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Do German speakers even care if you use the wrong article? I mean it's blindingly obvious you still mean the word 'the'.
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Dec 30, 2013 07:33
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Do German speakers even care if you use the wrong article? I mean it's blindingly obvious you still mean the word 'the'. I don't care if a non native speaker mixes the articles up. It sounds really weird though.
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Dec 30, 2013 07:36
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Do German speakers even care ifyou use the wrong article? I mean it's blindingly obvious you still mean the word 'the'.. If you are sufficiently drunk you can slur it to the point where they don't really mind. But they do hear it. Think about the Japanese and Chinese speakers you know. Even the really fluent ones still gently caress up the <no article>, "a", "the" thing. You totally 100% understand what they are saying but it sounds very "not right"
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Dec 30, 2013 07:46
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Flightradar24.com has live plane positions on a Google Map, pretty cool. Eurasia at 8:30 UTC:
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Dec 30, 2013 09:34
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First of all, is there a general language / language history discussion thread?VitalSigns posted:Nah, the second that Dutch people got away from it all and landed in Africa we immediately started dispensing with gender, irregular (strong) verbs, complicated spellings, and all that nonsense, so it's pretty obvious that the Dutch don't like gender either but they keep it around just to irritate foreigners. Carbon dioxide: confirm/deny? Let me just describe the situation in Dutch. We have three genders, masculine, feminine and neutral. However, we only have two definite articles, de and het. De is used for masculine, feminine and plural words, while het is used for neutral words. All diminutives (often ending on -je) are neutral. Like in German, we have the word 'meisje', which means (little) girl but is often used for girls in general. It's a diminutive so it gets 'het'. Its root is the word 'meid', which is a big girl. Meid is a feminine word and gets 'de'. So that at least clears up why 'meisje' is a neutral word. While the difference between masculine and feminine words doesn't matter for the articles, it does matter when referring to them. A masculine word gets 'he', a feminine word gets 'she' and a neutral word gets 'it', unless you're talking about something with an actual gender like a cat or a girl. However, in this case we very often default to 'he' for any word gender. 'He' sounds neutral (not the gender, just... neutral), while 'she' in certain cases sounds like you're specifically giving the object female characteristics. I just looked up a bunch of common words in the dictionary, and all feminine ones I could think of had 'f(m)' as gender. That means it's officially/originally feminine, but using them as a masculine word is fine. So, the masculine/feminine thing exists but is not that important in practice and most people won't even hear if you get that 'wrong', as long as you default to 'he'. Good thing is that in speech 'he' is even accepted for neutral words. The difference between de and het (and die and dat, which mean 'that' as in 'that book') are still big, though. Getting it wrong sounds weird to us, and the erroneous 'de meisje' is actually associated with the way Arab immigrants speak Dutch. It's even used to make fun of them. Now, I've read an article by a linguist who said that languages evolve, and in the future, we will completely get rid of 'het', leaving only the article 'de', and immigrants are starting that future. Of course, language does evolve but it's hard to predict in which direction. Many Dutch people seem to have a kneejerk reaction saying that using 'de' instead of 'het' sounds weird and the language should stay the way they learned it in school because that's the only correct way. I understand their reaction, but language is changing all the time in small ways, whether we want it or not. We'll just have to wait and see. By the way, I hated learning German in class. I couldn't get the hang of German word genders, and on top of that they have grammatical cases which change the article and the word ending, there were just way too many combinations. Except for some archaic idioms, Dutch got rid of grammatical cases in the last 100 years, and like in English, the function of a noun (direct/indirect object) is denoted by its place in the sentence. But don't worry. We still have plenty other incredibly difficult spelling rules. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Dec 30, 2013 |
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Dec 30, 2013 10:04
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Do German speakers even care if you use the wrong article? I mean it's blindingly obvious you still mean the word 'the'. Not really. A lot of Germans kind of swallow the endings anyway instead of clearly saying einer einem etc. You can communicate fine, it's just a dead giveaway that you aren't a native speaker (if your accent wasn't already). I hosed it up constantly in Germany, I'm sure. I'm usually good with grammar in languages I study but memorizing poo poo is difficult.
