memes @lemmy.world

1mo ago

the invite the....

74 comments

Any time I use the wrong definite article my German wife will loudly bark “NEIN!” It’s hot but educational.
- Hey, is your wife free later? I could really use some German lessons. I mean German less- I mean German- I mean Ger- I-I-I mean light domming.

I'm not sure any of those french phrases ever translate to "the"
- You're right, they don't.
  The ones beginning with "d" generally translate as "of the," while the "à" ones generally translate as "to the" or "at the."
  French has three words that mean "the": "le" (masculine), "la" (feminine), and "les" (plural).
  
  Right yeah I know. I was just allowing for some potential context I wasn't aware of

Russian:

Der, die, das 👏👏...
- Wer, wie, was👏👏
  
  Wieso, weshalb, warum? 👏👏

I'm trilingual and two of the languages don't even have this bs lol (Mandarin, Japanese, English).
- Recently I went on Wikictionary by curiosity to see how a Japanese world was constructed and Japanese looked extremely powerful but insanely complex.
  You can properly express so much in this language
  
  I'm learning japanese right now, it has a very Lego-like structure for creating words and sentences that allows you to be very specific about things which is pretty cool.
  Homophones are waaaaay more common in Japanese than in English though.
  
  You can express just about everything in any language. It just sometimes takes more words.

Edit: Shit, I mistook the original meme as about grammatical cases instead of articles. I think Finnish has 15 cases. 🤔🫣
- Wait i thought finnish didnt have articles? I dont know that much about it, im just hungarian(same language family) and also live in sweden which is of course next to finland. In hungarian there are articles tho(the grammar is extremely strange around them, we literally conjugate for them) but i heard finnish doesnt have them.
  
  Wait i thought finnish didnt have articles?
  Journalism exists in Finland too.

In Norwegian (or rest of scandinavistan, as far as I know) we don't even use "the". Suffixes are used instead.
Fish = Fisk
The fish (single) = Fisken
The fish (plural) = Fiskene
- So, is there no differentiation between "a fish" and "the fish"?
  
  A fish - en fisk
  The fish - fisken
  
  this is a relly gard thing to understand for natives of languagea without articles, "some fish" vs "this particular fish"
- Proud lad from Jutland here: in our dialect we do use "the" in "æ".
  The fish = æ fisk

French English

du of the
de l' of the
de la of the
des of the
au to the / at the
à l' to the / at the
à la to the / at the
aux to the / at the
French has multiple options because it has 2 genders for nouns "the chair" = "la chaise" (female), "the bench" = "le banc" (male), and it changes the article when you're talking about multiple things vs. single things "the benches" = "les bancs".
So, French really has 3 versions of "the": "le" (male, singular), "la" (female, singular), "les" (female or male, singular).
But German... ugh. There's a 4x4 matrix of German words for "the". German had the wisdom to come up with a neuter gender, but the insanity to not apply it to most common objects. Somehow a knife is sexless, a spoon is male and a fork is female. Making it worse, the version of "the" you use for an object depends on whether the object is the subject of a sentence, the object of a sentence, the indirect object of a sentence or possessive. I don't know if it's better or worse (but I'm leaning towards worse) that they re-use a lot of these articles at other spots in the matrix, so "der" is used for male objects in the nominative case, female in the dative case, and plural objects in the genitive case.
Case Masculine Feminine Neuter Plural

nominative der die das die
accusative den die das die
dative dem der dem den
genitive des der des der
Take "Stein" which is stone, not beer glass. If you're an English speaker and are used to adding an "s" to make something plural, and you see "Der Stein" and "Des Steines", you might think that the version with the "es" is the plural, right? Nope, the plural of "Der Stein" is "Die Steine". "Des Steins" is for the possessive case. You'd use "Der Stein" for "The stone is heavy", but if you want to say "The weight of the stone is high" you have to switch to "Des Steins" -- and to add another twist, sometimes it's "Steines" because of reasons.
- *(female or male, plural)
  
  Your matrix is correct, op errored on the neutral branch with "den".

French	English
du	of the
de l'	of the
de la	of the
des	of the
au	to the / at the
à l'	to the / at the
à la	to the / at the
aux	to the / at the

Case	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
nominative	der	die	das	die
accusative	den	die	das	die
dative	dem	der	dem	den
genitive	des	der	des	der

él la los las
Ellos ellas
Eso esa
Esos Esas.
- English is schizo, but “the” is actually a very nice simplification, and It hardly impacts the communication.
  
