What?
Oh, why do you care? You wouldn't be able to pronounce it anyway :)

German words don't tend to be long and convoluted. That's just a stereotype due to writing rules.

A sentence spelled without spaces isn't a word.

Not that I'm aware of but you can always make one up.

Like "verarbeitiungszeitintensive Frage" or something like that.

talking without thinking.... that could be called "amischnattern"

No but they do have a word for asking about it

Dumme Angewohnheit.

Den muss ich mir merken.

Ze Mouthen iz tu Quiken

I call it in a neat & translateable manner:

Some do their thinking 5cm behind the forehead,
and some do it 5cm before.

German compound nouns are just written without spaces. There's no grammatical difference between "Schlafsack" (= Schlaf "sleep" + Sack "bag") and "sleeping bag", except the way they're written down. In English we analyse a "word" as "a thing you write down with spaces on either side", which is valid as a definition or as an analysis, but it's not what we really think of when we talk about words, which we think of as something more fundamental.

If, tomorrow, we decided in English to write compound nouns without spaces, the language would have suddenly gained thousands and thousands of words, yet the only real difference would be a rule about writing things down. Spoken English would be exactly the same, so nothing fundamental about the actual bits of English would have changed.

I didn't believe you at first so I checked a few. This kind of ruins the magic tbh.

ah... ist lustiger sich spontan was auzudenken und mit den worten zu spielen :D

One of my frustrations with English is that spaces in compound nouns are arbitrary. We have fishbowl but also fish tank.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echoic_memory

Well the rest of the rules around written English are arbitrary, why would this one be different?!

I think I'd write fish bowl separately though.

Wow, I actually learned something today.

Wikipedia explains "the rules."

Orthography: open, hyphenated, or solid (closed up)

English uses many open compound nouns, a large subclass of which, by convention in accepted English orthography, are not closed up (not solidified) and are sometimes optionally hyphenated in attributive position (that is, when functioning as a noun adjunct). Examples are high school, kidney disease, and file format. Although some other languages would close up these nouns' components (for example, German usually does so), English has a tendency whereby it closes up only certain ones, usually only ones in which the head noun is monosyllabic (and even within that category, only sometimes, and in a way that is not fully standardized). For example, data set and dataset, or file name and filename, are accepted alternative forms, but file format, data format, and data analysis, which have multisyllabic heads (format and analysis), can only be spelled as open in accepted English orthography. This pattern holds for countless nouns with few exceptions. For the class with monosyllabic heads, there is a tendency that "compounds tend to solidify as they age,"[5]: 368  which is how a term such as data set becomes dataset, pin-up becomes pinup,[5]: 368  coal mine becomes coalmine, bottle cap becomes bottlecap, and so on. Such alternative forms usually continue to coexist in accepted use; style guides often convene on preferred dictionaries as a way of achieving consistency, by declaring that the headword form there will be the default styling for each such term.

Depends if it's a fish bowl (a bowl for a fish) or a fishbowl (a big watered down drink you can buy from bad nightclubs)

I think that might actually be it.

VorschnellantworttrotzNichtverstehensreaktion

Mundschnelleralsseele?

Some bastard dialect between English and Frisian haha.

would be a rule about writing things down.

Which really explains most of the weird things with English...

English isn't a "real" language, it's a hodgepodge peasant language that was completely unsupervised by any sort of written down words let alone rules. Like, shit just wasn't even really written in English, everyone educated enough to know how to write, knew "proper" languages and used them. It's why English words are used for animals rich people ate (pig, cow, deer) and French was used for what rich people ate (pork, beef, venison). English just didn't need a word for eating them as food, because no one who spoke only English could afford it. Meanwhile the simple chicken was called chicken regardless of if it was in a coop or in soup.

It was only standardized with the early use of the printing press by Dutch workers who didn't know English, but still felt the need to edit what they were printing. That was like 1470ish, and written old German has been traced back to like late 700s with a consistent usage. So even though English is standardized now, it's built on an absolutely nonsensical foundation. While other European language had educated people building logical systems.

It just seems weird to people who only know English and assume it's actually normal because they learned as a baby how to speak it.

Also the reason any random American can make decent money teaching English to foreigners, it's almost impossible to learn all the random shit intentionally.

Mundschussvorhirnverwendung

Also the reason any random American can make decent money teaching English to foreigners, it's almost impossible to learn all the random shit intentionally.

The reason English speakers can make decent money is that English is a high-demmand language and people naively value native speakers.

Untrained native speakers of any langauge are fucking horrible teachers because they can't explain anything to you. All they can say is, "I would say this in this situation, but can't tell you why I'd say that in that situation."

