Alas, poor genitive!
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- Опубликовано: 15 окт 2024
- To the uninitiated, Germany's case system is a fearsome beast. But it's only a matter of time before it breaks down, and the genetive case is already on its way out, to the annoyance of purists.
A quick grammar tutorial for those confused by how different real German is from what their text books say it should be.
Music by Kevin MacLeod: incompetech.com
Sound effects from the Freesound Project: freesound.org
It's not a "higher" level so much as archaic. Languages change all the time, and although it's usually interpreted at the time as "dumbing down", it's just change. No native German speaker now says "An dieses Jungen Schule", just as English speakers do not say, "Wear not that tunic, boy, for so to do is forbidden i' this school."
Overusing the dative where the genitive would be the better choice is still regarded as a lack of education.
But using the genetive where the dative is common, can make you appear somewhat arrogant in certain situations.
@@josefgunter4238 I'd rather be arrogant then uneducated.
@@ocks3623 same
@@ocks3623 It's not even arrogance. Depends on where you are, but here in southern Bavaria, using the simple past or the genitive sounds horribly archaic. Literally nobody would speak like that, not even grandparents.
@@leDespicable Interesting...
I realy adore the Genitiv case and use it a lot in my everyday conversation. It rises eyebrowes sometimes, because people feel it's a bit "posh" to use it and that you're showing of using it.
And btw I should thank God the almighty everyday for growing up in a propper German speaking family and just learning by listening. I'm rubbish at explaining German grammar, because I know fck all about it xD
Big respect to all you German learners, who master the use of the cases by studying the rules - frightening thought.
Well I think your reference to god has done us a service and disconnected the use of the Genitive case from intelligence.
I prefer to replace the Genitive with the Dative...Genitive just sounds so old-fashioned and unnecessarily complicated to me. Plus we like to simplify things here in southern Bavaria anyway ^^ I can count on one hand the number of times I actually use the Simple past in colloquial conversations. We have almost completely replaced it with the present perfect.
@@r.b.4611 Le enlightened atheist
It gets much, much worse in Latin, Greek, Sanskrit... though again, with practice, perseverance and interest, they can all be - happily - mastered :P
@@r.b.4611 well if u study a bit of history you will discover that most scientists who really made breakthroughs were very relious people. a very intelligent person once said: the more a person learns about the universe the more humble he becomes. and the more someone knows the more likely he or she is to become religious.
"Es heißt nicht wegen dem Schild, es heißt wegen des Schildes" - Feuerzangenbowle.
Bei uns sagt man: "Von weeschn denne Schild", im benachbarten Westfalen "Von wejen dat Schild"
If you're talking about the GfdS, that's a society that provides an advisory service at a cost. It doesn't try to regulate the language in the way that, for example, the Academie Française tries (and utterly fails) to regulate the French language. It is a member of the Council for German Orthography which regulates spelling, but as we all know, the rules are updated every few decades. The instrumental didn't take 1,000 years to die out, but died out 1,000 years ago.
I had to mention that Germans use a different order into to prevent any confusion, but I didn't really want to explain why.
Also, German didn't get cases and gender from Latin. Rather, both German and Latin got cases and gender from a language that no longer exists, but linguists call it Proto-Indo-European.
In Italy there is a long tradition of German studies and we used to learn the cases the German way, NGDA. That is also the traditional order of the classical languages and that surely has played a role in establishing the order.
Some more recent grammars have switched to NADG which is not a problem as long as the case is explicitly mentioned.
My name is Hans and I never bit a dog! ;)
Not even a hot dog? *grin*
Astrofrank You got me :-p
It's never too late, Hans.
The list of prepositions that used to take the genitive and now take the dative is longer than you might think. It includes "binnen", "laut", "dank" and "trotz" ("trotzdem" should in fact be "trotz dessen"). And when was the last time you ever said, "Ich erinnere mich meines Großvaters" or "Er spottet des alten Mannes"?
Linguistic changes come slowly, so you don't notice much change over your lifetime. But if you look through the history of the language, the evidence is there.
"Spottet" demanding use of the genitive is still around, but only in a single idiom: "Das spottet jeder Beschreibung."
Es wäre mir eine wahre Freude, wenn du ein gleichartiges Video über die Konjunktivformen machen könntest, mit dem haben nämlich sehr viele Deutsche auch ein großes Problem!
