deutsch_ off the shelf and looks up
>
>Is that a real book?
'Tschuldigung: _Richtiges und gutes Deutsch_. 9. Band vom Duden in 12.
Baenden.
>In any case, the only reference I might consult is Duden: Rechtschreibung.
>If it answers questions like the above, I've yet to find out.
Generally not. This is where I turn to Band 9 oder Band 2 (_Stilwoerter-
buch_).
>> >>Perhaps that's because the gap between the formal standard and
>> >> local forms of speech can be much greater than in the English-speaking
>> >> world
>> >
>> >I think that's just wrong.
>>
>> And you're entitled to your opinion. (Or, as we say in the local dialect
>> of the town I grew up in, "And you're entitled to your opinion".)
>
>In any case, both languages have those differences cross the
>understandability border.
I never contested that. I simply contest that the gap is larger in the
English-speaking world. Maybe in some far-flung corners (like Jamaica and
Seth Effrica), but not in the USA or most of Britain.
>> Hochdeutsch was once learned as a second language for the entire popula-
>> tion that spoke it! No comparable situation existed in the English-
>> speaking world.
>
>That's really irrelevant.
Hardly. I think the history of Hochdeutsch as something one learnt
primarily in school as opposed to something one spoke naturally very
relevant when discussing attitudes toward it.
>The important stuff is that, say, 100 years ago,
>you could listen to someone and determine which class he was from.
>Incidentally, the canonical text for this is, of course, "Pygmalion"
>(probably better known as "My Fair Lady"), and it is _English_.
Excactly--*not American*. You couldn't have done the same in the USA or
Canada, where social mobility was always greater.
>> >> That's a judgement call. If her boyfriend uses it as a matter of course,
>> >> why shouldn't she pick it up?
>> >
>> >Because she might use it with people who look down on it?
>>
>> Nu? And what, really, is the concrete negative impact of that?
>
>That should be obvious, no?
I'm telling you, it's not. If people are really going to despise her be-
cause of a colloquialism, then that only proves my point about German
stuffiness vis-a-vis language. If their reactions aren't going to be ex-
treme, then why worry about them?
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Helmut Richter <Helmut....@lrz-muenchen.de> wrote:
>de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) writes:
>
>>You misunderstand me.
>
>>As I pointed out in a previous rant, I know that to the average German
>>"better" means "Wie es im Duden steht". Several posters have stated that
>>the Rhenish Progressive is dialectal and stigmatised. We don't need to
>>hear that repeated ad infinitum--and we especially don't need to hear at-
>>tempts to "correct" that "bad German" that end up producing unnatural and
>>unidiomatic sentences.
>
>Agreed. But we should hear it at least once
By my count, we've heard it at least thrice. I myself cited the Duden on
this point, but only after Kai and Oliver had pronounced it substandard
and given standard equivalents. Since then, even more posters have pro-
nounced it Not For Learners.
>(as distinct from
>"repeated ad infinitum") and perhaps even with an attempt of
>"correction" for the following reason:
>
>"Bad German" (a notion I would not subscribe to) is very dependent not
>only on region but also on age and other factors. Unless you oversee
>these factors, such language sounds like the Black English of a Jewish
>Cockney Ku-Klux-Klan member - which is not at all "natural and idio-
>matic". One German example of that kind is cited below. Moreover, "bad
>language" is often short-lived. What sounds cool today may sound
>ludicrous tomorrow.
I agree. This is why I'm asking to hear about this factors.
>There are a *small* number of "bad German" features that rightfully
>belong to the colloquial language nearly everywhere, for everyone and
>for a longer period: "wegen mir" instead of "meinetwegen", "er wuerde
>kommen" instead of "er kaeme", "du brauchst nicht kommen" instead of
>"du brauchst nicht zu kommen". But even for these near-universals,
>you will find always people who say that they sound unnatural or
>unidiomatic or belong to some (usually distant) dialect.
Just as you will always find people who balk at "It's me" or "Try and stop
me!", not matter how ubiquitous they be in the colloquial language.
[snip]
>>Some posters have managed to do that and I
>>thank them for their contributions, but I'd appreciate hearing more. If
>>there are speakers out there for whom *"Ich bin am Schreiben eines
>>Briefes" *does* sound natural, then I'd like to know that.
>
>As another poster has already pointed out, the problem with this
>sentence is *not* that it is *bad* German but that it is
>*inconsistent* German, mixing colloquial (bin am ...) with stilted
>(... eines Briefes) style, just like "would you be so kind as to shut
>up" or "I just wanted to say hello prior to my departure".
So I need a definition of "bad German". I don't recognise "bad grammar"
as such, since the notion of "correct grammar" is very situationally de-
pendent, only "bad style". To me, inconsistency of register is bad style.
So I would consider "Ich bin am Schreiben eines Briefes" bad German, but
not "Ich bin am Briefschreiben" or "Ich bin einen Brief am Schreiben"
(although I would recognise the limitations on the usage of those two
constructions).
Clearly, most posters seem to define "schlechtes Deutsch" differently.
I'm just not sure how differently.
>>Obviously, not all posters agree with you. At least one was uncertain
>>whether the form was nonstandard or not. (A Bonner friend of mine wasn't
>>uncertain at all: I asked him about the sentence "Ich bin mein Buch am
>>Suchen" and he said, "Das klingt wie ganz gewoehnliches Deutsch". Far
>>from having a heavy Ruhrpott dialect, he speaks with a minimum of dia-
>>lect-colouring.)
>
>Equating dialect usage with colloquial style usage is, if I may
>correct a learned linguist, probably a blunder.
But it's not the blunder of a learned linguist, rather of an educated
speaker. My point is that if some speakers do not recognise this "dia-
lectal feature" as dialectal, then the previous poster's contention that
even small children consider it a regionalism and "bad German" is ex-
aggerrated, to say the least.
>If there is at all a connection, it is certainly different between High
>German and Low German regions.
I'm not exactly sure what you're saying here. That the colloquial varies
by region?
M. Tandy
I'm having trouble translating the sentence below (w/o
umlauts, etc.); would someone like to help?
"Trotz der unterschiedlichen politischen und rechtlichen
Standpunkte liesen sich beide Seiten davon uberzeugen, dass es moglich
sein sollte, dieses humanitare Anliegen zu verwirklichen."
I'm not sure what sich lassen means here. Thanks in advance.
