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Alphathon’s G&G log: Gaelic & German | ||
Tags: Gaelic (Scottish) | German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4788 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 17 of 44 09 April 2015 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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I didn't advise against output, but against literal translations from English. If there's someone to correct them, these mistakes are useful, because you can learn from them. However, writing an entire log in German, which no one is going to correct, is not advisable for someone who hasn't even mastered elementary concepts of German grammar.
I was shortly thinking about making some corrections myself, but the posts are simply too long and there are too many (elementary) mistakes in them. Output is good, but you need to know what you're doing and/or someone who corrects your mistakes. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alphathon Groupie Scotland Joined 4124 days ago 60 posts - 104 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Scottish Gaelic | Message 18 of 44 09 April 2015 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
I’m not 100% sure what you mean by this. Generally speaking what I have written in German has been composed in German both in my head and in type. At no point was it translated from English. (In fact, the English version of my log is effectively a translation of the German version, with perhaps a few extra sentences or elaborations added.) The only exceptions are when I’ve thought of something new to add when writing out the English version. Perhaps you’re saying I’ve used typically English phrasing or terms rather than idiomatic ones. If so, how can I possibly avoid that? No matter how or under what circumstances I output my internal assumptions aren’t going to change.
I had a feeling this might be happening. I’ve been trying to cut down the length of what I write for that very reason. There is, unfortunately, just so much for me to say. I’ve also considered splitting the German and the Gaelic into separate posts to keep the length of each individual post down a bit. (Although overall it wouldn’t change anything.) One of the main reasons for me doing this is to have my mistakes corrected as I have no other outlet or means at the moment. (The other reason being to give myself more opportunity to, and to a degree to force myself to, think in German.) The only other thing I can think of to do is exactly what I’m doing here but on Lang-8 or something similar, and I don’t see that that would be any better (it certainly wouldn’t be any shorter). I can neither afford to travel nor hire a tutor; I live in too rural an area for there to be meetups etc.; and my schedule is too erratic to use Skype or similar (which would also be an issue for a tutor). It would seem that I’m caught between a rock and a hard place somewhat (either do no output at all or do some without correction). Bear in mind that my base assumption is that what I’ve written is incorrect until someone tells me otherwise. I’d be more than happy if you (or someone else) corrected just a few sentences or something. If my mistakes are as elementary as you suggest then presumably they would be pretty widely applicable, so correcting one would in effect be correcting many. I am aware that even with that assumption there is the potential to engrain faulty structures etc merely through repeated use, but really, what choice do I have? (This is a legitimate question - if you have any suggestions I’m all ears.) As far as I’m concerned I’ve come out on top already. Without this log I’d not have read up on word order, as I didn’t know (merely suspected) I needed to - it gave me the push I needed. Edited by Alphathon on 09 April 2015 at 4:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4788 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 19 of 44 09 April 2015 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Yes, that's what I meant. Often, what you write sounds like a word-for-word translation from English instead of idiomatic German. The only solution for this would be systematically studying German grammar and making active use of the constructions you have learnt. That's why I said it might be a bad idea to write an entire log in German. Of course, you want to say everything you're capable to express in English, but actually you can't do it in German, so you resort to literal translations of English constructions. This might be comprehensible for someone who knows English, but monolingual German speakers might have problems understanding you. One example among many: You use "wer" as a relative pronoun, which doesn't work in German. Of course, in English you say "The man who walks across the street is American" and the literal translation of "who" is "wer". However, the German relative pronoun is not "wer" but "der/die/das", so the sentence has to be "Der Mann, der über die Straße geht, ist Amerikaner" in German. "Wer" doesn't work here!
I can try to make more corrections in the future, but as geoffw said, your word order is pretty off sometimes, so you might focus on that for the time being. I'm rather busy with other stuff at the moment, but I'll try to drop by and comment on what you write, if that helps you.
I don't know how exactly you are studying German, but maybe a thorough brush-up on grammar might help you. You mentioned the rules for word order and "zu"-infinitives were new to you, so maybe you simply need to focus on that for some time? Your vocabulary seems to be rather good, but your grammar seems to be your weak point. Just get a good grammar book and get going! :) I'm not a fan of the "learning by doing" approach in language learning, rather "learning by studying and applying what you've learnt". So, systematic grammar studies might really help you. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4788 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 20 of 44 09 April 2015 at 6:17pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Okay, I corrected your first post for you. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask! Edited by Josquin on 09 April 2015 at 6:24pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alphathon Groupie Scotland Joined 4124 days ago 60 posts - 104 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Scottish Gaelic | Message 21 of 44 09 April 2015 at 6:52pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
OK, that makes sense. I was sort of aware of that and have used it in some places (e.g. Bisher habe ich meistens Anki, DuoLingo usw. benutzt, die nicht interessant darüber zu lesen oder schreiben sind. from (the original version of) my first post), probably mostly in the later posts. That said, I thought der/die/das in that sense were generally restricted to inanimate objects/non-humans. Perhaps I’m getting confused with personal pronouns. (That said, if I’d thought of it like that while writing I’d probably have used er/sie rather than wer, which would also have been wrong I take it.) I probably need to take a bit more time to analyse my posts as I’m writing them.