Als Deutscher hat mir dieses Video übrigens sehr gut gefallen :D
Awesome explanation of the cases, why they exist and how the language is changing. Languages are organisms. They evolve over time due to outside stimuli. The genitive case is a great example of this evolution.
While watching this video, I honestly wondered, how I ever was able to learn my own native language and even get good grades in school...
Serbian has 7 cases:
Nominative
Genitive
Dative
Acusative
Vocative (for calling somebody)
Instrumental ('with' case)
Locative (similar as Dative, but it is usen only in location)
Language has 3 gramatical genders (male, female and neutral)
Also it has singular and plural variation of EACH gender.
That gives combiantion of 36 total cases.
+Mladen Milić
Czech has a similar system to yours, we have 7 cases, 3 genders and singular/plural variation of each gender. But apart from distinguishing what of the 3 genders a word is, there are several types of each gender which means that not all masculine words behave in the same way, instead there are more types or sub-types of masculine, femenine and neutral words, making the whole system quite complex.
Kao i svaki drugi Slovenski jezik.
+Mladen Milić Latin has those same seven cases to an extent:
Instead of an "instrumental" case, Latin has the "ablative" case, which can be used as an instrumental in some contexts. Moreover, the vocative usually looks like the nominative, and the locative looks like the dative or the genitive (depending on the noun), so Latin students usually just learn the Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, and Ablative, though some teachers also teach the vocative as a separate case, and there's a lesson later in the course on how to recognize a locative.
+Mladen Milić *36 different morphological forms, not cases. The number of Cases stays 7 it's just the morphological representation of these 7 cases that differs according to things like Number and Gender. Either way there are languages out there which do have a ridiculous amount of cases, like Basque which has 12 unique cases, Finnish with 15, Hungarian with somewhere up to 31, depending on how you count, or in the most extreme case Tsez which has 64 cases.
+Yeff Tom Being a Czech native is a great motivation for learning other languages because suddenly other languages like German etc. seem not so complicated in comparison. Case system in Czech is a true horror for any foreigner.
Hearning about Nominativ, Genitiv, Dativ, Akkusativ .. makes we want to learn German again since I have forgotten what's what since school. And I am German.
I'd like to bet that within four generations, it will have dwindled to the point that it's only used in some set expressions. German used to have an instrumental case, but that's completely disappeared; there's no reason to think that the genitive will escape the same fate.
The genitive will never go. It is just used on less occasions then back in the days.
Have you read all 5 series of the book "Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv..."? Is is a good book to read?
Meh. Much of it's interesting and useful, but Herr Sick will one week defend a non-standard grammar feature by saying that language constantly evolves, but the following week he'll criticize a very common grammar feature as sloppy and a sign of the degeneration of the German language -- his views on the genitive are a case in point. I wish he could decide whether he wants to teach us descriptive grammar or prescriptive grammar.
It is highly recommended to use the genitive! Not using it, could be taken for a lack of education/intelligence, especially for a German.
You can indeed speak German "wrong" in many ways, but often times people know when to change to proper German. As a foreigner it is wise to learn the correct form first and if you are very fluent and you may live in Germany you wont need to speak German perfectly in all situations, but now you know when to switch and why.
Greetings from Berlin
it's *highly* recommended to use it - 'hardly' means 'kaum'. :)
Oh my gaaawd... yeah I should have known Ôo
Yet, try to say "trotzdessen" instead of "trotzdem" and you will get bemused looks from every highly-educated German in the room. Quite fun, actually...
Actually, in colloquial conversations it is better to not use the Dative....at least when talking to younger people. Using the Genitive nowadays has this posh tone.
you need a critical mass of people to honor it, this mass is shrinking. Addtionally in German equality is very high ranked, if you stick out of mass in what they ever, no matter if you do it right or wrong, you are considered as Elite, a Snob or an Aristocrat. They do not honour it, they treat this derogative.
Du hast "Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod" gelesen! Ich liebe dieses Buch, aber seit ich es gelesen habe, werde ich schier wahnsinnig, wenn mein Gegenüber Grammatikfehler macht oder Verben wie "nachvollziehen" benutzt.
Oh wow! Recently two people I know who surreal German were talking to each other. One watches news programs to keep her landau's skills up. The other travels to Germany and talks to people, but has difficulty understanding the news broadcasts. This video made me understand why. Thank you.
Wait, OMG LEFTY!
There goes my concentration, I best take a tea break whilst I get over this startling revelation. Just about followed perfectly though, thanks!
