Even though I studied German for years idioms and sentence structure still throw me off. I tried to translate that looking up only the words I didn’t remember and figured “dein Scheiss Fahrrad” was “your shit bike” and Kriegen is to catch (or get I guess in this context), so I was like “No, you catch your shit bike not back” doesn’t make sense grammatically in English, so I put it into Google Translate and it translated it as “No, you won’t get your damn bike back”. Maybe it’s because I learned High German and only ever used it in formal settings 95% of the time but it still throws me off, I have a hell of a time trying to understand spoken German because I don’t have the time to parse it mentally most of the time.
In German is the word order simply different than in English. That stands in simple sentences not too much out, but if I, like now, try a sentence to build, that more complex and harder to understand is, will you that notice or in the worst case so much confused be that you it not understand can will.
Well to be fair, even native English speakers have problems with English. It’s a clusterfuck of a language. Learning German made me realize that more than I already did.
Even though I studied German for years idioms and sentence structure still throw me off. I tried to translate that looking up only the words I didn’t remember and figured “dein Scheiss Fahrrad” was “your shit bike” and Kriegen is to catch (or get I guess in this context), so I was like “No, you catch your shit bike not back” doesn’t make sense grammatically in English, so I put it into Google Translate and it translated it as “No, you won’t get your damn bike back”. Maybe it’s because I learned High German and only ever used it in formal settings 95% of the time but it still throws me off, I have a hell of a time trying to understand spoken German because I don’t have the time to parse it mentally most of the time.
In German is the word order simply different than in English. That stands in simple sentences not too much out, but if I, like now, try a sentence to build, that more complex and harder to understand is, will you that notice or in the worst case so much confused be that you it not understand can will.
I had to translate this to german to understand… and I’m not even german
Sound like Yoda, you do. Hmmm.
It is really not easy such to write, I must with violence the part of my brain suppress that the English grammar knows.
Germans have the same problem with english, too. Most of the time, I built the grammar in a sentence like I would do in german.
Well to be fair, even native English speakers have problems with English. It’s a clusterfuck of a language. Learning German made me realize that more than I already did.
Vocabulary in German is overall more logical than in English. But German grammar is very much a clusterfuck too.
Agreed.
in case you need context: German soldiers famously took dutch peoples bikes during the occupation in WW2
Ah thanks, I didn’t no that.
Catch would be “fangen” “kriegen/bekommen” is get.
Ah, leo.org said it was to catch.