Michael
Hans Friedlaender
I would translate
"...liessen sich beide Seiten davon ueberzeugen,..."
into
"both sides could be convinced of..."
My offer for the whole sentence:
"Despite the/their different political and legal positions, both sides
could be convinced of the possibility of realizing this humanitarian
intention."
Discussion is welcome.
Regards, Hans
--
Hans Friedlaender friedlaen...@gmx.de
HansMan on IRC#rrr XL600V Transalp '93 57,3Mm
http://come.to/rrr70 http://www.rrr.de/bst
Stephan Lehmke
> Stephan Lehmke <Stephan...@cs.uni-dortmund.de> wrote:
>
> tivism. I would appreciate it if y'all could simply suspend your value
> judgements about how the language should be spoken for a moment and recall
> what people actually say.
I was talking about what people actually say.
> Some posters have managed to do that and I
> thank them for their contributions, but I'd appreciate hearing more. If
> there are speakers out there for whom *"Ich bin am Schreiben eines
> Briefes" *does* sound natural, then I'd like to know that.
Allright. I don't see how they would be stopped from that.
So you absolutely _don't_ want to hear from people for whom
it _doesn't_ sound natural (it might help you judge how _common_
it is).
>
>>Honestly, the "Verlaufsform" with an object ("Ich bin meine Zaehne am
>>putzen") is considered unusual and low-level ("schlechtes Deutsch"),
>>and outside of areas with extreme "Ruhrpott" dialect, any child
>>uttering such a phrase would immediately be corrected from all
>>directions.
>
> Obviously, not all posters agree with you. At least one was uncertain
> whether the form was nonstandard or not.
With "hereabouts" I meant the Ruhr area.
> (A Bonner friend of mine wasn't
> uncertain at all: I asked him about the sentence "Ich bin mein Buch am
> Suchen" and he said, "Das klingt wie ganz gewoehnliches Deutsch". Far
> from having a heavy Ruhrpott dialect, he speaks with a minimum of dia-
> lect-colouring.)
There's a very large difference between "Das klingt wie ganz
gewoehnliches Deutsch" and "what people actually say" if "people"
is to mean more than one per mil of the population.
For instance, for "Reichst Du mir bitte mal den Hammer 'rueber.", all
of the following are equivalent expressions which are "ganz
gewoehnliches Deutsch":
"Gib ma den Hammer."
"Gib mir mal den Hammer."
"Gib mich mal den Hammer."
"Gib ma den Hammer bei mich."
"Gib mal den Hammer rueber."
"Hasse ma den Hammer?"
"Ich brauch' den Hammer."
"Den Hammer her."
"Schmeiss mal den Hammer 'rueber."
"Ey, den Hammer."
But there are some which are not what I'd call "what people actually
say".
regards
Stephan
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
>> >> >> local forms of speech can be much greater than in the English-speaking
>> >> >> world
>> >> >
>> >> >I think that's just wrong.
>> >>
>> >> And you're entitled to your opinion. (Or, as we say in the local dialect
>> >> of the town I grew up in, "And you're entitled to your opinion".)
>> >
>> >In any case, both languages have those differences cross the
>> >understandability border.
>>
>> I never contested that. I simply contest that the gap is larger in the
>> English-speaking world. Maybe in some far-flung corners (like Jamaica and
>> Seth Effrica), but not in the USA or most of Britain.
>>
>
>completely unintelligible to mainstream english speakers (possibly
>intentionally).
You may be right. I think mainstream English speakers often intentionally
fail to understand AAVE speakers.
>For heaven's sake, we had a local college basketball
>player on TV recently, and he almost needed subtitles. This is a
>college student, and Albany is not exactly LA or NYC.
This is a *basketball player*. A great number of professional sports
figures can't say anything intelligible in any dialect.
Kai Henningsen
> Personally, I find descriptivism endlessly more interesting than prescrip-
> tivism. I would appreciate it if y'all could simply suspend your value
> judgements about how the language should be spoken for a moment and recall
> what people actually say. Some posters have managed to do that and I
> thank them for their contributions, but I'd appreciate hearing more. If
> there are speakers out there for whom *"Ich bin am Schreiben eines
> Briefes" *does* sound natural, then I'd like to know that.
But what people _think_ about how language _should_ be spoken is just as
descriptive as how they _do_ speak the language. And just as relevant to
understanding the language.
(Note that I say what _people_ think, not what some sort of printed
standard claims. The latter is, in this respect, only as relevant as the
people let it be. And, incidentally, the Duden is, to a large part,
descriptivist, not prescriptivist.)
> >Honestly, the "Verlaufsform" with an object ("Ich bin meine Zaehne am
> >putzen") is considered unusual and low-level ("schlechtes Deutsch"),
> >and outside of areas with extreme "Ruhrpott" dialect, any child
> >uttering such a phrase would immediately be corrected from all
> >directions.
>
> Obviously, not all posters agree with you. At least one was uncertain
> whether the form was nonstandard or not. (A Bonner friend of mine wasn't
> uncertain at all: I asked him about the sentence "Ich bin mein Buch am
> Suchen" and he said, "Das klingt wie ganz gewoehnliches Deutsch". Far
> from having a heavy Ruhrpott dialect, he speaks with a minimum of dia-
> lect-colouring.)
In der Tat, das klingt "gewöhnlich" - the same way you'd use "common" in
the pejorative sense. A usage that was far more common half a century ago.
When I hear "Ich bin mein Buch am Suchen", I sort of cringe mentally. I'd
only use it in jest. OTOH, if you use "bin am" at all, I'd say this is the
way to do it.
Kai Henningsen
> In article <7D1Ye...@khms.westfalen.de>,
> Kai Henningsen <kaih=7D1Ye...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
> >de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote on 15.03.99 in
> ><F8nIM...@midway.uchicago.edu>:
> >> Of course! When a German has a usage question, what does she do? She
> >> pulls her copy of _Gutes and richtiges Deutsch_ off the shelf and looks
> >> up
> >
> >Is that a real book?
>
> 'Tschuldigung: _Richtiges und gutes Deutsch_. 9. Band vom Duden in 12.
> Baenden.
>
> >In any case, the only reference I might consult is Duden: Rechtschreibung.
> >If it answers questions like the above, I've yet to find out.
>
> Generally not. This is where I turn to Band 9 oder Band 2 (_Stilwoerter-
> buch_).