I really enjoyed this video. I wouldn't mind if you made more grammar videos. You are fantastic at explaining things. I know how to use our grammar and I easily get how grammar works in other languages, but I have no clue about the terminology, which sucks considering I've decided to study comparative linguistics. D;
0:25: Not just Germans. The traditional order of Latin cases is: I. Nominative, II. Genitive, III. Dative, IV. Accusative, V. Ablative, VI. Vocative, VII. Locative.
It reminds me of what people do colloquially in French, at least in my region (Quebec). It someone owns something, you usually have to use "de", which means of. However, many people use "à", which means to, when their talking about a person (by name).
For example, Sebastian's hat in standard French would be "Le chapeau de Sébastien ", yet everyone says "Le chapeau à Sébastien".
same in Metropolitan French. also "aller au coiffeur", "c'est la faute à Voltaire", etc.
This video is awesome and a lot of work has been put into it
Rewboss,
Presumably the "(possessor) sein (object)" form of the genitive must have existed in the north at some point as well? A similar form ("dativet er genitivet sin død") exists in Norwegian as well, and is believed to have been introduced by Hanseatic traders, who presumably spoke Low German. Perhaps it was the standard form in Low German, but was wiped out as northern Germans learned "correct" High German as a foreign language over the centuries?
The "sin" genitive is relatively common in Norwegian, particularly in western dialects, although it is considered somewhat childish. The rest of the genitive conundrum described in the video somewhat resembles what is found in Norwegian. "Dativet er genitivets død" is still preferred in formal written Norwegian, with the -s being a remnant from the old genitive case (Continental Scandinavian languages are in a similar situation to English, having gradually shed their cases over the last millennium or so. Meanwhile, Icelandic and Faeroese are still quite happy with the four cases they inherited from Old Norse.) On the other hand, it sounds incredibly old-fashioned in many contexts, so many people prefer the "sin" genitive I described above, or use a third form: "Dativet er døden til genitivet", which somewhat resembles the "vom" genitive described in the video.
My dialect is from Poland and Russia (Originally Prussia) but we would say "Dän Jenitiw sien Doot es de Dautiw." "The Genitive (the oblique case is used to express the possessor) its death is the dative," not the same as but similar to Southern Germany, Switzerland and Austria. "De Dautiw es de Doot fom Jenitiw," is more common nowadays, though.
@rewboss A few things you got wrong here, surprisingly.
1) The funny thing is, there is historical evidence of possessive dative usage for centuries, even with it being the preferred case. So while there still is a definite (educational) stigma associated with its use, it's more of a social phenomenon than a prime example of language change.
2) In spoken German, it is still 100% obvious who is the agent in your given sentence -- and the order of the arguments is not the deciding factor. It is the intonation.
2a) Colloquial German always *favours* SVO. To put it differently, the agent in non-standard argument order is always pragmatically marked. That *also* goes for sentences with persistent and distinctive article inflexion.
_
P.S.: As far as I can tell, German kids are taught N/G/D/A case order because they are taught the same way in classical Latin (and some bits of the German educational system evolve *glacially*). Either way, Germans are equally confounded by the insistence of English speakers to try to force everything into indirect/direct object categories. The distinction doesn't really matter to a German native. They would only speak of the case being used.
The same applies to transitivity. Many foreign grammar guides overload their students with the valency of predicates even though this has no practical use when learning the language. It is entirely meta-knowledge. Valency, as a concept, isn't even taught outside of university in the vast majority of cases. It has no practical application if a verb is impersonal or ditransitive. Instead, a helpful German grammar guide should just focus on the cases. Like: gegen(gab, gegeben: haben) akk(+dat)
This is such an incredible video! It does an AWESOME job and recapping GERM101 + GERM102 in most college courses. I've taken German in two different universities here in the US, and Genitive has been taught in both as a rushed 1 week thing after learning Acc, Nom & Dative pretty well.
"Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod"
I just started German 101 this Semester of college so this was really fun to watch. :)
But it's just not true that the Genitive even near to death. If you counted how many Genitives you can hear in one day, you'd be surprised.
The number of mentionings decreases. Not in everyone's daily use, but more and more come up who are no more able to form a genitive.
That's an interesting old tube shortwave receiver in the background at the end of the video. I wonder what the make/model is? does it work? Do you use it?
But when we speak, we're not concerned about saving words; we're concerned with making sure people understand what we say. We wouldn't say: "Das Auto des neuen Freundes der Mutter der Mitschülerin meiner Tochter." Instead we'd say: "Also, die eine Mitschülerin von meiner Tochter: ihre Mutter hat einen neuen Freund, und sein Auto..."
