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 German, the language of the Nazis

 Author:  Topic:  Posted:
Jul 30, 2001
 Comments:
Language and culture are deeply tied together. Thus, looking at a language tells us much about the culture of its speakers. In this piece, we take a superficial look at two aspects of German grammar; yet this superficial look will already expose many disturbing aspects of German culture.
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Devious, secretive and glorified vocabulary

One of the things about the German language for which one hears much praise is it's supposed "logicalness". However, German is far from a logical language. To put it succintly, German is complex, and unoriginal where not arcane.

Just ask yourself: what kind of rational justification can there be for the Germans to base anything but their very basic vocabulary (as opposed to technical vocabulary) on germanic words, instead of doing like the rest of the world and basing it on Latin and Ancient Greek? And why do they go on inventing mile-long compound words for concepts other European languages use either short figurative words or classical borrowings for?

Contrary to what they may tell you, Germans simply don't have any sort of superior ideas on how to create words. Countless words in German are just vile calques from classical words; for instance Flu�pferd: Flu� = "river", which in ancient Greek is thamus; Pferd = "horse", which is Greek hippus. Flu�pferd is thus nothing but a pretentious germanic-root ripoff of the Greek word hippopotamus. Whichever purpose they have in forming words like that must be devious-- they could as well have used "Hippopotamus" as other european languages do, and let us know what they mean!

However, anybody who has learned German from scratch can see just what the purpose is to all this nonsense, with just a little thought. The primary operative principle of German vocabulary is to hide meaning from non-Germans, not to communicate ideas.

Let's look at a very typical situation for learners of German as a final example. Say you are reading a document in German, and you come across one of German's abundant 5 stem words. Then you have to look up each of the five stems in the dictionary. So you look up stem 1, then stem 2, ... stem 5, and by that time you've forgotten the first 2 stems. So you look them up again, and realize you forgot stem 3. Well, you write them all down with their meanings in order to avoid that. What now? According to the Germans since German is "logical", and of course, by knowing what each part means, there is no way you can fail to understand the whole.

Let's assume you somehow manage to split the stems up right in the first place. Let's further assume that you find the right bracketing for the stems (the number of which rises exponentially as you add stems). You know which words go together to form a unit that goes with another unit. Even then, the claimed "logicalness" fails for 2 stem words. If I told you the English equivalent of Ich habe ein Flu�pferd gesehen, "I have seen a riverhorse", how could you guess it's a hippo unless you already knew that the combination meant that? Hell, if you tried to make a logical guess, you'd guess that it was a kind of horse, thus you'd get the very first thing wrong, just because you were trying to be logical!

Verb final ordering: the syntactic reflex of authoritarian culture

German is famously known for having verb final order in its sentences. While the basic order for a main clause in most European languages (e.g. English, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Finnish, Greek, etc.) is Subject-Auxiliary-Verb-Object (also known as SVO order, or verb-medial), the basic schema for a German main clause is Subject-Auxiliary-Object-Verb ("I have a foreigner killed" instead of I have killed a foreigner). Technically speaking, the German pattern is known as an SOV order prepositional language with second position auxiliaries. Practically speaking, it is fascist culture incarnate.

It's impossible to make sense of a sentence until you've heard all the core participants (the subject and the objects) and the event being described (the verb). With SVO order, the core participants and the event come very early in the sentence, so it's possible to tell early on what the main message of the sentence is:

  • John has seen Mary.
  • John has seen Mary in bed.
  • John has seen Mary in bed with his boss.
  • John has seen Mary in bed with his boss yesterday.
  • John has seen Mary in bed with his boss yesterday afternoon.
In all these sentences, "John has seen Mary" conveys the event with its core participants; it is manages to express a whole thought. The stuff afterwards is just additional details. In these sentences, right after each of "Mary," "bed," "boss," "yesterday," and "afternoon" we have a syntactic completion point, a place where we could end the sentence having expressed a full thought.

Compare this to the German counterparts:

  • Jan hat Marie gesehen.
  • Jan hat Marie in Bett gesehen.
  • Jan hat Marie in Bett mit der Herr gesehen.
  • Jan hat gestern Marie in Bett mit der Herr gesehen.
  • Jan hat gestern abend Marie in Bett mit der Herr gesehen.

While in English, each further elaboration added a syntactic completion point, in German, no matter how much we elaborate, we get only one syntactic completion point, after gesehen "seen".

This is self-evidently a sign of the authoritarian nature of German culture. From birth, children are brought up listening to the commands of their parents attentively, not missing a single of their words, knowing that they have to patiently wait while all the modifiers and elaborations of the central sense go by, in order to get the crucial information about what the event being described is, which only arrives at the very end, with the verb.

The SVO syntax of other European languages frees the speakers from having to attend to every single word in the sentence, and thus leaves them with time to question the truthfulness, sanity and moral character of what's being communicated by his interlocutor, which is essential if freedom and democracy are to flourish. But this is not so for German. Verb-final syntax requires unfettering attention to the speaker for as long as he may choose to drag on with a single sentence; the hearer is too busy anticipating the syntactic completion point, and can't contemplate the bigger implications of what is being said: "Is the speaker trying to build a better world for all of us, or just trying to spread evil? No time to tell, gotta wait for that verb."

The most valued speech style in German is one that piles modifier upon modifier on extra-long sentences, which hearers battle to make sense of while awaiting the crucial ending moment, when the verb arrives and puts it all together. Thus the imagic model of Germanic sentential syntax is an authoritarian one; the speaker almost literally holds his audience captive, under great interpretive pain, giving them only ocassional relief whenever he feels like it. By virtue of being socialized in such an environment, the German soon comes to crave power, both in this verbal form and in the physical form. One need only witness recent German history to grasp this.

As a further argument, consider the makeup of the two sides in World War II. On the Allied side were Britain, France, the USSR and the US as the major players-- all countries which speak SVO languages. In the Axis side the only other major player apart from the Germans were the Japanese-- and their language, unsurprisingly enough, has an even stronger tendency for head-final order than German (while German has prepositions and articles which come before nouns, Japanese has postpositions and articles which follow nouns-- everthing goes at the end!). This was a crucial yet little apreciated front on which WWII was fought: the linguistic front, verb final culture vs. verb medial culture. Mediality, along with its associated democratic values, came out on front. Do we really want to sacrifice this important victory by allowing the Germans to go on speaking their language, telling each other things that (as seen in the first section above) they take great pains to hide from us?

Conclusion

German grammar is organized in such a way as to hide meaning from outsiders, and to support authoritarian inclinations. We need to start a massive reliteracy program for Germans; otherwise, they will rise again like they have done in the past, since deceptiveness and authoritarianism is deeply embedded in their culture, as can be witnessed in their language. I, of course, recommend that this reliteracy program be implemented with Tok Pisin, the ideal language for the 21st century.


First of all, (none / 0) (#7)
by elenchos on Mon Jul 30th, 2001 at 11:09:05 PM PST
...I just want to say that German pastry is really good. I've spent many of my unproductive afternoons in one of those little corner pastry shops they have in German villages, where the coffee is completely opaque black and they little cookies and cakes and bread is just to die for. I don't think a thing like that should be ignored.

Second, isn't that Natalie Portman in front of that Nazi flag? Just how much Nazi propaganda has she done? A harmless little bit? Or a lot? I know certain people will insist she has done so little work for the Nazis that we should pay no attention to it at all, but I'm not so sure. Regardless of the answer, I want to be the first to say that Natalie Portman is not vile and repulsive in appearance at all. There is nothing in her looks to be ashamed of, and anyone who calls her a (WOOF!) dog is (WOOF!) completely nuts. She is as perfectly normal and non-grotesque an actress as you could ever want to see, and I'm not afraid to say so.

Third, I have a German language question. What is up with all this Sie and sie business anyway? That always confused me. 'tag.


I do, I do, I do
--Bikini Kill


It's been a long time since I took German (none / 0) (#8)
by Anonymous Reader on Mon Jul 30th, 2001 at 11:38:07 PM PST
sie, uncapitalized, is the third-person plural "subject" pronoun (like "they"). Sie, capitalized, is the second-person singular "formal" "subject" pronoun (like "you"). The equivalent of those as "object" pronouns is ihnen and Ihnen.

The second-person singular "informal" "subject" pronoun is du, and it's object is dich. Normally, only family members and close friends use the du/dich pronouns. They're kind of equivalent to the archaic English "thou" and "thee." For instance, the du pronoun is used in this traditional German drinking song:

Du, du, liegt mir im Herzen,
Du, du, liegt mir im Sinn,
Du, du, macht mir viel Schmerzen
Weisst nicht, wie gut ich dir bin


("You, you, are in my heart,
You, you, are in my soul,
You, you, give me great pain,
Don't know how good I am for you.")