Well, I've never looked at any other than "the" Duden (Rechtschreibung),
and I've not felt any need to, either.
> >> Hochdeutsch was once learned as a second language for the entire popula-
> >> tion that spoke it! No comparable situation existed in the English-
> >> speaking world.
> >
> >That's really irrelevant.
>
> Hardly. I think the history of Hochdeutsch as something one learnt
> primarily in school as opposed to something one spoke naturally very
> relevant when discussing attitudes toward it.
Well, I don't.
> >The important stuff is that, say, 100 years ago,
> >you could listen to someone and determine which class he was from.
> >Incidentally, the canonical text for this is, of course, "Pygmalion"
> >(probably better known as "My Fair Lady"), and it is _English_.
>
> Excactly--*not American*. You couldn't have done the same in the USA or
> Canada, where social mobility was always greater.
Excuse me, but _I_ was talking about German vs. English. Not about British
English vs. American English.
This is still a.u._german_, right?
> >> >> That's a judgement call. If her boyfriend uses it as a matter of
> >> >> course, why shouldn't she pick it up?
> >> >
> >> >Because she might use it with people who look down on it?
> >>
> >> Nu? And what, really, is the concrete negative impact of that?
> >
> >That should be obvious, no?
>
> I'm telling you, it's not. If people are really going to despise her be-
> cause of a colloquialism, then that only proves my point about German
> stuffiness vis-a-vis language. If their reactions aren't going to be ex-
> treme, then why worry about them?
Can it be that your world has only two colors, black and white?
Because otherwise, your last paragraph doesn't seem to make any sense.
Kai Henningsen
> I'm having trouble translating the sentence below (w/o
> umlauts, etc.); would someone like to help?
>
> "Trotz der unterschiedlichen politischen und rechtlichen
> Standpunkte liesen sich beide Seiten davon uberzeugen, dass es moglich
> sein sollte, dieses humanitare Anliegen zu verwirklichen."
>
> I'm not sure what sich lassen means here. Thanks in advance.
" ... both sides let themselves be convinced ..." is probably the most
literal (not necessarily the best) translation.
Kai Henningsen
> Clearly, most posters seem to define "schlechtes Deutsch" differently.
> I'm just not sure how differently.
I suspect for most Germans these days, "schlechtes Deutsch" closely
correlates to "gets you in trouble in school".
> But it's not the blunder of a learned linguist, rather of an educated
> speaker. My point is that if some speakers do not recognise this "dia-
> lectal feature" as dialectal, then the previous poster's contention that
> even small children consider it a regionalism and "bad German" is ex-
> aggerrated, to say the least.
I don't think one, or ten, or even ten thousend counter examples would
invalidate that claim.
We have how many people in Germany these days? Something like 80 millions?
Ten thousand would be one eigth of a percent - completely insignificant
for a claim like this.
Nathan_Fredette
says...
>
>m...@u.washington.edu (M. Tandy) wrote on 18.03.99 in
><Pine.A41.4.05.990318...@dante38.u.washington.edu>:
>
>> I'm having trouble translating the sentence below (w/o
>> umlauts, etc.); would someone like to help?
>>
>> "Trotz der unterschiedlichen politischen und rechtlichen
>> Standpunkte liesen sich beide Seiten davon uberzeugen, dass es moglich
>> sein sollte, dieses humanitare Anliegen zu verwirklichen."
>>
>> I'm not sure what sich lassen means here. Thanks in advance.
>
>" ... both sides let themselves be convinced ..." is probably the most
>literal (not necessarily the best) translation.
>
>Kai
Usually 'sich + infinitive lassen' is a frequent alternative to 'past
participle + werden koennen', so the english translation is usually 'can be
+ past-participle' or some other construction involving possibilty. Here is
one:
"In spite of the different political and legal viepoints it was possible to
convince both sides of it."
Nate
Oliver Gassner
Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
>Of course! When a German has a usage question, what does she do? She
>pulls her copy of _Gutes and richtiges Deutsch_ off the shelf and looks up
>the answer. But for English? No comparable reference exists.
Hm, I use 'Practical English Usage' by Swan which is done specially with
the foreigner in mind but might help a native, too.
At lest to German English teachers it is pointed out that they insist on
norms that nobody sticks to in the 'mother' county/ies of the
language(s) they teach ;)
OG
--
"it's times like this i wished i had listened to what my mother used to
tell me." "why? what did she say?" "i don't know. i didn't listen!"
[douglas adams, the hithch-hiker's guide to the galaxy]
Literatur am Draht --> http://www.carpe.com/lit/ Link me, I'm a Klick!
Oliver Gassner
Sieks) wrote:
> "Correct German" is, in my opinion,
>the language used by the newspapers and the TV.
a) Ever heard a 'Tagesschau'speaker use the Conditional for indirect
speech?
b) 5.- DM for each typo in a German newspaper and I'll retire NOW.
OG
--
Ich verstehe meine *Plonks* fuer Mailfaelscher als Einhaltung
der Netiquette. Falescher teilen mir mit, dass sie auf Mail-
antworten verzichten moechten. Dieser Bitte komme ich nach.
Rezensionen --> http://www.carpe.com/buch/
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Kai Henningsen <kaih=7DHxI...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote on 18.03.99 in <F8t8H...@midway.uchicago.edu>:
>
>> In article <7D1Ye...@khms.westfalen.de>,
>> Kai Henningsen <kaih=7D1Ye...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>> ><F8nIM...@midway.uchicago.edu>:
>>
>> 'Tschuldigung: _Richtiges und gutes Deutsch_. 9. Band vom Duden in 12.
>> Baenden.
>>
>> >In any case, the only reference I might consult is Duden: Rechtschreibung.
>> >If it answers questions like the above, I've yet to find out.
>>
>> Generally not. This is where I turn to Band 9 oder Band 2 (_Stilwoerter-
>> buch_).
>
>Well, I've never looked at any other than "the" Duden (Rechtschreibung),
>and I've not felt any need to, either.
That's great. Not every German-speaker grows up with such confidence in
their grammar.
>> >The important stuff is that, say, 100 years ago,
>> >you could listen to someone and determine which class he was from.
>> >Incidentally, the canonical text for this is, of course, "Pygmalion"
>> >(probably better known as "My Fair Lady"), and it is _English_.
