Why you should learn German...

[Bremspropeller]

...because it's quite easy!

 

[namhee2]

[AndyJWest]

English is much simpler:

 

Quote

Time flies like an arrow.

Fruit flies like bananas.

 

[cardboard_killer]

I like French.

 

 

[namhee2]

French und German

 

 

[ZachariasX]

„Warme“ is translated with little imagination. You could translate it to „gay people“ to make for a better line.

[Uufflakke]

'Er hat in Berlin Liebe genossen - He enjoyed love in Berlin.'

 

That is about me!

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/1609-faces-of-the-flying-community/page/19/?tab=comments#comment-894797

 

Edited August 9, 2021 by Uufflakke

[Chief_Mouser]

3 hours ago, AndyJWest said:

English is much simpler:

 

 

 

Always been my favourite! ?

[Gambit21]

I took German in high school - Stalag (room) 42. 

 

 

[Feathered_IV]

5 hours ago, Uufflakke said:

'Er hat in Berlin Liebe genossen - He enjoyed love in Berlin.'

 

That is about me!

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/1609-faces-of-the-flying-community/page/19/?tab=comments#comment-894797

 

My grandad visited Berlin several times during the war.  Although it was dark and he never landed. 

[ST_Catchov]

I had a language handbook when I flew to Europe on a one way ticket. It turned into a year and a half working holiday through 1980/81. The only German phrase I mastered was "Wo ist die Toilette?"

[Gambit21]

6 hours ago, ST_Catchov said:

The only German phrase I mastered was "Wo ist die Toilette?"

 

That is sehr pathetic! ?

[ZachariasX]

„Eier! Wir brauchen Eier!“

„Eggs! We need eggs!“

 

(The needs of a certain Ollie during a soccer match.)

[AEthelraedUnraed]

It's quite obvious that German is a horrible language and deserves to be deleted from the Internet.

 

I think we should look to English as a textbook case of a perfectly constructed, understandable language that deserves to be the world's lingua franca.

 

Spoiler

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

 

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

 

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

 

--- The first three stanzas of "The Chaos," a poem by the Dutch teacher Gerard Nolst Trenité ---

 

Edited September 23, 2021 by AEthelraedUnraed

[von_Tom]

21 minutes ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

English ... deserves to be the world's lingua franca.

 

This made me giggle.

 

English has to be the most bastardised language of all, incorporating ye olde English, Latin, French, German, Scandinavian languages and a host of other tongues.  Plus it continuously adapts.

 

But, for martial sounding language German is the one.

 

von Tom

[Diggun]

English has zero confusing terms or ambiguities; see this famous explanation of that most straightforward of games, Cricket.

 

• You have two sides, one out in the field and one in.
• Each man that’s in the side that’s in the field goes out and when he’s out comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out.
• When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in.
• When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out.
• Sometimes there are men still in and not out.
• There are men called umpires who stay out all the time, and they decide when the men who are in are out.
• Depending on the weather and the light, the umpires can also send everybody in, no matter whether they’re in or out.
• When both sides have been in and all the men are out (including those who are not out), then the game is finished.

– Attributed (tenuously) to the Marylebone Cricket Club

 

I was fortunate enough to attend a perfectly ordinary State Comprehensive secondary school with a slightly bizarre Marxist, Oxbridge-educated, Deputy Head. Those of us in top set language classes (I was assigned to the German cadre on arrival at 11) were given the opportunity to take Latin classes twice a week with this odd chap. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and ended up studying it 'til I was 17 (it was a very good year)*.

 

I thought it would never be of any practical use at all - though it was occasionally helpful in translating menus in various Romance languages, until the time came for me to tackle some Old English texts at University. Old English is essentially the bastard lovechild of German & Latin, and having a bit of both of those in my back pocket made that course much easier.

 

All of which is to say, I think you should study German, English and Latin.

 

 

* Please do not judge the standard of Latin on the Misfit's squad crest based on this statement. It was a long time ago and besides, the wench is dead.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Diggun

[SYN_Mike77]

Thank you Diggun!  Now I can finally follow cricket.?

[Diggun]

Just now, SYN_Mike77 said:

Now I can finally follow cricket.

This video guide may also help...

 

 

[AEthelraedUnraed]

23 minutes ago, Diggun said:

All of which is to say, I think you should study German, English and Latin.

Check, on all of those. Someone wretched a long time ago decided that it'd be good idea to torture every pupil in Dutch secondary education (well, everything except the lowest of the three levels) with compulsory English, French and German classes, besides obviously Dutch. Having attended the highest level of secondary education, there were Latin and Ancient Greek classes in addition.

 

As I've grown older and my interests have evolved, I'm thankful for especially the English and Latin classes and even French and German occasionally come in useful, but back then it was pure hell.

 

31 minutes ago, Diggun said:

Old English is essentially the bastard lovechild of German & Latin, and having a bit of both of those in my back pocket made that course much easier.