I guess you're right. While I usually use the genitive in written as well as spoken german (or at least try to), has become more and more, well shall we say obsolete, for the majority of spoken and also written german. It is a funny thing to have learned and used a language one way and see it evolving to another way ... makes me feel kind of old ...
my girlfriend is from south korea, i am from germany and we both agreed that we'll just communicate in english because although korean is an easy language its not very useful and german isn't that useful either + german is unnecessary difficult to learn. It took me a few years to learn english but look at me now, i am able to speak it almost fluently. english is a useful language and quite easy to learn. the only problem with english is the inconsistent spelling rules. for example: how can "read" in "to read a book" and "i have read a book" be written exactly the same when its pronounced differently? they need to implement consistent spelling rules in the english language asap
it is also considered more elegant to use and your style will be more appreciated using genitive.
You didn't mention the adverbial Genitive (eines Tages, guten Mutes, and even des Nachts even though "Nacht" is feminine).
A prominent use of the genitive that sticks out in my mind occurs in the title of the Zuckmayer play "Des Teufels General".
You make really cool videos :) Thanks :)
Maybe the people I sourround myself with are a bit weird, but whenever I use dative instead of genitive in german or hear someone doing so, there will always be at least one person arround to correct them. Nowadays I even catch myself being that one from time to time.
This is especially the case with "wegen mir" and "meinetwegen".
Also I really like the german genitive.
I was born and raised in the Ruhr-area (Duisburg, Mülheim, Essen etc.) … and I can say… we do say this… Like: "Dat war dem seine Schuld"… just saying!
BTW.: I love your videos! Grüße aus Bremen (where I now live) - David
"Rhineland Genitiv". When I - living in and around Cologne for more than 13 years now - was about to buy the same car model as a colleague's wife already drove and talked about their experience for some time before coming to business matters, the guy I share my office with asked me what I was talking about on the phone. My answer: "Über das Auto von dem Timo seiner Frau!"
Rewboss its pretty easy to understand why we list the cases Nominativ - Genitive - Dative and Accusative : because thats the order how the romans had.
In Latin its just the same. Although they got even a 5th case the Ablative.
And the words in german all having a specific gender is also coming from the latin language.
Die Tür ( the door ) = feminim in german. Porta ( latin for the door ) = also feminin
We may have not been conquered by the romans but we've been influenced by them.
4:33 Cool he has a old vacuum valve radio in the background. Is it restored to working condition? If not never switch it on could cause fires , destruction of the radio or electroshock hazard. EM 34/ 35 ?
When I learned German quite a few many years ago, I used a grammar written for American students in... 1937. The one remark it made on the genitive was that, if the owner was a living being like a man one could say "des Vaters Buch" just as well as "das Buch des Vaters" but if the owner was an inanimate entity the construction "das Papier des Buches" should be preferable, as in English one would rather say "the paper of the book" instead of "the book's paper".
This video needs to be spread across the globe
My sister started it when she was around 16 and i continue it, but i since started being aware of using the genitive. Every time using it wrong at dinner would be worth calling it out and when used correctly after calling it out would follow an approving nod. I since found one other person who likes usng it aswell, because somehow it sounds nicer, although it is more difficult to use.
One of my favourite stories is The Railway Children and I once tried to think what the title would be in different languages. In French it would be 'Les Enfants du Chemin de Fer' and in Spanish it would be 'Los Niños del Ferrocarril', in both cases literally meaning 'The Children of the Railway', but I think in German it would be 'Die Eisenbahnkinder', the same way round as in English
4:33 hey my parents have the same old radio. Still works perfectly :D
Repetitio est mater studiorum = Repition is the mother of all studies.
I'm studying history. And therefore I need Latin to understand historical sources. I did not have Latin at school. So I have to learn it in only one year at university. In the first semester (15 weeks) you learn the whole grammar and in the second semester you build up your vocabulary stock and exercise in translating texts by Cicero. This summer I will have to repeat the whole grammar. Can you imagine how I feel?
I want to learn the genitive for the same reason I want to use whom and who: it makes you look smarter.
As you surely noticed, there are many parts of the grammar, which aren't used correctly in everyday conversation. Where I live, people use to change the meanings of "dir" and "dich" or "mir" and "mich". So, as an example, they say: "Gib mich mal die Butter" (of course they would use a dialect, which leads to 'Gib miech amol den Budder'...). The correct form would be: "Gib mir mal die Butter".
