(Untitled)

[byelka58]

A few observations before I hit my chronological stride: Dresden is really cold. I mean, at the moment it's only really cold for August, in that I'm wishing I'd packed some sweaters, and sleeping happily under a substantial down duvet, and throwing on the occasional jacket. But dear Lord, what can this imply about winter here? The way I see it,

Comments

[kalliwoda]

I know I'll regret asking this, but what in the world is a dative plural?

[vislius]

Muwahaha ... be glad you don't have to think about things like declensions and cases.

[byelka58]

Oh no, vislius, allow me.

You see, lj user="kalliwoda", in English we have the damn sense not to distinguish further between direct and indirect objects than context clues and word order make possible. It's pretty clear, in the sentence "He gave the girls the book", that "book" is the direct object (what he gave) and "the girls" are the indirect object (to whom he gave it). We only make a distinction for pronouns, (some of)which have two forms: I/me, he/him, we/us, etc. "He gave it to me", but "I gave it to him".

In German, every single word has four cases (both singular and plural), one of which is the dative; you use it for indirect objects and with certain prepositions and verbs. So 4 cases x 2 (singular and plural) x 3 (masculine, feminine, neuter) means I have to learn 24 different endings. Latin has 6 cases x 2 x five possible patterns, or 60 possible endings. Russian has 6 x 2 x 3, or 36 endings. And that's just nouns; adjectives have different endings that also change. And every language has irregular words

[kalliwoda]

Quite the contrary - I'm laughing at, I mean WITH you. Never thought I would think that English was one of the simpler languages to learn.

[vislius]

But you'd be wrong there. While English may seem simpler, because of its general lack of a set pattern of declensions and conjugations, it is this very lack which makes English highly irregular and, therefore, rather tricky.

[byelka58]

Nouns are our friends (ignoring the problem ESOLers have with articles, since German has the same in/definite thing going), unless you try to pronounce them, in which case you're guaranteed to fail. At least they don't decline. Ooh, and our adjectives are fantastically solid. But English verbs conjugations are ridiculous, because there are way too many tenses and moods and voices. And prepositions in every language are completely hopeless.

[kalliwoda]

Hehe - I don't even know what a declension is, and I'm glad I don't have to think about it.