Whereas the formal, Sie pronoun is used in this well-known movie line:

Doktor Jones? Der Herr in der Bar moechte mit Ihnen sprechen. Kommen Sie bitte mit uns.

("Dr. Jones? The gentleman in the bar would like to speak with you. Please come with us.")

Alles klar?


sie, sie, Sie (none / 0) (#11)
by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 06:05:21 AM PST
sie is also feminine first person singular pronoun.(she).

IIRC, in many European languages the feminine first person singular pronoun and the formal second person singular pronoun are the same. This goes back to some linguistic tradition of addressing the queen as formal you which eventually transformed into the feminine form. At least this is what one of my friends who studies linguistics told me, but your truth factor may vary.


 
Strong (none / 0) (#88)
by Anonymous Reader on Wed Sep 4th, 2002 at 08:48:31 PM PST
german is a cool language! very powerful sounding...


 
Germans!=Nazis (none / 0) (#9)
by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 05:12:40 AM PST
Even General Patton figured this out after Germany was occupied by Allied forces and he was one of the US's most battle-hungry leaders during WW2. The German language has been around a lot longer than the Nazi party. Making superficial judgments on one or two idiosyncracies of grammar translated through your reality distortion Babelfish means nothing.

Someone get me a French dictionary, I can prove all French people are predisposed to eat snails through verb conjugation. Get me an Egyptian dictionary too. Egyptian sentence construction proves they're all latent civil engineers who can't help but build large stone structures.{/sarcasm}


He wasn't saying that Germans=Nazis (5.00 / 1) (#12)
by bc on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 06:15:25 AM PST
He was saying they have a tendency to have a fascistic culture based on obedience and lack of independant thought.

And indeed. if you look at the history of the Germans, one can see that they have always had an authoritarian culture.

It can be broken up into different stages:
  • Primitive Germans. These were tribes of Germans who were so attached to the cult of the tribal leader, that unlike SVO countries such as Britain, France, Spain, etc etc, they didn't once submit to the Pax Romana, preferring instead to stick to their primitive ways, worshiping their tribal cheiftans unthinkingly and rejecting one of the greatest civilisations the world has seen and doing so time and time again through 900 years.
  • Medieval Germany. The era of the Holy Roman Empire and the numerous city states that crowded Germany, each with its own tinpot dictator. Unlike other parts of the world, the Germans were incapable of uniting into a Reich, due to the strong bonds many felt to their Liege Lord. A hallmark of being unable to think independantly.
  • Modern Germany. This continued till the 1880's, when Bismark, that cruel, ambitious dictator realised that the only way to unite Germany was through brute force of persuasion. Where other countries were well on the road to democracy and universal sufferage, the Germans were still pissing about with an all powerful monarch, power dressing and a tribal society. Their unquestioning obedience led them to challenge the SVO countries for global dominance in WWI, desirous as they were for an Empire, at the same time said more civilised SVO countries were well on the road to disestablishing their Empires.
  • Nazi Germany. This wasn't really a change; it was just more of the same. Adolf Hitler wasn't any nicer or more civilised that Kaiser Wilhelm - although he was more entitled to rule, seeing as he was voted in. Nazi Germany was just business as usual for Germany.
  • Recent Germany. More of the same. Germany isn't democratic, for example - it has a silly, rigged PR system of government which makes the votes of the people irrelevant - and they don't care. Modern Hitlers such as Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schroder are able to drag Germany towards a new destiny in Europe without even asking them for consent. This shows a total disregard for democracy and the old, distinctly German, love for Strongman politics.
Say what you like, but the author of this article was perfectly correct; Germany is writ through with a history of fascist behaviour, and has been for 5000 years or more, continuously. Attempts by people like you to rewrite history will be exposed.

Go back under your revisionist bridge.


♥, bc.

Turn off the hot air machine (5.00 / 1) (#13)
by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 08:25:58 AM PST
Anyone can go through the history of any culture, pick out specific times, and make it sound just as authoritarian as your example.

Go back under your completely-out-of-context-bridge.


This is moronic! (none / 0) (#16)
by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 10:32:14 AM PST
What kind of crap is all this supposed to be? I'm reading this page for the first time and I'm already QUITE sure I'm not going to read it again.

First off, this whole article is of course crap, I'm a German, I've grown up here, I lived in the US and I KNOW. To judge a whole country by two aspects of it's language is just so unbelievably stupid I don't even want to think about it.

And then to have somebody say that today's Germany isn't democratic and that Kohl and Schroeder are "modern Hitlers" is just so unbelievably stupid. Just because Germany doesn't have direct democracy (i.e. the people vote 'I like this law' or 'I don't like this law) but instead they vote for a party, which in turn votes for laws and different kinds of measures doesn't mean a country is ruled under a dictatorship. This is handled like this in many other countries as well. And, talking about Europe, all treaties have to be ratified by the German Parliement, so there is your democracy that you are missing.

To take the US as an example, the political system here is much more undemocratic than in Germany (at least from a German's point of view). There it is possible for a presidential election to turn out that Gore has 200.000 votes more than Bush but because of the moronic voting system, Bush still gets to be president. Sounds very democratic to me, and I haven't even started talking about American politicians getting bought out by all of the different lobbyists and this being ACCEPTED because there is no public campaign financing.

Oh, and apart from that, isn't judging a whole linguistic area (i.e. people speaking the same language) like you do just as rassistic, bad and wrong as what Hitler promoted in his racial cleansing campaings. He wanted to 'reeducate' people that didn't like him, talking of your 'reliteracy programs'.



Britain is the most humanitarian EU nation. (none / 0) (#32)
by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 06:07:10 PM PST
talking about Europe, all treaties have to be ratified by the German Parliement, so there is your democracy that you are missing.

Indeed. But when the public votes against an EU treaty (like the Danish did with the treaty of Maastricht, and the Irish more recently with the treaty of Nice) The EU simply asks them again, repeatedly, until it gets the answer it likes.

It is also highly shameful the way Turkish gastarbieters are treated, being denied citizenship, even when born in Germany, and despite Turkey being a member of the EU.

Contrast this to the other EU state: Britain.

Britain has an almost 'open door' policy on immigration, as anyone from Bosnia or Kurdistan will tell you. Simply arrive in the UK and claim asylum. The UK turns away almost noone.

This is despite the French deliberately sending huge numbers of asylum-seekers to the UK. The British nation with its sense of fair play, and right and wrong, takes these people in, and in time grants them citizenship.

Why is it that Britain (One of only three net contributors to the EU budget) is villified by other EU nations ? It seems to me as if Britain is showing the way for the other nations of the EU. Are they brave enough to follow ?


Reality check (none / 0) (#40)
by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 06:57:05 PM PST
[I'm another AC, call me Friedrich Wilhelm]

EU treaties: The Danish got significant concessions before they agreed to Maastricht.
Nice will be tougher, as the French (not so much the Germans) were the driving force behind the complex regulations. And, te Irish don't want to lose their subsidies, although they don't need them anymore.

Gastarbeiter, Turkey: Turkey is not part of the EU, only NATO. It has severe human rights 'issues'. Gastarbeiter can apply for German citizenship like every other foreigner. Since last year, their kids get it automatically.
The discussion was about dual citizenship, which is problematic in cases of a conflict with the respective state.

Britain 'villified': Thanks to Mrs. Thatcher, Britain gets huge discounts. They benefit from the EU (free market, subsidies...) but they are not willing to contribute/pay.
Due to their shabby politics in the BSE case (they allowed exporting infected animal feed that was illegal in the UK), the disease spread over Europe.

UK immigration policy: Have you seen the civil war like incidents in Oldham and Bradford on TV? Not quite a role model for immigration. Furthermore, those people are mostly from the commonwealth. The vast majority of asylum seekers and civil war victims are in Germany.

The reason why they are relatively open to foreigners is that they offer the least social security. They are more like the US and less like the other Euronations in this respect, so they are less attractive.



You are right about that (none / 0) (#41)
by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 07:37:22 PM PST
They are more like the US and less like the other Euronations in this respect, so they are less attractive.

Although I think that is precisely what makes Britain so attractive for the average immigrant. Most of the asylum seekers are not in any immediate physical danger, and for the most part are what we would call economic migrants. The most dynamic of these migrants will want to go somewhere with a less socialist way of life.

Think about it: If you are prepared to risk your life attempting to cross the English channel on an inflatable li-lo, the last thing you want is for the government to take 60-70%% of your earnings in tax.