But they do not stick to that all the time and sometimes they use the correct form and the dialect form in one sentence: "Gib mich mal deinen Stift, dann gebe ich dir dein Brötchen."
The Imperfekt is also used rarely if you talk to someone else whereas it is often used in written texts.
And Germans use much more commas as English speaking people do - you may noticed while reading my text :D
Alas, an awesome analysis, Andrew!
Why is it odd to list them in one order and not the other?
There are still traces of the instrumental case in German. And it was gone in Old High German. That's over 1000 years ago. So it will take a long time until it's gone especially since German is standardised through the Council of the German langauge.
3:08 you can use articles on names (everyone does it - so forget about what purists might say) ... some people even would say "die Katze beißt in Hans" (although "in" is not supposed to be an article)
When I was in secondary school back in the day, it took us the entire 5th and 6th grade of German classes to learn formal grammar, punctuation rules and some quirky spelled words. :D Things got quite a lot simpler since then, but I guess it' still not easy. I use the genitive correctly when I write something for uni or even in private letters, but not often in colloquial speech. People would find that rather strange sounding I guess. ^^
4:38 "Jakob bewirbt sich um Amt des Bürgermeisters"
Sind der Zeitung die Artikel augegangen!? o_O
Das hat gleube ich etwas damit zu tun, dass früher jedes Wort etwas kostete und deshalb man auch König kommt an schrib anstelle von Der König kommt an.
I was taught that the genitive, contrary to belief, is not dying. Our teacher told us that they asked students on a German school they know whether they use the genitive regularly and they said they did.
Except for the fact that I learned in school, that the accusative is the third case and the dative is the fourth case, this was a really fine video.
Did you know, Andrew, that a genitiv like "der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod" appears in the oldest written evidence of German language at all, the Merseburger Zaubersprüche (Spells of Merseburg?)? Some Germanic gods, among them Baldur/Balder, are riding on horseback through a forest and - in discreetly modernized spelling - : "dû wart demo balderes folon sîn fuoz birenkit" (then the foot of Baldur's horse got cricked ). Note that the phrase "foot of the horse" is put "demo ... folon sîn fuoz", "dem Fohlen/Pferd sein Fuß". How can anyone ever dare to name such a time-honoured construction or grammatical workaround "bad German"? Until today it's so popular that people in Hesse prefer to say things like "Ihne Ihrn Mann" instead of simply "Ihr Mann".
Normally I watch your videos at the speed of 1.25 but for this one I needed to switch back to standard, though I am German. Actually a speed between standard and 0.5 would have been the right one and I definitely had to pause for the old English.
By the way: how many and which languages do you speak? You mentioned you speak Russian in another comment. (I'm currently learning my 12th language.)
+Mohammad Rahman I got certificates of learning Deutsch, English, français, español, svenska, 中文, ру́сский, português, Plattdüütsch, עברית , العربية and latinum. And just to annoy you even more ;) additionally I know some words in norsk, italiano, čeština, tlhIngan Hol, ދިވެހިބަސް, dansk, Nederlands and maybe there is one I forgot. If it counts I also know the Greek αλφάβητο which I learned in maths and physics classes.
Es gab mal in den 80ern den Schlager "Wegen Dir", der die bayrische Sängerin Nicky halbwegs berüchtigt machte. Ein paar Monate später veröffentlichte der Österreicher Udo Jürgens seinen klangegewordenen Protest namens "Deinetwegen". Das zugrunde liegende Problem ist dialektal und nicht unbedingt neu...
Little correction: “dem Genitiv sein Tod“ is not only to be heard in Bavaria. Westphalians and also commonly use this pattern.
its very confusing that you write the cases in the wrond way :D
+BlueSkyEntertaiment I use the order linguists use (there's a fixed order for cases for all Indo-European languages that have them), which is also the order used in textbooks for English-speaking people learning German.
rewboss but we learned them in a different way in germany :D
Well, I can't help that...
+rewboss did you try Russian, with six cases?
Six cases and two sub-cases. Да, я говорю по-русски.
3:45 I think that would be a better sentence construction. It would put the genitive sentence structure with Dutch
I graduated from secondary school last year after studying Latin Modern Languages. I'm now in university studying English and Spanish linguistics. I was concidering studying German, but the whole case system threw me off, and German isn't as widely spoken as Spanish anyway. Trust me, it is such a pain in the arse to try and write a scentence in German without screwing up the cases... When I went to Germany recently, I just didn't bother and said screw you to the cases, locals understood me perfectly fine.
