/lit/ - Literature

He's not wrong but this is also the majority of IE languages.

>>19078939
True, I'm learning German and all these artikels are too retarded for me to bear.

>>19078939
>Anglophone having a fit about linguistic exceptions
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
He's a fucking retard
Truly reddit: the author

>>19078953
Exception implies a rule and there are no rules regarding definite articles in German
>inb4 -ung, -heit, -schaft etc.
Minority of words are like that

>>19078939

Twain is probably the worst midwit author I can thing of. Noun gender in German isn't that bad because you can usually tell the gender from the type of word or by the word ending. Also many nouns are "conceptually" masculine, feminine, or neuter but interpreting it this way is ambiguous and unreliable

Why would one admit so boldly to being a pleb who never learned latin or ancient greek like this?

>>19078962

Oh, I forgot to add that German is kiddie shit compared to Ancient Greek. I assume Twain was poorly educated

>>19078939
>G*rman "language" BTFO by Mark Twain
No, it's not cope. English is one of the worst languages to write poetry/meaningful stories given its tremendous lack in both beauty and elegance. English really functions like Chinese but the latter is visually pleasing if written and words usually have several meanings.

>>19078939
sounds like he just couldn't figure it out and got mad

>>19078962
>>19078965
>>19078966
>>19078977
>>19078989
>muh Ancient Greek and Latin!
Twain was self educated and he never made attempts to hide that. Let's see how your writing compares to his

>>19078939
twain liked german, its meant to be a humorous essay

German has this separation of a word by descriptive sentences and he mentioned it in the book, It's sort of like: And he was Go- after having kissed his wife goodbye, talked to his little son and daughter, who was rather sad seeing her father leave so quickly as he had just arrived -ing and waving his hand at his family
What's up with that Germanbros?

>>19079071
I'm not good at my own language but I can't think of anything like that (the word being separated). Also Twain should leave my language alone and go back to seething about Messi

>>19079106
Here, look at this, it starts from >9:53
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s-qWFhwM9o&t=1309s

>>19079106
he means something like "er schlief, nachdem er ein glas milch getrunken hatte, sofort ein." where einschlafen is separated.

>>19079116
>However, it is not well to dwell too much on the seperable verbs. One is sure to lose his temper early; and if he sticks to the subject, and will not be warned, it will at last either soften his brain or petrify it.
kek and possibly, BTFO'd??

>>19079116
>>19079125
Ok you were right they do exists and are quite common, but I happen to like them. It kind of keeps you on track when writing a scentence and you know how you have to end it, which is nice with longer sentences.

>>19079020

His writing is very unremarkable. On par with your average college grad. One issue he has is stupid redundancies if you want me to give a specific criticism. Such as "memory" and "memorandum", it doesn't work as a pun or something (observing the shared etymology). The metaphor of a "memorandum" such as a written reminder or a business memorandum being similar to the rote memory of vocabulary and grammatical gender (same thing in this case) is very vague and clumsy.

Learning a noun gender, even if gender is distributed randomly in a language which they definitely are not in German, amounts to an extra element to learning vocabulary. Tying a concept to written symbols and to a grammatical gender both share the same style of thinking, the gender is much easier to remember than the spelling and phonetics of a completely unfamiliar word

And woops, he said "memorandum-book" which I guess is a written logbook. Still a stupid comparison but my mistake

>>19079134
>Learning a noun gender, even if gender is distributed randomly in a language which they definitely are not in German, amounts to an extra element to learning vocabulary.
Why can't you krauts just be like slavs or italians and add suffixes to words that indicate their gender? I propose a reform of your language
>every masculine word ends with -er so Arzt becomes Arzter
>every feminine word ends with -in so Ärtzin doesn't change
>every neuter word ends with whatever you want
There, it isn't that hard

>>19078939
I really love "Die Schreckliche Deutsche Sprache" very funny. Twain is a fun guy.

>>19079152
der hunder und die katzin :D

Twain's american masculinity frightens eurofags.

>>19079161
every time i encounter euros online i'm reminded why America was necessary

>>19079207
everytime i encounter americans online i think the same thing

>>19078939
>anglo goblin is stumped by a real language

>>19079231
Seethe. (i wish i could learn and master German)

>>19079256
Start here. It will carry you all the way up to C1

>>19079152
No, there's a very good reason why German has twelve different plural endings and seven different singular endings. They all continue old germanic forms. Abandoning them means abandoning germanic heritage.

>>19078939
I'm a german native speaker and sometimes i think about some random aspect of the language and how it makes no sense. For example why do "with" and "without" use different cases. "Mit mir" und "ohne mich"

>>19079273
Thanks, the girl is a cutie, is that how it feels like to be a Kraut? Nice

>entgegengegangen

>>19078939
>moved to germany when I was 15
>spoke no german
>learned german in situ, all the way through to meisterschule
>people tell me my german is great

>actually, my german sucks
>i hate reading german
>i still don't know my artikeln
>i really hate reading german
>keep buying german books
>never read them
god, I love being a polyglot, but I really do dislike german. I think each language has it's strength and weaknesses in the arts. German's weakness is novels. German poetry is amazing, but novels? I don't know what it is, exactly. The language is too sterile, maybe.