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Dec 30, 2013 10:59
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the jizz taxi posted:Um it always kind of irks me when people - especially Flemings - often unconsciously - describe Flemish as a language, which it isn't. There are differences between Standard Dutch in the Netherlands and Belgium, but these are more or less comparable to the differences between British and American English. Flemish dialects can be really different from Standard Dutch, but dialects in the eastern part of the Netherlands even moreso (because they're actually Low Saxon, but that's another story), and as a Fleming you know that dialects of Limburg are very different from those in West-Flanders, so 'Flemish' as a language doesn't exist. Yes, you are right. However, linguists have recently been studying the rising trend of having a "standard Flemish" amongst youth. Essentially, older generations looked at the Netherlands and tried to mimic the proper Dutch for all sorts of Flemish media and the proper rules of spelling, pronunciation and vocabulary. But this trend stopped in the nineties and now everyone is switching over to the dialect from Antwerp and Brabant when talking to each other, including politicians, writers and news anchors and the like. Dialects are disappearing, but are being replaced by the dialects from Brussels and the surrounding cities, which is similar enough to Dutch that we can understand each other but still has its own quirks and oddities. I've read that the difference between the Serbian language and Croatian language are smaller than the difference between Dutch and Flemish, but I don't speak either of those languages so I really wouldn't know if that's true or not. Raskolnikov38 posted:Do German speakers even care if you use the wrong article? I mean it's blindingly obvious you still mean the word 'the'. In German and Dutch, messing up de/het or der/die/das is kind of like messing up a/an in English. Everyone knows what you mean, but everyone also knows you slipped up. EDIT 2, on the subject of maps, because that's what this thread was about before Dutchmen and Germans hi-jacked it. http://www.deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws/videozone/programmas/terzake/2.27827?video=1.1612619 Students were asked to "draw Belgium" and most of them immediately also drew the language barrier through the middle, and quite a few of them put Brussels squarely on top of the language barrier separating Flanders and Wallonia.(hint: it's to the North of it, even though most of the people in and around Brussels speak French.) Deltasquid fucked around with this message at 11:48 on Dec 30, 2013 |
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Dec 30, 2013 11:42
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Deltasquid posted:I've read that the difference between the Serbian language and Croatian language are smaller than the difference between Dutch and Flemish, but I don't speak either of those languages so I really wouldn't know if that's true or not. One of my friends in college was a Serb from Croatia, and you're correct. Croatian and Serbian are the same language; she compared it to British and American English. You know where someone is from because of certain words that are different, but otherwise they're entirely mutually intelligible. They're only called different languages because of politics and the issues between the Serbs and Croats.
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Dec 30, 2013 11:50
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Grand Fromage posted:One of my friends in college was a Serb from Croatia, and you're correct. Croatian and Serbian are the same language; she compared it to British and American English. You know where someone is from because of certain words that are different, but otherwise they're entirely mutually intelligible. They're only called different languages because of politics and the issues between the Serbs and Croats. Serbian is written in Cyrillic while Croatian is Latin though right? Could a Croatian read Serbian? 
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Dec 30, 2013 11:57
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menino posted:Serbian is written in Cyrillic while Croatian is Latin though right? Could a Croatian read Serbian? "Cyrillic is the official script of the administration in Serbia and Republika Srpska but Latin script is most widely used in everyday life." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_standard_Bosnian,_Croatian_and_Serbian
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Dec 30, 2013 12:00
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menino posted:Serbian is written in Cyrillic while Croatian is Latin though right? Could a Croatian read Serbian? If you know Cyrillic yeah. Both can be written in either alphabet, though I think Croatian is always in Roman and Serbian uses both. Croatian was her native language but understanding Serbian and Bosnian was no problem.
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Dec 30, 2013 12:05
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Deltasquid posted:"Cyrillic is the official script of the administration in Serbia and Republika Srpska but Latin script is most widely used in everyday life." I wonder what kind of situation that creates for Serbs. It seems like you'd get a lot of people who are out of practice with the official script, unless it's the script of instruction too.
