Comments on: "I am Jacob." "Und I am Wilhelm." "Und ve just vant to pump... (clap) ...YOU UP!"

"I am Jacob." "Und I am Wilhelm." "Und ve just vant to pump... (clap) ...YOU UP!"

kenko — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 11:38:56 -0800

Some are strong, and some are weak. The weak, as is well known, are easily mastered—completely regular and, frankly, pathetic. But it doesn't have to be that way! The Society for the Strengthening of Verbs labors at its noble cause of strengthening verbs and nouns (in English too, though with less Sprachgefühl), increasing the stock of causatives, and generally messing around with German (excuse me, with Neutsch).

By: Jehan

Jehan — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 11:52:57 -0800

Ha, from the English list are some that I've heard spoken in life:

reach raught raught seep sept sept

Moreover, no "bring, brang, brung"? "Sell, selt" or "tell, telt"? You hear funny things out of folks mouths sometimes.

By: kenko

kenko — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 11:57:17 -0800

No quit/quat or submit/submat, no dine/done (rhymes with "stone").

By: Nomyte

Nomyte — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 12:00:55 -0800

"Calculaught." Lo, I am ruptured.

By: RogerB

RogerB — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 12:03:41 -0800

It's funny too that some of the English ones are real etymologically connected forms, packaged up as though they were newly coined nonsense words (e.g. "behove"). Still, I'll read the list over later for more fun, once I have prunt it out (brought to you by Sprünt). As far as the German part, my linguistic skills aren't quite up to the task of finding Neutsch hilarious rather than extremely confusing — so I thank you for providing me with a newfound understanding of how non-native speakers must feel when they read Lewis Carroll. Understanding a language's nonsense is a pretty interesting test of fluency, in fact.

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 12:04:13 -0800

Nothing unfriends my angriness like a weak verb or noun.

By: madcaptenor

madcaptenor — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 12:53:28 -0800

What, no "froke"? (As in "I froke out when I realized what a clusterfuck BART was going to be this morning because of the parade, so I walked four miles to work.")

By: shortyJBot

shortyJBot — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 13:24:30 -0800

Long ago in our middle school years, my cousin was making fun of my grandma for saying she was going to "warsh" the clothes. My grandma defended "warsh" by explaining, "It's 'warsh' because you are washing more than one thing." We both cracked up laughing. Sorry, Grandma! I am now a Linguistic Descriptivist, not a Prescriptivist.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 13:26:01 -0800

What is this 'walked'? I assume you mean welk.

By: deathpanels

deathpanels — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 13:35:56 -0800

Biked --> Boke As in, "I boke to work this morning."

By: Ironmouth

Ironmouth — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 14:00:44 -0800

My main concern is with a single alleged adjective: "impactful."

By: unSane

unSane — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 14:32:39 -0800

'Resiliency' and all its friends and relations must die.

By: RogerB

RogerB — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 14:58:14 -0800

It seems like some of you might not have fully comprehone what the post is about. It's not just a list of disloke words — they've chung the actual word forms.

By: kenko

kenko — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 15:17:24 -0800

And done so with a lot of creativity and rigor (but not too much: "Dass sengen sprachgeschichtlich des Singens Kausativ sei, ist nicht bewiesen, wenn nicht sogar widerlegt. Es ist aber trotzdem eine schöne Vorstellung, dass das Zum-Zischen-Bringen durch Ankokeln eine Form von Zum-Singen-Bringen sei."*). They may be in favor of saving the genitive along with many Germanic language grumps, but grumping about language isn't the aim of the site. Playing with language is. * which my none too excellent German Englishes thus: "That 'singe' is, etymologically, the causative of 'sing' is not proven, though also not refuted either. It is nevertheless nice to think that making something sizzle by igniting it ["through ignition" would be very Germanic, here] is a form of making it sing."

By: kenko

kenko — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 15:20:48 -0800

"Resiliency", incidentally, has been around since the 1650s, translating postclassical Latin "resilientia". "Resilient" is attested only a little bit earlier (1640s); the much uglier to my ears "resilience" is attested in 1626.

