Re:The capital sharp S in now part of the official German or...
by krylon on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @03:08AM
(#14694105)
Mmmh, but in German you can say "Der Hund sprang auf den Tisch und biss ihn". This kind of ambiguity can be a lot of fun. (It can also be confusing, I admit. But it can be fun, too.)
EDIT: Well, in English you can say "The dog jumped on the table and bit him", but it is not ambiguous. ;-/ The ambiguity in German is not due to gendered pronouns, but due to the gender of table/Tisch. :-|
Re:The capital sharp S in now part of the official German or...
by yehi on Monday July 03, 2017 @11:38PM
(#14693369)
the benefit of languages with cases is that you can switch the order of the sentence without changing the meaning. In those languages I can say "the dog bit the person" and "the (accusative) person bit the (nominative) dog" and it would not change the meaning of the sentence but it would allow me to emphasize one object more.
Re:The capital sharp S in now part of the official German or...
by TulliusCicero on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @06:44AM
(#14694964)
You can still do that in English though: the dog bit the person, the person was bit by the dog
This sentence is short. It is short.
"What did you do today?"
"Rode bike"
Sometimes we even use genders for nouns even though it's not official:
The ship sank. She sank.
Compared to German:
The dog jumped on the table and bit the man.
Aww shit there are three "the"s in there... if I'm speaking, I can just slur through it and say "d'Hund" or "d'Tisch" but that doesn't work when I'm writing... okay let's try to get through this.
Der Hund sprang auf... Hmm, well "the table" is Der Tisch, but hang on, I have to figure out what case this is... ah, accusative! den Tisch und biss Ah fuck, "the man" is "der Mann" but what case is this... I don't even care anymore... d'Mann. Nailed it.
It's not like anyone is going to say "he jumped on him and bit him", so the genders serve absolutely no purpose.