Nowadays it is alright to say "wegen dem Wetter". So you can use the preposition with either Genitive or Dative in spoken language(!). But in written language the Genitive is still expected after wegen. However many people write as they speak and use the Dative instead. Teachers at school and professors at university would mark that wrong in an essay.
Language is diversity! Every case has its justification and meaning, and should be used! Thank you for this beautiful video!
Have you seen Jürgen Klopp challenging his translator in a press conference?
What is your best translation for the german idiom "Die Trauben hängen hoch"?
I love that you mentioned that it's actually the prepositional phrase that replaces the Genitiv quite often, not the Dativ. The funny thing is that many people overuse the Genitiv with prepositions that require other cases, like "entgegen" (Dativ) oder "wider" (Akkusativ). So, there's nothing to fear for poor Genitiv, it's still around :)
Könnten Sie mir ein paar Beispiele geben?
Entweder bin ich zu blöd mit guten Beispielen zu kommen, aber ich will bei 'entgegen' immer den Genitiv benutzen^^".
Even more complicated, the form with "ein" (a) is sometimes different than the form with "der" (the) "der Gefangene" vs "ein Gefangener" although it’s both first form singular
It's really ugly if someone is speaking german and just not accepting that there is something like a "genitive". To foreigners learning german: please use it! And if all the people in your environment do it in the wrong way, don't change your language, but your environment.
Als wir in der Schule die Kriegsbücher Caesars übersetzt hatten wars eigentlich für mich zumindest ziemlich einfach.
Das was du meinst sind weniger Fälle sondern mehr spezielle grammatische Konstruktionen. Das historische Präsens, der ACI, die Gerundium und Gerundivum. Sowas ist es doch was du meinst nicht wahr ?
Ich hab Latein auch weiter gemacht. So wirklich schwer wars nicht. Chemie konnte ich dafür immerhin abwählen.....
Actually, I have to correct you on the use of the dative to replace the genitive. It's also used that way in Ripuarian Franconian, the endangered language/dialect spoken in the Cologne area (I should know, I'm one of its few remaining speakers under the age of 50). We say "Em Mann si Hongk" (the man his dog), "Em Lisbet si Brill" (the Elizabeth its glasses [named women tend to be treated as neuter for some reason]) or "Minger Dochter ihr Aapel" (my daughter her potato).
In 1985, my first time in (West) Germany, when I was shocked to discover that my mostly self-taught, grammatically-based German did not at all prepare me for the actual, spoken language, there were two or three pieces of German graffiti on the walls of the "Innenstadt von Stuttgart" (a decidedly non-genitive construction) that caught my eye and have stayed with me all these years. The best was not the ubiquitous "Raus aus der NATO!" or the equally prevalent "Reagan isch a Nazi Popper!", but instead "Rettet dem Dativ!", which makes your assertion that the Dative is the assassin of the Genitive quite fascinating. Especially for a native English speaker like me who can't help but be annoyed by the recent trend among hipster Americans who endeavor to put on airs of erudition by breaking the basic, fundamental distinction between the objective and subjective cases--the only ones we have left!--by refusing to say "me, us, him, her and them," even after prepositions, which results in such obscenities as "between he and I." !!!
And my visceral, even angry reaction to this shite is not because I'm one of those dreaded "grammar Nazis," but because it breaks the narrative flow. It's just so fookin' pretentious, so very obviously done in order to appear grammatically cognizant! Aargh!
Maybe the subjective/objective case "declensions" in English are bound to expire naturally, like all the others have done over hundreds of years, but this is wholly artificial. This is f*ckwits disturbing the flow of language because they are so desirous of appearing to be "educated," which only has the opposite effect. They might as well be saying "Him gave it I," for all the effect it has, which is so very obviously self-absorbed and deeply ignorant for people whose goal it is to appear "educated." Will they next rewrite all the canon of classical and popular Lit so as to reflect their pseudo-learned, insipid stupidity, completely erasing all objective case pronouns?
It's already happening, actually. Newer fiction is just chock-full of this pretend erudition, which drives me crazy because, as I mentioned, it unnecessarily blocks the flow of the essential narrative thread.
