But since German and English are both derived from the same parent language, we can find some similarity.
I am from India and ironically, I find learning Japanese easier than learning German/Spanish.
What German does though, is a declination of verbs through all cases and times, often irregular, accompanied by gendering pronouns which seems to be the hardest part of German for learner's with native tongue that hasn't these features.
The thing is, some think they got it after a few years, but we just let it slip, because it is not required, just feels wrong. We can tell, you've not grown up here.
"Incredibly stupid" sounds a little derogatory. They are not particularly necessary for understanding the language, the correct gender/article for certain nouns are even subject to heated debate between regional dialects, and I agree, if you are coming from a language without these rules it might be hard to grasp/integrate. Nevertheless, I would not go as far as to say they are incredibly stupid.
Consider, English also has he/she, him/her, his/hers. You just got rid off the "the"s, AFAIK (or German is the only Germanic language that adopted it from Latin, but I am no linguist).
But gender is the easier part, the cases make it difficult: Similar to the English "he/him", we have declination of articles: "einen/einem/eines". This seems terrible for English natives. Together with constructs of "den einen/dem einen/von einem/vom einen/zu einem/auf einen/auf einem", so you need to memorize ways of saying things and at the same time apply the case accordingly. It can make a huge difference in what you are trying to convey.
"Von einem ..." is "... of one" (indefinite article), where
"Vom einen ..." (Von dem einen) is "... of the one" (dem is the article, einen is actually a counting pronoun, not sure this is the right name).
Yeah, sorry about that, I just get a bit frustrated when I encounter languages with them, because they, for me, feel so unnecessary.
I don't feel that comparison is fair, and I consider the English a lot more intuitive, since it's an indication of the gender of a person, which has a gender, and not of an object, which doesn't. They are more similar to "er"/"es" or "seiner"/"ihrer" in my view.
My main gripe is that the gender is a needless extra burden when learning the language, and it doesn't even make sense some times (my go to example is "das Mädchen"). Luckily German is not as bad as french in that part, which even changes words themselves based on what gender you are talking to!
Careful throwing those stones!
Besides that, there's a huge difference, since plurals have clear cut rules, while object genders are only by memory with qualified guessing. That said I would welcome "2 dog", although Japanese has other problems with counters (e.g. "yonko", "yottsu", "yonki" etc), so not a very compelling argument to make...
My second pet peeve is the various different (and unrelated) meaning of the word 'ihr', which can mean in turn you (plural pronoun), her (pronoun), her (possessive determiner, as in "her book") and their (determiner). Why in the world would you reuse the same word for so many different meanings?
My favorite thing about German is that things are pronounced as they are spelled and vice-versa.
Likewise I can tell that English is not your mother tongue.
I understood everything you wrote (you're obviously fluent), but tiny little things give away that English isn't your native language:
> learner's with native tongue that hasn't these features
I would have written: learners whose native tongue doesn't have these features
> but we just let it slip
but we just let it slide
> you've not grown up here
you didn't grow up here
I sincerely hope you don't take my comment the wrong way. It was too interesting to pass up an example of the very thing you mentioned: that you can tell even when the person is fluent (even if you don't hear an accent).
Related observation: You know how Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber[1], was caught? He used the expression "You can't eat your cake and have it, too."[2] But nearly everyone knows the expression as "You can't have your cake and eat it, too." Ted Kaczynski's brother recognized Ted's highly unusual usage from the anonymous manifesto published by the Unabomber, and this is what convinced him that he was the Unabomber.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski
[2] http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002762.h...
Reminds me of when an Indian friend in high school played a prank on another friend by impersonating me through instant messages (we were sharing a hotel). My friend was able to figure out that it wasn't me because my Indian friend used the phrase "today morning" instead of "this morning."
Back then, we didn't have whatsapp, so we were texting. She never responded to texts during lecture before that day, so I was shocked.
Then, one message later, I realized that it was someone else using her phone and fifteen minutes later, I said, "If you are done, please give her phone back to XYZ"
He'd say "I order the fries" to the waiter.
I sincerely believe that becoming perfect in a language requires a lot of daily hard work and actually living in a respective country. In fact, seeing my parents misusing the Portuguese language still with some very obvious bad habits, even after they lived and worked there for more than 12 years, almost only talking Portuguese, I think after a certain age it becomes incredibly difficult to acquire a foreign language to such a degree that you become indiscernible from a native speaker, at least for Average Joe.
My above post though... Very bad usage for which I can only blame myself and the early morning. And learning proper English on the Internet is close to impossible. How most Americans use English has become a gobbled mess to be honest (e.g. "irregardles", or "that was uncult for").
I've seen this with Spanish-speaking people. My wife was born and college educated in Mexico, has a Masters degree from here in the US as well. I've gleamed some insight from her. Many immigrants to this country, from all nations, don't know their native language. They can survive wherever they're from, but they don't really know Spanish or Cantonese etc, they'll use terms commonly used by the uneducated like "patas" for their feet (patas = paws in Spanish).
I can attest that there's no shortage of monolingual English-speakers who are no different, and don't really know their own language. They can survive here, but are barely educated enough to survive in the US. Some can't, and rely entirely on social programs to make it through life, a large part of the reason is general lack of education. Many Americans are entirely unemployable, and many are already "over-employed" and lucky to have jobs at all. You could easily be meeting up with those people online.
First of all, Spanish has a whole other problem, because there is no "official" Spanish AFAIK (even though people from Madrid claim that), compared to e.g. German and "Hochdeutsch". If you travel around Spain, just half a day from Madrid, even well educated, employable people will use words and constellations nobody would use in Madrid. And I think that is totally fine, people adapt to it. Considering the whole Latin American region and their variants, Spanish is a mess in this regard (they officially write words differently, using 'x' instead of 'j' in several occasions), but you can tell where somebody is from.
Regarding the deterioration of English: perfectly employable, smart, educated people in high paying jobs use "irregardless" (that missing 's' was my mistake), and it somehow made it into dictionaries, and it seems you think it is a word too. But think about it, does it make sense?
Why would you negate regardless and what does that construction mean?
What I meant was das Ma:dchen die fru:shtuck
It is not just remember the noun (apologies) but also the gender associated with the noun. To exacerbate the matter, there are millions of rules and then there are thousands of exceptions to those rules.
But then again, the language is intuitive :)
I just happened to love Japanese because I want to go to Japan soon and that's why I gave up German, but I will learn it in the next five years
Btw. it is "das Frühstück" as well.
But you get laughed at when saying "das Cola" in Germany, but yelled at being a stupid German when saying "die Cola" in Vienna. Which makes the whole thing great, because it obviously annoys us a lot, both is correct though, and it totally doesn't make a difference what the gender of the thing is :)
We have lot's of words where the "Duden", the official dictionary has an "Austrian also: ..." alternative gender. And then there are colloquial habits that are utterly out of spec which make me furious to be honest. Who the hell thinks "das Teller" sounds right?!
https://www.visitberlin.de/en/tempelhofer-feld-tempelhof-fie...