Please, don't pay an untrained native speaker for anything but conversation practice.

Off topic, but in English, it’s called an ‘audio processing disorder’

What would you call this?

Or as some would say, classic wortlängenbedingte Sprachwesensverfälschung*. See the space there inbetween ☝️?

*amtlich korrigiert

Stereotype?

Stereo type?

Stereo-type?

Klappengeschwindigkeitsübertretung

The idea that English's orthography is crazy because it came into written use late doesn't really hold water. The ancestors of Modern English have all been written down for many centuries, even though post-1066 no-one was using it for a good while at court.

It's more that English as a whole is split between a Germanic and Romance ancestry, with the orthography of both sources being represented, while standardisation took place right around the time of a huge shift in pronunciation - the great vowel shift - fossilising an orthography that represented a bygone pronunciation.

In fact I think more can be blamed on English writing being standardised early than late, and then not keeping up with changes in pronunciation: the infamous cluster used to represent a pronounced /x/ sound - compare English night with German Nacht, or knight with Knecht, or freight with Fracht. All these spellings were standardised from a language that pronounced this consonant! If English really standardised late, then the likelihood would be that these words would not have a (written) consonant where the pronunciation doesn't have one.

delightful?

That's just a regular english word.

Sprachwesensverfälschung, wenn ich bitten darf.

(Word length induced misconception of a language's nature)

It’s more that English as a whole is split between a Germanic and Romance ancestry, with the orthography of both sources being represented

It's way more than those two...

a huge shift in pronunciation

That has absolutely nothing to do with grammar, just spelling...

Like, you seem to be solely focused on spelling.

And that's my entire point, you don't notice the other shit because it's "normal" to you. That's why you'd be paid money to "teach" English...

The rules are so convoluted and nonsensical (the adjective order is a great example) that even native speakers are often unaware of the rules, we just follow them without understanding them.

You can't teach a non native speaker all the rules, it's too much to remember. They need that whole "immersion" thing everyone says but never understands. They need to figure it out thru trial and error and learn it subconsciously otherwise they'll always be focused on translating into English and abiding every rule and remembering each exception.

That's also why you see internet comments of absolutely perfect classroom English, where the writer constantly apologized for their poor English. Textbook can be learned, but authentic English speakers rarely speak/write how we were taught, and that is what wealthy foreigners want their kids to learn, how the language is actually used.

That is nowhere near as big of an issue with any other language.

Because English isn't consistent or logical. There's a shit ton of exceptions to every "rule" and users constantly change things.

Getting deeper into how language influences our thoughts, and the rise of English could explain "the Americanization" of the world just because of how disorganized it can be leaving room for cheating and the importance it puts on the individual and capitalism:

Studies in psychology have found that bilingual people respond differently when they complete tasks in different languages. For example, one study randomly assigned bilingual people in India to complete a work task in Hindi or English.[10] Social norms were more effective at motivating people to work longer in Hindi, whereas payment was more effective in English, which is similar to results when people work in their native languages in the United States and India. Another study randomly assigned bilingual managers in Hong Kong to rate the importance of different values in English or Chinese.[11] When surveyed English, managers in Hong Kong rated conformity and tradition as less important and rated achievement and hedonism as more important.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_and_thought#Studies_concerning_the_Sapir–Whorf_hypothesis

It's a fascinating topic, but I fully expect it to be one of those things no one's heard of before, so people with no idea what is going on will reflexively defend English as a language.

Which ironically enough, they likely wouldn't experience that response if their native language wasn't English, even if someone was critizing their hypothetical native language.

Ooh I've had this happen

Username checks out

I'm talking about orthography because the thread is about how language (German originally) is written - i.e. orthography. You didn't mention anything about grammar until this latest comment; your previous comment mentioned orthography and vocabulary. All I did was continue talking about what I was already talking about.

The rules are so convoluted and nonsensical (the adjective order is a great example)

The adjective order is an old, overblown meme. The meme came with a ready-made exception ("big bad wolf") which is no less of an exception for the fact that it came with ready-made excuse ("ablaut reduplication").

Did you notice that "old, overblown meme" violates the order (opinion follows age)? That's because it's overblown.

Did you know that other languages have adjective orders of various specificity and rigidity?

Yes, it's a fascinating topic, and yes, there are many markers of non-native English speaking which are impractical to teach. But it sounds like you're trying to steer the conversation somewhere I don't want to go, and I'm not going down there. As soon as you start categorising languages as "real" or "not real" you're on your own. Your misunderstanding of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, likewise.