It's not--in this Brave New English--that we need markers like ihn and ihim, etc, to figure out who is doing what to whom, but this snooty aversion to the objective case so disrupts the narrative flow that I find myself gritting my teeth every time I encounter it. With German, as you point out, it's more a matter of the Dative--itself endangered--obliterating the Genitive, but the result is the same. Replacing the wonderfully efficient Genitive usages with clumsy Dative constructs that sound like a 5 year-old trying to avoid the trickier bits.
That was quite funny, but a little bit confusing too...even as a german. Kleine Anekdote: Mein Lateinlehrer war geradezu begeistert vom besitzanzeigenden Dativ ("dativus possessivus"). Der Hut von dem Mann wäre, ins Lateinische übersetzt, Hochlatein. Also, alles halb so wild! ;-)
I'm from (roughly) the centre of Germany (the Franconian region in southern Thuringia to be exact) and people call things we say in this region "southern German" all the time. 😅
Witty and correct observation. Definetly not publicity for studying German. Its a hard language indeed. However, it is not so much a question of linguistical development. The genetive was never particularly popular for quite some time. German is a language where there are slight but noticeable languages between normal spoken and written or formal language. The genetive is one example, the simple past, Mitvergangenheit, Präteritum another. In spoken language it is either a distinct marker of extreme formality or a particular marker of a local dialect, most often similar to Dutch but it is also heard in Franken and even the northern old Bavarian dialectal area, In novels it used almost exclusively unless one wants to give a colloquial touch to what was written. Actually German got reinfected with the genetive recently at least in names. We use the English 's to create it, which is called the Deppenapostroph, as the genetiv is NOT preceded by an apostrophe in proper German and more often than not is not created by appending an S. Even when speaking standard German which is not at all a very common occurence I would use the prepended dative followed by the personal pronoun. Dem Andi sein Hut and NOT Andis Hut. While I'm aware that that gives a slightly local touch to my speech it sounds much less arrogant to my ears and is definitely understood von der Etsch bis an den Belt von der Maas bis an die Memel, or almost. But this is another topic you may want to review in another clip, the embarassement of this particular verse of the German anthem. None of the four locations actually is in what is considered Germany today and offends 6 nations in four words: Italy, Austria, Denmark, Belgium, Poland through Lithuania.
Your information is very much correct! :-)
Eigentlich ist nur der Genitv des Maskulinums und des Neutrums rudimentär. Und abgesehen davon benutzte ich den Genitiv sehr oft. O.o
4:51 Oh what a beautiful a beautiful fuse radio receiver. Don't touch. It might be worth hundreds of Euros in a few years. As long as there is terrestrial analog FM radio.
Please, use it!
many germans use the genitiv.in my opinion, its a kind of status symbol for educated people. and alot people dont want to seem silly, and mayyybe they are realy proud of their native laguage, as me. so: the genitiv isnt dead yet, but as you said, many people use the dativ instead... lets see how it develops i guess. remember: not using the genitiv is "schlechtes Deutsch"- bad german
+bytheway500 sorry for the link it wasnt intendet
+bytheway500 Meh. I hoped for it to be a thing, was slightly disappointed when it wasn't. Now off to create the site genitiv.in!
furthermore english and german stem from the same root - protogerman, which had 7 cases. (if you think thats much - hungarian has 35 cases)
both languages however received latin influences tough they show differently.
castle is derived from castellum and was originally "burg" (as in german today)
in german, mauer derived from murus and was originally "wall" (as in english today) anyway both languages are still close if you keep older forms like pork = swine = schwein in german. beef - cow - kuh
Ich sage tatsächlich noch oft "wegen des Wetters".
Ich mag es dir beim Reden zuzuhören, ich finde auch einfach britisches Englisch klingt viel schöner als das amerikanische. Verfolge deine Videos schon sehr lange aber immer als stummer Zuseher, möchte aber mein Lob aussprechen, du hast mich viel geholfen gesprochenes Englisch zu verstehen und neue Wörter in meinen Wortschatz aufzunehmen.
Danke dafür :)
Gruß
Claire
I took German in high school and i never learned about genitive or dative. I learned to use prepositions or something. Or maybe i misremember but still i don't remember learning these at all and i took 3 semesters of it
where I'm from we do say "dem ... sein". It goes to an extent where I ALWAYS say that even if I don't speak a real dialect at all and am studying at University..
I don't even know when I'm doing it wrong. My friend who is an international student from Korea has to correct me...
Actually romans have many more cases but you only need these five the most time. There are about 23 cases whereas many of them were invented by single persons (like Caesar,...).