By: sixohsix

sixohsix — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 16:22:10 -0800

Oh please, German is confusing enough as it is with its 16 forms of "the" and its exceptions to every rule. Please, no more verbs that turn into transformers when put in the (two forms of) past tense or the other three forms of present tense. I'd support a club based on the weakening and regularization of all verbs. Verb equality, if you will.

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 16:27:45 -0800

skim - skam - skum I really did hear "skun" (as in, "I fell off my bike and skun my knees") often enough where I grew up. (More than often enough, really.)

By: benito.strauss

benito.strauss — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 16:31:50 -0800

I love this, especially the term "Nittelhochmeutsch". But my ever-weakening grasp of German makes me afraid to read it too deeply. Their new "rules" could quite easily wipe out my memory of the actual rules. As for weak vs. strong verbs, aren't they swimming against the tide of history? I thought strong verbs were generally older ones, and newer words tend to default to being weak.

By: unSane

unSane — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 17:07:53 -0800

It's the -ency ending I deprecate. -ence is much nicer. Saves a syllable. Time's short. Must fly.

By: unSane

unSane — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 17:09:39 -0800

(we talk about silence, not silency, and licence, not licency)

By: kenko

kenko — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 17:15:42 -0800

The adequacy of your argument is indisputable.

By: kenko

kenko — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 17:35:03 -0800

I find, having consulted /usr/shared/dict/words with the aid of grep, that they in fact have an unsurpassed sufficiency, and you exhibit great proficiency in making them; you would be within your rights to argue against me with all the stringency you can muster and to show me no leniency. Argue, further, with dispatch and efficiency: allow me no longer to hold tenancy of untruth! (Rather, there should be a vacancy in those lands, in which no one should take up residency.) This is a matter of great urgency! Do not limit the cogency of your attack because my literacy is evidently still in its infancy (a fact which is quite obviously an irrelevancy); the exigency of my understanding, my deficiency of fluency, is my own doing, and deserves to fall before your potency. Etc.

By: unSane

unSane — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 17:55:27 -0800

Yes, and you sound like you're broadcasting direct from the 18th century. Huzzah!

By: uosuaq

uosuaq — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 17:56:11 -0800

As for weak vs. strong verbs, aren't they swimming against the tide of history? I thought strong verbs were generally older ones, and newer words tend to default to being weak. It seems more likely that it's old, but frequently-used verbs that tend not to "weaken" (search for "less-commonly" in this story.

By: kenko

kenko — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 18:33:33 -0800

Really? You'd prefer "urgence", "infance", "proficience"?

By: hoyland

hoyland — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 19:43:01 -0800

As for weak vs. strong verbs, aren't they swimming against the tide of history? I thought strong verbs were generally older ones, and newer words tend to default to being weak. backen is clinging on for dear life, which amuses me. I'm completely blanking on a German example of a formerly strong verb. It may just be that backen is the example everyone uses. Part of me wonders whether I should feel cheated that no one talks about verb classes when teaching German because there's totally a system and I never noticed it when staring at the list of strong verbs in the back of every Germany textbook ever. Of course, that would involve a table and, as evidenced by the response to any mention of German grammar, the fact that nouns (well, articles, mostly) decline is apparently way too taxing. Then again, I learned about verb classes taking Middle High German, so I'm probably not normal.

By: Harvey Kilobit

Harvey Kilobit — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 19:48:25 -0800

As for weak vs. strong verbs, aren't they swimming against the tide of history? I thought strong verbs were generally older ones, and newer words tend to default to being weak. Actually we can see that some old weak verbs are strengthening by analogy if they are phonetically similar to common strong verbs. Dove as the past tense of dive is relatively new, for instance -- the "correct" form has always been dived.

By: BinGregory

BinGregory — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 20:31:05 -0800

Really? You'd prefer "urgence", "infance", "proficience"? Merce! Merce, I can take no more!

By: kenko

kenko — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 21:42:41 -0800

Part of me wonders whether I should feel cheated that no one talks about verb classes when teaching German because there's totally a system My teachers did! And the lists of strong verbs were even divided up by paradigm.

By: dunkadunc

dunkadunc — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 21:07:27 -0800

This is totally and absolutely something I can get behind for English- and can we please bring back grammatical gender and case while we're at it?