Britain is indeed very much like the USA. So much so in fact that when they finally reject monetary union, there is a very, very real possibility that they may join NAFTA, and indeed eventually may become another American state. Believe me this would be a VERY popular move amoungst the youth of Britain who universally despise the EU corruptuion and socialism.

We speak the same language. We have an Anglo-Saxon culture in common. We are not socialists. Britons watch a diet of almost exclusively American TV and Movies. We listen to gangsta rap all the time and eat in McDonalds. Hell, we are 90% of the way to being fully fledged yanks. All we need are a few guns and for everyone to put on 100lbs (thats around 45KG for the euro-correct)


When the empire becomes a colony... (none / 0) (#45)
by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 08:53:00 PM PST
I understand that, having lost their empire, the British are a bit reluctant to 'merely' be a part of a united Europe just now. After all, the 'Grande Nation' has had some problems with that as well.

It would, however, be a remarkable irony if the honorable British chose to be enslaved as a US colony in their NAFTA backyard instead of going with Europe, where they'd be one of the major players.

OTOH, somehow I doubt we'd miss them too much. The UK has adopted a lot of nasty habits lately: A blatant disregard for privacy matters, just like the US (cameras everywhere, RIP), terrible education and health systems, no decent public transport, all kinds of bad food (we've grown accustomed to the taste or lack thereof, but now the diseases come into play).

The only thing that bothers me is the fact that the US have pretty much turned into a rogue state under GWBush, and I'd hate to see the UK going down the same road.


Hmmm I don't get it (none / 0) (#62)
by Anonymous Reader on Wed Aug 1st, 2001 at 02:38:17 AM PST
It would, however, be a remarkable irony if the honorable British chose to be enslaved as a US colony in their NAFTA backyard instead of going with Europe, where they'd be one of the major players.

It has nothing to do with being merely part of Europe, and everything to do with the democratic tradition and accountability that is part of our culture and which is not part of the continental European culture. (but I expect you knew that).

If you are talking about free trade, why would we be better off in Socialist Europe with all the corruption and extortionate taxation ?

Why use emotive words like slavery ? At the moment many of our British laws are being overruled by Brussels. Recently Minister Louis Farakkhan of the racist Nation of Islam has been allowed in to Britain due to an EU court of human rights ruling.

Britain has been forced to legalise extremely hardcore pornography in the name of the 'free market' and we are forced to use metric measurments when the general public is perfectly happy with the existing system.

Now what exactly are the much touted benefits of Europe ?

Why do not the Swiss join ?


Why glorify the US? (none / 0) (#67)
by Anonymous Reader on Thu Aug 2nd, 2001 at 02:38:47 AM PST
"It has nothing to do with being merely part of Europe, and everything to do with the democratic tradition and accountability that is part of our culture and which is not part of the continental European culture. (but I expect you knew that)."

'scuse me, French Revolution vs. Oliver Cromwell anyone???
Whatever, you lie to yourself if you think the US would be any better than the EU. They just legalised corruption instead of fighting it (Bush campaign financing -> Oil drilling in nature-sanctuaries).
The US are so fixated on their past and tradition that they don't realize they aren't a democracy anymore (despite the elections - remember, all eastern communist states had elections as well).
Not to mention the irresponsible isolationism and taliban politics (read today that outlawing condoms is planned...).
I think you'd have a much better chance fighting EU corruption (probably together with the Germans, against the French) than changing something in the insane US system...

"we are forced to use metric measurments when the general public is perfectly happy with the existing system."
Everyone who insists on using insane measurements is a dork ;) (Besides, a pint is still a pint, and even the Pound Sterling uses the metric system for a long time). And: US gallons are different from UK gallons etc...

"Now what exactly are the much touted benefits of Europe ? "
Britain benefits most of the free market. Heck, we even had to let in that infected beef stuff for some time due to UK politicians citing free market rules!

"Why do not the Swiss join ?"
Mostly because of their system of unique direct democracy. Business is almost unanimously in favour of joining. (Note: I used to live there.)


 
Including discounts UK still no 2 EU contributer (none / 0) (#42)
by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 07:54:12 PM PST
Britain gets huge discounts. They benefit from the EU (free market, subsidies...) but they are not willing to contribute/pay.

After Germany, Britain is still #2 net contributor to the EU. This is INCLUDING the discount that Thatcher negotiated.

The incidents in Oldham were sparked off by the Neo-Nazi British National Party, which unsurprisingly enough has many links with you've guessed it - German Fascists.


Blamethrower (none / 0) (#46)
by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 09:04:18 PM PST
"The incidents in Oldham were sparked off by the Neo-Nazi British National Party, which unsurprisingly enough has many links with you've guessed it - German Fascists. "

Yeah, and those are responsible for BSE, FMD, and the notoriously bad weather as well...
Face it, UK integration policy sucks. If the young Asian Britons had a good perspective and education, they would have been cooler. Frustration leads to violence. Expect more of it during the economics downturn...


No, you missed the point entirely. (none / 0) (#48)
by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 09:16:30 PM PST
These young British Asians are integrated with the UK way of doing things, which is why they don't take any crap from Nazis, unlike their elders who urged a ghandi-like peaceful resistance. The Muslim youth of Britain will not take any crap from white racists any more, and that IMO is a very good thing.

Also, the fact that these riots occured in the North (known for its bigotry) and not in the South speaks volumes.

Britain has a long history of resisting Fascism in all its forms. Your comment about education is therefore completely wrong. It is precisely because our education system teaches us about WWII and incidents like the Cable Street riots that British youths on the whole understand that Nazism and Fascism must be nipped in the bud with extreme violence (if necessary), wherever it rears its ugly head in order that it does not gain a foothold.

Although I am a capitalist, this is one point on which I fully agree with my Socialist Worker friends.


Do you really think... (none / 0) (#83)
by Anonymous Reader on Sun Apr 28th, 2002 at 03:19:24 AM PST
...that German education does not teach their pupils about the crimes of WW2?


 
Naaaah its the hot weather. (none / 0) (#49)
by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 09:18:03 PM PST
Always leads to riots. Young men with too much time on their hands.

If it wasn't race it would be football, or some other stupid reason.

The basic issue is that young men like fighting. Simple as that. It has almost nothing to do with race, and everything to do with boredom.


 
I was with you until... (none / 0) (#55)
by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 10:27:27 PM PST
To judge a whole country by two aspects of it's language is just so unbelievably stupid I don't even want to think about it.
You misspelled "its". If you can't be trusted to get a simple thing like that right, then I'm afraid I can't trust the rest of what you're saying either.


Syntax vs. Semantics (none / 0) (#68)
by Anonymous Reader on Thu Aug 2nd, 2001 at 02:48:56 AM PST
"You misspelled "its". I can't trust the rest of what you're saying"

If proper English is key, never trust an American ;)

(BTW: a) Barely any of the German sentences in the main Article are (?) grammatically correct.
b) the writer is German, where the apostroph israrely used)

FW


 
Proportional Representation (none / 0) (#17)
by Platypus on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 10:35:17 AM PST
Germany isn't democratic, for example - it has a silly, rigged PR system of government which makes the votes of the people irrelevant


PR does not make the votes of the people irrelevant, in fact it avoids disenfranchising people who prefer any but the most popular one or two alternatives. Compare, for example, the stories of the Green parties in Germany (PR) and the US (FPP). In the US, voting for the Greens is either meaningless or favors the major party most ideologically opposed to the Greens (by splitting the vote for the ideologically closest major party). That's a totally absurd result, which PR is specifically intended to avoid, and which it does avoid.

For more information on voting systems, including definitions of "fairness", check out the Voting Systems FAQ.


PR Needn't be fair (none / 0) (#20)
by bc on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 10:48:04 AM PST
Because countries with PR tend to have goverments which form vast coalitions, and then effectively become a huge monoparty.

A good example might be Austria, which under PR had the exact same coalition government from 1945 to 1999, when the people of Austria finally got fed up of the endemic corruption and voted in a fascist party.

PR leads to coalition governments which aren't ever voted out, because all parties are part of the system. And with politicians being on a list, rather than being directly elected, they are answerable to the party hierarchy much more than they are the people.

Hence Germany tends to have coalition governments that keep power for 25 years or more at a time, and is led into situations by its government (such as the EU) because said government doesn't give a damn about what the people of Germany think.

The simple fact is that PR is antidemocratic because it removes choice for the voter and means that politicians are not accountable to the voter.


♥, bc.

Well, I vote with my wallet on the Austrian Nazis. (5.00 / 1) (#33)
by dmg on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 06:14:28 PM PST
I used to be a frequent visitor to Austria, having skied in Soll, Ellmau, Mayerhofen, Kaprun, Zell am Zee, Hintertux, Gerloss, and many others.

