Language Learners, or: The Owl Comes For Us All

Discussion in 'General Chatter' started by kmoss, May 20, 2019.

  1. TheOwlet

    TheOwlet A feathered pillow filled with salt and science

    there's a few fixed rules for the nouns if that helps

    but also there's an impassioned argument about the correct gender of Nutella so like. good luck.
     
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  2. Loq

    Loq rotating like a rotisserie chicknen

    if the noun ends in -e it's probably feminine but for everything else Good Fucking Luck
     
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  3. TheOwlet

    TheOwlet A feathered pillow filled with salt and science

    nouns ending with -ung, -keit and -heit are always feminine, too.
     
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  4. kmoss

    kmoss whoops

    thank you to everyone but also What
    what are the stakes of this argument please & thank you

    also I wasn't super clear earlier but like, is there. way to navigate nonbinaryness in gender? do y'all opt for neuter?
     
  5. Aondeug

    Aondeug Cringe Annoying Ass Female Lobster

    this makes me wish i was learning german so i could become the foremost researcher in arguments about the gender of nutella in german
     
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  6. TheOwlet

    TheOwlet A feathered pillow filled with salt and science

    ok basically the argument is whether Nutella is 'die Nutella', 'das Nutella' or 'der Nutella' with my opinion being that 'der' is right the fuck out, and 'die' and 'das' both being acceptable but 'das' is clearly better, soundwise. Since Nutella is a kinda nonsense word vaguely sourced from italian, there's not exactly a lot of external guideline.

    as to nonbinaryness....that's not really a thing in German. Using 'es' as a pronoun for a person is rude as absolute fuck (it's like using 'it'). I usually do a bit of a dance and try to avoid pronouns, or if not possible go for the one that's hopefully least offensive because there is... no singular 'they' stand-in that I know off.
     
    Last edited: Jun 8, 2019
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  7. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    I had a German friend once get really mad at "der Butter".
     
  8. TheOwlet

    TheOwlet A feathered pillow filled with salt and science

    like, german makes no vocab distinction between sex and gender, so a lot of the time when discussing things like that, you gotta make do with english loan words.
     
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  9. keltena

    keltena putting the fun in executive dysfunction

    This was also my exact reaction.


    On a totally unrelated note, I was browsing example sentences the other day, and...

    buffalo.png

    Tatoeba, no.

    (My favorite part is that the translation is infinitely easier to understand without explanation than the original even for me, and my Japanese ability could generously be called "beginner-intermediate".)
     
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  10. Aondeug

    Aondeug Cringe Annoying Ass Female Lobster

    tatoeba, yes.
     
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  11. kmoss

    kmoss whoops

    thanks @TheOwlet ! I had a feeling it was like that, I feel like English's main benefit is that it has space for nonbinaryness. I will just have to figure out how to navigate it if I am able to travel to Germany! (boyfriend is considering getting a student visa and studying in Germany in the future, as that entire trip is still apparently less expensive than college in the US)

    also I love the weird stupid arguments all languages have
     
  12. TheOwlet

    TheOwlet A feathered pillow filled with salt and science

    depending on how long it takes you to get here maybe people will come up with one, otherwise...yeah you sadly gonna have to pick one by coinflip/lesser evil I'm afraid.
     
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  13. keltena

    keltena putting the fun in executive dysfunction

    Hi, please appreciate this beautiful piece of translation a friend linked me:

    376.gif


    The joke is that
    they miswrote 太 (thick) as 犬 (dog).
     
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  14. TheOwlet

    TheOwlet A feathered pillow filled with salt and science

    Very annoyed at the most recent owl update. it has a new feature that supposedly allows you to type in words in the middle of a sentence, except it doesn't trigger my phone's keyboard, so I'm just stuck as fuck.
    switched to another lesson but MAN this is annoying
     
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  15. Codeless

    Codeless Cheshire Cat

    it´s Die Nutella. Like Die Marmelade, both sweet things to put on bread.

    ETA: In my opinion
     
    Last edited: Jul 9, 2019
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  16. Saro

    Saro Where is wizard hut

    why so many articles.......
     
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  17. TheOwlet

    TheOwlet A feathered pillow filled with salt and science

    I now have a 300 days streak on duolingo's French!
     
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  18. kmoss

    kmoss whoops

    we went to critical northwest for a week and that's no service area..... so my streeeeeak, it's Broken

    ...worth it tho
     
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  19. TheOwlet

    TheOwlet A feathered pillow filled with salt and science

    365 days of doulingo french! still so many more days to go probably but! progress!
     
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  20. hyrax

    hyrax we'll ride 'till the planets collide

    does anyone know any online resources for learning Georgian? it's not on duolingo. alternately, can anyone recommend some reputable non-duolingo sites or apps to check? there's a million "learn languages online fast!" sites out there that i've never heard of and it's hard to tell which ones are good and which ones are shitty and scammy.

    (i have absolutely no reason to learn Georgian, but the script is really pretty and i wanted to challenge myself with an agglutinative non-Indo-European language!)
     
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