German has the cool feature of just cramming a bunch of words together to make a new word. That’s about the only thing I know about it as someone who’s just interested in language as a concept.
For people interested in language who speak English, I will recommend this book, which kinda blew my mind explaining why my native tongue is so stupid for good reasons:
English isn’t stupid. It’s organic. Just like any other language. Two native English speakers can communicate with each other clearly and easily, which is the point of language. Saying a language is stupid because it is difficult to learn by non-native speakers, or because it is easy to get your wrist slapped by a hard-nosed grammarian is just hand-wringing.
Learn about the Great Vowel Shift and how the timing for it, as well as the timing of the printing press, created a mess of a language with few consistent rules. It’s a stupid (written) language because history made it that way.
German has the cool feature of just cramming a bunch of words together to make a new word. That’s about the only thing I know about it as someone who’s just interested in language as a concept.
For people interested in language who speak English, I will recommend this book, which kinda blew my mind explaining why my native tongue is so stupid for good reasons:
Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don’t Rhyme and Other Oddities of the English Language
It’s really not that different.
German: Dampfschiffkapitän
English: steam boat captain
German, if compound words worked like in English: Dampf Schiff Kapitän
English, if compound words worked like in German: steamboatcaptain
Sadly, for some Germans it does
English isn’t stupid. It’s organic. Just like any other language. Two native English speakers can communicate with each other clearly and easily, which is the point of language. Saying a language is stupid because it is difficult to learn by non-native speakers, or because it is easy to get your wrist slapped by a hard-nosed grammarian is just hand-wringing.
Learn about the Great Vowel Shift and how the timing for it, as well as the timing of the printing press, created a mess of a language with few consistent rules. It’s a stupid (written) language because history made it that way.