2mo ago

W H Y

Language Learning @sopuli.xyz

Lazycog @sopuli.xyz

2mo ago

W H Y

35 comments

And let's not get started about the term "Handy".
Being offered a cheap Handy was very disappointing.
Of course you realize that English is a Germanic language? Therefore it is you who have strayed from the proper words. 😉
- German is not the same as Germanic. Both German and English evolved from a common ancestor, which we call Proto-Germanic.
  'Who' and 'Where' are '*hwaz' and '*hwar' in Proto-Germanic.
  I would say that in this case German strayed more than English.
  
  Wat?
- We added a bunch of French. It's not a romance language by any stretch but it's kind of a Francish one. Francish being a Celtic word, because we added a bunch of those too.
  
  And lots of straight up Latin, yeah.
Don't worry, it's the other way around for Germans learning English.
I had this problem learning Norwegian.
"And" is "og"
"Or" is "eller"
Everytime I see "og" in a Norwegian sentence, I immediately want to translate as "or." It keeps tripping me up! "Eller" feels like too many letters to be "or," so I keep translating it as "and" instead.
- You would also get the same problem as the op in Norweigan.
  Hvor = Where
  Hvem = Who
  (Hvorfor = Why / Wherefore)
  English is the odd one out here, it seems. (Also why I would rather be learning German from Norwegian than English, but oh well.)
W A R U M ?
It's actually really easy to remember when considering the Proto-West Germanic etymology, one comes from *hwār, the othe from *hwaʀ. Just apply regular sound changes to find the modern form!
Just remember that whomst = wemst and it'll all make sense.
- Wem wemst du was? Ich wem dir gleich eine!
"Push" sounds exactly the same as the word for "Pull" in Portuguese (Puxe)
Und dann es gibt wann und wenn.
I'm a native French speaker that learned English in school, and we had to get used to words spelt the same but with a different pronunciation and sometimes a slightly different meaning.
Don't worry, you'll probably get used to it.
Isn't English partially based on German
- English shares a common Germanic ancestor with German. German and English are sisters.
Just memorize and then internalize the lyrics to "Wo Bist Du" by Rammstein and then never get confused again!
Trust me, pretty much everything about German is easier than English (I'm a native English speaker who learned German). The only difficult thing is learning all the verb cases.
- Not the genus of nouns? It makes so little sense I couldn't explain it to anyone.
  Edit: That's why we argue whether it is der, die or das Nutella. When of course it is obviously die Nutella.
  
  Compromise:
  "nuschel gibs'ma'Nutella?"
  
  Well yes, that too.. They are petty intertwined.
  It's been a long while though - I was fluent by the end of 2003 (except for those things, but I got by), but if let it slip a lot since then
And then you listen to the Frysian song "Wer Bisto" by Dutch Frysian duo Twarres, where "wer" means "where".

35 comments