Questions tagged [german]

A Germanic language spoken in, among others, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. For non-linguistic questions about the German language, visit our sister site German Language Stack Exchange.

Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
4 votes
1 answer
309 views

English an Oral, German a Written Culture?

From my perception (native German, lived in UK) German culture is more focused on the written word and values precision and perfection when expressing yourself. English culture on the contrary ...
Christian Macht's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
169 views

What methods do languages use to re-introduce the subject of a passive construction?

In German and Spanish (I think), you use the word for 'from'. In Japanese though, I think they use 'ni' (which can either mean 'to' or 'at'). In English we use the preposition 'by', which is rarely ...
user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
119 views

What is the syntactic function (if there is any) of the prefix in some German verbs?

Consider the following sentence: "Ich rufe dich an". It is a very simple Standard German sentence with the verb "anrufen", the unusual thing about it is this prefix that comes ...
Ergative Man's user avatar
  • 1,436
4 votes
0 answers
105 views

Is there a name for this type of language divergence and isolation?

In South Australia there is a region called the Barossa Valley. At some point [after WW2? not sure] it was settled by a lot of German farmers who bought land and started dairy farms. They applied ...
Snack_Food_Termite's user avatar
3 votes
3 answers
1k views

Why are English and German West Germanic languages while Scandinavian Germanic languages are an own branch

The Germanic languages are according to Wikipedia subdivided into North Germanic languages and West Germanic languages (historically, there also existed East Germanic languages). The most important (...
Nubok's user avatar
  • 131
3 votes
2 answers
358 views

Why do “reiß” and “reis” not have the same phonemes although they are pronounced the same?

Reiß and reis are two words that have the same pronunciation in standard German. So why is it that the final phoneme in each word is different? In reiß it is /s/, and in reis it is /z/. Is there some ...
Jacob Lee-Hart's user avatar
3 votes
3 answers
599 views

Do "wise" and "wissen" share the same root?

A cursory search shows that the English adjective "wise" and the German verb "wissen" descend from the same root: the PIE *weyd- ("to see, to know"). I found this by using Etymonline to search the ...
ktm5124's user avatar
  • 449
3 votes
2 answers
2k views

"Maybe" in German (vielleicht)

The word maybe is pretty much a direct translation of "may be" in all languages I know, with or without concatenation. Examples: kanske (Swedish), måske (Danish), peut-être (French), может быть (...
Daniel R's user avatar
  • 192
3 votes
3 answers
278 views

Can one word be classified as two different word classes?

Over at German Language Stack Exchange, the question was asked what the structure of the sentence Ihr Antrag ist abgelehnt. is, and what the word abgelehnt can be classified as. Traditional German ...
Jan's user avatar
  • 1,160
3 votes
2 answers
523 views

German long "o" vs. "au". Is there a rule?

There are common words in Germanic languages that have a long "o" vowel in the stem, and which in modern German seem to be either "o" or "au" randomly. Examples: Dutch ROOD, Swedish RÖD, German ROT ...
geodude's user avatar
  • 261
3 votes
1 answer
250 views

How to automatically determine good Charades words?

I want to automatically create a list of words for Charades (in German or English), where one person has to describe, draw or show by pantomime a certain word to the others. Humans can intuitively ...
Konrad Höffner's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
56 views

Are there any corpora of informal and unstructured text labelled for Named Entity Recognition?

I have been searching since last week for annotated informal texts (with a lot of misspelled words, slang, etc.) to test some Named Entity Recognition tools for research purposes. For example, it ...
KeyPi's user avatar
  • 133
3 votes
2 answers
2k views

Resource for German minimal pairs

I recently asked a general question about minimal pairs and got a link to a website that provides a comprehensive list of English minimal pairs. Is there a similar list for German minimal pairs?
Christian's user avatar
  • 788
3 votes
1 answer
116 views

In German, doesn't using 'von' for agents of passive sentences result in ambiguity?

In German, the agent of a passive construction can be re-introduced using the preposition 'von' (well, 'durch' can be used too, but that's not really relevant). But what if there's another noun ...
user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
197 views

On an anthropological feature of German etymology (e.g. Pusteblumen)

A curious and nice property of German is that some nouns don't have, say, intrinsic names, but composed (German!) names according to the human use or perception. For instance: Pusteblume (...
c.p.'s user avatar
  • 133
3 votes
3 answers
340 views

Case in German Nouns

German has an interesting situation in its noun phrases - articles and adjectives reflect case, but the noun itself does not. Der große Mann sieht das Haus. ("The big man sees the house," ...
matan-matika's user avatar
  • 2,364
3 votes
3 answers
192 views

What is the word class of the first part of a partitive genitive?

