learnin german

roumeaz

how about some nice tutorial for learning a bit german?

german of today is very straightforward and sterile and it uses toooo many
hard t's & s'es and nearly all words end with e(spoken), that freaks me out every time.

ich bin hier .. ig bin hear .. i am here

be excellent to each other .. seid excellent zueinander .. side excellent sou.i.nun.duh

- to be continued -

jeeno0142

I am useless with foreign languages. Never get the pronounciation, can never form a complete sentance, and then I always forget what I've learnt within the week. I've tried french and spanish as they were mandatory, and out of all the years of learning them, I can only say hello. I've heard before that German is easier as it's closer to English than the other languages, but I am sure I'll personally never get to grips with it.

It'd be nice to know how to say 'hello' in German though! I promise I'll remember that.:rolleyes:

Avistew

Guten Tag is hello, I believe.

It's a really nice idea but I'd suggest using actual phonetics or attaching sound files, because I'm not quite sure what you're getting at with the "english-like" pronunciation thing. Plus there is a risk people might remember that as the spelling instead of the proper one.

roumeaz

a is allways spoken as in UP: clear, without any glitches with tong or lips ..

english: hello - hell.ou
german: hallo - hull.ou

Mandahaya

Funny idea, that one. (You could also just notify all the German people here to talk about random stuff in here, write everything in German and translate it into English after somebody innocently guessed what it was all about. So you have loads of German stuff to read and later also have to understand it.)

Kartoffelsalat ist fast genau so lecker wie Nudelsalat, aber nichts geht über Pizza
(Kartoffelsalat - Car-tough-el-sa-laad (too lazy to translate everything in that way now, gotta work on fanarts) - potato salad!)

(It means 'potato salad is almost as tasty as noodle salad, but there's nothing better than pizza.)

Katsuro

roumeaz wrote: »

german of today is very straightforward and sterile and it uses toooo many
hard t's & s'es and nearly all words end with e(spoken), that freaks me out every time.

Uhm...
I... don't really think your description of the german language is accurate.

Avistew

So Kartoffel is potato, Nudel is noodle, and "better than" is "über" without a "than" word?

What genders are Kartoffel, Nudel and Salat?

Javi-Wan Kenobi

One of the first (if not the very first) word I've ever learn in German is "Zutaten" ("Ingredients"), because it was always the first one on the Ingredient lists on the multilanguage-labeled snacks!

Alcoremortis

Oooh! I need to learn some German by this Wednesday. Some family friends who only speak German are coming over then and all I know is Guten Tag and the lyrics to Zegeunerlieder (spelled wrong).

Mandahaya

Avistew: 'Better than' means 'besser als', it was just a more appropriate translation for that part. Normally it would have been 'you just can't beat pizza', but that would've meant 'nichts schlägt Pizza'. In German language, we translate things a little different sometimes so they simply sound better.
Kartoffel is feminine, Nudel is feminine too, and Salat is masculine.

'Über', by the way, is actually 'over' or 'upon'.

Javi-Wan Kenobi: Multilanguage-labeled snacks? Sounds tasty.
Alcoremortis: It's Zigeunerlieder.

Alcoremortis

Mandahaya wrote: »

Alcoremortis: It's Zigeunerlieder.

This is why I need to learn German.

Avistew

Thanks!

So Xsalat becomes masculine due to it being a type of salad, right? Or does it vary?

And if I was to do a more literal translation, you said something like "nothing is/gets over pizza", is that it?

(Do all nouns take a capital?)

doodinthemood

Guten Tag, Ich bin in der naher von mein Katze.
Viederstand ist Zwecklos.

ChemBro

doodinthemood wrote: »

Guten Tag, Ich bin in der naher von mein Katze.
Viederstand ist Zwecklos.

Schon mal ein guter Anfang... um, I mean, that's a good start.

And there is a nice joke for "Widerstand ist zwecklos", that might only work in german. --> http://kristof.niederholtmeyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/widerstand.jpg

Soultaker

^^ why German only? This is the same joke:


Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!

taumel

@roumeaz
Vielleicht wär's ja auch angebracht, wenn Du selbst erst einmal ein wenig Deutsch lernen würdest? Deutsch und straightforward, oh jeh! Aber irgendwie ist's auch schön, daß dem nicht so ist.

ChemBro

Soultaker wrote: »

^^ why German only? This is the same joke:

Ah, well. I thought "resistor" is the word for that small box, not "resistance". That's why I thought, the joke only works in german.

Soultaker

Ah, I suppose so. But a resistor produces a certain amount of resistance in the network, so in that sense the joke still works. (I believe "Widerstand", like the Dutch "weerstand", is the word used for both resistance and resistor, so depending on how you interpreter the German joke, the English one could either be the same or slightly different.)

Laserschwert

Avistew wrote: »

Guten Tag is hello, I believe.

Actually it's "good day", but as in "hello", right. (Isn't "good day" a farewell in english? That's what I learned from Fez in "That 70's Show"... although Fez isn't probably the best character to learn English from )

Avistew wrote: »

So Kartoffel is potato, Nudel is noodle, and "better than" is "über" without a "than" word?

What genders are Kartoffel, Nudel and Salat?

Kartoffel and Nudel are female, Salat is male. Don't ask why

TomPravetz

Memme = Coward or Yellowbellied
Panzertape duct tape

Soultaker

Laserschwert wrote: »

Kartoffel and Nudel are female, Salat is male.

Thank you, this neatly summarizes why I will never be able to speak or write German properly, despite understanding it reasonably well.

Javi-Wan Kenobi

ChemBro wrote: »

Ah, well. I thought "resistor" is the word for that small box, not "resistance". That's why I thought, the joke only works in german.