Most of its people in my experience were not Nazis. Sure they were a bit right wing, but so are some British, and genocide was not on their minds. I cannot understand why such a country would vote for Fascists. What on earth were they thinking of ?

Since they voted in Haider, I have not been back there, and I will not do so until they sort out their politics. Instead I now ski in France, or the USA, or Canada.

Maybe it won't make a difference. But I am making my personal feelings count in an economic way.

time to give a Newtonian demonstration - of a bullet, its mass and its acceleration.
-- MC Hawking

 
The best you can get (none / 0) (#44)
by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 08:31:18 PM PST
PR is the closest you can get to a 'just' system, as voters can express their will better. It does in no way remove choice for the voter. On the contrary, it provides for more choices, as in the US system it is basically useless to vote for another party than the two big ones.


Your indication that PR leads to permanent "vast coalitions" is wrong. In Germany, except for a very short period, there has never be a "big coalition" of the two big parties on the national level, and governments/coalition change much mure rapidly than you indicate (longest time: Kohl, 16y).
As for Austria, this is correct, but for entirely different reasons.
Part of the reason why Hitler could easily incorporate Austria into the 'Reich' was the fact the the political class was severely weakened by a civil war like conflict in the 30s where conservatives were fighting social democrats.
After the war, the political system was built up so as to make sure this could never happen again. Every council, board of directors, public post etc was divided between conservatives and social democrats so that peace was ensured as they'd always have to work together.
This evidently worked, but the downside was that corruption and nepotism blossomed.
Now that there is no fear of a bloody conflict anymore, the population wanted to break up this (now corrupt) system by voting for a different party. Both the Greens and the FPOE gained votes, but unfortunately the FPOe with their charismatic leader made it into the government.

So, in Austria the stability was not a negative side effect of the PR system, but intentionally built into the general political system.

In Germany, there are usually coalitions of a big and a smaller party (Greens, liberals). The latter act as a moderator in the legislation process. That's one of the reasons why such dangerous and industry-lobbied laws like the DMCA or the RIP in the UK haven't been introduced in Germany.




 
Blather (none / 0) (#21)
by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 02:23:24 PM PST
Maybe this never occured to the author, but:
  1. Germans were speaking a language closer to German than Latin, Greek, or other "Classical" languages before Rome, or even Alexander's Macedonia, even existed.
  2. Goth, Frank, and other cultures that lived in the regions now called Germany and western France were never much Romanized (unlike, say, the god-awful Angles), and didn't absorb much Roman culture or language (or Greek, for that matter).
  3. Linguistic analysis of behavior is a dead-end, based on several minutes of actual thinking.


Germans didn't vote for Hitler because their language compelled them to; they voted for Hitler because he promised to bring them prosperity and an end to the depression.


 
Missed some History Lessons, eh? (none / 0) (#53)
by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 10:14:39 PM PST
Hey, even as a German, I'm always in for a decent amount of German-bashing.(After all, my generation lacks that US-style nationalism or UK-style nostalgia). But do it with style. This was just pathetic.

* How can fighting for freedom and independence from the Roman Empire be "fascist culture" and "lack of independent thought". Do you say the same of the Irish and Scottish who didn't want to submit to the great British Empire...
(By the way: not all was free. The south was under Rome's control. I live right at the Limes).

* The "Holy Roman Empire of German Nation" was (as my history prof said) neither holy, nor Roman (they had nothing to do with it anymore), nor German Nation, as although 'Germany' was very vague back then, Northern Italy and Sicily -both part of the Empire- weren't part of it, and the patchwork of small states were definitely not a coherent nation. What's important to note is that the emperor was elected, and that there were a lot of independent 'free cities' fostering independent thought. Compare that to France, Britain or Spain.
And don't get me started on your Lord Protector! If there was anything like a fascist rule in Europe before the last century, it was Cromwell!

* Bismarck: "cruel, ambitious dictator"? 'scuse me, he was effectively an employee of the emperor and got eventually fired by him. He had to deal with the parliament, but proved to be very smart with it. He had a realistic goal (small Germany without Austria) and achieved it by the then usual means (negotiations, money, war).
WW1 was mainly a result of bad politics after Bismarck was dismissed, technically started by Austria. After the war Germany was (one of) the first countries to introduce womens' suffrage.

* You forget The Weimar Republic and the Great Depression, which hit Germany hardest. Hitler was NOT voted into power, he was transferred the power through an intrigue by the old military elite. Only after the opposition had been eliminated was he able to get the majority of votes.
You could argue there was a lack of resistance from the population against Hitler at this point of time, but as Hitler proved to be economicaly very successful, many people were satisfied.

* Germany today: Like late chancellor Brandt once said: "With really important questions, you never ask the people."
Everyday politics are just fine, but when it comes to Europe, all parties agree on a pro-EU course, and don't want to ask the people...

We all know how the EU works: The French run the show, Britain is commenting from the sidelines and Germany pays the bills. It has worked amazingly smooth like that, and apparently our politicians want to keep it that way...
So agreed, there was no direct referendum yet, but we don't have a direct democracy like the swiss, so we have to trust our politicians.

AC aka Friedrich Wilhelm


Not quite Friedrich ! (none / 0) (#58)
by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 11:58:07 PM PST
  • The French run the show

    With the help of the Germans.

  • Britain is commenting from the sidelines

    Constructive commentry ignored by the Europeans purely because of the source.

  • Germany pays the bills

    In the words of Mrs Thatcher: No No NO!. Germany does indeed contribute a lot to the EU financially. However the United Kingdom also pays far more than other nations.

    CAP needs to go. The corruption in Italy France Greece etc needs to go. The EU needs to be accountable.

    none of these things will happen.

    My prediction: Britain will vote against monetary union, and will gradually be eased out of the EU. We will then be free to follow our own route, and the EU will still trade with us, the same way it trades with Iceland and Switzerland.

    This will be a GOOD THING for all concerned.


  •  
    primitive tribes? (none / 0) (#80)
    by Anonymous Reader on Sat Apr 6th, 2002 at 10:17:11 AM PST
    Britain:settled by the Angeln, the Sachsen and others
    France:settled by the Franken and others
    Spain:settled by the Gothen and others.
    all of them are part of germanic tribes.
    there are more argues to teel you,but...
    read some history books, don�t look dragon ball :-/



     
    wrong (5.00 / 1) (#14)
    by em on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 09:54:11 AM PST
    Even General Patton figured this out after Germany was occupied by Allied forces and he was one of the US's most battle-hungry leaders during WW2.

    You are leaving out the fact that the US, far from persecuting Nazis, was recruiting them at the moment. General Patton, as a high member of the US military, was in the business of giving sanctuary to war criminals.

    The German language has been around a lot longer than the Nazi party. Making superficial judgments on one or two idiosyncracies of grammar translated through your reality distortion Babelfish means nothing.

    As bc so aptly points out, the Nazis are just one among many episodes of authoritarianism in German culture.

    Someone get me a French dictionary, I can prove all French people are predisposed to eat snails through verb conjugation.

    Given that French has barely any regular conjugation, I'd be very amused to see you try.
    --em
    Associate Editor, Adequacy.org


    You didn't read the title (none / 0) (#18)
    by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 10:40:39 AM PST
    He didn't recruit Nazis. He recruited Germans. Regular German people who knew how to get the mail service, railroad, electrical power up and running to bring some semblance of civilization back to the country.

    Put it this way. If a small group of armed SS show up at your door saying you will perform X service for the greater glory of the Fatherland, Reich, and der Fuhrer, are you going to say no? Because you give in, does that mean you automatically believe everything the Nazi part stands for?

    In reality there were very few Nazis and a lot of scared German civilians who got caught in the middle.


    Well it depends what you mean by 'a few' (none / 0) (#30)
    by dmg on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 05:46:18 PM PST
    In the national elections of September 1930, the Nazis garnered nearly 6.5 million votes and became second only to the Social Democrats as the most popular party in Germany.

    time to give a Newtonian demonstration - of a bullet, its mass and its acceleration.
    -- MC Hawking

    See second paragraph (none / 0) (#36)
    by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 06:41:15 PM PST
    And replace 'X' with vote for our guy


    And one more thing... (none / 0) (#37)
    by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 06:44:10 PM PST
    Remember what Stalin said: It doesn't matter who makes the votes, only who counts them (hmmm, Florida prophecy? :)


     
    Read the comment again/ (none / 0) (#43)
    by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 07:56:43 PM PST
    in 1930 the SS was not in existance. 1930 was NINE YEARS before WWII started. (11 years if you are a yank)


     
    depends on when you were pro-Nazi (none / 0) (#50)
    by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 09:33:53 PM PST
    If you were a German in 1930, trying to make a living in an economy crippled by sanctions imposed after ww1, the economic reforms of the Nazi Socialists might have seemed attractive. The death camps came after the party was elected.
    Dot-com's were a good investment last year, now they're not.