>>19079290
>I don't know what it is, exactly. The language is too sterile, maybe.
Kleist, Döblin, Kafka
how are you gonna call the language that brought forward novels from all these guys sterile?

>>19079290
>God, I love being a polyglot

>>19079430
Yes, I am proud of knowing multiple languages.

>>19078939
this is literally the same for English too?

>>19079441
Dilate. you think i'm not?

>>19079443
uh no english doesn't have noun genders

>>19079479
This is what having a genderless language does to a mf

>>19079479
Arabic and French do, git gud

>>19079490
What does that have to do with english

>>19079511
nevermind, i was responding to an imaginary Anon

>>19079513
I do that too but instead of an anon its the voices in my head

>>19078939
>filtered by gendered pronouns
Many such cases!

>>19078939
What a fucking retard. This is standard in almost all European languages.

>>19080052
No, only Germanic autists do that. Slavs recognize grammatical gender by the ending of the noun (-a for feminine, -o for neuter, everything else for masculine) as do Spaniards and Italians

>>19080076
We got too cocky germanicbros

>>19078939
I am using English for 20 years and for the love of god I have no fucking idea when to use "the" or "a" or nothing at all. No rime or reason to it, genders are MUCH more logical both in German and in my native Polish (or Russian for that matter)

>>19080076
>Slavs recognize grammatical gender by the ending of the noun (-a for feminine, -o for neuter, everything else for masculine)
My five slav cents - this is only correct as a rule of thumb, feminine nouns typically end on -a, -я, or -ь 90% of time, but masculine nouns can end on any letter including the ones above. Also, some nouns have context-sensitive gender, for example the word 'зaнyдa' (a dull person) declines as feminine or masculine depending on who it describes at the moment.

>>19079157
Or just skip the whole gender thing and the "the" part and go danish

Hunden og katten

>>19080296
>I am using English for 20 years
*have been

>>19078939
>Twain got filtered by grammatical gender
lol. Twain was such a mediocre intellect. He was praised by Americans at the time because they had so few others. He was literally the bottom of the barrel of 'tolerable' quality in literature.

>>19078939
Why no one else but this
>>19079031
wrote that this work of Twain, like many of his works, belongs to the genre of "humor and satire".
Although I noticed that you cannot joke with a fool - he does not understand humor and can become an aggressive fool.

>>19078939
Based Twain making pseuds seethe from the grave

>>19081234
t. Jane "femur" Austen

>>19080296
But there is a rime and reason for using 'the' and 'a.'

>>19081188
I knew, often I don't even bother using proper tenses because my fucked up articles will ruin everything anyways

>>19080052
Except the truly good languages that are genderless.

>>19079134
Gran Autismo. This argument is weak as the grasp of connotation it assumes.

>>19079273
Just torrented the A1 books, but they're in German. How the fuck will I understand what they say if eveyrhting's in the language I wish to learn but don't know shit about? Hilfe bitte??

>>19083333

Dude I haven't even read Twain recently and my critique was going off a few excerpts I've seen posted on /lit/ recently. Are you a fucking bugman? Mark Twain's work is fashionable light reading. It probably does not qualify as literature at all, even if you're generous. I personally do not have the erudition nor language aptitude to be a great writer, despite how quirky and wacky I sometimes am >;^)
But my writing, if I really tried my best, would at least end up better than Twain's probably better. But I would never impress any remotely serious author or reader. And America has a very lacking culture, it always has. Standards are generally and historically very low here. But I have too much pride and self awareness to hustle my way into common consciousness. God there's other ways to make money and better ways to be recognized. Having Mark Twain on the same shelf as Moby Dick, the complete collection of Shakespeare, and the King James bible is very America tier - at least circa 20th century. I know I'm being mean about it but it's true

>>19083385

>But my writing, if I really tried my best, would at least end up better than Twain's probably better.

whoops, I meant "on par with Twain or better". At least I don't employ annoying alliteration, stupid puns and observational "wit" (wit itself has a bad connotation, witty also means cheap and tricky since amusement/whimsicality is bad, despite it's grander earlier meaning in etymology). And Twain loves using goofwords, sometimes his vocabulary is strange and unattractive. He sometimes treats language like a demonstration of petty, unappealing facts. Also a demonstration of cheap wit which is kind of the same thing. But to be fair the English language is horrible for literature and American culture is a horrible vessel for it, so you often cannot tell if a word is meant to be upper register and "literary" (unless it's clearly Greek or Latin) or if some of his stupid language was conventional for his time. There isn't much of a difference, English sucks at every level of understanding