Did you notice that “old, overblown meme” violates the order (opinion follows age)? That’s because it’s overblown.

Did I notice how all the nonsensical rules have nonsensical exceptions...

Yes, that's why I said:

You can’t teach a non native speaker all the rules, it’s too much to remember. They need that whole “immersion” thing everyone says but never understands. They need to figure it out thru trial and error and learn it subconsciously otherwise they’ll always be focused on translating into English and abiding every rule and remembering each exception.

If someone said "the bad big wolf" would you as a native English speaker react?

You would...

You wouldn't be able to explain why, you wouldn't understand why thats an exception and couldn't explain it to someone else, you just know that's an exception, we all do.

Your subconscious would just flag it as off, because people not conforming means they may be from another tribe...

You're literally proving my point, the only way to learn "big bad wolf" is exposure and letting the subconscious handle that.

But it sounds like you’re trying to steer the conversation somewhere I don’t want to go, and I’m not going down there.

Then just dont reply?

It's literally that easy, buddy, if you can't manage that I'll just block you now that way you can always chime in not getting the point and then I won't "force" you into a conversation trying to help you.

What exactly are you trying to "help" me with?

Welp, nothing now.

Best of luck

Would that end bit basically translate to "if I may"/"if you will"? I know a more literal translation would be "if I may ask/request". Mein Deutsch ist mittelmäßig und ich brauche mehr Übung.

lmao.

i too remember getting a fishbowl in the 90’s at applebee’s in the mall, then going to a movie, and then hoping by the time your movie was done you’d be sober enought to drive home.

Not really, it's a phrase. Basically "if you please".

What? No say the exact same words again. What’s a singdis? Audio process singdis order? Audio processing disorder! Oh, I have one of those! Why? What’s up? I wasn’t listening.

I figured it was a phrase that didn't have a direct translation to English. I believe my initial translation of "if I may"/"if you will" is correct then since I've heard/used "if you please" in the same way in English. Either way thanks for clarifying!

In case anyone is interested now this "helpful" character has departed:

The conventional explanation for "bad big wolf" sounding "wrong" is that "big bad" is an example of ablaut reduplication, which has a fixed sequence of vowels.

This is a weak explanation for two reasons: a good example of ablaut reduplication is for example "bish bash bosh" where only the vowel changes. This is a weaker example, and so ablaut reduplication is a weaker predictor of the pattern, because the final consonant is not the same between "big" and "bad". Secondly, "big bad wolf" is a phrase from a folk tale and hence deeply embedded in the language in its own right. It's hard to disentangle whether "bad big wolf" sounds strange to native ears because it's a violation of the pattern of ablaut reduplication, or because it's a violation of the specific example, "big bad wolf," that all native speakers heard many times as children.

Remember, this is all a tangent from whether English has a rigid adjective order. A stronger example to consider is A1: "big beautiful house" versus A2: "beautiful big house", and B1: "little beautiful house" versus B2: "beautiful little house". As a native speaker, I strongly prefer A1 but B2. The adjective order adherents say it should be A2 and B2.

So, I don't think the supposed rule of adjective order really exists.

I think if the helper were still around, they would say that actually this just proves their point. Even though they complained about the "rule" of adjective order, actually the fact that there is no rule is even worse! (how convenient, if true), and you just have to learn each example - B2 not B1, A1 not A2 - one by one, and their real point is that English is particularly bad because of this.

Unfortunately, because they are apparently not any kind of linguist, they never presented any comparative examples. Tagalog has a strong preference for adjective order, for example. Languages with flexible word order in general, such as Finnish, nevertheless have a preferred default word order and if you don't learn it you will sound weird. Languages which use prepositions pair certain verbs with certain prepositions (so in English you sit in your seat, watch the performance in English, and in the end the good guys win) but this pairing is arbitrary and if you pick the wrong one you'll generally be understood but sound wrong (in German you sit im Sitz, watch auf Deutsch, and am Ende the good guys win).

Languages - all languages - abound with aspects that mark out non-native speakers. That's because they're complex things that incorporate huge aspects of culture, not merely a means of communication. That's not something that anyone needs to "defend" and it's not something that makes a language cease to be "real". Is it the same degree in all languages? I'm sure it isn't, but that's not the point either.

Those two are way less offensive. I (ironically) used this phrase to poke fun at them. It is rather sarcastic and implies that they really should have. At least in my understanding of the English language.

Pink Floyd:

How I wish, how I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls swimming in
a fishbowl, year after year
Running over the same old ground, what have we found?
The same old fears, wish you were here