I'm trying to determine the part of speech in the following example: German: Mario Götze ist einer der besten Fußballspieler der Welt. (partitive genitive) English: Mario Götze is one of the ...
Kathrink's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
126 views

What is the official/correct orthography for Alsatian / Elsässisch German?

As per the Wikipedia article on the Alsatian language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alsatian_dialect#Orthography) the orthography includes the latin letters A,B,C ... X,Y,Z and the following vowels ...
Nausher's user avatar
  • 146
3 votes
0 answers
159 views

How to find words to other languages that have no clear translation in English

For a work of fiction, I have a character who speaks Russian, German and Hungarian, none of which I speak. The character wrote a fictional novel that appears only in its English translation, but the ...
Chris Wilson's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
110 views

How to get morphological information from Stanford POS tagger?

I'm using the Stanford POS tagger to process German text and I'm interested in assessing the number (singular/plural) of the nouns in the sentence, so that I can classify them accordingly. This is ...
Miluleh's user avatar
  • 86
3 votes
0 answers
95 views

Does "a little" (en) correspond to the same grammatical class as "ein wenig" (de)?

If you want to say in German, "I speak a little German", you would say, Ich spreche ein wenig Deutsch. The phrase "ein wenig" is reminiscent of the English phrase "a little", but what is ...
ktm5124's user avatar
  • 449
3 votes
0 answers
134 views

"Sei" in German mathematical texts [closed]

I am a native German speaker and one year ago i wrote a mathematical text and gave it to a friend who knows nothing about maths to look for typos. I often used the following or similar formulations: "...
Joe_base's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
1k views

Are there any minimal pairs for German lax/tense vowels?

As we know, most German vowels have a 'tense' (or long) pronunciation and a 'lax' (or short) pronunciation. Most of the time, which pronunciation should be used can be determined by the context that ...
user avatar
2 votes
6 answers
1k views

Natural vs. "Forced" language learning

Would the "natural" way of learning a language (the way we learn our mother tongue) be better even for acquiring second (and third, etc.) languages? What I mean is: The "natural" way to learn a ...
B. Clay Shannon-B. Crow Raven's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
185 views

Is it a coincidence that both Italian and German use third person feminine pronouns for formal second-person address?

In both Italian and German, the third person feminine pronouns ("lei" and "Sie," respectively) also serve as the formal second person pronoun. Etymologically, is it a coincidence ...
Eric's user avatar
  • 123
2 votes
2 answers
477 views

About Subjunctive/Konjunctive

What is the reason for the difference between German dass-Sätze (which are in the indicative mood) and French que-sentences (which are in the subjunctive mood)? My German understanding is far better ...
Kiril Mladenov's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
576 views

Why did the 'ie' survive through the many German orthography reforms?

German orthography is now much simpler than ever and there are now far less redundancies than there ever was. One thing that has drawn my attention lately is the fact that never after an 'ie' in a ...
user3482545's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
141 views

Is the active vs passive voice distinction, a property of the verb or sentence itself?

In English, I have seen some sites explaining active vs passive voice distinction as property of the verb. And, other sites as a property of sentence as a whole. I am learning German, and in that it ...
tryst with freedom's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
234 views

Term for omitted pronouns?

In informal German, e.g. spoken conversation or text chat, it is possible to omit certain personal pronouns and sometimes inflected forms of sein ‘to be’, too (similar to Russian). Ich gehe ...
Crissov's user avatar
  • 561
2 votes
2 answers
232 views

History of Preverbs in Indo-European

As you may know, quite some of the IE languages know preverbs, who may modify the meaning of a verbal root. I would like to know more about the interrelation of the various preverbs found in these ...
zwiebel's user avatar
  • 1,030
2 votes
2 answers
111 views

Does the voicing of morpheme-initial /z d/ in German transmit to the preceding voiceless consonant in the same consonant cluster?

Here are som examples: [t͡sʰ], [t͡s] or [ʣ]? Wie alt sind Sie? nicht sehr [s] or [z]? Was sind Sie von Beruf? Das Sofa [st], [sd] or [zd]? das du weißt The consonant clusters ...
wodemingzi's user avatar
  • 1,057
2 votes
1 answer
197 views

Is there a name for self-reference in verbs?

In German and Swedish we have typically the ending ...sig (själv) or ...sich (selbst) (in German) when doing something with yourself, for yourself or oneself. Example Ändra sig (="change yourself/...
Niklas Rosencrantz's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
97 views

Nominal umlaut alteration in German

I am trying to understand how umlaut came to be as a marker for various inflectional forms in Germanic. The obvious answer is that there was i-umlaut, a-umlaut, u-umlaut, R-umlaut, breaking and ...
Hlakkar's user avatar
  • 21
2 votes
0 answers
198 views

Is there any epenthesis in German by which "eins" sounds like "eints" and how frequent is the phenomenon?

