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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5297 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes  | Message 9 of 18 11 April 2011 at 9:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ich langweile mich: That's a matter of vocabulary, the verb is "sich langweilen". An easy case, you either know the verb, or not. "langweilen" can exist as a transitive verb, without the "sich", too, but then it takes an accusative, "Du langweilst mich.", that's completely different from "ich langweile mich", as similar as the constructions may seem. "Sich müden" is n o t a German verb, so easy again, a matter of vocabulary. I am tired: Ich bin müde, that's fine, so for once you have the same structure in German and English. Well, maybe not such a rare thing, overall, hence what you have to get used to, or to learn, are the differences, when you meet them. From your (English) point of view: The "exceptions". Vocabulary is always a matter of learning by example, if you want so; whether you absorb it, or immerse yourself, or another nice metaphor does not really matter, as long as you learn it. Edit: I had auto-corrected your example and not noticed what you had actually written. "Ich bin gelangweilt" is not incorrect, but maybe someone tried to explain to you that you cannot always translate word by word, and rejected it, because he had "Ich langweile mich" in mind. But "ich langweilig mich" is wrong, there is a verb for it, "sich langweilen". Edit 2: And ponygirl's explanation was not bad at all, there are many cases like "I am hungry", "I am cold", where the German language uses different ways to express what is meant: "Ich bin hungrig" is possible, but "Ich habe Hunger" much more common. "Ich bin kalt" is an expected statement if you are a corpse, we say "Mir ist kalt" or "Ich friere" ... Edited by lingoleng on 11 April 2011 at 10:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| PonyGirl Groupie United States Joined 5018 days ago 54 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 10 of 18 11 April 2011 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
It is actually "Mir ist langweilig," if memory serves me correctly. You are correct on the "Ich bin müde." Prepare yourself for many more of these situations. (Ich habe Hunger. Mir ist kalt.) [[ETA: the person above me who posted while I was writing has a different and much better explanation of ^^, so you can disregard my above info :D ]] I try not to really think about the logic behind them and just learn them. Obviously for more complex grammar you should have a foundation of knowledge, but for some idiosyncrasies, the less questions asked the better. Something you mentioned earlier that I do not think was addressed was the use of the article before 'shopping list.' I am not advanced enough to give you real advice about that, but you do need to be aware that articles are used a lot more im Deutsch than in English. Edited by PonyGirl on 11 April 2011 at 9:41pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Astrum Newbie United States Joined 5064 days ago 15 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 11 of 18 11 April 2011 at 9:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
Vielen Dank! One more question (for now). "Wenn der Wecker läutet, wache ich auf." Warum ist es "wache ich auf" und nicht "ich wache auf"? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5297 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 12 of 18 11 April 2011 at 10:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
"Ich wache auf, wenn der Wecker läutet." -> The subordinate, dependent clause (wenn ...) after the independent clause: kind of a "normal word order"; the independent clause has the verb in the second position. "Wenn der Wecker läutet, wache ich auf." -> The subordinate, dependent clause comes first: Then the independent clause starts with the verb, kind of "inverted word order". (The idea behind dependent/independent is that an independent clause can stand alone, on its own, as a full sentence, while the dependent clause cannot.) Edited by lingoleng on 11 April 2011 at 11:09pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Astrum Newbie United States Joined 5064 days ago 15 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 13 of 18 16 April 2011 at 11:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have another question now (a question of syntax)
Could you please explain to how how in the world this sentence makes sense? "Gehe nicht nach dem Essen baden." I understand what it's saying, but not how I could make my own sentence. "Go not after eating swimming." I can't wrap my head around this, how would I know to word my sentences in such a strange manner? Does this follow some rule that I'm not familiar with? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tbone Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4990 days ago 92 posts - 132 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 14 of 18 16 April 2011 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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When should we "nicht baden gehen"?
"Nach dem Essen". Or "Dienstag", or "jetzt", or "während deiner Hochzeit". You could also say, "Nach dem Essen, geh' nicht baden", which separates the two ideas a little better. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6948 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 15 of 18 17 April 2011 at 4:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes, my understanding is that if you have some kind of adverb (or adverbial phrase) of
time, manner, etc., there are two ways you can insert it into a German sentence. 1. You can simply put it after the main verb. Ich gehe heute schwimmen. Ich esse jeden Abend Hamburger. 2. You can put it at the beginning of the sentence. If you do it this way, the subject and verb will become inverted as if it were a question. Heute gehe ich schwimmen. Jeden Abend esse ich Hamburger. I believe that even when you put a direct object at the beginning for emphasis, the sentence will invert in the same way. Hamburger esse ich jeden Abend. Also, I want to explain a little about "mir ist (adj)". In order to understand this, think about the difference in English between "I am bored" and "I am boring", or "I am excited" and "I am exciting". "I am exciting/boring" is an actual description of what kind of person you are. On the other hand, "I am excited/bored" does not describe anything about your personal qualities, just your reaction to something. We can rephrase the sentence "I am bored by this class" as "This class is boring to me" and they are pretty much equivalent, don't you think? In German, we often make this distinction even where it's lacking in English. For example, "Ich bin kalt" would be some description of your physical qualities, as in, "My skin feels icy", which as you might imagine is hardly ever used. Instead, when English speakers say "I'm cold" what we actually mean is "It feels cold to me". When we say "I'm good" we don't actually mean we are well-behaved people or anything like that; rather, we mean "It feels good to me". That's why German makes this quite logical distinction and says "Mir ist kalt", "Mir ist heiss", "Mir ist langweilig", "Mir ist gut", "Mir is schlecht", "Mir ist krank", etc. However, you should be aware that what is an adjective in English won't always be expressed as an adjective in German. For example, to say "I'm scared" we have to use a verb, "sich fürchten": "Ich fürchte mich". (the reflexive verb shows that there's no direct object in this case. You're simply fearing, not fearing "something"). Or sometimes an English adjective will be a German noun, as in "Ich habe Hunger" or "Ich habe Angst (I have anxiousness)". These three (Ich bin/mir ist ----, Ich ---- mich, Ich habe ----) are the most common patterns to express what would be an adjective in English. I hope this is clear. Native speakers, please feel free to correct if any part of this is inaccurate! Edited by Lucky Charms on 17 April 2011 at 4:27am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| gaggilla Tetraglot Newbie Switzerland Joined 5016 days ago 18 posts - 28 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Romanian Studies: Icelandic, Persian, Hungarian, Danish | Message 16 of 18 23 April 2011 at 11:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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As an addition to what Lucky Charms wrote, you should notice that while the explication of "mir ist"-sentences
works well if you translate those sentences to other languages, it unfortunately does not always hold the other way round; for example you would not say "Mir ist krank" or "Mir ist gut", but instead "Ich bin krank" or "Mir geht's gut". I guess this way of expressing emotions and sensations is currently being replaced by nominative + adjective or noun sentences ("Ich bin hungrig", "Ich bin durstig", "Ich habe Angst" - two centuries ago it would have been quite natural to say "Mir ist bang" instead of "Ich habe Angst"), so the best way to learn to express yourself in "Mir ist"- sentences is, alas, to learn by heart which adjectives demand them. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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