I mean, yeah. This is an important part of the German language. They create composite words to describe a thing, and learning to break it down into its constituents is a fundamental part of reading German.
It makes more context to translate “Zeug” as “tool” in most compound words, it is its original meaning like in Feuerzeug, Flugzeug, Fahrzeug, Rüstzeug.
In English, it would be a “thingie.” Like Germans are constantly trying to remember the word “lighter” and they’re like, “you know, the whatsit, the… fire… thingie.”
It’s a good joke but I don’t think it’s too far off. The comment about it being “tools” kinda falls short of explaining things like Spielzeug=toy (play thing) and Schlagzeug=drum (beating/striking thing). I think “thing” is better. Might be somewhere in between though. Ich weiß nicht…
It’s also one of the most difficult parts of learning German as an adult, despite being a relatively simple syntactic rule and something we kinda-sorta emulate in English. The other part, at least for me, were false friends. Also sorry to all the lurking Germans waiting to comment, I forgot all of my German the moment I graduated college.
My biggest issue with Duolingo trying to learn German honestly. Sure I can read a compound word when presented with it, but fucking Duo is like “Cool… now spell it… bitch”
German is phonetic though - once you know how pronunciation maps to the alphabet (and certain compounds), it becomes easier to spell any new word. It’s actually why there’s no Spelling Bee in German.
I’m nearly at the end of Duolingo’s German content and spelling has mostly been quite easy (as a native English speaker). You want a spelling challenge, try French.
Yeah but the spelling ‘normally’ would have been updated to match English pronunciation. That’s what happens in most languages. As I understand there were two issues:
Some dictionary writers (ca. late 1400s IIRC) wanted spellings that seemed fancier like French and Latin, which is why e.g. the silent B in debt was added ‘artificially’.
The printing press was invented right in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift so old spellings got “locked in” even though spoken English continued to change significantly for a long time afterward.
I gave up on duolingo very quickly because it had a ton of clearly wrong stuff too. Drops and Rosetta Stone have much better content for learning German.
As a German I can assure you that false friends are something you scare away all pupils (regardless of age). I have very intense memories of our English teacher correcting us again and again.
Regarding the composita in German: we are moving more towards the English approach by splitting these word monstrousities with hyphens. E.g. Donaudampfschifffahrtsamt may be spelled Donau-Dampfschifffahrts-Amt. Its way easier to read and write. While the hyphenated spelling is not something that is used often officially, it got more popular in the last decades.
That’s something different. False cognates are words that look related even tho they are not and often have a similar meaning that makes it look even harder to be related. False friends often are related but have a very different meaning. Like the German word “eventuell” meaning “maybe” which is very bad if you use it wrong. Unlike the false cognate “emoji” meaning “picture sign” and – etymologically speaking – having nothing to do with emoticon despite its similar meaning. Which is more a linguistic fun fact than any problem for learners.
Whilst quite a lot of words are pretty much the same in both languages, “wie” in Dutch means “who” whilst in German it means “how”.
Having learned Dutch first, I can tell you that when I was first learning German the expression “Wie geht’s” tended to give me a serious mental hiccup when I was trying to talk to German people.
I haven’t tried, but I feel like that concept would be easy for me to grasp because I already find myself doing it with English if I happen to know the old words, Latin or otherwise, used to construct the modern ones.
When you’re a fireman whose job is to plan which vehicles go where or when you need to precisely specify which type of fire vehicle. Non-firemen usually say Feuerwehrfahrzeug or even Feuerwehrauto.
I mean, yeah. This is an important part of the German language. They create composite words to describe a thing, and learning to break it down into its constituents is a fundamental part of reading German.
It makes more context to translate “Zeug” as “tool” in most compound words, it is its original meaning like in Feuerzeug, Flugzeug, Fahrzeug, Rüstzeug.
In English, it would be a “thingie.” Like Germans are constantly trying to remember the word “lighter” and they’re like, “you know, the whatsit, the… fire… thingie.”
No, it’s literally not. It is “tool” or “gadget”. Not just any object or dingsbums.