Latein hat mich bis zur zehnten Klasse begleitet und besonders im "de bello gallico" / "bellum gallicum" wird man verrrückt - andererseits war ich auch nur ein Durchschnittsschüler, aber für's Studium hat es gut gereicht.^^
German is already so much simpler than Polish and now you're saying it's getting simpler still?
Jim Fortune in spoken german, yes. But to be fair, polish grammar is a pain in the ass but so is german for foreigners. I grew up with both, my mum lives in germany for 15 years and still makes grammar mistakes. So no need to feel "cool" for being a grammatical pain-in-the -ass
Rose McGee Not sure what button I pushed there, but I apologize if I upset you.
You say that English doesn't have cases, but doesn't it too have a genitive case (or alternatively possessive case, which I've also heard it called) marked by the particle 's?
It doesn't make sense to call it a "genitive case". In particular, the apostrophe-s ending isn't attached to nouns, but to noun phrases: we say "David and Goliath's showdown", not "David's and Goliath's showdown"; and we say "the attorney general's office", not "the attorney's general office" (unless we mean the general office of an ordinary attorney).
So although it evolved from a genitive case, it no longer behaves like one. Generally, it's more helpful to categorize the apostrophe-s as something linguists call a "clitic" while trying to keep a straight face: it's like a word, except that it can never stand alone.
Non Guidare Dopo Aver Visto "Amici": the sentence to remember the cases order in Latin
Ich weiß, das Hochladedatum des Videos liegt schon weit zurück, allerdings muss ich tatsächlich sagen, dass es einige in meiner Klasse gibt, die die Tendenz aufweisen, Leute, die das Dativ anstelle des Genitivs nutzen, zu korrigieren.
Und ganz ehrlich, ich bin auch ein großer Befürworter des Genitivs, aus dem einfachen Grunde heraus, dass ich finde, dass "Das Handy des Jungen" deutlich besser klingt als "Das Handy vom Jungen", oder gar noch schlimmer "Das Handy von dem Jungen". Allerdings benutze ich generell etwas unübliche Sprache, da ich finde, dass oftmals weniger geläufiges Vokabular besser klingt als das alltäglich genutzte
Children don't use case tables to learn the mother tongue -- they encounter it in school to explain the structure, but they get it innately by matching the speaking patters of adults.
Grammar is descriptive and once you fall into the trap of trying to construct sentences via grammar you'll not have time to keep up. Practicing the patterns in real everyday situations will allow your brain to form the neural connections naturally, not though rote mechanical application of rules.
Was ich erst kürzlich gelernt habe, primär weil es mich auch vorher nicht wirklich interessiert hat, ist (was ich jetzt nicht unbedingt korrekt ausdrücken werde weil das Ergebnis war das wir Ergebnislos bleiben) das es nicht ganz eindeutig ist wann man bei einem Wort wie ''werden'' ein 'zu' in den Satz einbaut. Ursprünglich habe ich es immer nach Gefühl hinzugefügt, aber als die Diskussion aufkam hab ich etwas gegoogelt und ein Forum gefunden in dem die Leute davon redeten es hinge vom Kontext ab (bspw "er wird zur Furie" als Transformation aber "er wird Bürgermeister" als Ernennung) und ich meine beim Duden dann (und so kommen wir darauf wieso ich das hier unter das Video schreibe) gelesen zu haben das es vom Fall abhinge. Das Problem war ich konnte nicht wirklich ne gute Erklärung finden sondern nur ein "Isso". Was das ganze natürlich etwas komplizierter macht, bedenkt man das kein Mensch sich um die Fälle kümmert wenn er nicht gerade nen Deutschkurs belegt.
"Ick liebe Dir" was correct in Berlin.
Schönes Radio, selbst restauriert?
got to do a little addition. originally english had 4 cases as well and germans had once the th sound. there was a point in history around 1000 were a german could speak with an english guy without a single lesson needed, languages were so close that basic communication still worked (just like with englishmen and scotts muah^^)
anyway since then english got a lot of influences from french and "norse" that german didnt, + it simplified the language a lot dropping the 2 cases
In der nähe DES BahnhofES! Genitiv bitte!
Ich gehe meinen Freunden regelmäßig mit solchen grammatikalischen Spitzfindigkeiten auf den Senkel, weswegen ich inzwischen "Grammar Nazi" als Spitznamen habe. :)
Here's the deal: You learn German, including all those cases, determiners, articles and adjectives complexities, then write them down on a paper and show it to people. Voila! You're cool.