    I think you are stretching the point a bit (none / 0) (#52)
    by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 09:47:52 PM PST
    There's a big difference between a failing dot-com and a Nazi party that advocates exterminating jews don't you think ?

    Why are you apologising for the Germans anyway ? They VOTED for an openly racist and nationalistic party before it had any power, and when nobody was twisting their arm or pointing a gun to their heads.

    Quite simply, Germans were and still are Nazis.

    They may be better at hiding it these days, but scratch the surface of any German and you will find a racist.


    Looking Back (none / 0) (#56)
    by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 10:34:13 PM PST
    "They VOTED for an openly racist and nationalistic party before it had any power, and when nobody was twisting their arm or pointing a gun to their heads."
    Some voted, not the majority. Then again, racism wasn't top of their agenda, fighting the reparations (esp. to the French) and the economic problems were. It's fair to say that the average man hated the French much more than the Jews.
    And for these goals, looking 5 years ahead, like it or not, Hitler wasn't a bad choice.

    "They may be better at hiding it these days, but scratch the surface of any German and you will find a racist."
    Might be true or not. In any case, the same applies to USAmericans, or most other nations, for htat matter. Those who are or look different will always facea certain hostility, hidden or not.

    FW


     
    Let me guess - You're an American right ? (none / 0) (#31)
    by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 05:52:12 PM PST
    If you were British, or French, or Dutch, or Danish, or Swedish, or Norweigan, or Polish, or Russian, you would realise that you have to keep a very close eye on those German bastards. They have a nasty habit of going walkabout in a quest for 'lebensraum'.

    In Europe the German is almost universally despised for his Nazi past, and his almost unswerving obedience to authority.

    Lets be honest here, most non-German Europeans are scared of Germans. We don't want to be gassed.


    At least you didn't say 'merkin or USian... (none / 0) (#38)
    by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 06:47:23 PM PST
    In Europe the German is almost universally despised for his Nazi past

    A shame. Sins of the Father(land), perhaps?

    Afraid to get gassed? Have you seen Germans walking around with tanks of Zyklon B recently?


     
    And You are from where (none / 0) (#47)
    by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 09:12:15 PM PST
    That sounds pretty much like Thatcher-style paranoia.
    UK anyone?

    I for one know for sure that Germans are rather popular in Ireland - But then, everybody who throws bombs on the Brits would be popular in Ireland, I guess.


     
    be realistic please (none / 0) (#60)
    by Anonymous Reader on Wed Aug 1st, 2001 at 01:50:46 AM PST
    hey,

    think before you writeup something please. the nazis were bad guys, the germans are not. this whole article is silly. languages differ and only because german doesn't belong to the common denominator doesn't make a nation fascist. get real. my language (dutch) resembles german very much, but the dutch are well known for their open mindedness (ask any amerikan who's been to amsterdam ...). that pretty much destroys the original argument right?

    regards,
    wim

    ps. the dutch do despise germans ;^), but that's because of a certain football-final in 1974...


    I lived in Amsterdam for a while. (none / 0) (#61)
    by Anonymous Reader on Wed Aug 1st, 2001 at 02:32:16 AM PST
    I don't think the Dutch are particularly open-minded. Sure a lot of Amsterdammers are pretty indifferent to the vices of others, but Amsterdammers are not the same as Dutch.

    The main reason Dutch hate the Germans is that the Germans took their grandfather's bikes. (fiets?) I know at least this much.

    I was quite sad to hear that cars with a (D) sticker are regularly vandalised in Amsterdam.identicak


     
    wronger (none / 0) (#19)
    by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 10:45:15 AM PST
    Given that French has barely any regular conjugation, I'd be very amused to see you try.

    Then what's this page do?


    Archaic french doesn't count. (5.00 / 1) (#24)
    by em on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 03:01:06 PM PST
    Ha, I knew somebody would come up with the fallacy of confusing orthography with spoken language. As it happens, French verbal paradigms are very invariant in the actual language: je parle, tu parles, il parle, on parle (not the archaic "nous parlons"), ils parlent are all pronounced the same; only the second person plural, vous parlez, is pronounced differently from the other forms.

    Look at the actual verbal paradigms of modern French in phonological transcription-- French is only slightly more inflective than English.
    --em
    Associate Editor, Adequacy.org


    I see that you were eager to answer (none / 0) (#26)
    by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 03:25:00 PM PST
    But next time answer in English. :)

    Conjugation is conjugation. So some of the forms are homophones. What's the significance of that? They're all spelled differently which means they are all different concepts. BTW, next time try something other than present tense, you'd notice that the pronunciations (and spelling) differ quite a bit more.


    Tu t'trompes-tu en astie comme �a tout l'temps? (5.00 / 1) (#28)
    by em on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 04:47:05 PM PST
    Conjugation is conjugation. So some of the forms are homophones. What's the significance of that? They're all spelled differently which means they are all different concepts.

    Define "concept". And please explain why spelling (or pronunciation, for that matter) should in any way reflect the "concept"; especially in the face of facts like the existence of ambiguous words and cases of multiple accepted spellings for the same word.

    Something to keep in mind. The father of modern linguistics, Saussure, even went as far so as to make the opposite idea, the arbitrariness of the sign, a defining feature of language. He also set out as a basic theoretical principle the primacy of the spoken form of a language over the written one. By assuming the opposite of these in your argument, you simply are parting company with the science of linguistics; don't be surprised when the amount of attention and seriousness people devote to your "arguments" becomes proportionate to your adherence.

    BTW, next time try something other than present tense, you'd notice that the pronunciations (and spelling) differ quite a bit more.

    Imparfait: je parlais, tu parlais, il parlait, on parlait, vous parliez, ils parlaient. 5 homophones.

    Subjunctive: que je parle, que tu parles, qu'il parle, qu'on parle, que vous parliez, qu'il parlent. 5 homophones.

    The verb forms in French that don't follow this pattern are archaic (future indicative, simple past, nous forms which are being ousted out of the language by on) or marginally productive at best (2nd and 3rd conjugations, irregular verbs).

    The fact is that French, contrary to its orthography, is an isolating language, whose verbs have for the most part 1 stem which takes very few inflectional suffixes. This is evident if you take a standard French conjugation table, throw out the obsolete parts, and transcribe the forms phonologically.
    --em
    Associate Editor, Adequacy.org


    A la Bill Clinton: Define "is" (none / 0) (#29)
    by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 05:09:12 PM PST
    Are you saying that the following are exactly the same: I am, you are, he is, they are? The concept is the verb and what it refers to or acts on it.

    This Sassure person says that the language is more important than the spelling. Fine. What happens when you want to record it in a book? How will you figure out exactly what he's trying to say. Parle. It sounds like I or he or you speak, but if it's written down this way, how would you know? And how would you know what tense he's in? He could be talking about the past and a reader could misinterpret it as a discussion of the future?


    To pa kapab comprend sa? Mo pa gain di temps! (5.00 / 1) (#51)
    by em on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 09:42:32 PM PST
    Are you saying that the following are exactly the same: I am, you are, he is, they are?

    No. But you're not only changing languages, you're picking the most irregular verb in English.

    The difference between those verb forms is the range of subjects they may be used with. But the agreement information they provide, as it happens, is completely redundant. And not only that, they hardly contribute any meaning to the sentences they occur in, if they do at all-- why do you think so many languages do without the verb "be" in present tense copulative sentences like He in school? (e.g. Russian or African-American English; actually, most languages in the world work like this...)

    The concept is the verb and what it refers to or acts on it.

    What do the verb forms you cite refer to? That is, what is the meaning of the forms of the verb "to be"?

    Parle. It sounds like I or he or you speak, but if it's written down this way, how would you know? And how would you know what tense he's in?

    Duh. The only sentences in French where you could use "parle" without an overt subject are imperative sentences. Thus, under the assumption what's written down is a sentence, that's a 2nd person imperative.

    Of course, you. seem. to. be. living. in. a. fantasy. world. where. people. speak. in. isolated. words. and. not. in. phrases. and. sentences. and. say. verbs. on. their. own. without. putting. subjects. on them. or. auxiliary. verbs.
    --em
    Associate Editor, Adequacy.org


    la stuff du concept :-) (none / 0) (#63)
    by Anonymous Reader on Wed Aug 1st, 2001 at 05:03:46 AM PST
    The concept is the verb and what it refers to or acts on it.

    Example: first person singluar of be - am. "Am" by itself doesn't mean a whole lot unless you stick a noun in front of it. "I am" is a complete thought (in an philosophic sort of way ;) If you have an imperative, then there is an implicit noun reference to whoever the speaker is referring to.