  … it he hardly impacts …
  
  I could see the value in changing the article if the noun itself didn't change. For example, if Spanish said "la casa" for singular and "las casa" for plural. Then the article would be all you need to know if something is plural or singular. But, every language I'm aware of (which isn't all that many) changes both the article and the noun. Using "the" in English removes this unnecessary redundancy. But, English is ugly in that whether you add an "s" for plural or "es" seems somewhat arbitrary.
  
  Spanish (and I don't think French) doesn't have that many words for "the". It's just "El" and "La".
  I suppose "los" and "las" as well... Sorta. But that's just plural "El/La". Which might sound unnecessary but having everything match plurality and grammatical gender does clear up ambiguity sometimes.
  Eso(s)/Esa(s) mean "that/those"
- The Inquisitor!
- Spanish (and I don't think French) doesn't have that many words for "the". It's just "El" and "La".
  I suppose "los" and "las" as well... Sorta. But that's just plural "El/La". Which might sound unnecessary but having everything match plurality and grammatical gender does clear up ambiguity sometimes.
  Eso(s)/Esa(s) mean "that/those"
  
  Mfs just explained to me my native language.
  They teach them as different, is important to know they are not the same or else you use a singular when you should use a plural, or viceversa.
  "The" can be singular or plural, femenime or masculine.

Yorkshire:
T' (Glottal stop sound)

I'm not sure it's kosher to count à la and de la as separate definite articles.
- I don't speak French but from my understanding, they fulfill the function, cases in German do. But than again you could add "to the" and "of the" in English
  
  Strangely, le itself is missing from this list, probably the most obvious definite article

I don't even know a correct way to translate 'the' to my language, it doesn't really exist

More like: by the, of the, for the, to the, belonging to the etc.
- Yeah I was gonna say, those aren't the same at all. English has way more prepositions than French.

Me speaking a language which uses quotes instead of the
- That kid is about to ruin someone's microwave lunch.

You guys have articles?

Die Nichteinhaltung der Fallzahlen von eins bis vier vom Mittelpunkt ausgehend stört mich massiv.
Der, des, dem, den
Die, der, der, die
Das, des, dem, das
Die, der, den, die

Norwegian: -en, -a, -et (suffixes)
But also -o, -i and probably other variations depending on location.
- O and I? In swedish we only have en and ett and norwegian has a third one but what the hell are o and i? Im not very good with swedish yet(im an immigrant) but could you explain what o and i do? I dont think swedish has this tho.
  
  They are dialects, mostly. In parts of western norway, -o is used for singular feminine words, for example: "stuo" (instead of "stua" ("the living room")). Similarly, -i is used in parts of central Norway, for example: "boki" (instead of "boka" ("the book")). I'm not sure if these are accepted in "correct" written form of nynorsk, but it is commonly used in spoken and written dialects.

Polish: (null)
🫲👁️🧠👁️🫱
- Correct, Polish doesn't exist. It never has, and it never will.
- not really, suffixes serve this purpose
  
  You sure?
  Kupiłum rower.
  Rower kosztował 1337 złotych.
  Jadę teraz na tym [looks like an article] rowerze.
  Rower nie jest nowy, raczej używany po remoncie.

I can see now why English is seen as more universal, even if in an alternate timeline where the Anglophones never became dominant.

In hungarian the articles are only "a"(which actually works like the english "the" but with a form that is "az" which is like "a" turning into "an" in english) and then "egy" which means "a" in english but also means the number one. Most times from what i notice it works pretty closely to what german or english does. Where my whole "it works pretty intuitively" argument falls apart is that you conjugate your freaking verbs and they work in sometimes completely mysterious ways.
"Eszek egy almát" and "Eszem az almát" -- these are just "I eat an apple" and "I eat the apple"
But "Almát eszek" also works it just sounds more like you are specifically pointing out that its an apple that you are eating(and not an orange for example) and even tho its in the indefinite form it can sound pretty definite depending on context.
But then "Almát eszem" sounds like you are eating a person named Alma because for some reason not having the article makes it sound more personal.
"Eszek" is just eating
And at last "Eszem" sounds like you are pointing out that "I am eating that" or "I am eating that". Also if its in a more rural dialect it could be just the base form.
So yeah its an absolute brainfuck in hungarian.
- the

Too many instances of den, not enough of das.

74 comments

él la los las

Ellos ellas

Eso esa

Esos Esas.