>>
>> Excactly--*not American*. You couldn't have done the same in the USA or
>> Canada, where social mobility was always greater.
>
>Excuse me, but _I_ was talking about German vs. English. Not about British
>English vs. American English.
You didn't specify, so I assumed you were generalising about both British
*and* American English--just as when someone says "German", I assume they
mean both German German and Austrian German unless they say otherwise.
>This is still a.u._german_, right?
If you think this is an inappropriate forum for this discussion, I'm glad
to take it to another newsgroup or to e-mail.
>> >> >Because she might use it with people who look down on it?
>> >>
>> >> Nu? And what, really, is the concrete negative impact of that?
>> >
>> >That should be obvious, no?
>>
>> I'm telling you, it's not. If people are really going to despise her be-
>> cause of a colloquialism, then that only proves my point about German
>> stuffiness vis-a-vis language. If their reactions aren't going to be ex-
>> treme, then why worry about them?
>
>Can it be that your world has only two colors, black and white?
>
>Because otherwise, your last paragraph doesn't seem to make any sense.
Nonsense. You say there is concrete, negative impact to being despised by
other German-speakers for one's usage. I'd like to know what it is.
Would she be refused service? Dinner invitations? Street directions?
If such is not the case, then I don't consider there to be a strong argu-
ment against using colloquialisms freely. If the consequences are this
extreme and worse, then it undermines your comparisons to the situation
in English-speaking countries, where I wouldn't expect such reactions
based on usage alone. Those are two independent points and I think it
possible that a properly nuanced response could prove or disprove them
both. But I doubt it, which is why I phrased the question the way I did.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Oliver Gassner <oliver-...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 15 Mar 1999 19:39:39 GMT, de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward
>Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
>
>>Of course! When a German has a usage question, what does she do? She
>up
>>the answer. But for English? No comparable reference exists.
>
>Hm, I use 'Practical English Usage' by Swan which is done specially with
>the foreigner in mind but might help a native, too.
Never heard of it. Who is the publisher?
>At lest to German English teachers it is pointed out that they insist on
>norms that nobody sticks to in the 'mother' county/ies of the
>language(s) they teach ;)=20
Of course that happens here as well. An old joke:
St. Peter hears a knock on the Pearly Gates.
"Who's there?" he asks.
"It is I!" comes the response.
"Go to hell!" he shouts. "We already have enough English teachers up
here!"
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Kai Henningsen <kaih=7DHxJ...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote on 18.03.99 in <F8tE8...@midway.uchicago.edu>:
>
>> Clearly, most posters seem to define "schlechtes Deutsch" differently.
>> I'm just not sure how differently.
>
>I suspect for most Germans these days, "schlechtes Deutsch" closely
>correlates to "gets you in trouble in school".
>
>> But it's not the blunder of a learned linguist, rather of an educated
>> speaker. My point is that if some speakers do not recognise this "dia-
>> lectal feature" as dialectal, then the previous poster's contention that
>> even small children consider it a regionalism and "bad German" is ex-
>> aggerrated, to say the least.
>
>I don't think one, or ten, or even ten thousend counter examples would
>invalidate that claim.
Not true. He made an absolute generalisation: _Everyone_ would consider
x to have quality B. It only takes a single counterexample to invalidate
that sort of claim. That's elementary logic.
>We have how many people in Germany these days? Something like 80 millions?
>Ten thousand would be one eigth of a percent - completely insignificant
>for a claim like this.
If you don't recognise the validity of statistical sampling, then surely.
George F. Hardy
Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
>Of course! When a German has a usage question, what does she do?
>He pulls his copy of _Gutes and richtiges Deutsch_ off the shelf
>and looks up the answer. But for English?
Try Meriam Webster's "English Usage". Or Strunk and White "The
Elements of Style".
GFH
Oliver Gassner
Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
>>Hm, I use 'Practical English Usage' by Swan which is done specially with
>>the foreigner in mind but might help a native, too.
>
>Never heard of it. Who is the publisher?
Oxford University Press, it is designd for learners of english as a SL.
>Of course that happens here as well. An old joke:
>
>St. Peter hears a knock on the Pearly Gates.
>"Who's there?" he asks.
>"It is I!" comes the response.
>"Go to hell!" he shouts. "We already have enough English teachers up
> here!"
See? Wehn I told my pupils that 'it is me' is 'wrong(ish)' they told me
the other teacher told them it was correct.
I just checked. Swan says: 'me' after be is informal here, 'I' formal.
So... ;)
Best thing in Swan is the fozr-letter-words listing with the rating from
* to ***** ;))
OG
--
Aus der Signatur-Serie: Wunschprogramm fuer Dr. Dagmar L.:
What do the Enterprise and toilet paper have in common?
ROT13: Gurl obgu pvepyr nebhaq Henahf naq pbyyrpg yvggyr Xyvatbaf.
Rezensionen --> http://www.carpe.com/buch/
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
George F. Hardy <geo...@mail.rlc.net> wrote:
>On Mon, 15 Mar 1999 19:39:39 GMT, de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward
>Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
>
>>Of course! When a German has a usage question, what does she do?
>>He pulls his copy of _Gutes and richtiges Deutsch_ off the shelf
>>and looks up the answer. But for English?
>
>Try Meriam Webster's "English Usage". Or Strunk and White "The
>Elements of Style".
Once again, my point somehow got lost. This is what happens when they
stop teaching rhetoric in school.
When I *personally* have English usage questions, I generally turn to
Merriam-Webster. But not everyone does--for starters, their focus is on
American English, not Canadian, British, Irish, Australian, etc.--and I
could hardly settle an English usage argument by saying, "Merriam-Webster
says X". It's a very different situation in Germany where--please, some-
one correct me if I'm wrong--there is an official national standard codi-
fied in a text issued either by Duden or Bertelsman and this standard,
with a few accommodations to local usage, is overwhelmingly accepted in
Austria, Switzerland, etc. as well.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <36fcac37...@news.pf.bawue.de>,
Oliver Gassner <oliver-...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 22 Mar 1999 23:12:36 GMT, de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward
>Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
>>
>>St. Peter hears a knock on the Pearly Gates.
>>"Who's there?" he asks.
>>"It is I!" comes the response.
>>"Go to hell!" he shouts. "We already have enough English teachers up
>> here!"
>
>See? Wehn I told my pupils that 'it is me' is 'wrong(ish)' they told me
>the other teacher told them it was correct.