    The only sentences in French where you could use "parle" without an overt subject are imperative sentences.

    According to you, conjugation is dead in French - just use one form of the verb instead of six. Extend your claim about the spoken language to the written and things can get confusing.

    Of course, you. seem. to. be. living. in. a. fantasy. world. where. people. speak. in. isolated. words. and. not. in. phrases. and. sentences. and. say. verbs. on. their. own. without. putting. subjects. on them. or. auxiliary. verbs.

    Scotty. Can you. Get the. Warp. Engines. Back on. Line? :)


     
    The most irregular... (none / 0) (#84)
    by Anonymous Reader on Sun Apr 28th, 2002 at 03:34:46 AM PST
    ...and the most-often used verb of 'em all.

    Besides, trying to hack on having several forms of the same word, the same concept, is equivalent to promoting Chinese as the World Language.

    Kim~*


     
    Egyptian sentence construction? (5.00 / 1) (#15)
    by zikzak on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 10:18:27 AM PST
    Speaking Arabic makes you prone to building large stone structures?


    No No No! (none / 0) (#23)
    by Electric Angst on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 02:58:52 PM PST
    I believe he's speaking of the language the Egyptians spoke long before Islam was introduced to that nation, back when they were building like crazy...


    --
    In the dark times, will there still be singing?
    Yes, there will be singing. There will be singing about the dark times. -- Bertolt Brecht

    Hehe (none / 0) (#27)
    by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 03:25:59 PM PST
    Nice to see someone saw my sarcasm HTML tag at the end of that paragraph :)


     
    Language Of The Third Reich (none / 0) (#10)
    by nobbystyles on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 06:00:35 AM PST
    Actually the Nazis purged a lot of greek and latin based words from German substituting German based ones. So that's why you have this problem today.



    Uh oh. (none / 0) (#85)
    by Anonymous Reader on Sun Apr 28th, 2002 at 03:36:20 AM PST
    Yeah, they tried to convert "Nase" to "Gesichtserker". Read that? They TRIED.


     
    German word order... (none / 0) (#22)
    by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 02:25:59 PM PST
    Erm...

    I really hate to mention this, but putting the verb last *is* something that German borrowed from Latin.

    And another thing I wouldn't like to mention is that it's not "every other language" that takes from Greek and Latin... I don't remember much Chinese or Japanese that borrows from them. From American, yes, but not from Latin and Greek...

    I'm posting this anonymously, because I am a coward, and I can't really be bothered to create an account at the minute.

    Thanks.



    wrong (none / 0) (#25)
    by em on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 03:06:54 PM PST
    I really hate to mention this, but putting the verb last *is* something that German borrowed from Latin.

    IIRC, Proto-Germanic has been reconstructed as being verb-final second position language, so your statement is plainly false.

    And another thing I wouldn't like to mention is that it's not "every other language" that takes from Greek and Latin... I don't remember much Chinese or Japanese that borrows from them.

    I made it quite explicit that I was talking about European languages.
    --em
    Associate Editor, Adequacy.org


     
    Japanese (none / 0) (#64)
    by Anonymous Reader on Wed Aug 1st, 2001 at 07:56:06 AM PST
    Hrm, havn't got an account on here yet I'm delmoi on k5/slashdot. Anyway. <br><br>
    <i> don't remember much Chinese or Japanese that borrows from them. From American, yes, but not from Latin and Greek...
    </i><br><br>
    Japanese actualy borrows a lot from english and other europian languages. I don't know about structure, but many words, including 'namae' their word for 'name' come from english/romance languages.


    actually... (none / 0) (#73)
    by Anonymous Reader on Fri Aug 3rd, 2001 at 02:34:13 PM PST
    ..."romance" languages and asian languages both branch from a common root ("Indo-European"). Thus, in Japanese it's "namae", in Sanskrit it's "nama", in Hawaiian it's "inoa" which is not too close but still has some similarity...

    another fun one is "sapta" (sanskrit), and "septum" (Latin) for seven, or "Pater/Mater" (latin) and "Pitr/Matr" (sanskrit). It's not borrowing, it's just evidence of an older root language.




     
    pika! (none / 0) (#75)
    by Anonymous Reader on Sat Aug 4th, 2001 at 09:07:59 PM PST
    Japanese actualy borrows a lot from english and other europian languages.

    Of course it does. It even has a special script, katakana, to make use of foreign names and 'loanwords', as the borrowed words are called.

    A few examples:
    • wa-ku-man (Walkman)
    • a-me-ri-ka (America)
    • un-ja-mu-ra-mi (Um Jammer Lammy)
    • to-zu-to (toast)
    • chi-zu (cheese)
    • he-ren-su-mi-tsu (Helen Smith)
    Now just think of the words we borrow and pronounce incorrectly, like karaoke (kah-RAH-oh-KAY, not kah-REE-oh-KEE), anime, tsunami, ...


     
    Made for a really good laugh! (none / 0) (#34)
    by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 06:27:35 PM PST
    Thanks, that was really hilarious! I know it was probably meant to be serious, but as someone with German as mother tongue that really amuses me.

    Just let me, Nazi-by-language, as it were, add a few remarks:

    A. What about the SWISS? They are stubbornly democratic and free minded, boasting the oldest modern democracy. And yet they are speaking German! With a heavy dialect, but still following the same grammatic rules.
    Sure, there is a minority of French and Italian-speaking people as well, but the 'German Swiss' started the whole thing. Dammit, they're cheating...

    B. It might be helpful to look at the roots of European languages, instead of just picking random examples to build a theory on. There are Romanic and Germanic languages, the former building on Latin, the latter also called Indo-Germanic/Indo-European, as they are said to originate from India. (We'll leave out the strange cases of Finish-Hungrian, Basque and Gaelic languages for now).
    English, while Germanic, has naturally strong romanic influences (see history book).

    C. Latin - we all loved it at school :-} is much less 'ordered' as you'd like it to be. "Omnia Gallia divisa est in partes tres" - not everyone writes as simple as Caesar. In fact, there is no mandatory order at all, you have to look at he cases, analyse the grammar etc to find out the meaning of a Latin sentence e.g. in Ciceros writing or in poetry. Some things are even intentionally left out. In any case, you have to read the sentence to the very end to understand it. This flexibility is actually very similar to German, which leads us to

    D. You sound like a disgruntled High School student who is pissed off by how tough German is.
    I understand you. Honestly, I'm really happy I don't have to learn it from scratch. Your German examples are pretty (*COUGH*) buggy (it's "IM Bett mit DEM HerrN"), and what's more, it is only one possibility, with many others left out (you just can't put both aux. and verb before the object).
    So agreed, it's tough, but guess what: It's really worth the hassle!

    E. As for the logical combinations of words, maybe "Flusspferd" is a bit unfortunate because it's not a horse, but it demonstrates the point: every kid knows instantly that this creatures lives near rivers and looks (very) remotely like a horse. While in English, if you don't know the greek word hippo(potamus), you'd maybe think it's an infective desease.
    While this may sound like it's not a big deal in this case (and in fact we'd use the greek/latin counterparts in more scientific areas as well) it is extremely valuable in areas where genuinely new thoughts and concepts are to be described.
    How come the English use Zeitgeist, Wanderlust, Eigen vector etcetc...
    How come the really deep and groundbreaking works of modern philosophy were written in German (Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger), as opposed to the scietific-practical works in English (Pope, Hume, Smith) and the morally-educational entertaining 'chatter' in French (Rousseau, Voltaire)? How come they lose immensely when translated?
    I'd argue that the complexity of the language allows to express in German a superset of what's possible in other European languages (nuances...).

    The price of it? You have to read the sentences to the very end, for sure...

    What this has to do with Germans apparently being born Nazis?
    - Don't know. But next time I will show conclusively how the use of inversion after restricting adverbs at the beginning of an English sentence explains how the US and the US switched from supporting Saddam to fighting Iraq.

    Thanks for listening!


    You've discovered our secret! (none / 0) (#39)
    by Anonymous Reader on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 06:55:29 PM PST
    next time I will show conclusively how the use of inversion after restricting adverbs at the beginning of an English sentence explains how the US and the US switched from supporting Saddam to fighting Iraq

    I don't know how you got that information, but please stay where you are. Our black helicopters should arrive at your house momentarily.


     
    Just a couple of points (none / 0) (#69)
    by Anonymous Reader on Thu Aug 2nd, 2001 at 04:39:41 AM PST
    A. As a point of fact the Swiss are _very_ authoritarian and bureaucratic. A point to note is that universal female suffrage was not introduced until 1972 there which certainly gives an indication of an authoritarian temperament. Add to this the compulsory military service and their obsession with cleanliness and order and I do not believe you have a picture of a nation of carefree, happy go lucky people.

