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Are there any tricks to German nouns? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Kyle Corrie Senior Member United States Joined 4820 days ago 175 posts - 464 votes  | Message 25 of 29 22 May 2012 at 1:00am | IP Logged | ||
This is not good advice to follow in my opinion. It's very typical of Germans to play with indefinite articles to aid flow when speaking or singing. Especially with negation you'll hear things like, "Es macht kein Sinn." rather than the proper, "Es macht keinen Sinn." Now he heard 'kein' and it's in the accusative, therefore he should assume it's a neuter noun, right? No. Then not to mention when listening it may be even harder to pick out the pronunciation of 'nen or 'ne as shortened indefinite articles and distinguish them from ein. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LebensForm Senior Member Austria Joined 5041 days ago 212 posts - 264 votes Studies: German | Message 26 of 29 22 May 2012 at 1:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, many times at least from what I heard is, that the 2. verb does not always go to the end of the senetnce either in many German songs. Wie soll ich leben ohne dich instead of wie soll ich ohne dich leben. Like the previous poster mentioned, this helps with flow of the song and it sounds better to the ears than actually being grammatically correct, I do have to say though I use music to help me learn more words in general. It helps build vocab, that you would otherwise not learn because most songs are about love and cheating or whatnot...Now I know more vocab that has do to do with relationships, :/ Edited by LebensForm on 22 May 2012 at 1:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| boudouris Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4610 days ago 12 posts - 14 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Greek, Indonesian, French, Mandarin | Message 27 of 29 22 May 2012 at 5:45am | IP Logged | ||
That's a good point. If you can find a reliable, accurate text for the lyrics they will sometimes note the change (eg. Es macht kein' Sinn), but maybe not. I guess that's probably one of the things I miss occasionally as a non-native speaker. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4940 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 28 of 29 22 May 2012 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Actually, the three genders and multifarious plural formations was one of the allures of German (to me).
I'm at the point though where I can predict the gender of nouns I see for the first time (not including the obvious -ung/heit/keit/in, -chen, etc). And even better at knowing the plural, because believe it or not after a while it becomes intuitive (though not 100% reliable: der Rang/die Ränge but der Rand/die Ränder). Believe it or not it is a bit sad for me since it no longer has that "new" feeling. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| yong321 Groupie United States yong321.freeshe Joined 5533 days ago 80 posts - 104 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 29 of 29 22 May 2012 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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> If you're skipping the gender, that's like always using the infinitive
> form of a verb. Kind of annoying to listen to. I know the gender is important, simply because it's used in the language right now, not because it's grammatically important. This cannot be compared to verb conjugation, which serves important functions. In fact, noun genders may be a hindrance to the language, as http://business.highbeam.com/4048/article-1G1-172777359/subt ly-sexist-language implies --- begin quote --- study participants were asked to describe a bridge (a word that is feminine in German and masculine in Spanish). The German speakers described it as "beautiful, elegant, fragile, peaceful, pretty, and slender," while the Spanish speakers described it as "big, dangerous, long, strong, sturdy, and towering." --- end quote --- That extra connotation added to Brücke or puente is not needed, and may subconsciously distort the speaker or listener's understanding. http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/languages/french/inde x.html says --- begin quote --- If the French language was "redesigned" to make it easier for the student, we would certainly get rid of the gender system. But this will not happen, so you need to learn it --- end quote --- We only need to learn it because that's part of the language, and if we don't use it, people would consider us under-educated, but would not misunderstand us (except for very few words), as in the case of always using verb infinitive forms. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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