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German: Formal Vs. Informal | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Ubik Senior Member United States ubykh.wordpress.com/ Joined 5315 days ago 147 posts - 176 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish | Message 9 of 24 02 June 2010 at 3:05am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Another quick one: Where does one decide to put Estzets? In a word like ausstoßen (to
eject, toss out-good mnemonic) both uses of double S are there. Would someone still understand if I wrote außtoßen or ausstossen or außtossen? Is it just the same as a misspelling like "I loose the game" (which annoys the hell out of me in English btw). Is there ANY sound difference whatsoever? Do you just have to memorize these the same way one memorizes definite articles? Oh, and Ive seen it spelled a bunch of different ways to. Eszett, Estzet, etc I looked this up on wikipedia, but I got even more confused. Can someone dumb this down for me? Bitte schön? Edited by Ubik on 02 June 2010 at 3:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ubik Senior Member United States ubykh.wordpress.com/ Joined 5315 days ago 147 posts - 176 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish | Message 10 of 24 02 June 2010 at 3:16am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Another one: Why are there two words for Saturday? Ive always known Samstag, but I found
a website that uses der Sonnabend. Ive never seen that before. So I plugged all the days of the week into google and all the rest only had one word, so whats so special about Saturday? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5351 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 11 of 24 02 June 2010 at 3:26am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
These are just regional differences. I initially learned Samstag, then later I learned Sonnabend. I think that the latter is more common in Southern Germany, perhaps as well as Austria. Have you stumbled upon "schauen" yet? I use it and words such as "anschauen" often, although apparently they are less common than the sehen variants. Regarding ß: There are rules governing the usage of this symbol, although I do not remember what they are. It has to do with the length of the vowel or something of that nature. The reason I do not know the rule is because when I learn a new word (written), I take a look at its spelling and simply memorize whether it is written as "ss" or ß. Regarding ausstoßen: If I am feeling lazy or am using a computer which does not have an ß key, it would be okay to type it as "ausstossen" just as one can also represent an umlaut by using ae, oe, or ue. However, I know that writing "außtossen" or "außtoßen" is wrong, because "aus" is a prefix tacked onto the verb "stoßen", so the letters cannot be connected. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ubik Senior Member United States ubykh.wordpress.com/ Joined 5315 days ago 147 posts - 176 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish | Message 12 of 24 02 June 2010 at 3:52am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Tracker, about where are you at with your German? Are you actively studying it? If youre
not too far above me (i.e. you are at a level where you wouldnt get too annoyed at my many questions), and you are interested in holding IM conversations at some point, PM me and we could do that. Ive been in search of someone who I can consistently talk to and practice my German with other than with Jean and Gunther (my Pimsleur buddies ;)) Your explanation of the prefix of ausstoßsen makes complete sense now that you explain it. I already knew that, but didnt think about it. I just found a word that had two double-Ss and figured itd be a perfect example. :P 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5319 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 13 of 24 02 June 2010 at 10:03am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yes, we would. BTW, ausstossen is OK in Switzerland where they got rid of the "ß".
IMHO, this would be considered a slightly more serious mistake.
Germans use Eszett. I also read in some books "scharfes S".
Since the infamous German spelling reform it's actually relatively easy, if you know the pronunciation of a word, that is. :-) As rule of thumb, use "ß", if the s sound is preceded by a long vowel or a diphthong and "ss" elsewhere, but only if the stem of the word contains a "ss". For example: ausstoßen requires an "ß" because the o is a long vowel. "Weiß" and "heiß" also require an "ß" because of the preceding diphthongs, but "Schloss", "Kuss" and "Hass" require "ss" because the vowels in these words are short. (Before the spelling reform, these words were written with an "ß" and some argued that writing them with "ss" would clearly indicate that they contain short vowels.) Of course this only applies to words that originally have "ss" in their word stems. For example "Kloß" rhymes with "Los", but the latter is written with an "s" because there's no double s in the word stem. Since many Germans still use the spelling conventions that were in force before the spelling reform, you might find different spellings on the internet. A clear giveaway for "unreformed German" is usually "daß" instead of "dass". 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ubik Senior Member United States ubykh.wordpress.com/ Joined 5315 days ago 147 posts - 176 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish | Message 14 of 24 02 June 2010 at 8:49pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Thank you Doitsujin! That was very informative except when you commented on the spelling error, did you mean MY error was bigger or the Estzett error was? I think you meant mine, but I want to make sure.
Regarding your last explanation that makes me question: what is considered a long vowel and what is considered short? I have pretty good pronunciation of German, but Ive never officially looked at pronunciation guides...Ive just always listened to native speakers. There are very few words Ive said in German that I havent previously heard come out of the mouth of either a German or someone natively fluent in German (i.e. my high school German teacher) Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5319 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 15 of 24 03 June 2010 at 12:56am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
What I meant was that your typo was slightly more serious than mixing up loose and lose.
I was never very good at phonetics, so I can only give you the Vowels for Dummies version. To put it simply, in English and in German long vowels are usually not specifically marked. I.e., you have to learn the proper pronunciation by heart. However, there are some spelling conventions to mark at least some of the long vowels in both languages. In English, many words that end in e often contain a long vowel. For example, the o in lone, dome, cone, and bone is pronounced longer than the o in lot, dot, got, and rott. Also most words with "oo" and "ee" contain long vowels. Unfortunately, in German long vowels often aren't specifically marked. Unless a vowel is followed by an h (e.g. Lohn, Sohn and Hohn) you can never be sure how it's pronounced unless you consult a dictionary. (In a relatively small number of words long vowels are also marked with "ie" (e.g. fließen), "ee" (e.g. Meer) and "oo" (e.g. Moor).) To hear the difference in prononciation go to the Acapela speech to sound demo web site: http://www.acapela-group.com/text-to-speech-interactive-demo.html Change the voice to "German - Sarah" and have it read the following German words with long vowels: Fließen, schließen, Meer, Moor, Los, groß, heiß Then have it read the following words with short vowels: Russen, Hessen, Tassen, essen, vergessen, müssen Hopefully, you'll hear a difference in the length of the vowels. Edited by Doitsujin on 03 June 2010 at 1:01am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ubik Senior Member United States ubykh.wordpress.com/ Joined 5315 days ago 147 posts - 176 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish | Message 16 of 24 13 June 2010 at 11:34pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Got another one that I just cant seem to figure out. In the book Im reading: Barron's
1001 Pitfalls In German, they give a sentence that reads: Er war eine gute Mutter und sie war ein guter Vater. The rule they speak of right before this is "grammatical gender is used for the pronoun in the case of nouns with a fixed gender or nouns used for both male and female beings". Ive read both the sentence and the rule over and over again and I still dont get it...please help Edited by Ubik on 13 June 2010 at 11:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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