    Please note, this is not intended as a critisism of the Swiss, many, if not most of whom would, perhaps quite rightly, consider the qualities I have mentioned to be virtues. However, I do not think the Swiss are a good example to give in this case.


    To sum it up (none / 0) (#70)
    by Anonymous Reader on Thu Aug 2nd, 2001 at 10:27:40 AM PST
    So, in short, the Swiss are Nazis and do regularly behave in fascist behaviour.

    Thanks for the clarification.

    (BTW, the first big successes of fascism were in Italy under Mussolini and Franco in Spain - until 1968! I don't think the main characteristics of these peoples are "authoritarian and bureaucratic".
    And I don't think you'd describe puritan Englishmen as "a nation of carefree, happy go lucky people" either.)

    The point is: Peoples may well have certain characteristics. These may or may not correlate with their culture and language (I'd say geography is more important). To link these to specific incidents like Naziism is like proving Frenshmen eat snails due to their grammar - a far fetch.


     
    what happens if you out of order Deutsche speak? (none / 0) (#35)
    by johnny ambiguous on Tue Jul 31st, 2001 at 06:34:49 PM PST
    I've read elsewhere that the jagged sounds of spoken German, so harshly similar to the clank and rattle of jackboots upon cobblestones, lead native speakers to deeply irregulationary thoughts and tendencies, but I hadn't read the notion that their word-order was also implicated. But as em is the linguistic expert, I'll at least provisionally take his word for it; at least, on his authority, I'll roll the idea around in my mind.

    Alas, as an Americano, I am embarrassingly monolingual (maybe you can take the boy out of Ohio, but you can't take Ohio out of the boy), so I must ask someone this. What I would like to know, however, is if in spoken German one can get away with sentences which do not obey the customary word order, and yet still be understood by native German speakers. (Maybe my oldest daughter, who is studying German in college, could answer that, but she's out of town visiting friends for a couple more weeks.)

    For example, in English, where the subject-verb-object order ordinarily prevails, one can still the German verb-last rule obey. True, one like a foreigner sounds; readers the text into an punctilious monocle-wearing accent project. Nevertheless one oneself understood can make. Whereas on the other hand if one arbitrarily scrambles the order of subject-indirect object-direct object in English, a speaker will surely give his listeners a dose of confusion, as: "dose gives listener speaker" conveys something distinct than "speaker gives listener dose".

    Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net


    Getting into my Chevrolet Magic Fire, I drove slowly back to the office. - L. Rosen

    germand language (none / 0) (#59)
    by gmarceau on Wed Aug 1st, 2001 at 01:42:42 AM PST
    I just learned the basic germand, so I'm no authority. However, I'll happily share my impression of the language so far. As a reference, I know French (1st lang.), English (2nd) and Germand (3rd).

    Yes, you could change the word order in Germand as well, and it would be just as painfully unnatural as your english examples.

    In fact, maybe I'll advance it would be more difficult. Germand verb tenses interact rather strongly with the word order. Simple present and simple past are SVO whereas most other tenses are SaOV (where 'a' stands for the auxiliary).
    Plus there are OVS orders you can use if you need to highlight something important about the object.

    Blaming WW2 on SOV order is entertainigly far fetch. There is however a very practical effect of SOV.
    Germands never interupt each other as they talk. They just can't, the grammar doesn't allow for it! As I hear, even flames, disputes and even heated technical discussion will operate by alternating full sentences and complete idea. Don't you wish you would see that more often?

    I'm sure a long time ago, the germands must have been interupting each other all the time, for them to have developed a whole grammatical defence against being cut off...
















     
    Have you ever been to Germany ?! (none / 0) (#65)
    by Anonymous Reader on Wed Aug 1st, 2001 at 09:59:10 AM PST
    Being German, it is quite anoying to hear people rant about things they don't really know. Now i'm no "patriot" (in fact, those are far fewer in Germany than in the states), and i hate to engage in writing "don't you talk about my momy"-posts. But some of the comments (and most of the original article) are just so hypocritical and clueless, it's just enfuriating. Actually, I share the notion that a language is actually telling a lot about the culture in which it is used, but the conclusions draw here are just hidious.

    DISCLAIMER: I'm not a native english speaker, so please forgive me my spelling mistakes, even if we are taling about language here.

    A) Nearly every single example of a german sentence in this thread is faulty, if not plain WRONG. If you want to make judgement, know the subject !

    B) As many posters pointed out, by picking the right "examples", you can just proove about everything. F.i. there is the (AFAIN) unique rule in english to capitalize "I" and any word referring to a country, like "German". Shall I conclude from that that english-speaking people are egocentic and nationalistic ?

    C) The German language produces obidience and strictness ? Have you ever ben to germanny, or are you drawing you profound wisdom from a textbook (or from a TV-show by any chances) ?
    I've been living here all my live, and I had a 10 month stay in the states (Indiana) some years ago -- i went to an american highschool as an exchange student. If comparing the relation of American teenagers to their parents and teachers, in America is much more about "respect" (meaning obidiance -- true respect is based on LIKING someone) than it ever experianced it at home. In general American parents, teachers and polititians rely far more on the "because i said so"-attitude, which allways made my think if they ever read there holy Declaration of Independace or the Buill of Rights (which could be great achivements, if they were actually taken seriously).

    D) As opposed to what the article suggested, the German language was not "designed" -- like nearly every language, it just developed. Now, that actually means it is VERY STRONGLY influencedby the culture -- but no one ever sat down and devised a language in order to make the Germans obidient, or whatever.

    E) I personally can think of only one true "Nazi-Language": I's "Newspeak", outlined by Gerorge Orwell in the novel 1884: Its a minimal language designed in a way to make it impossible to formulate (and even think) about disobedience or individuality. So, what is good about a language is it "power" (=ability to express an idea correctly and efficiently) which is based on diversity and flexibility -- those criteria are met by pretty much every language i know of, and im very glad this is so.

    F) Who (besides your highschool german teacher) told you that german was "logical" ?! Surtainly not a German ! English is far more "logical", when it comes to grammar. But languages like French and Russian (not to speack of Hungarian) are even far more complicated than German -- try it if you don't belive it.
    The way compound-word are created in german is actually quite unique - but once you have figured out what words were kombined, it is easy to understand their meaning -- as opposed to the English language, were there are literally millions of special words for those things (I read figures that said the english language has about factor 10 more individual words than any other european language). Now, talking about hard to understand for outsiders !

    OK, i could get on and on about this, but i don't want to be too frindly to my neighbours here -- i'm not a true "fan" of Germanny. So, as i pointed out in the outset, i do agree that a language may tell a lot about the people that use it. But i would concentrate on things like finding out how many words there are for a specific concept in that language: if you told me that there is a people whos language has 20 word for snow, i would know without looking that that people is living in a cold area with a lot of snow (it's actually true for the Inuit people). Besides: did you know there is no word for "freedom" in chinese ? The closest translation means something like "unlimited allowance" (please correct me if i'm wrong).

    Furthermore, judging the characteristics of a people SOLELY by looking at their grammar is just as bad as judging someone by the color of it's skin -- it's prejustice, if not a sign of fascism.

    regards,
    daniel

    P.S.: im a lazy anonymous coward, not willing to spend 90 seconds to create an account. If you want to know who i am, look for NumbThumb on slashdot.




    Nah (none / 0) (#66)
    by Anonymous Reader on Wed Aug 1st, 2001 at 10:15:12 AM PST
    You think you can tell things about people's cultures from language? You can't! Language is just arbitrary, and bears no relationship to the people who speak it. Any language can express any idea it needs to.

    if you told me that there is a people whos language has 20 word for snow, i would know without looking that that people is living in a cold area with a lot of snow (it's actually true for the Inuit people).

    English easily has 20 words for snow too. snow, slush, sleet, hardpack, skeet, softpack, shest, krystalnachtice.... The list goes on & on. Studies have shown that English has more words for snow than inuit...does this mean all English speakers live in icey dwellings? Of course not!

    Damn linguistic determinists.


    Theres is no determinsm here (none / 0) (#72)
    by Anonymous Reader on Thu Aug 2nd, 2001 at 03:58:30 PM PST
    You think you can tell things about people's cultures from language? You can't! Language is just arbitrary, and bears no relationship to the people who speak it.

    Bullshit. You can tell tons of things about a people's culture from their language; hell, language is part of culture in the first place!

    Evidence for this is just there all over the globe for taking-- e.g. cultures where languages have evidential marking place high values on the sources of information.

    Damn linguistics determinists.

