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Arguing in German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6856 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 1 of 17 01 February 2007 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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So I'm learning German in a pretty unorthodox way, just for kicks, so you have to forgive me if this sounds like a silly question.
It's regarding German language word order, where the verb goes at the end of the sentence. With English's subject verb object order, you can almost get always away with interrupting, although you shouldn't do that, because it's easy to predict the rest of the sentence. I am not defending interrupting as an arguing tool; I am merely stating that interrupting happens frequently because one can do it and get away with it. But in German, you're not going to get to the meat of it 'til the very end of the sentence. You HAVE to wait. I'm sick of your lying, cheatin', foolin' around! You don't need to hear the last part to get the gist. In German: I am your lyin', cheatin', foolin' around ________ The ending could be "okay with". It could happen. You have to wait 'til the end to know for sure. It's my guess that this either increases the civility of German arguments or there are even more misunderstandings. I know this sounds crazy but I do wonder about these things. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Christine Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 6625 days ago 41 posts - 47 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Japanese, Modern Hebrew | Message 2 of 17 01 February 2007 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
With German being my mother tongue, I was at first a bit irritated... I have never thought of it as a language which puts the verb at the end of the sentence. So I just picked up a newspaper and checked several sentences... except for sentences in perfect tense and verbs consisting of two parts, the verb usually can be found in the first half of the sentence. But after having reread what you have written, I think I know what you are talking about.
"To be sick of something" roughly translates to "etwas leid sein". This is in fact one of the verbs that consists of two parts, and one of them has to be put at the end of the sentence. "Ich bin deine... (enumeration) ...leid." I hope I got what you are referring to. However, even if the speaker is interrupted, other people would still be able to guess the rest of the sentence / the verb from intonation, choice of words, or context. So I don't think that there's a greater amount of mutual misunderstandings when people are arguing or discussing things in German. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6856 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 3 of 17 01 February 2007 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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I actually didn't know the equivalent of "to be sick of something", but yes, that explains exactly what I mean. I was also thinking about how past participals work.
I love this aspect of German, by the way. My error is that I thought my post would sound so stupid that it would be obviously tongue-in-cheek. It wasn't my intent to assert that Germans, or any nationality, argue better or worse than anybody esle. I first wondered about this in a linguistics class, when the topic of word order came up. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6942 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 4 of 17 01 February 2007 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Kato Lomb, a known Hungarian polyglot, mentions in her book that she had run into occasional problems with the word order in German sentences in her work as an interpreter.
From what I remember, she says that an interpreter cannot wait until the whole sentence is spoken before translating, and with the German sentence structure she'd run into situations at conferences when she was not sure which way the statement would go until the sentence has been spoken in its entirety. This does not, however, seem to pose problems for Germans in their daily lives. :) Edited by frenkeld on 01 February 2007 at 5:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6856 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 5 of 17 01 February 2007 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Random example from a Radio DW learning German page:
Diese Fläche könnte man für den Anbau nachwachsender Rohstoffe nutzen. I am referring to könnte... nutzen. You could stop after "can use" in English and get the gist. In the German sentence, you'd have to read the whole thing before you'd know that you can use the direct object. I'm not talking about arguing; that was just bad humor. But I'm intrigued by word order. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6856 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 6 of 17 01 February 2007 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, yes, that's exactly what I mean. But that one word could change the entire meaning! I think too much I think. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6942 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 7 of 17 01 February 2007 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | ||
I am on my baby steps in German, and I also find the word order fascinating. It gives me the feeling that German is somehow much closer to that mythical "Indo-European" than languages like French and English, which, in terms of grammar, seem to have all but lost their ancient roots. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hagen Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6959 days ago 171 posts - 179 votes 6 sounds Speaks: German*, English, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 8 of 17 02 February 2007 at 12:44am | IP Logged | ||
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I guess when you're arguing (or for some other reason being afraid that you might be interrupted) you might subconsciously change sentence structure so that essential constituents occur as early as possible in your sentence.
In the "I'm sick of..." --> "Ich bin ... leid" example, I could imagine changing that to an extraposition structure with "es": "Ich bin es leid, deine Lügen etc... hören zu müssen." On the other hand you might consider the lies etc. to be more essential to the sentence than the "sick of". (You're hardly going to end with saying that you really like them anyway.) So the original German structure might be more "efficient" in this regard, after all. Anyway, I think language usually has enough freedom to accommodate our needs. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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