My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years.
The major reason for the thirty years are the genders of inanimate objects. If you don't know them, even the most simple sentence has a 2/3 chance of being wrong. My attempts to describe the matches of Torpedo Entenhausen in German are often confounded by a combination of alcohol and der/die/das confusion. Yesterday I made a small step towards learning German: the word for a football pitch is masculine, der Fussballplatz. I found this out because, as manager, I needed to know whether the pitch was waterlogged or not. During a couple of calls to find and pass on this information I was corrected.
"So, the pitch. Is it playable?"
"Yes, HE is playable"
So, one noun down, a few thousand to go, and things are fine until summer comes and we play on grass. A grass pitch is also called a 'Feld', which is neutral. Yet it is still a pitch, which is still masculine. I have been learning German for nigh on twenty years, and hold little hope of mastering it in another ten.
Well anyway, the pitch (male) was playable, and the defence (female, but consisting of four males) of Torpedo held firm. We shot the winning goal (neutral) in the second half (female). I wonder how long you have to write like this until insanity (male) sets in.
2 comments:
It's been some time since I last heard you speak, but I don't recall you making noticeable many gender errors.
Hi,
thanks for the reassurance, as usual I probably concentrated on the mistakes rather than the bits I get right.
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