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Comment by philp | Hacker News Reader

The situation is actually quite a bit different from what was presented in the siliconfilter article. I looked into a couple of more established local media outlets and it turns out that this fine does not apply to all of Germany. Mr. Weichert strictly targets sites from Schleswig-Holstein ( Population: 2,8M ). This is the only state where he has 'some' legislative power and it remains to be seen how we would be able to target sites from his specific district. I'm sure you can appreciate the technical difficulty. This is also not a new law but a highly controversial interpretation of existing privacy law. There is a tremendous backlash and open opposition coming from high-ranking German politicians regarding this fine. All in all the whole thing looks more like a PR-stunt, it's highly unlikely that website-owners will ever be fined in the near future for Facebook buttons.

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I'm German btw. Don't want anybody to think I learned that gruesome language for the fun of it...

I'm American, whats so bad about it? Was easier to learn than French coming from an English speaking background. Not that I think I'm fluent in either.

I wasn't super serious when I said that but comparing German to English ( not that I am fluent ) I have to say that I think English has a simplistic beauty to it that German can't live up to. Whenever someone asks me to translate even the simplest sentence / idiom into German I end up answering, 'you can't really say it that way in German'. German happens to be very particular about the correct choice of words and won't let just mix a bunch of words together like English does. I'll admit that there is some world-class literature / poetry that benefits tremendously from the depths of the German language but I'm neither a poet nor an author, I'm just in it for the practicality. Horribly off-topic btw.

Horribly off-topic btw.

Yes, it is. But, while we're off topic, I have to say I really like how in German, words are generally spelled like they are spoken.

(I was once fluent, but I don't use it enough, so have forgotten most of it. I can understand it very well still and it does, at least partially, come back to me when I visit Germany, thankfully)

I wouldn't really know since I grew up speaking German, but I think this only works one way ( written to spoken). The other way ( hearing a word and being able to spell it ) has to be next to impossible for a non-native speaker. How did you learn to speak German?

Ah, this is true, I can read German pretty well, but writing it is.. hard.

How did you learn to speak German?

I originally learnt as a kid, having German family, and actually spoke German before I spoke English, but living in Ireland, I obviously needed English more, so we exclusively spoke English since I started school. I've always known enough German to understand spoken (and make out written) German, but speaking it myself was more difficult (and writing even more so), but mostly because I forget words, rather than not knowing the rules or pronunciations. When I learnt German in school, I was pretty much fluent and non-Germans found it difficult to realize that English was my main language when I spoke German, but I've forgotten most of it due to disuse. I really should relearn it...

Perhaps based on German pronunciation, but they're not spelled like they are spoken to English people. OBvious examples being things like when the letter 'd' sounds like an English 't', or 'w' sounds as 'v'.

I never actually learned to speak German, did learn French (can speak it fine, with a very English accent). Slightly odd situation though, I was taught to pronounce German extremely authentically (former professional singer), and didn't found it harder to learn German pronunciation than French.

That said I love the German language, some day when I can be bothered I really do want to learn it; can't quite put into words why I love it, but there's something weirdly special about it. Maybe just because of associations I have with it and certain music, like Bach's St John's Passion.

The consonant changes while non-obvious to native english speakers at least are somewhat consistent. Using a different latin character for a sound isn't that big of a deal when learning a language. Once you get to Japanese/Chinese/Korean its normally the least of your concerns. :)

Compare and contrast to English pronunciation of things like: moose goose lose loose hose etc/usw... Quite a disparity between the lot of words despite their similarity.

Sorry for the thread derailment, i'll go sit in the corner and think about my life.

That's not true. "V" and "f" are interchangable (e.g. I always forget if it's "haven" or "hafen", which would be pronounced the same), as are "eu" and "äu". "V" at the beginning of a word is pronounced like an English "V" (as in "Viktoriapark"), where it's ambiguous with "w". There are also a large number of French, English and Slavic words that are used in German (for instance I live in "Treptow", which is pronounced as it would be in English, not with a "v" sound on the end). Jumbojet is perhaps the funniest, where the first "j" is pronounced as a "y" and the second as a "j".

In general mastering German is harder than mastering French for an English speaker, despite them being linguistically quite similar. German has retained a lot of features that have been stripped out in various degrees in other Germanic languages, most radically in English, that are difficult for English speakers (case system, almost totally irregular plurals, irregular genders, irregular past participles, irregular usage of "haben" and "sein" in construction of compound tenses and so on).

(I'm an American that's lived in Germany for almost 10 years.)

In general mastering German is harder than mastering French for an English speaker

I've heard lots of people say this. I don't know any French, so can't comment.

I guess I don't notice the letter differences so much. I suppose having German family corrupted my sense of how letters are pronounced ;-)

As for "eu" and "äu", could this be a thing similar to "ss" vs "ß"? In any case, when reading German, I don't find these pairs a problem. Of course when writing German, they obviously are, so I stand corrected on this, though I did say "generally" and not "always". As others have commented, its probably a one-way thing: reading is definitely much much easier than writing.

for instance I live in "Treptow", which is pronounced as it would be in English, not with a "v" sound on the end

Place names don't seem have as regular pronunciation as normal words.

The phonetics are similar enough to English to make sense to someone who speaks both, but in terms of phonetic consistency, I think you're better off with Italian or Spanish (no silent letters, few weird consonant blends, letters are consistently pronounced the same). Or Esperanto, but that doesn't count :P

I have to say, I always liked how strict German is about how to say things, at least when learning it as a second language. It made it a whole lot easier to learn, rather than a language where there are 10 different ways to say the same thing.

I'm also a big fan of how few tenses are used colloquially--for instance, very few people actually use the future tense. You just have to add a time ("tomorrow", "in 2 years", etc.) to qualify a sentence as referring to the future.

Off topic, perhaps, but interesting nonetheless :). HN values the quality of the discussion over its focus on a given article.

We have threads for a reason.

That is true for some cases, but also not for a lot of others. The German language is a great language as is English; there are a lot of sentences and words which pop in my head in German and I cannot translate them adequately in Dutch (my mother tongue) or English and I have the same with Dutch and English. I think you need to read more literature and analyze the beauty of your language; you are missing out if you only go for 'mixing up words' in a practical manner.

I'm not German, I learned that great language for the fun of it. I wanted to be able to read "Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme, I." after I read Gödel, Escher, Bach when I was in college. And read Böll untranslated. Much better than the English versions imho.

Wow impressive, glad you like the German language :) How do you read Bach though? Is there a notable German Bach other than the composer? What am I missing?

Possibly this: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_E...

(That is, the book "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas Hofstadter)

Thanks, shabble!

Yes, sorry for not adding the whole title; that I read in English :)

Mark Twain wrote a satirical but very funny critique of German:

http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html

I must've emailed that to a 100 people by now. Thank you so much for this gem!

While we're on the subject...

An American woman visiting Berlin - intent on hearing Bismarck speak - obtained two tickets for the Reichstag visitors' gallery and enlisted an interpreter to accompany her.

Soon after their arrival, Bismarck rose and began to speak. The interpreter, however, simply sat listening with intense concentration. The woman, anxious for him to begin translating, nudged and budged him, to no avail.

Finally, unable to control herself any longer, the woman burst out: "What is he saying!?" "Patience, madam," the interpreter replied. "I am waiting for the verb."

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