It works in Spanish too. "La resistencia es inútil"

Avistew

Laserschwert wrote: »

Actually it's "good day", but as in "hello", right.

Right. Most languages I can think of work that way thought ("bonjour" in French, "buenos días" in Spanish, "dzień dobry" in Polish, etc) so I didn't think I needed to specify that.

Soultaker wrote: »

Thank you, this neatly summarizes why I will never be able to speak or write German properly, despite understanding it reasonably well.

And none of them are neutral yet! :P

roumeaz

don't put the flag on the nevada desert (cough) on the moon before you have landed there. so start slow n chilled and easy.

there are exactly 10 different vouls in german which allways are spoken da sahahame!!!
a e i o u .. a = up . e = has . i = bin . o = hot . u = boot
au ei eu .. au = a+u . ei = right . eu = voice
oe(ö) ue(ü) .. oe = earth . ue = oui,rue

ie = long i .. a e o u gets enlonged by adding h

roumeaz

raumfahrt liebeswacht zauberkrieg
spacetravel lovewatch voodoowars

ch after . e i . is spoken like a creepy y(as in yes)
ch after . a o u . is spoken like a creepy g
z = t+s
when attaching another word to one ending on the infamous e(in singular), s will work as the glue

Giant Tope

You didn't even make it snow in san diego.

roumeaz

if i would let it snow in places where no snow should fall, i realy would start some kind of .. lets think .. wetterverdrehungsumschwungentfesselung

words that will be added to ung also need s

Giant Tope

You said you would do it, but then you didn't. You're just chickening out because you can't actually do it.

roumeaz

the only thing i want to prove to myself has to do with a one gallon bong ... and not using illegal stuff ..

Shwoo

Writing words down phonetically is always a problem because of accents. The American A, as in cat, sounds more like a short E to me, for example, and the American short O sounds a lot more like a long A.

I think the best way to learn how German words are pronounced is to hear them spoken, preferably with subtitles.

TomPravetz

Shwoo wrote: »

Writing words down phonetically is always a problem because of accents. The American A, as in cat, sounds more like a short E to me, for example, and the American short O sounds a lot more like a long A.

I think the best way to learn how German words are pronounced is to hear them spoken, preferably with subtitles.

bomb
comb
tomb

der_ketzer

Shwoo wrote: »

I think the best way to learn how German words are pronounced is to hear them spoken, preferably with subtitles.

right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMmG9TrYyAE

I hate this video and it's not even from Germany.

OzzieMonkey

I did German for 7 years in primary school (yeah, we have prep here) and then another 2.5 years in secondary college. I decided not to learn German anymore, as I was kind of getting sick of it. I also felt there was no progression going on, especially with the teacher. She is horrible. Also, I wanted to do something that would help me more on a career basis, so I went with programming.

Anyways, enough of me going on a tangent, let's talk German!
It's a fascinating language, very close to English. So, I'll try and say something in German.

Ich komme aus Australien und ich bin funfzehn jahre alt. Ich wohne in Melbourne. Ich bin gross Monkey Island fan!

Shwoo

TomPravetz wrote: »

bomb
comb
tomb

What about them?

der_ketzer wrote: »

right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMmG9TrYyAE

I hate this video and it's not even from Germany.

German subtitles, I mean. English ones aren't very helpful.

TomPravetz

Shwoo wrote: »

What about them?

b-aw-m
c-oh-m
t-oo-m

Avistew

Tom means that although these words are spelled almost exactly the same way, their pronunciation isn't very consistent.

I think the point was that "writing sound" isn't just inaccurate and prone to error due to various people's accents but also due to the nature of the English language by itself, which has a weaker link between spelling and pronunciation as some other languages do.

serweet

I thought Die Prinzen was the best way to learn German

MeisterGlanz

I think Die Ärzte are better. For example in Lasse Redn (the song text is in the youtube description) the pronunciation is very clear.

And then there is also Majus first Monkey Island short.

Shwoo

MeisterGlanz wrote: »

And then there is also Majus first Monkey Island short.

He speaks really fast in that. Lots of simple sentences, though.

roumeaz

most grammar stuff is done with m n s t e ig ung and changing vowels to others, but the easy part is .. german vowels are allways spoken the same

ss(ß) = s
v = f
c = k

roumeaz

some vocabulary

nice woman = suesse frau
mean coworker = fieser mitarbeiter
computer = rechner
boring = langeweile -> langweilig
nerd = depp
president = kanzler
cat = katze . dog = hund . mouse = maus
squirrel = hoernchen (oak = eiche, so they realy are called eichhoernchen)
racoon = dachs . snake = schlange . bird = vogel . parrot = papagei
starship = raumschiff or sternenschiff
hate = hass . love = liebe
dumb = dumm . smart = schlau
horny = geil . fu... = fi... .. shit = scheisse (sch = sh)
holliday = urlaub . break = pause
i drink = ich trinke . eat = esse . fart = furze . dance = tanze . cry = heule . laugh = lache
e and en are very often used grammarwise to correct stuff
old school = alte schule (e harmonizes stuff)
friend = freund . show = sendung . failure = versagen . money = geld . conspiracy = verschwoerung
lizard shapeshifter = echsen formwandler(chs = gs) . naz... german ufo = reichsflugscheibe (imperial flying disc)
sea = see . pirate = pirat, freibeuter (buccaneer i think), seeraeuber
coat = mantel . boot = stiefel . hook = haken . ship = schiff . flag = flagge . sail = segel
captain = capitaen . soldier = soldat . weapon = waffe . sword = schwert . map = karte
shovel = schaufel . treasue = schatz . ghost = geist . i fight = ich kaempfe
afterlife = jenseits . i lie = ich luege
mediocre dinosaur = mittelmaß -> mittelmaessiger dinosaurier(i think this is the only word were ie is spoken as in cashier)