Komische Leute & wie man an Geld kommt
Heute bei H&M: ich versuche dezent, die Länge von irgendwelchen billigen Hosen einzuschätzen. Auf einmal kommt ein Jungmann (Typ "asymmetrische Haarfrisur und Trainingsjacke, besitzt bestimmt mindestens eine CD von Tocotronic") mit Entscheidungsfindungsproblemen angesurft. Ich nehme meine Kopfhörer raus; manchmal sagen andere Leute ja interessante
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Yes :D
Also, since I've got you here (mwahahahaha): Why does 'you' translate as both 'du' and 'sie'? Is it like 'thou' vs 'you' in English? (Tu/Vous in French)?
It's a bit like thou/you, only I had the impression that thou is only used when one is either Shakespeare or praying or being pretentious. It's better to compare du/Sie to tu/vous in terms of usage, however there's one important difference.
Uh. 'Du' is second person singular, right? 'Vous' would be second person plural in French and be translated to 'you' in English and 'ihr' in German. 'Sie' is actually third person plural (they / ils/elles), only, well, uppercase.
Because that's not complicated enough, you'll find 'ihr' (second person plural) as a formal pronoun in fairytales and historical movies and such :D I don't actually know where the usage of 'Sie' came from.
'Cause... "Du bist bei mir" vs "Wie Gehen[1] sie?"... I don't what the difference in the 'you' is, other than, well, spelling. Geh?
I assume you mean 'Wie geht es Ihnen?'* (How are you?), since 'Wie gehen Sie?' means 'How do you walk?'. Yes? Grammatically, the difference is in the plural and in the person used, since German is one of those nice languages with different verb forms for different pronouns.
Er. Does that clear *anything* up?
*'geht' instead of 'gehen' because the 'es' (it) is the pronoun that gets to bend the verb :D
Yay, bed now :D
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Re: Wie gehen Sie: I was, in fact <*covers head in shame*>, aiming for "Where are you going/headed?" Gnrk. :-\ ... Wie = How? Wo = Where?
Re: Thou/You: Yes. It's archaic English (which people always get wrong when they're being pretentious. Which rather puts a hole in their credibility... ;-) But it's archaic English that works like French. :-)
So... 'Ihr' shows up sort of like 'thou' -- not the same meaning, but for the same reasons?
"Wie geht es Ihnen" is sort of like saying "Hey! How goes it?" :-) Yes?
Re: verb forms: So... "Sie bisen bei mir"? Er? (How hard are you laughing right now? Really?) :-\
Re: Bed Now: Sleep well, Sunshine. :-D
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Wohin gehen Sie? (there are two possible translations for 'where': 'wo' if you ask for a place - 'where is that?' - and 'wohin' if you ask for a direction)
So... 'Ihr' shows up sort of like 'thou' -- not the same meaning, but for the same reasons?
Uh, not really. It's fairly common in literature that predates, say, 1900, and is used to address the unknown and / or rich.
Re: verb forms: So... "Sie bisen bei mir"? Er? (How hard are you laughing right now? Really?) :-\
Bisen? I dunno. It's not a word.
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(ich bin, du bist, er/sie/es ist, wir sind, ihr seid, sie sind. Easy :D And 'to be', of course, is 'sein')
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So... how exactly does one get 'bin/bist' from 'sein'?
(Sort of like how does one get 'better/best' from 'good', I suppose... ;-)
I think the English word 'frolic' must have come from 'Fröhlichen' (and, thus, Amazon learns that she can copy-past umlauts...)... and that 'better' and 'best' must have come from the French 'Bien'.
Not that I have much of anythign to base this on, but there you have it. Linguistic ramblings by me. :-) (Surely this has improved your day to *no* end. ;-)
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So, Amazon, how exactly does one get 'am/are' from 'to be'? :D
I think the English word 'frolic' must have come from 'Fröhlichen' (and, thus, Amazon learns that she can copy-past umlauts...)... and that 'better' and 'best' must have come from the French 'Bien'.
I didn't know that about 'frolic'!
I think 'better' and 'best' may have germanic roots (they're 'besser' and 'am besten' in German, respectively). 'Bien' has more of a Latin feel to me - I'm not exactly fluent in any Romanic language if one doesn't count my French and I suggest that one doesn't, but there's 'buon giorno' and 'buena notte' in Italian (I think), and Spanish also comes into play at some point.
I dunno :D
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Or 'is', for that matter. :-D
I have no idea, so I'm going to blame it English being such a composit mess of other languages. :-)
(I assume, with no proof what so ever, that 'is' came from 'est' in French. But I clearly have no clue. :-)
Re: Frolic: Neither did I. I'm just guessing. :-)
Re: Besser/am besten: Oo! I think you're right! :-D
Bien totally has latin roots, definitely. :-) Buenes Notches (Natches?)? :-)
English is a mix of French and German, mostly, although there's bits and heaps of other stuff in there, too. :-)
There is a joke: English is a language that lurks in alley-ways, clubbing other languages over the head and going through their pockets for spare vocabulary. :-)
Which I think is a very accurate portrayal. :-)
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