There's not much Latin in Old English, it's mostly Germanic. That said, in many cases I find Old English to be closer to Dutch than to modern English, and reading/pronouncing it in a "Dutch" way usually helps me with comprehension.

 

Kind of makes sense since Dutch is, geographically as well as linguistically, halfway between English and German. Like English, we've lost most of our grammar cases, but we've got the V2 (sometimes FV) word order of German instead of the SVO of English. Like English, Dutch didn't have the High German Consonant Shift (ship / schip / Schiff), but on the other hand also didn't participate in many sound changes English did have (eye / oog / Auge). The earlier you go, the fewer of these sound changes have already taken place, so hence the occasional resemblance between Dutch and Old English.

 

Anyway, I digress. English is, as @von_Tom states, a horrible mix of several Germanic and non-Germanic languages. On the other hand, German's got its horrible grammar cases. I think the best solution is we all just learn Dutch

[Diggun]

7 minutes ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

we all just learn Dutch

Problem with that is, you only need one word to speak Dutch. Once you can say 'lekker', you've got pretty much everything covered, right?

[LLv24_Zami]

You should study Finnish, all you need is few sentences to cover everything:

[ITAF_Airone1989]

What about Italian? 

[Gambit21]

I think Chinese will come in the most handy in days to come.

[jollyjack]

4 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

 ..... I think the best solution is we all just learn Dutch

 

Count me in, that'll be Double Dutch.

[Trooper117]

2 hours ago, Gambit21 said:

I think Chinese will come in the most handy in days to come.

 

The way things are going you might be better off learning Klingon...

[Mad_Mikhael]

On 9/23/2021 at 4:44 PM, LLv24_Zami said:

You should study Finnish, all you need is few sentences to cover everything:

PERKELE!

[marycarneg]

It has always been difficult for me to learn languages, so I am definitely not going to learn German. In general, not so many people communicate in German. It's better to learn Chinese. lol 
 

[ROCKET_KNUT]

You definitly should. Because it is absolutely hilarious. For Non-Germans.

I´m joking. I piss my pants, every single time I watch one of these:

 

 

[PatrickAWlson]

I always thought this was funny.  English, with minor modifications, as the official language of the EU

https://globalgraduates.com/articles/european-english-joke

[WoolieWool]

On 9/23/2021 at 12:46 PM, Gambit21 said:

I think Chinese will come in the most handy in days to come.

 

 

Quote

石室诗士施氏，嗜狮，誓食十狮。

氏时时适市视狮。

十时，适十狮适市。

是时，适施氏适市。

氏视是十狮，恃矢势，使是十狮逝世。

氏拾是十狮尸，适石室。

石室湿，氏使侍拭石室。

石室拭，氏始试食是十狮。

食时，始识是十狮尸，实十石狮尸。

试释是事。

 

Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.

Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.

Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.

Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.

Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.

Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.

Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.

Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.

Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī.

Shì shì shì shì.

This is a real poem.

[Danziger]

On 8/9/2021 at 5:56 PM, Bremspropeller said:

...because it's quite easy!

 

I keep reading this in the voice of Till Lindemann ?

[Eldur]

Has anyone ever tried Polish?

 

 

[Danziger]

8 hours ago, Eldur said:

Has anyone ever tried Polish?

 

 

I've been trying for four years. Ja pierdole! Kurwa trudno!

[Hamaha15]

To make matters worse German varies a lot between different regions to the extent that poeple may not understand each other:

 

Inrhoihessebeimwoidolässdesojesojesoi.

(1990s wine publicity of a region South of Mainz just outside the Rhineland map)

 

Translating this phrase could be a million Pound question in the German forum.

Edited February 26, 2022 by Hamaha15

[Uufflakke]

On 9/23/2021 at 3:53 PM, Diggun said:

Problem with that is, you only need one word to speak Dutch. Once you can say 'lekker', you've got pretty much everything covered, right?

 Actually 3 words:

- Lekker

- Leuk

- Gezellig

[Hamaha15]

Bedankt

[J2_Bidu]

On 8/9/2021 at 4:56 PM, Bremspropeller said:

...because it's quite easy!

 

 

How do you say that the imprisoned prisoner flea has escaped?!

[Hamaha15]

Der gefangene Gefangenenfloh floh.

[56RAF_Roblex]

In all seriousness, I have often considered learning German by flying with a German squad. I am one of those people that learns best when forced by circumstances. I find it hard to learn a language in isolation and what I do learn is soon forgotten if I don't get to use it.  I have a basic grounding in French but now I live in West Cornwall where bizarrely the majority of the tourists speak German. Apparently this is because TV adaptations of all Daphne De Maurier's books (eg Frenchmans Creek, The Jamaica Inn) are extremely popular in Germany, Austria and surrounding countries so they all come to visit the locations.

[ROCKET_KNUT]

6 hours ago, Hamaha15 said:

Inrhoihessebeimwoidolässdesojesojesoi.

This is just Heinz Schenk taking the piss out of everybody. ?