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Dec 30, 2013 12:07
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the jizz taxi posted:Flemish dialects can be really different from Standard Dutch, but dialects in the eastern part of the Netherlands even moreso (because they're actually Low Saxon, but that's another story) WestFries used to be Low Saxon as well, but that's no longer the case.
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Dec 30, 2013 12:11
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Yugo reporting for duty.  Serbo-Croatian is linguistically considered to be one pluricentric language with four standard forms (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin). The difference between official Croatian and official Serbian is almost negligible, even little kids follow media in either "language" with perfect clarity. There is an apocryphal story that after the 90s crises, when the country split up it took a while for many foreign countries to realize they don't have to re-train diplomats in the local language after they move them to the neighboring country. While official Serbian and Croatian are 100% mutually intelligible, with the exception of some region-specific words, because both are based on the Shtokavian dialect, there are other dialects within each country with much lower mutual intelligibility. A Shtokavian speaking Croat will perfectly understand his Serb friend but will follow a Chakavian or Kajkavian speaking Croat with some difficulty. A Shtokavian speaking Serb will likewise understand his Croat buddy but will have trouble following somebody from South-East Serbia. (where I'm from  ) The South Slavic languages are on a neat dialect continuum, going North-West to South-East you get to hear the spoken language gradually transition.The dialects can also be divided according to which reflex of the proto-Slavic vowel "jat" they use. Thus there are Ekavian, Ijekavian and Ikavian dialects. Beautiful: Lep (Ekavian), Lijep (Ijekavian), Lip (Ikavian) Faith: Vera (Ekavian), Vjera (Ijekavian), Vira (Ikavian) All this gets a lot more involved with migrations, border changes in the last century or so, linguistic enclaves, transitional dialects, attempts at assimilation etc. Also Serbian is the only language in Europe to officially use two alphabets as far as I know, plus we have a print and cursive script for both Cyrillic and Latin so I had to learn four scripts in school. E: If this is actually interesting to anybody I can do a long effortpost on South Slavic languages, this time with a ton of politically-loaded maps to boot. SaltyJesus fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Dec 30, 2013 |
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Dec 30, 2013 14:19
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menino posted:I wonder what kind of situation that creates for Serbs. It seems like you'd get a lot of people who are out of practice with the official script, unless it's the script of instruction too. Well knowing two alphabets is pretty trivial. I know cursive despite never ever using it, too.
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Dec 30, 2013 14:37
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SaltyJesus posted:
Do it!
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Dec 30, 2013 15:18
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SaltyJesus posted:Also Serbian is the only language in Europe to officially use two alphabets as far as I know, plus we have a print and cursive script for both Cyrillic and Latin so I had to learn four scripts in school. To my recollection, Yiddish is also often written in either Latin or Hebrew script, and I believe there's a similar situation going on with Kazakh. SaltyJesus posted:E: If this is actually interesting to anybody I can do a long effortpost on South Slavic languages, this time with a ton of politically-loaded maps to boot. Go for it!
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Dec 30, 2013 15:37
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SaltyJesus posted:E: If this is actually interesting to anybody I can do a long effortpost on South Slavic languages, this time with a ton of politically-loaded maps to boot.
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Dec 30, 2013 16:53
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Carbon dioxide posted:First of all, is there a general language / language history discussion thread? Tell Me What You Hate About Your Language!
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Dec 30, 2013 17:06
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quote:I had 30 people draw a map of the world from memory and digitally merged the results.  http://imgur.com/gallery/HCpoKlg Insanely detailed knowledge of the Great Lakes makes me think this is a North American survey. Africa is easily the most remembered of the continents too.
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Dec 30, 2013 18:51
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That is the saddest looking Australia I've ever seen
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Dec 30, 2013 18:55
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DarkCrawler posted:
The original reddit post: http://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1tz4t9/i_had_30_people_draw_a_map_of_the_world_from/cecxc3b Not the most bright moment in the University of Michigan's history (the 30 people were students there).
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Dec 30, 2013 18:58
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No one knows about england.
