Talk:German/Level I/Introduction

Helping/auxiliary verbs
hi, There are no helping verbs in German. That's not right. Do you mean auxiliary verbs? What about Ich habe gesungen, Ich bin gegangen or Ich werde kommen? haben and sein and werden are auxiliary verbs! m:User:Louisana

As native German I can second that - there are auxiliary verbs, and they are quite necessary. Imagine English w/o auxiliary verbs.. --84.62.175.68 14:43, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi! I'm a native German, too, and I deleted that assertion. I think I'm right to suppose that a "helping verb" is an "auxiliary verb" (at least the English Wikipedia article redirects there), so it turns out to be wrong. Those who know German, please read Hilfsverb. --Langec 20:29, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Closeness of English and German
Can someone with some knowledge clear this up:

German and English are very close to each other. Here are some major similarities: ... As you can see, German is very much like English. There are, however, differences:
 * Both languages have the same 26 letters: A - Z.
 * German has more letters than and different pronunciations from English (see Lesson 1).


 * There is more truth to the second statement. In addition to the ascii alphabet we have vokals with those funny dots on top and the sharp s. However, I wouldn't base the proximity of languages on the number of letters. After all, Finnish uses the same letters as English but linguists have a hard time to find any similarity at all.--KaiMartin 00:36, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Identical Words?
"Many words, such as Football and Sandwich are the same in English and German. "

Really? One of the first German words I learned was Fußball... not really the same as English. Terrafire 15:25, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Hi Leo, I (a German) can confirm that. Sandwich is another bad example, because this word has been imported from English to German; it is not a native German word. Otherwise, you could also name "kindergarten" or "autobahn", which would be ridiculous ;-) I'd suggest to leave that point out. --Langec 20:32, 18 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I replaced the examples with words like Text, Zoo, Handball, Park, Position, Garage, ... I guess some of these words are imported from Latin, Greek, and French into both languages. In that sense they might be bad examples, but they are considered normal German/English words now. --Martin Kraus (talk) 11:25, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Contents
I can not find the special German method of showing completeness anywhere in the German Wikibook. The section stating that they do things differently should be revised. Jade Knight 09:54, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

More guttural
"German is more 'guttural'. In German, you talk in the back of your mouth."

What is the reasoning behind this statement? In both Standard German and English, there are no consonants with Epiglottal, Pharyngeal, or Uvular articulation (regional varieties of  aside). Is the reasoning based on the number of sounds in the back of the mouth, i.e. /k, g, h, ŋ/ in English vs /k, g, ç, x, h, ŋ/ in German? Or maybe the frequency of these sounds?

Regardless, "In German, you talk in the back of your mouth" is an imprecise--if not outright false--statement. --JS


 * I removed the statement since I didn't know what it refers to. --Martin Kraus (talk) 11:22, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

English has genders?
In what possible sense do English words have genders?


 * Please sign your comments with --~ . The way I understand that statement is that you have to use pronouns of the right gender to refer to nouns: "The man walks on the street. He wears a hat. A woman follows him. She doesn't wear a hat. The street doesn't really care. It has seen many men and women." But maybe the statement should be removed. --Martin Kraus (talk) 07:03, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
 * And think of phrases like "brother sun and sister moon", the sun and the moon, while referring pronouns are "he" for sun and "she" for moon. In German the other way round: *Schwester Sonne und Bruder Mond", die Sonne und der Mond. --93.83.23.30 (discuss) 19:26, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

audio does’nt work
audio does’nt work 154.182.198.9 (discuss) 15:08, 15 July 2022 (UTC)