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To: professor@schoolname.edu Subject: CLASS3290 Question

are you mad at me

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I should probably answer something more reasonable, but I had fun with this.

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German children’s tv show mascot Bernd das Brot would do numbers if he had a tumblr account:

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I'm trying to do a certain amount of immersion for my German studies- because god help me, this class is not going to get me to A1 by January, much less B1- so I'm listening to German-language music while I study other topics.

Anyone want a dose of Pure Concentrated 1980s?

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i'm kinda enjoying doing math exercises rn ????? what the actual fuck happened to me

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my hungry ass could NEVER work in a hardware store.

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I've really been struggling with noun genders in German; I found this, and am going to work on memorizing her groups and techniques rather than the rote memorization.

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Scary scary German syntax... right?

The following sentence exhibits a typical mistake German-learners make: Heute ich gehe in ein Museum.

It's not conjugation ("ich gehe" is correct!), it's not declension ("ein Museum" is correct too!). The issue is "heute ich gehe". Correct would be: Heute gehe ich in ein Museum (or: Ich gehe heute in ein Museum.)

What's the rule here?

It's unfortunately not simply "there can only be one word before the verb"

German word order is so difficult be cause it is so variable. All following sentences are correct and synoymous (though emphasis shifts):

Der Opa schenkt seiner Enkelin zum Geburtstag ein Buch über Autos.

Seiner Enkelin schenkt der Opa zum Geburtstag ein Buch über Autos.

Ein Buch über Autos schenkt der Opa seiner Enkelin zum Geburtstag.

Zum Geburtstag schenkt der Opa seiner Enkelin ein Buch über Autos. All mean: The grandfather gifts his niece a book about cars for her birthday.

What do they all have in common, syntax-wise? There's only one phrase in front of the finite verb. What does this mean? A phrase is a completed (!) unit that can consist of one or more words (depending on the word class (-> noun, verb, …)) Typical word classes that can be a phrase with just one word are:

Proper nouns, plural nouns, personal pronouns, relative pronous (Lukas kocht. Busse fahren. Ich schreibe. Der Mann, der kocht, …)

Adverbs (Heute, Morgen, Bald, Dort, Darum, …) Most other word classes need additional words to form a full phrase:

adjectives need a noun and article: der blaue Ball, der freundliche Nachbar

nouns need a determiner (= article): der Mann, eine Frau, das Nachbarskind

prepositions need… stuff (often a noun phrase): auf der Mauer, in dem Glas, bei der Statue

…

A finite verb is the verb that has been changed (=conjugated) according to person, time, … All verbs that are NOT infinitive or participles are finite. ich sagte -> "sagte" is the finite verb ich bin gegangen -> "bin" is the finite verb The infinitive and the participle are called "infinite verbs" and are always pushed towards the end (but not always the very end!) of the sentence: Ich bin schon früher nach Hause gegangen als meine Freunde.

So: Before the verb (that is not the participle or infinitive) there can only be one phrase.

Since "heute" is an adverb (-> forms a full phrase on its own) and "ich" is a personal pronoun (-> forms a full phrase on its own), they can't both be in front of the verb "gehe" You have to push one of them behind the verb: Heute gehe ich in ein Museum Ich gehe heute in ein Museum.

Both of these are main clauses (Ger.: Hauptsätze), which in German exhibit "V-2 Stellung", meaning the finite verb is in the second position (after one phrase).

What happens if we push all phrases behind the finite verb?

Gehe ich heute in ein Museum? (Watch out: Gehe heute ich in ein Museum would be ungrammatical! The subject has to come in the second position)

It's a question now!

In German, question sentences (that do not start with a question word like "Was?", "Wo?", …) start with the finite verb (called "V-1 Stellung").

Questions, main clauses,… what's missing?

Dependent clauses!

The third type of sentence exhibits "V-letzt Stellung" or "V-End Stellung", meaning the finite verb is at the very end of the sentence. Ich bin gestern in ein Museum gegangen, … main clause -> V-2 Stellung … weil es dort eine interessante Ausstellung gab. dependent clause -> V-letzt Stellung If you want to practice this....

... determine if the following German sentences are correct. If not, what would be the right way to say it?

Der Zug war sehr voll.

Gestern ich war in der Schule.

Die Lehrerin mich nicht hat korrigiert.

Gehst du heute zur Arbeit?

Das Buch ich finde nicht sehr interessant.

To practice this further, translate the following sentences into German and focus on the order of words:

The boy gave the ball back to me.

I called my girlfriend because I missed her.

The girl saw her brother at the train station.

The horse, which was standing on the field, was white and black.

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Math tip- always make sure your percentages add up to 100.

My statistics professor is a massive troll and put a question on the exam where there were more data points on the table than the question said there were. If I hadn't double checked my work (and caught that the percentages didn't add up to 100%) I would have bombed that question.

Of course, I subjected the poor man to Spiders Georg, so we're even.

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Math tip- always make sure your percentages add up to 100.

My statistics professor is a massive troll and put a question on the exam where there were more data points on the table than the question said there were. If I hadn't double checked my work (and caught that the percentages didn't add up to 100%) I would have bombed that question.

Of course, I subjected the poor man to Spiders Georg, so we're even.

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I'm currently about halfway through reading the Yiddish translation of The Hobbit, and I thought I'd record a few of my observations thus far:

I really like the overall writing style! This is my first time reading The Hobbit in translation (aside from excerpts from the Latin translation), so idk how well it works in other languages, but I feel like the Yiddish lends itself really well to mimicking Tolkien's style.

Apparently the modern Yiddish word for dwarf is שרעטל, which was a bit weird to get used to as an Old Yiddishist who is used to צװערק/צװערג. I don't know the etymology of the modern word, but according to definitions I've found online, it can also mean elf or gnome. (Basically any diminutive mythical creature, I guess?) Goldstein just uses the word עלף for the Elves.

I can get behind the way he transliterates most of the Dwarves' names, but for reasons I cannot comprehend, he transliterates Balin and Dwalin as בײלין and דוײלין respectively. (Beylin? Dualin?)

He translates "ale" as ענגליש ביר (English beer), presumably to distinguish it from regular beer, but it sort of breaks immersion by implying the existence of England lol.

I do not envy anyone the task of translating Tolkien's verse. I think he mostly does a good job; the rhyme and meter work better in some songs than others.

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So... I found a website that lets you turn Quizlet quizzes into a weird little minecraft clone that helps you study. It's been helping me a remarkable amount.

You need a school email to sign up, and I think they might not like you using it if you're not a teacher... but even if you're not willing to make an account, you can play quizzes other people made.

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Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.

What does not kill me, makes me stronger.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900), German philosopher

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nothing better than the wrong capitalization of Sie

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it's okay, ulysses ogre. you can back up and try dubliners, it's a short story collection with much more straightforward prose, you can dive deep on one piece at a time, and once you've toyed around with that then I'm sure you'll have an easier time with ulysses. besides, I had an irish lit professor who'd been studying finnegans wake for twenty years and she said she still didn't really know what was going on in it. ulysses ogre, what really matters is if you are enjoying your time with literature and feel like you are gaining something, not whether you reach the "correct" conclusions. there's no need to try and force yourself through something if you feel like you aren't on an even enough plane with the text to reap any of its rewards.

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Can we start a GoFundMe to give the German language a few more pronouns, please?

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ive seen ppl using /gen, but what abt /nom, /voc, /acc, /dat and /abl?