this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2025
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[–] rockerface@lemm.ee 49 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Slavic languages: You guys have articles?

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[–] 97xBang@feddit.online 31 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)
[–] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Japanese: you guys have plurals?

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Japanese: just say the word twice.

[–] Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Any slavic language afaik.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Damn, beat me to it!

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[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 25 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (6 children)

What really fucks with me is akkusativ suffixes

If dein grampa isn't the first and foremost noun in a sentence then it has to be deinen grampa but if it's a feminine word the the rule doesn't matter

Meine Oma Liebt deine Oma.

Mein Opa Liebt deine Oma.

Mein Opa Liebt deinen Opa.

Meine Oma Liebt deinen Opa.

I want to be good at this but that shit makes no sense, Hans. And why the fuck does a Library have a gender?!

EDIT: Liebt not Liebst in this context

[–] brennesel@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Just a minor correction: instead of "Liebst" it must be "liebt" since it's 3rd person singular:

  • ich liebe
  • du liebst
  • er/sie/es liebt
[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Thank you for catching that, I appreciate the input.

[–] jenesaisquoi@feddit.org 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's not gender like in humans or in animals. Nobody thinks of the library as a woman, that would be absurd. It's a purely grammatical concept.

[–] Schmoo@slrpnk.net 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Grammatical gender will never make sense to me, and I suspect that's because it actually just doesn't make sense.

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[–] Dagnet@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Don't worry, Dativ will come and double fuck you too

[–] Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Because the subject is in Nominativ and the object is in Akusativ here.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Has anybody so far just considered not doing any of that anymore?

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[–] JayObey711@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I fucking love German grammar!!!! It's awesome. The Futur 2 and Plusquamperfekt are my favourite. We have some funky letters like ß (<- look at this guy :) ) and weird sounds like the CH and SCH. There is this one grammar "rule" that I don't like. Because there is no real rule. You just have to know. It's about the "connecting s". So in some compound words you sometimes put an s between the two words to connect them. But there is not really a way to know when to do it. It's Rind + Fleisch = Rindlfeisch but Rind + Leder = Rindsleder with an S.

Thank you all for coming to my tedtalk.

[–] PlexSheep 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I love how we can stick two words together and bam it's a new word. Rucksackriemenquerverbindunsgträger

[–] samuelazers@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

Compound words are great because there's no ambiguity about where noun groups start and end. English has compound words too, but german are the undisputed champions of compound words.

[–] gilgameth@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

In Persian we don't even have "the". If it's indefinite we use the equivalent of "a". If it's definite we don't use anything.

[–] jenesaisquoi@feddit.org 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That sounds... efficient

In Russian there aren't any articles, and no concept of definite/indefinite. Hence the cliché accent in English leaving out all of the "the" and "a/an"

[–] gilgameth@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I have guessed the lack of articles in Russian from the cliché! By the way, how many cases does Russian have?

[–] jenesaisquoi@feddit.org 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Six real cases, plus some remnants of two more that are no longer used.

The same ones as in German, plus prepositive (typical use is "in" something) and instrumental (typical use is "with" something). They also distinguish between living and non-living, for example, accusative male is the same as nominative male if the subject is non-living (things), but if living (humans and animals) then it is the same as genitive male.

They also love to use genitive for everything. Let's say you're counting. One is nominative, two through four is genitive singular, five through twenty and zero is genitive plural. Above twenty the last digit determines the case.

Wanna say a date? Ordinal number in genitive according to the rules above for the day, genitive for the month.

Wanna say x amount of something? The something is genitive. If it is countable, it's genitive plural, if it's uncountable, it's genitive singular. You might think, that's not so bad, until you discover that Russians consider onions, potatoes, carrots etc as uncountable. Of course you can't say 5 carrots! Impossible to count them. You must say "5 pieces of carrot" in genitive plural. Duh.

Please hit like and subscribe to be notified when a new Russian grammar rant is published.

[–] gilgameth@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

You might think, that's not so bad, until you discover that Russians consider onions, potatoes, carrots etc as uncountable. Of course you can't say 5 carrots! Impossible to count them.

:))) I love these random craziness of languages. And I don't want to know the reason behind them. Like when I learned the word for "girl" is neuter in German, I was happy but when I learned the reason, it was boring.

I swear Persian might be the easiest language there is.

[–] Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is it prepositive or locative? I know slovenian has the same cases and they are used pretty similarly.

[–] jenesaisquoi@feddit.org 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Prepositive. They don't have locative anymore. I believe prep. replaced loc. They also had ablative but I think it was combined with accusative. But I'm not sure about that.

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The last time I counted them, it was six.

[–] devfuuu@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

I finally realize why the people coming from the east to speak Portuguese have some special quirks in their efforts. It's really hard coming from that perspective.

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Also English: Random pronunciation without working rules.

[–] thebigslime@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (3 children)
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[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's why "the" is such a common word in English. If you have a toddler, teach them to read (recognize) the word "the." Then sit down together with a book, reading aloud with your finger running under the words, and pausing to let them read all the "the"s. It'll help them get the connection between print and speech, even if they're still working on the alphabet. And they'll feel powerful.

As a lesson in English, you can explain that even though there's no t, h, or e sound in it, it's pronounced "the" because whenever t and h are together we say (long exaggerated th sound), and it's such an old and common word that we got lazy about saying "ee" and now we just say "uh."

[–] Squeezer@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

I taught my daughter to read during covid when the schools were closed. ‘The’ was the first word she learned to read, and I did exactly what you suggest, pausing for her to read it. It really helped. When my workshop reopened I made her a silver badge of the word ‘the’ to celebrate.

[–] whostosay@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This really fucked me up in German class

[–] jenesaisquoi@feddit.org 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ha, try the modal verbs! Or Konjunktiv 1. Partizip is also a favourite

[–] CitizenKong@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Plusquamperfekt! Futur II!

[–] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Meanwhile Danish turns the indefinite article into a definite suffix. Like:

A house: "et hus"
The house: "huset"
Houses: "huse"
The houses: "husene"

[–] zedgeist@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Don't most (if not all) Nordic languages do that?

Also, I can't help but share: https://youtu.be/s-mOy8VUEBk

[–] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Scandinavian, yes, nordic, well, I don't think they do it in Finnish? Not sure about Icelandic.

[–] zedgeist@lemm.ee 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Fair. I meant Scandinavian and not Finno-Scandic in my comment. Finnish isn't even in the same language family, so I don't claim to know anything about it

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[–] LorIps@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

Which psychopath decided to put the cases in German in the wrong order?

It's:

  1. Fall (Nominativ)
  2. Fall (Genitiv)
  3. Fall (Dativ)
  4. Fall (Akkusativ)
[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago
[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Und jetzt machen wir die unbestimmten Artikel.

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[–] aggelalex@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Singular male, female, neuter, Plural male, female, neuter

Nominative: ο, η, το, οι, οι, τα

Genitive: του, της, του, των, των, των

Accusative: τον, την, το, τους, τις, τα

Callitive: (no article)

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[–] logorok@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

German:

Singular: der, die, das

Plural: die

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It’s a weird contrast between Germanic language German and Germanic language English

I wonder if it comes from Gaelic languages

[–] hyves@feddit.nl 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Germanic language Dutch only has "de" and "het"

[–] bob_lemon@feddit.org 3 points 10 months ago

We should absolutely steal it. All the different articles serve no linguistic purpose at all. You could literally just use "de" and "en" in German today, and it'd be perfectly understandable.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Good Neder

that’s awesome

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