>
>I just checked. Swan says: 'me' after be is informal here, 'I' formal.
>So... ;)
So? I'm afraid that's a little too general to be of much use. Merriam-
Webster (3rd ed., 1996) says:
"Even literate speakers of Modern English have found the rule difficult to
conform to, but the stigmatization of 'It is me' is by now so deeply
lodged among the canons of correctness that there is little likelihood
that the construction will ever be entirely acceptable in formal writing.
Adherence to the traditional rule in informal speech, however, has come to
sound increasingly pedantic, and begins to sound absurd when the verb is
contracted, as in 'It's we'."
This gives one a sense of the actual situation: "It is I" sounds stilted
in all but the most formal writing. (Let alone "It is we". That's my ace
in the hole when I encountre someone who insists on the traditional rule.
So far, I haven't found someone who will admit to saying it naturally.)
>Best thing in Swan is the fozr-letter-words listing with the rating from
>* to ***** ;))
IIRC, the useful "Merde!" series of books (_Merde!_, _Merde encore!_,
_!Mierda!_, _Scheisse!_, _Merda!_) uses a similar though less finely-
grained system. (Despite the name, they do a good job of presenting not
just slang but colloquial usage.)
Oliver Sieks
oliver-...@bigfoot.de (Oliver Gassner) writes:
> On 16 Mar 1999 11:39:51 +0100, si...@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de (Oliver
> Sieks) wrote:
>
> > "Correct German" is, in my opinion,
> >the language used by the newspapers and the TV.
>
> a) Ever heard a 'Tagesschau'speaker use the Conditional for indirect
> speech?
No, but I've already really carefully chosen forms like
"gedenken". Unfortunately followed by dativ.
> b) 5.- DM for each typo in a German newspaper and I'll retire NOW.
>
Okay ;)
No, but change "correct"->"standard", please. I mean a German free
from regionally or socially specific jargon. And I'm the first to
admit that the news don't use "good" German, neither in grammar nor in
orthography and surely not in style. (Didn't I write something like
that? I don't remember any more...)
Viele Grüße!
Oliver
Oliver Sieks
oliver-...@bigfoot.de (Oliver Gassner) writes:
> On 16 Mar 1999 11:39:51 +0100, si...@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de (Oliver
> Sieks) wrote:
>
> > "Correct German" is, in my opinion,
> >the language used by the newspapers and the TV.
>
> a) Ever heard a 'Tagesschau'speaker use the Conditional for indirect
> speech?
No, but I've already heard[1] really carefully chosen forms like
"gedenken". Unfortunately followed by dativ.
> b) 5.- DM for each typo in a German newspaper and I'll retire NOW.
>
Okay ;)
No, but change "correct"->"standard", please. I mean a German free
from regionally or socially specific jargon. And I'm the first to
admit that the news don't use "good" German, neither in grammar nor in
orthography and surely not in style. (Didn't I write something like
that? I don't remember any more...)
Viele Grüße!
Oliver
[1] This "heard" was missing in my original post, changing the meaning
of the sentence quite a bit...
Kai Henningsen
> In article <7DHxI...@khms.westfalen.de>,
> Kai Henningsen <kaih=7DHxI...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
> >de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote on 18.03.99 in
> ><F8t8H...@midway.uchicago.edu>:
> >> In article <7D1Ye...@khms.westfalen.de>,
> >> Kai Henningsen <kaih=7D1Ye...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
> >> >de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote on 15.03.99
> >> >in <F8nIM...@midway.uchicago.edu>:
> >> >The important stuff is that, say, 100 years ago,
> >> >you could listen to someone and determine which class he was from.
> >> >Incidentally, the canonical text for this is, of course, "Pygmalion"
> >> >(probably better known as "My Fair Lady"), and it is _English_.
> >>
> >> Excactly--*not American*. You couldn't have done the same in the USA or
> >> Canada, where social mobility was always greater.
> >
> >Excuse me, but _I_ was talking about German vs. English. Not about British
> >English vs. American English.
>
> You didn't specify, so I assumed you were generalising about both British
> *and* American English--just as when someone says "German", I assume they
> mean both German German and Austrian German unless they say otherwise.
I don't know about you, but when *I* speak about German vs. English, I
mean all of German, together, vs. all of English, together. Not "pick some
subset of each".
To answer a claim about large differences in English by saying "but there
are no large differences in <subset of English>" doesn't make any sense to
me. I completely fail to understand the logic behind such an argument.
> >This is still a.u._german_, right?
>
> If you think this is an inappropriate forum for this discussion, I'm glad
> to take it to another newsgroup or to e-mail.
Well, if you're twisting it into an English A vs. English B discussion,
you can take it wherever you want, but leave me out of it.
> >> >> >Because she might use it with people who look down on it?
> >> >>
> >> >> Nu? And what, really, is the concrete negative impact of that?
> >> >
> >> >That should be obvious, no?
> >>
> >> I'm telling you, it's not. If people are really going to despise her be-
> >> cause of a colloquialism, then that only proves my point about German
> >> stuffiness vis-a-vis language. If their reactions aren't going to be ex-
> >> treme, then why worry about them?
> >
> >Can it be that your world has only two colors, black and white?
> >
> >Because otherwise, your last paragraph doesn't seem to make any sense.
>
> Nonsense. You say there is concrete, negative impact to being despised by
> other German-speakers for one's usage. I'd like to know what it is.
That depends on the situation and persons involved, of course.
> Would she be refused service?
Unlikely.
>Dinner invitations? Street directions?
Possible. First *probably* more likely than second. As I said, it depends
on the persons involved and the situation.
I'd also list things like "fail to make friends".
Of course, it depends on *how much* such language quirks one uses.
> If the consequences are this
> extreme
Extreme?
> and worse, then it undermines your comparisons to the situation
> in English-speaking countries, where I wouldn't expect such reactions
> based on usage alone.
That surely depends, again, on the persons and situations.
Of course, in *some* English-speaking countries, it's rather more likely
to get far worse effects from even subtler things - stuff like skin color.
Not that that's impossible over here, but - IMHO - far less likely.
Some people are quicker than others to take offense, and it doesn't
necessarily take much.
Kai Henningsen
> In article <36f70...@news.rlc.net>,
> George F. Hardy <geo...@mail.rlc.net> wrote:
> >On Mon, 15 Mar 1999 19:39:39 GMT, de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward
> >Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
> >
> >>Of course! When a German has a usage question, what does she do?