    Please point out where in the article there is any implication of linguistic determinsm. There is absolutely none. Language and culture are not neatly separable as the "linguistic determinism" argument requires.


     
    languages (none / 0) (#71)
    by Anonymous Reader on Thu Aug 2nd, 2001 at 11:32:28 AM PST
    how could you even base a logical argument on the fact that a language is not latin-based?????

    lets list the bases here:
    latin (includes many western "civilised languages"
    germanic (from the tribes of the middle ages, including the goths, norse, etc (read ur history moron))
    asian (well duh. to a stupid american (i.e. the author of the article) it sounds like babling, yet, some asian countries are far superior technologically than the U.S. (read: japan)
    african (sounds like a bunch o' clickin... must be morons... let's segregate yeah!)
    native american (more morons. let's kill em and take their homes...)

    you CAN NOT assume that persons are something without knowing them. The germans of WWII may not have all been racist morons (like the author, who is clearly anti-germanic), many of them were easily influenced morons.

    Now, realise i am not defending nazis, just defending the people of present day everywhere-but-good-ol-retarded-us-of-a


     
    Ah... postfix. (none / 0) (#74)
    by Anonymous Reader on Sat Aug 4th, 2001 at 12:12:56 PM PST
    >the basic schema for a German main clause is
    >Subject-Auxiliary-Object-Verb

    So it's like useing a HP calculator instead of a TI?

    Ya know, once you get used to it, postfix is MUCH more efficent and useful than infix. It takes some getting used to, to be sure. But once you have a handle on them, nearly EVERYBODY who gives them a shot agrees that HP's are FAR superior.

    Or perhaps you're going to claim that everyone at Hewlett Packard is a Nazi as well.

    Or throw in Yoda while you're at it.


    foo on you



    Umm (none / 0) (#77)
    by Anonymous Reader on Sun Aug 5th, 2001 at 02:13:12 PM PST
    Looks like you cam here from slashdot. Please be informed that nobody here cares about calculators, they prefer issues of import, like sex, bdsm, the weather, and political bargaining (unlike other sites, we don't report the bargaining - it actually happens here).

    HTH


     
    Totally correct (none / 0) (#76)
    by Anonymous Reader on Sun Aug 5th, 2001 at 05:10:17 AM PST
    You can obviously see that not only is German the language for Nazis but Satanists as well - I mean, shit, look at Nietsche. And all those operas by Wagner, those were actually the very beginnings of Nazism in Germany, back when the space aliens landed, turned Wagner gay, and told him about the coming of Hitler. Actually, a little known fact, Elvis Presely wasn't abducted by aliens - he time traveled. Yes, its well known what a rabid Nazi lover he was, in fact, its because of his time travelling that the German language was founded (all in an attempt to fuel the fire of Nazism and burning pale emaciated Jews alive as they screamed and cursed their God as they watched their own fat melt off them).

    Here's an idea: shut the fuck up til you actually read a book.


    Der Hogwash (none / 0) (#79)
    by Anonymous Reader on Wed Sep 26th, 2001 at 12:51:10 PM PST
    Sie t�uschen. Sie werden uns entbl��en. Der Vater ist wahnsinnig. Sie werden zahlen. Solche �berheblichkeit.

    In Zukunft: Pr�fen Sie sich, bevor Sie sich zerst�ren.

    Der Troll Cometh f�r Sie

    --ken


     
    actually (none / 0) (#78)
    by Anonymous Reader on Sun Aug 5th, 2001 at 06:14:08 PM PST
    The most significant predisposing factors for Nazism are a belief in the superiority of one's own culture and language, a lack of understanding of other cultures, ignorance of one's own history, deep-rooted social problems, and a good dose of nationalism and right-wing politicking. In short, the kinds of traits that are rampant in the US at the beginning of the 21st century (and that you could serve as a poster child for). Let's just hope that the US economy doesn't go sour, because that is usually the trigger that causes people to act on their beliefs.

    As for yourself, to cure your own nationalistic views, I recommend reading up on the history of the US and Britain from the point of view of the (American/Asian) Indians, Chinese, Africans, Hawaiians, and Central and South Americans, people who were abducted, murdered, subjugated, terrorized, enslaved, and robbed of their lands. You shouldn't throw stones if you sit in a glass house.


     
    (German != Nazis) (none / 0) (#81)
    by Ilya on Mon Apr 22nd, 2002 at 11:21:41 AM PST
    well em,
    i see u have no idea of the german language.
    first of all i noticed several grammatical mistakes in ur "examples".
    Jan hat Marie IM Bett mit DEM Herr gesehen
    IM not in DEM not der.

    so u really seem to be a not so "skilled" german speaker, and you dare to write such "comments"
    about the german language. Did you ever read the book "Animal Farm" written by George Orwell .. well its a kind of a novel which meaning can be transfered to the real world in the WW2 era.
    Well your "arguments" are as ridicolous
    as the ones Napoleon from Animal Fram used to say.

    Another point. You say German is complex... i say no definetaly not as complex as for example russian(i speak russian and german very good). In Russian we have 7 clauses , in german only 4 and in english only 1 . so from your point of view german seems very complex... but from for example mine its rather simple... there are also certain asian languages which are made in a very different way.

    Another point. You say the rest of the world speaks latin-based languages... ever heard of a country called china, populated with over 1.000.000.000 people..speaking a non-latin-based language... �?

    Another point. You have the example
    (Ich habe ein Flusspferd gesehen) I've seen a riverhorse. (by the way in the new german grammar Fluss is written with a double 's' not an '�').
    you further say
    "if you tried to make a logical guess, you'd guess that it was a kind of horse,". Well id say languages are not there for that u can guess the meaning... (its not a programming language).
    and if greek "hippopotamus" means riverhorse and is made up of two greek words why is it so amazing that the germans did �the same with two analog german words...and further u say german is unoriginal... well than tell me what is more original just to take a greek word and use it as if it were english...or at least use this word translated....

    And i just dont understand what connection there is between the language of the country and their culture.. u have no real arguments just because the adjectives you use to describe the language, can be used to describe a culture its still not a reason to do so. for example it is said that
    french is a beautiful language... and remember napoleons war in europe and russia... wehre so �there were so many innoncent victims? on the other hand english is said to be simple, easy,good... well what about the horrible
    slave- triangle, shipping slaves to america..throwing pregnant women overboard, because they were not strong eoungh... if u say german is bad...so why dont u think of the no1 in pollution decreasing technology, germany.
    i dont want to say that england or france is bad nor that germany is good... merely wanted to tell that the language has absolutely nothing to do with the lifestyle!
    i think im done!
    ------------
    just one thing about ur own description...
    em is an armchair anarchist, intellectual attack dog...
    a real big LOL to the intellectual attack dog... its really ridicolous what u wrote here! and far, very far away from intellectual...rather a collection of adjectives u use to describe language and culture at the same time. (a tip for the next time learn german better before u write those text ... "boss" still means "Boss" in german..."derived from latin", yeah yeah... haha!)
    and even if you write with a so complex language u still write bullshit...with no sense!
    so a real big "FUCK YOU" to you and your text.
    -mr.Ilya




     
    Wrong translations (none / 0) (#82)
    by Anonymous Reader on Sat Apr 27th, 2002 at 03:05:29 PM PST
    i'm a german and i must defeat some phrases. e.g. "John has seen Mary in bed with his boss yesterday afternoon. " myself translate it: "John sah Mary mit ihrem Chef im Bett". and many other germans, too. i think the most sentences are translated by a babelfish. at next i show the phrases "of doing like the rest of the world and basing it on Latin and Ancient Greek?" German based on greek, latin and teutonic. well, please read here: http://hosted1.direct-netware.de/g-a-m-c_de/index.php?t=topic&fn=21&tn=83

    and - i know, my english is bad ;)


     
    LOL! (none / 0) (#86)
    by Anonymous Reader on Sun Apr 28th, 2002 at 04:23:35 AM PST
    Well, first of all I must say that your Text is a very good joke. You can't even speak German (Your translations are REALLY funny) and think you can view by your wrong translation that we built our Grammatic so you don't understand it?!
    Sorry, but if you are too lazy to learn German Grammar it really isn't our fault. And if you aren't even able to keep 5 words when you look them up in your Dictionary I'd just say you should leave learning German (or languages at all) and not say that we are 'mean' or something.

    bye,
    Kaworu


     
    rotfl (none / 0) (#87)
    by Anonymous Reader on Mon Apr 29th, 2002 at 04:43:14 AM PST
    This text does just one thing: It strengs my prejudices about americans.

    At least it would, if i wouldn`t know some INTELLIGENT Americans. But you aren`t one of them. Definitely.


     

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