• wrinkle2409@lemmy.cafe
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    1 hour ago

    Dude, I’m trying to learn German and those goddamn articles are so infuriating. I wonder how difficult it would be for there to be a linguistic reform to make it simpler

  • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
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    47 minutes ago

    Hebrew:

    the: prefix “ha” ה-‏

    in the: prefix “ba” ב-‏

    to the: prefix “la” ל-‏

    example:

    book: ספר sefer

    the book: הספר hasefer

    in the book: בספר basefer

    to the book: לספר lasefer

  • affenlehrer@feddit.org
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    7 hours ago

    I don’t know about Russian but at least Croatian which is also a Slavic language confuses the hell out of me (and I’m German)

      • hakase@lemmy.zip
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        3 hours ago

        Technically it’s the other way around - the ones German lost in comparison to Russian were the Instrumental and Prepositional (Locative).

        This is from the original 8 (or 9) cases in their ancestor, Proto-Indo-European: Nominative, Accusative, Instrumental, Dative, Ablative, Genitive, Locative, Vocative, (Allative).

    • DasFaultier@sh.itjust.works
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      6 hours ago

      confuses the hell out of me (and I’m German)

      And rightfully so. I’m also German, I learned Sorbian (slavic minority in Lusatia), and I can very much feel your pain.

    • PostingInPublic@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      And they aren’t clear when to use them either, it’s kinda cute when they look at you questioningly if they did correctly after formulating a sentence.

    • Dicska@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Neither does Polish. I know at least one polaka who confuses the/a(n) 15% of the time.

      • addie@feddit.uk
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        4 hours ago

        One of my Polish colleagues, who otherwise speaks pretty perfect English, seems to choose he/she/it at random when putting sentences together. Which is fine for objects, but misleading for people. “I saw a friend yesterday and she said such-and-such” for a male friend, and so on.

        • DeLancre@piefed.social
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          4 hours ago

          Slavic languages notoriously have gender for every object. In russian “friend” have two variants, one for male gender, one for female. Same at least with Ukrainian and Serbian. So when I translate sentence to English (which only have one word for “friend”) I subconsciously use default word + she/he to empathize gender.

          It’s annoying habit, cause when I say or refer to “user” for example, I always assume it’s “he/him”.

          Guess same for your colleagues.

        • Dicska@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          …which sounds surprising to me, because AFAIK Polish also has separate he/she words (on/ona).

          • Aqarius@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            I assume he’s aligning the pronouns to the gender of the noun, rather than the person. “Susie is a great worker, he’s very efficient” kind of stuff.

  • TabbsTheBat (they/them)@pawb.social
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    7 hours ago

    We don’t have an equivalent of a/an/the in lithuanian either =w= but we do have definite adjective forms, which is kind of like saying the, so there’s that