> >>He pulls his copy of _Gutes and richtiges Deutsch_ off the shelf
> >>and looks up the answer. But for English?
> >
> >Try Meriam Webster's "English Usage". Or Strunk and White "The
> >Elements of Style".
>
> Once again, my point somehow got lost. This is what happens when they
> stop teaching rhetoric in school.
Obviously, you also lost mine.
> When I *personally* have English usage questions, I generally turn to
> Merriam-Webster. But not everyone does--for starters, their focus is on
> American English, not Canadian, British, Irish, Australian, etc.--and I
> could hardly settle an English usage argument by saying, "Merriam-Webster
> says X". It's a very different situation in Germany where--please, some-
> one correct me if I'm wrong--there is an official national standard codi-
> fied in a text issued either by Duden or Bertelsman and this standard,
> with a few accommodations to local usage, is overwhelmingly accepted in
> Austria, Switzerland, etc. as well.
The situation is *not* "very different" in German.
The only Duden that gets a lot of usage - and this is extreme enough that
even advertising assumes that people haven't even heard of the others - is
the one about Rechtschreibung (orthography). It has rudimentary Grammar,
but *no* style; the style Duden is a very obscure publication.
Plus, the Duden doesn't codify any national standard. It's descriptive,
not prescriptive. Since the "Rechtschreibreform", it *lists* the official
document; but again, this is not at all about style.
Of course, calling it a "national" standard is wrong - Germany, Austria,
and Switzerland together decided on the "Rechtschreibreform".
The Duden (that is, the orthography one - it's the only one most people
know) is used to arbitrate *orthography* and sometimes (far less) grammar,
and that's all. Even if you thought otherwise, you'd fast learn that the
actual word definitions aren't very good, and there simply is no style
advice, except for a few rules about typewriter usage - which is quite a
different version of style than used above.
Germans in general don't use style guidelines. Some professions do, of
course.
Kai Henningsen
> In article <7DHxJ...@khms.westfalen.de>,
> Kai Henningsen <kaih=7DHxJ...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
> >I don't think one, or ten, or even ten thousend counter examples would
> >invalidate that claim.
>
> Not true. He made an absolute generalisation: _Everyone_ would consider
> x to have quality B. It only takes a single counterexample to invalidate
> that sort of claim. That's elementary logic.
Where did he do that? I neither remember it, nor could I find it in the
thread.
There's one claim about average Germans, one about how every Child would
be corrected, and one about something that should be allowed colloquially
for everyone but isn't really.
> >We have how many people in Germany these days? Something like 80 millions?
> >Ten thousand would be one eigth of a percent - completely insignificant
> >for a claim like this.
>
> If you don't recognise the validity of statistical sampling, then surely.
I do recognize the value of *correct* statistical sampling. I happen to
know that it's *really* hard to do, and I suspect nobody in this thread is
up to actually taking an unbiased sample about things like this.
Of course, nobody has even tried to present numbers even remotely like
that.
Kai Henningsen
> b) 5.- DM for each typo in a German newspaper and I'll retire NOW.
DM 0,05 would probably suffice.
Watt iz a speal djeckur?
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Kai Henningsen <kaih=7DSfW$I1...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote on 22.03.99 in <F90qz...@midway.uchicago.edu>:
>
>> In article <7DHxI...@khms.westfalen.de>,
>> Kai Henningsen <kaih=7DHxI...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>> >de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote on 18.03.99 in
>> ><F8t8H...@midway.uchicago.edu>:
>> >> In article <7D1Ye...@khms.westfalen.de>,
>> >> Kai Henningsen <kaih=7D1Ye...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>> >> >de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote on 15.03.99
>> >> >in <F8nIM...@midway.uchicago.edu>:
>
>> >> >The important stuff is that, say, 100 years ago,
>> >> >you could listen to someone and determine which class he was from.
>> >> >Incidentally, the canonical text for this is, of course, "Pygmalion"
>> >> >(probably better known as "My Fair Lady"), and it is _English_.
>> >>
>> >> Excactly--*not American*. You couldn't have done the same in the USA or
>> >> Canada, where social mobility was always greater.
>> >
>> >Excuse me, but _I_ was talking about German vs. English. Not about British
>> >English vs. American English.
>>
>> You didn't specify, so I assumed you were generalising about both British
>> *and* American English--just as when someone says "German", I assume they
>> mean both German German and Austrian German unless they say otherwise.
>
>I don't know about you, but when *I* speak about German vs. English, I
>mean all of German, together, vs. all of English, together. Not "pick some
>subset of each".
But you did, insofar as you produced evidence that was germane only to a
small subset of English.
>To answer a claim about large differences in English by saying "but there
>are no large differences in <subset of English>" doesn't make any sense to
>me. I completely fail to understand the logic behind such an argument.
What is the claim? That, on average, a German-speaker's native dialect is
more divergent from the standard language than an English-speaker's native
dialect. The average native German-speaker is a German, but the average
English-speaker is a North American. Therefore, it makes the most sense
to compare the situation on the ground in Germany to that in the USA,
*not* Britain.
A similar mistake, in the opposite direction, would be to contrast the
sociolinguistic situation in Ontario to that in Austria.
>> >This is still a.u._german_, right?
>>
>> If you think this is an inappropriate forum for this discussion, I'm glad
>> to take it to another newsgroup or to e-mail.
>
>Well, if you're twisting it into an English A vs. English B discussion,
>you can take it wherever you want, but leave me out of it.
Standard German is a far more unitary language than Standard English. All
I'm doing is pointing that out.
>> Nonsense. You say there is concrete, negative impact to being despised by
>> other German-speakers for one's usage. I'd like to know what it is.
>
>That depends on the situation and persons involved, of course.
>
>> Would she be refused service?
>
>Unlikely.
>
>>Dinner invitations? Street directions?
>
>Possible. First *probably* more likely than second. As I said, it depends
>on the persons involved and the situation.
>
>I'd also list things like "fail to make friends".
Those were just a few random examples. So you think using colloquialisms
would significantly affect a German-learner's ability to make friends a-
mong native German-speakers?
>Of course, it depends on *how much* such language quirks one uses.
>
>> If the consequences are this
>> extreme
>
>Extreme?