That’s almost certainly down to Anki (and maybe how I use it). If I come across a new word I try to add it to my deck unless it’s really topic-specific and I don’t care much for the topic. I have everything from everyday words to things like specific terms for mediæval legal concepts (mostly through playing computer games set in the middle ages in German) and scientific terminology. I haven’t found an effective way to do this with grammar though. (If you know of one I’d love to give it a try, but I suspect it’s the sort of thing that doesn’t lend itself to flash cards.)
I feel the same way, and that seems like a good idea. I did try that in the past using Teach Yourself German Grammar by Jenny Russ. For whatever reason I didn’t get very far, although I suspect it was just that I didn’t have the time for a while and never ended up going back to it. I’ll have to find a way to interleave it with Scottish Gaelic in Twelve Weeks.
Thanks very much! I’ll have a read through it later today and I’ll let you know.
Will do.
Thanks! As I said I may go back through my earlier posts and fix some of the word order bits myself (just the act of doing so may be beneficial), so I’d avoid going through my other posts just yet. I haven’t much to write about this week so my entry may be a little shorter than the others, and with any luck should be a bit better, at least in terms of word order. Edited by Alphathon on 09 April 2015 at 7:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alphathon Groupie Scotland Joined 4124 days ago 60 posts - 104 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Scottish Gaelic | Message 22 of 44 09 April 2015 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
OK, here we go. I understand most of it, especially having read over the word order rules. Honestly it doesn’t seem as bad as I’d thought it would. I did consider using Wissenschaftsnachrichten but thought Wissenschaft-Nachrichten was safer as I wasn’t sure.
So is Log masculine? I wasn’t sure when I wrote it so looked it up and found that it was neuter, at least when referring to a ship’s log(book).
In English it’s very common in informal writing to start a sentence with but (or and), but it’s one of those things that gets drilled out of you in school as being incorrect or bad form. Instead, however offset by a comma is used. Is this not the case in German? (This is probably one of those “Englishisms” you were talking about.)
Hmmm, and I thought I had the kennen/wissen distinction figured out. Apparently not. Also, what is the purpose of bei?
Why have you put (?) at the end? If you’re not sure what I meant, I was saying that I don’t really care about German, Austrian or Swiss politics very much as it really doesn’t affect me and I have no idea who’s who. Exceptions include EU politics etc. Honestly I had issues thinking of a good way to word that in English, let alone German. I’ll go through the Gaelic section tomorrow. A few other points. No matter where I look I can’t find the rules governing word order in parenthesis (brackets). Up to now I’ve just been winging it based on how English does it but I really don’t know - any help here would be great. One thing you did was the removed a semicolon in favour of a full stop; does German not use semi-colons to connect two sentences together? (To be fair it isn’t all that common in English, but it’s a form I like.) Edited by Alphathon on 09 April 2015 at 9:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4788 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 23 of 44 11 April 2015 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Okay, this is a very short answer as I don't have much time. I hope it helps!
"Wissenschaftsnachrichten" is the correct solution. "Wissenschaft-Nachrichten" doesn't exist.
"Jedoch" has different connotations than "however". "Jedoch" is rather formal and practically restricted to written language. It sounds very formal, so it's more natural to use "aber" here. There's no rule against starting a sentence with "aber" in German. By the way, in German, adverbs are not seperated from the following clause by a comma. Instead, the word order changes.
It just sounds more natural to use the "bei" here. You can think of it as "I'm at B1", if that makes sense to you.
Yeah, I didn't understand what you meant to say by "Politik ist zu lokal", so I added a question mark. You might say: "Deutsche Politik interessiert mich nicht, da sie mich nicht betrifft."
Word order in parenthesis is just like any other word order, too. It depends on the kind of sentence you're adding in brackets. If you add a main clause, it's S-V-O, if it's a dependent clause, it's S-O-V, if it's a question, it's V-S-O.
It's possible to use a semicolon, but it's better to use a full stop. It's something I have always been corrected for in school and university. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alphathon Groupie Scotland Joined 4124 days ago 60 posts - 104 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Scottish Gaelic | Message 24 of 44 11 April 2015 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
OK, that all seems to make sense.
Right, on to the Gaelic part. Again, it seems pretty straightforward/self-explanatory for the most part. You changed my
This isn’t really a question, but I have to say, I don’t think I’ve come across vorhaben before. It seems like I should have.
Is this a typo? Edited by Alphathon on 11 April 2015 at 4:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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