The phenomenon works also on the cluster ls and thus it becomes [lts]. Both examples are alveolar sounds. The epenthesis does not occur universally, but often works on "eins" anyway. This does not ...
wodemingzi's user avatar
  • 1,057
2 votes
0 answers
182 views

Combinatory Categorial Grammar developments and lexicon for German language?

I am trying to apply Cornell Semantic Parsing framework (implementation of Combinatory Categorial Grammars CCG) to the German language. This framework takes natural language texts, learns grammar and ...
TomR's user avatar
  • 499
2 votes
0 answers
90 views

On the search for an example sentence from a German textbook

Once I read three sentences build of made-up words with correct German declination and conjugation, so you were able to parse this sentence although it beared no semantic meaning. It was something ...
Largo's user avatar
  • 229
1 vote
2 answers
210 views

Are the English "Woe" and the German "Wo" related?

Is the English "Woe" and the German "Wo" related? I just heard a colleague say, "Wo ist mein ..." and I thought of the band Woe is me. Are these words just false cognates... or is there some common ...
ThomasRones's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
391 views

Beginner to Dutch language: should I translate Dutch to English or to German?

I am a fluent English speaker (lvl C2) and a decent German speaker (lvl B2 and fully prepared for C1). I recently started following a Dutch course for beginners. My fear is that I will eventually ...
jpro's user avatar
  • 131
1 vote
2 answers
1k views

How Mistakes in Pronunciation Happen for native Germans speaking English

In German the sound of 'w' in the English word "wallet" does not exist. As a result, it is difficult for native German speakers to speak it any indeed many say "vallet" instead, which is the typical ...
PPR's user avatar
  • 113
1 vote
1 answer
547 views

Proximity of Dutch and German explained by the history of language

It seems to me that Dutch is closer to German in its pronunciation than in its writing. It is a bit approximative to say so, and that's rather a personal impression, shared by some German native ...
kiriloff's user avatar
  • 137
1 vote
3 answers
1k views

Looking for tool to split german text into sentences

I want to train a german embedding and need to split text into sentences. That is not easy since "z. B." and "Dr." are not endings of a sentence. Does anybody know a tool to do that for german texts? ...
Dieshe's user avatar
  • 121
1 vote
4 answers
251 views

Bisyllabic German Verb Roots with the Stress Being on the First Syllable

I'm looking for German verbs with a bisyllabic root that have are stressed on their first syllable. But verbs like ändern or wechseln and also eignen don't count, which would be verb roots that end in ...
user3482545's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
233 views

IPA notation for syllabic [n] after another [n]

Written German has verbs like <können> ‘can’, but some (quick, lazy, …) speakers – myself included – pronounce this word form without any /e/ or schwa sound in the second nucleus. There are still ...
Crissov's user avatar
  • 561
1 vote
1 answer
120 views

Auxilary verb alternation in analytic perfect for French/Italian and German languages [duplicate]

French/Italian and German have a composite past tense (passé composé/passato prossimo/Perfekt) that is formed using either auxiliary verb to be (être/essere/sein) or auxiliary verb to have (avoir/...
Roger V.'s user avatar
  • 980
1 vote
1 answer
424 views

How to know whether a word is context appropriate? [closed]

So as we all know in both Englisch und Deutsch there are many nouns/verbs that either mean the same or close to the same as eachother, but are chosen based on the context (ex: damp, moist, soggy, etc.....
Mr518's user avatar
  • 31
1 vote
1 answer
769 views

Why are German and Dutch preschool TV shows so unintelligible to English speakers?

I understand that English has a whole lot of Romance and Latin influence whereas Dutch has less and German has very little. This is the main reason why English is so different compared to its mainland ...
bearblu's user avatar
  • 21
1 vote
1 answer
3k views

How did Adolf Hitler pronounce his own name?

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian, who used the alveolar trill [r] in his speech, not the Standard German [ʁ]. This is only to be expected for an Austrian. According to the German Wikipedia, in Austrian ...
Stephanus Tavilrond's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
142 views

Phonology for Loanwords

What is the reason for loanwords to preserve the original pronunciation, but not to be assimilate into the new language? For example, the German loanword from English Handy (mobile phone), it is ...
Gaai Chia's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
816 views

How similar are Low German and Dutch?

In Duisburg and Düsseldorf I have heard people talking a mixture of German and Dutch which really confused me! Can anyone please explain how similar to Dutch this so called Low German language is?
Antoine Vichev's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
360 views

Why did 'r' disappear in English "speak" (compare German "sprechen") and in German "Welt" (compare English "world")?

I cannot help but notice some 'r'-s seem to have randomly disappeared in both German and English. What is going on there?
FlatAssembler's user avatar