I'd say refusing to get to know someone merely on the basis of their gram-
mar and usage is a rather extreme reaction, wouldn't you?
>> and worse, then it undermines your comparisons to the situation
>> in English-speaking countries, where I wouldn't expect such reactions
>> based on usage alone.
>
>That surely depends, again, on the persons and situations.
>
>Of course, in *some* English-speaking countries, it's rather more likely
>to get far worse effects from even subtler things - stuff like skin color.
>Not that that's impossible over here, but - IMHO - far less likely.
That I must firmly disagree with. Most of my North American non-Caucasian
friends were shocked by the reactions they got in the German-speaking
countries. The Austrians and the Swiss tended to be worse in this regard
than the Germans, but none of these nationalities was particularly exem-
plary.
I would also refer you to the recent EU surveys of prejudice in member
countries. Again, Germany scored higher than many others, but they still
showed less tolerance of minorities than Americans or, notably, Canadians.
>Some people are quicker than others to take offense, and it doesn't
>necessarily take much.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Kai Henningsen <kaih=7DSfW...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote on 23.03.99 in <F91zq...@midway.uchicago.edu>:
>
>> In article <36f70...@news.rlc.net>,
>> George F. Hardy <geo...@mail.rlc.net> wrote:
>> >On Mon, 15 Mar 1999 19:39:39 GMT, de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward
>> >Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
>> >
>> >>Of course! When a German has a usage question, what does she do?
>> >>He pulls his copy of _Gutes and richtiges Deutsch_ off the shelf
>> >>and looks up the answer. But for English?
>> >
>> >Try Meriam Webster's "English Usage". Or Strunk and White "The
>> >Elements of Style".
>>
>> Once again, my point somehow got lost. This is what happens when they
>> stop teaching rhetoric in school.
>
>Obviously, you also lost mine.
With all due respect, I think I simply disagreed with it.
>> When I *personally* have English usage questions, I generally turn to
>> Merriam-Webster. But not everyone does--for starters, their focus is on
>> American English, not Canadian, British, Irish, Australian, etc.--and I
>> could hardly settle an English usage argument by saying, "Merriam-Webster
>> says X". It's a very different situation in Germany where--please, some-
>> one correct me if I'm wrong--there is an official national standard codi-
>> fied in a text issued either by Duden or Bertelsman and this standard,
>> with a few accommodations to local usage, is overwhelmingly accepted in
>> Austria, Switzerland, etc. as well.
>
>The situation is *not* "very different" in German.
The USA has no official spelling. It doesn't even have an official lan-
guage. This is a very different situation.
>The only Duden that gets a lot of usage - and this is extreme enough that
>even advertising assumes that people haven't even heard of the others - is
>the one about Rechtschreibung (orthography). It has rudimentary Grammar,
>but *no* style; the style Duden is a very obscure publication.
>
>Plus, the Duden doesn't codify any national standard. It's descriptive,
>not prescriptive. Since the "Rechtschreibreform", it *lists* the official
>document; but again, this is not at all about style.
>
>Of course, calling it a "national" standard is wrong - Germany, Austria,
>and Switzerland together decided on the "Rechtschreibreform".
I stand corrected, then.
>The Duden (that is, the orthography one - it's the only one most people
>know) is used to arbitrate *orthography* and sometimes (far less) grammar,
>and that's all. Even if you thought otherwise, you'd fast learn that the
>actual word definitions aren't very good, and there simply is no style
>advice, except for a few rules about typewriter usage - which is quite a
>different version of style than used above.
>
>Germans in general don't use style guidelines. Some professions do, of
>course.
What, then, is the basis for the grammar taught in schools?
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Kai Henningsen <kaih=7DSfX...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote on 22.03.99 in <F90rC...@midway.uchicago.edu>:
>
>> In article <7DHxJ...@khms.westfalen.de>,
>> Kai Henningsen <kaih=7DHxJ...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>
>> >I don't think one, or ten, or even ten thousend counter examples would
>> >invalidate that claim.
>>
>> Not true. He made an absolute generalisation: _Everyone_ would consider
>> x to have quality B. It only takes a single counterexample to invalidate
>> that sort of claim. That's elementary logic.
>
>Where did he do that? I neither remember it, nor could I find it in the
>thread.
>>Honestly, the "Verlaufsform" with an object ("Ich bin meine Zaehne am
>>putzen") is considered unusual and low-level ("schlechtes Deutsch"),
>>and outside of areas with extreme "Ruhrpott" dialect, any child
>>uttering such a phrase would immediately be corrected from all
>>directions.
x (the Verlaufsform) is considered to have quality B ("schlechtes
Deutsch"). He doesn't say "everyone", but I think that's a proper re-
phrasing of the passive, don't you? Or who do you think the implied sub-
ject is?
All it takes is one person who doesn't consider the Verlaufsform
"schlechtes Deutsch" to invalidate this claim. And we found at least two.
>> >We have how many people in Germany these days? Something like 80 millions?
>> >Ten thousand would be one eigth of a percent - completely insignificant
>> >for a claim like this.
>>
>> If you don't recognise the validity of statistical sampling, then surely.
>
>I do recognize the value of *correct* statistical sampling. I happen to
>know that it's *really* hard to do, and I suspect nobody in this thread is
>up to actually taking an unbiased sample about things like this.
>Of course, nobody has even tried to present numbers even remotely like
>that.
Agreed. Fortunately, no one has yet made any claims that require statis-
tical sampling to prove or disprove them.
George F. Hardy
>The USA has no official spelling.
And German does? Is German spelled the same way in Switzerland,
Austria and Germany? True, French does. Is that why French is
falling so rapidly from favor?
Sir, you have an agenda, and it is not intellectual honesty.
GFH
George F. Hardy
>
Oh, my gosh. Style is not grammar. And, on what basis is
grammar taught in the USA? I assume you will calim it is not.
A fair comment. But, attempts are made, and not on the basis
of some government decree.
Spelling is not regulated either. "Anyone who can think of
only one way of spelling a word has a severely limited imgaination."
Fits?
GFH
Oliver Gassner
Henningsen) wrote:
>oliver-...@bigfoot.de (Oliver Gassner) wrote on 22.03.99 in <37055a71...@news.belwue.de>:
>
>> b) 5.- DM for each typo in a German newspaper and I'll retire NOW.
>
>DM 0,05 would probably suffice.
Riht, but I want it to be quick and painless.
