AMD2 "The Awful German Language" - Liz Sherzer

    I've often heard that English is a difficult language to learn. After trying to learn French and Spanish in 8th grade, I determined that those people were idiots. English doesn't have any masculine or feminine words, so there was no need to remember certain articles. To put most words in the past, all you have to do is add -ed to the end, no matter who or what is doing the action. But I grew up knowing English, and I was very biased. 

    Over the years, I have learned what is so hard about English. The shear number of words make it hard to know them all and the subtle differences in them are hard to explain to someone who's native language is much smaller. This examples was brought up in a class I had at Michigan my first semester of Freshman year. (can't find the exact lecture, so I'm going to guess). There is one word to ask someone to do something German. Adding "bitte" makes it more polite. There are over 15 ways of saying the exact same thing in English, but some are more forceful while others are meek, some are more polite while others are casual, ect. Another thing that I can see being very annoying for people learning English is the pronunciation of words. German in mainlly the "e"'s almost always make this sound and the "j"'s are always pronounced as "y"'s while English had several difference pronunciations for the vowels and constants, silent letters, and several compound letters that also change things. 

    I'm not an English major and I forgot most grammar awhile ago, (thank goodness for Spell and grammar check) so I cannot comment about the grammar differences. I feel that certain things like when to use whom instead of who, must be complicated for people new to the English language if most the native English speakers I know don't even know when to do it.

    So, to make a comment about the essay, I say that grammar in not any fun in any language, but knowing the grammar is very important for fluency in the language. It makes you appear much more advanced then your grammar-less adversaries, even if they know more words and phrases then you.

    The way the German language adds - what appears to me as random - words to the end of the sentence is highly confusing. The sentence from The Old Mamselle's Secret, which did not make any sense until the last word and had several non-important words in the middle. The literal translation reminded me of poetry. All the compound words are not as helpful either, especially if you don't see any words you recognize as part of the giant word. Trying to look up einehundartzweiundveirzig won't work in a dictionary. 

    When he talked about the separable verbs, it actually makes some sense to me. It says that all the words are  just descriptive and are not needed for the sentence. I am still very unsure about which verbs can be separated and which can't.