Zeug used to mean something different back in the day.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear about that being a tongue in cheek remark.
It’s that German humor.
It’s a good joke but I don’t think it’s too far off. The comment about it being “tools” kinda falls short of explaining things like Spielzeug=toy (play thing) and Schlagzeug=drum (beating/striking thing). I think “thing” is better. Might be somewhere in between though. Ich weiß nicht…
It’s also one of the most difficult parts of learning German as an adult, despite being a relatively simple syntactic rule and something we kinda-sorta emulate in English. The other part, at least for me, were false friends. Also sorry to all the lurking Germans waiting to comment, I forgot all of my German the moment I graduated college.
My biggest issue with Duolingo trying to learn German honestly. Sure I can read a compound word when presented with it, but fucking Duo is like “Cool… now spell it… bitch”
German is phonetic though - once you know how pronunciation maps to the alphabet (and certain compounds), it becomes easier to spell any new word. It’s actually why there’s no Spelling Bee in German.
I learnt to write after hearing in Grundschule. It doesn’t work that well.
That’s your issue? Not adjective declination?
I’m nearly at the end of Duolingo’s German content and spelling has mostly been quite easy (as a native English speaker). You want a spelling challenge, try French.
Fucking French. ‘we’re never, ever going to say this ‘h’ character, but you still need it to spell words correctly because fuck you, that’s why.’
English isn’t exactly innocent there. See knight, plumber, mnemonic, pterodactyl.
Well those are words descendent from Latin and Greek.
Yeah but the spelling ‘normally’ would have been updated to match English pronunciation. That’s what happens in most languages. As I understand there were two issues:
I gave up on duolingo very quickly because it had a ton of clearly wrong stuff too. Drops and Rosetta Stone have much better content for learning German.
I once talk to a guy that was learning portuguese all by himself using Langenscheidt’s portuguese course.
They are pretty neat.
As a German I can assure you that false friends are something you scare away all pupils (regardless of age). I have very intense memories of our English teacher correcting us again and again.
Regarding the composita in German: we are moving more towards the English approach by splitting these word monstrousities with hyphens. E.g. Donaudampfschifffahrtsamt may be spelled Donau-Dampfschifffahrts-Amt. Its way easier to read and write. While the hyphenated spelling is not something that is used often officially, it got more popular in the last decades.
oh Christ, please. it really is just the lack of spaces that make them a nightmare.
Oh I thought those were false cognates
That’s something different. False cognates are words that look related even tho they are not and often have a similar meaning that makes it look even harder to be related. False friends often are related but have a very different meaning. Like the German word “eventuell” meaning “maybe” which is very bad if you use it wrong. Unlike the false cognate “emoji” meaning “picture sign” and – etymologically speaking – having nothing to do with emoticon despite its similar meaning. Which is more a linguistic fun fact than any problem for learners.
Another example of a false friend:
German: Bekommen (to get), English: Become (werden)
Hence a joke I often heard while learning English:
Whilst quite a lot of words are pretty much the same in both languages, “wie” in Dutch means “who” whilst in German it means “how”.
Having learned Dutch first, I can tell you that when I was first learning German the expression “Wie geht’s” tended to give me a serious mental hiccup when I was trying to talk to German people.
Alles gut. Deine Vergesslichkeit hindert mich nicht daran, hier zu pfostieren.
Doch
I haven’t tried, but I feel like that concept would be easy for me to grasp because I already find myself doing it with English if I happen to know the old words, Latin or otherwise, used to construct the modern ones.
In which context would you use Hilfeleistungslöschgruppenfahrzeug instead of Feuerwehrfahrzeug?
When you’re a fireman whose job is to plan which vehicles go where or when you need to precisely specify which type of fire vehicle. Non-firemen usually say Feuerwehrfahrzeug or even Feuerwehrauto.
But the firemen would just call it by it’s abbreviation HLF of course
And obviously there is a norm for all Vehicle types in use. Here is a list of all of them https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feuerwehrfahrzeuge_in_Deutschland#Feuerwehrfahrzeug-Typenliste_der_aktuell_genormten_Fahrzeuge