>Watt iz a speal djeckur?
Ask journalists about spell checkers ;)) (I did...)
OG
--
> "Das brachte mich dazu, nachzudenken, was ich falsch mache,
> wenn ich mit Klonen von mir Probleme haette und habe ein
> paar Sachen in meinem Leben geaendert :-)" - Wau Holland in dang
Oliver Gassner
Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
>[Follow-ups to alt.usage.english]
>
>In article <36fcac37...@news.pf.bawue.de>,
>Oliver Gassner <oliver-...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>>I just checked. Swan says: 'me' after be is informal here, 'I' formal.
>>So... ;)
>
>So? I'm afraid that's a little too general to be of much use. Merriam-
>Webster (3rd ed., 1996) says:
I was just summarizing what he devotes 2 pages to.
remember: foreigner learning English... different aim...
>conform to, but the stigmatization of 'It is me' is by now so deeply
>lodged among the canons of correctness that there is little likelihood
>that the construction will ever be entirely acceptable in formal writing.
That is a complicated way to say 'it is considered informal'. Right? (I
usually say that a styl like the one in the quote calls for a weapon's
licence (? is that the term).
>This gives one a sense of the actual situation: "It is I" sounds stilted
>in all but the most formal writing. (Let alone "It is we". That's my ace
Hm, in a similar German expression the Verb would have to be in
plural... (Wer ist da? -> Wir sind's./Wir sind es.)
>IIRC, the useful "Merde!" series of books (_Merde!_, _Merde encore!_,
>_!Mierda!_, _Scheisse!_, _Merda!_) uses a similar though less finely-
>grained system. (Despite the name, they do a good job of presenting not
>just slang but colloquial usage.)
I'll look out for them ;) I am sure the German one is good for a laugh
;))
pvryn
themselves be convinced that it should be possible to bring this
humanitarian orientation to fruition.
On Thu, 18 Mar 1999 16:08:15 -0800 "M. Tandy" <m...@u.washington.edu>
wrote:
>
> I'm having trouble translating the sentence below (w/o
> umlauts, etc.); would someone like to help?
>
> "Trotz der unterschiedlichen politischen und rechtlichen
> Standpunkte liesen sich beide Seiten davon uberzeugen, dass es moglich
> sein sollte, dieses humanitare Anliegen zu verwirklichen."
>
> I'm not sure what sich lassen means here. Thanks in advance.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
--
Posted via Talkway - http://www.talkway.com
Surf Usenet at home, on the road, and by email -- always at Talkway.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Oliver Gassner <oliver-...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 24 Mar 1999 04:28:46 GMT, de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward
>Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
>
>>[Follow-ups to alt.usage.english]
Or not...
>>In article <36fcac37...@news.pf.bawue.de>,
>>Oliver Gassner <oliver-...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>
>>>I just checked. Swan says: 'me' after be is informal here, 'I' formal.
>>>So... ;)
>>
>>So? I'm afraid that's a little too general to be of much use. Merriam-
>>Webster (3rd ed., 1996) says:
>
>I was just summarizing what he devotes 2 pages to.
My mistake!
>remember: foreigner learning English... different aim...
Right, right...
>>conform to, but the stigmatization of 'It is me' is by now so deeply
>>lodged among the canons of correctness that there is little likelihood
>>that the construction will ever be entirely acceptable in formal =
>writing.
>
>That is a complicated way to say 'it is considered informal'. Right?
Yeah, but it sounds good!
>(I usually say that a styl like the one in the quote calls for a weapon's
>licence (? is that the term).
Meinst du 'Waffenschein'? I don't think we have an equivalent expression.
"poetic licence" (dichterische Freiheit) opens itself up to some similar
plays on words (i.e. "He should have his poetic licence revoked!"), but
it's not really applicable here.
>>This gives one a sense of the actual situation: "It is I" sounds =
>stilted
>>in all but the most formal writing. (Let alone "It is we". That's my =
>ace
>
>Hm, in a similar German expression the Verb would have to be in
>plural... (Wer ist da? -> Wir sind's./Wir sind es.)
The general rule in English is that the copula agrees with the word that
comes first. Thus, "It's us!" but "We're it!" Of course, English lacks
the some of the syntactic freedom of German and these sentences aren't
equivalent. The latter is usually closer to "It's only us", e.g.
"Isn't anyone else coming?"
"Nope, we're it!"
[snip]
This points to a fundamental difference in the way English and German
speakers view the "dummy subject" it/es. It seems to be a little less
dumb in English.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
>
>>The USA has no official spelling.
>
>And German does?
Did you happen read the same post from Kai Henningsen that I did?
>Is German spelled the same way in Switzerland,
>Austria and Germany? True, French does. Is that why French is
>falling so rapidly from favor?
>
>Sir, you have an agenda, and it is not intellectual honesty.
That's a serious charge and I expect to see you substantiate it.
Oliver Gassner
Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
>>Germans in general don't use style guidelines. Some professions do, of
>>course.
>
>What, then, is the basis for the grammar taught in schools?
Descriptive grammars. Nowadays. Used to be prescriptive grammars.
And the education of the teachers. ;)
OG
--
** Mailadressen, die einen der untenstehenden Begriffe enthalten, werden
** von mir, weil ich keine Lust habe, Header zu lesen, beim Newslesen
** ausgefiltert: nospam* - delete* - dummy* - spam* - *.deX -
Oliver Gassner
Henningsen) wrote:
>Of course, calling it a "national" standard is wrong - Germany, Austria,
>and Switzerland together decided on the "Rechtschreibreform".
Plus repersentatives of other states/regions where German is spoken. ;)
(I guess you'll be ablte to get a list on the web...)
Michael Pronay
<3709d798...@news.pf.bawue.de>...
On 24 Mar 1999 19:32:00 +0200, kaih=7DSfW...@khms.westfalen.de
(Kai Henningsen) wrote:
>Of course, calling it a "national" standard is wrong - Germany,
Austria,
>and Switzerland together decided on the "Rechtschreibreform".
Plus repersentatives of other states/regions where German is spoken.
;)
(I guess you'll be ablte to get a list on the web...)
Here it is. First, at the time, of course, there were two German
states besides Austria and Switzerland agreeing on the reform.
The other countries/regions involved were: Belgium, France/Alsace,
Italy/Alto Adige, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Romania, and Hungary.
HTH,
Michael