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Dec 30, 2013 18:58
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Baronjutter posted:No one knows about england. Apparently nobody knows about the Panama and Suez canals, either.
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Dec 30, 2013 19:05
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The whole China-Japan-Korean Peninsula part is fairly well done.
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Dec 30, 2013 19:07
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No Safe Word posted:The original reddit post: Most of the maps seem fine or like whoever drew them clearly didn't give a poo poo.
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Dec 30, 2013 19:11
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computer parts posted:The whole China-Japan-Korean Peninsula part is fairly well done. That's probably less because of what the respondents drew, and more because of the method used to create the composite image. The same goes for the Great Lakes, I suppose. There were like three people who even remembered that Japan existed.
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Dec 30, 2013 19:20
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Dusseldorf posted:Most of the maps seem fine or like whoever drew them clearly didn't give a poo poo.
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Dec 30, 2013 19:23
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DarkCrawler posted:Insanely detailed knowledge of the Great Lakes makes me think this is a North American survey. Africa is easily the most remembered of the continents too. It seems more likely that the great lakes were part of the topography layered on top of the outlines of the major landmasses, and not something that everyone actually drew to such insane detail.
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Dec 30, 2013 19:25
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That reddit poster said that the result is the top map, the bottom map is something he photoshopped together using a real map and the results. So no, nobody drew Italy that well. Some of the original maps: http://imgur.com/a/1w6fC  Did you know that North America actually looks like an eagle?
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Dec 30, 2013 20:08
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Yeah, I don't think it's a very interesting map since it seems like most people just threw something together in 5 seconds. Would have been cool to see if it had been done 'seriously' though. Kainser fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Dec 30, 2013 |
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Dec 30, 2013 20:11
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Kainser posted:Yeah, I don't think it's a very interesting map since seems like most people just threw something together in 5 seconds. I'm unsure whether the artist here drew a massive Madagascar or a tiny displaced Australia.
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Dec 30, 2013 20:13
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No Safe Word posted:The original reddit post: Even though they're from University of Michigan I'd bet many of them aren't from Michigan. A lot seemed to not draw the Lakes at all, which is something I couldn't see a Michigander doing. No matter how amorphous and terrible the map may be, Michiganders will make a token effort to draw in the Lakes.
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Dec 30, 2013 20:29
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Soviet Commubot posted:Even though they're from University of Michigan I'd bet many of them aren't from Michigan. A lot seemed to not draw the Lakes at all, which is something I couldn't see a Michigander doing. No matter how amorphous and terrible the map may be, Michiganders will make a token effort to draw in the Lakes. Wow you really like your loving lakes, huh? They're not that great!
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Dec 30, 2013 20:40
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Deltasquid posted:I'm unsure whether the artist here drew a massive Madagascar or a tiny displaced Australia. It has the Azores and Falklands though.
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Dec 30, 2013 20:42
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Crossposting from the PYF maps thread:
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Dec 30, 2013 21:24
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Deltasquid posted:I'm unsure whether the artist here drew a massive Madagascar or a tiny displaced Australia. My interpretation of it is that India finally broke free of Asia and took Sri Lanka along for the ride.
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Dec 30, 2013 21:56
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steinrokkan posted:That's probably less because of what the respondents drew, and more because of the method used to create the composite image. The same goes for the Great Lakes, I suppose. There were like three people who even remembered that Japan existed. Same with the Caspian Sea, which make me note that the Black Sea is just gone. Gulp gulp gulp.
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Dec 30, 2013 22:06
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Raskolnikov38 posted:My interpretation of it is that India finally broke free of Asia and took Sri Lanka along for the ride. And Africa sank into the ocean
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Dec 30, 2013 22:32
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DarkCrawler posted:Wow you really like your loving lakes, huh? They're not that great! They're pretty great  This map is intended to combat the notion that Brittany is far on the periphery of civilization. It's obviously pretty disingenuous given how the scale of the circles doesn't change with the curvature of the earth but he gets a B for effort.  edit: tables Soviet Commubot fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Dec 30, 2013 |
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Dec 30, 2013 22:51
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