Dienstag, 17. Januar 2012
AMD 1 Blog Post
I changed my Facebook profile language from English to Deutsche several days ago. Other than learning some useful German vocabulary (for example, Status means Status, and Foto means Photo!), I've noticed some interesting things about the structure of the German language. First, it seems that German privileges longer words over shorter ones. Aside from the myriad of combinations (nachrichten meaning unread), even some of the idioms are longer. Gefällt mir replaces the "Like" button, which implies that Facebook thinks that "I really like it!" is more attractive to German audiences than "Like" or a shorter German equivalent. In addition, the way in which English and German speakers pronounce words retains more similarity than their spelling often would imply. For example, profilbild means profile, which looks fairly distinct but upon reading is really pronounced and (maybe) stressed in a new way. Hopefully keeping my profile in German will help me expand my German vocabulary further!
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The "I really like that" button is cool. Maybe its because the German language is smaller than English. Or maybe its that they are more opinionated than Americans, so they need a stronger phrase than just "like"ing something.
AntwortenLöschenI didn't realize they liked compound words so much. They seem to make them extremely long, which makes it hard to identify the word as someone learning German.