• FundMECFS@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    7 months ago

    As someone who learnt both German and English as a second language, german was far easier to learn. Atleast the spelling and stuff makes sense.

    • doingthestuff@lemy.lol
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      7 months ago

      As someone who speaks German alright (lived there awhile and studied a few years in school) gendered nouns and all of the versions of “the” are just stupidly laborious and I never cared if I got it wrong. Even if my accent was okay (it wasn’t okay, my US German teacher was Danish and I was sometimes told I sounded Danish) my lack of fucks about der, die, das, dem etc made it very obvious I wasn’t a native speaker.

      All of that said, I found that popup kids book pretty easy to read.

      • Omega@discuss.online
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        7 months ago

        Hilfe (help or assistance)

        Leistung (act, performance or service)

        Lösch (delete, remove, extinguish)

        Fahrzeug (vehicle)

        Hilfeleistungloschgruppenfahrze, or Extinguishment help service vehicle

  • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    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.

    Hilfeleistungslöschgruppenfahrzeug

    Hilfe - help
    leistung - performance
    Hilfeleistung - assistance
    lösch - delete, extinguish
    gruppen - group (team, department)
    löschgruppen - (fire) extinguishing team or department
    fahr - drive
    zeug - thing
    fahrzeug - vehicle

    Assistance Extinguishing Team Vehicle

    Now translate

    Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft

    • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      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.

      • LeFrog@discuss.tchncs.de
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        7 months ago

        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.

      • Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        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”

        • colourlessidea@sopuli.xyz
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          7 months ago

          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.