Wiktionary talk:About German

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Erstarrter Genitiv

Is there a specific linguistic term for this in English? Grammaticalized genitive? Denominalized genitive? For example Zweck → zwecks. – Jberkel 23:35, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't know. I'm not even convinced it is a genitive, since we have nachts from a feminine noun whose genitive is not and never has been *Nachts. —Mahāgaja · talk 01:33, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

A recent edit to nachts uses "solidified genitive". Nacht has «A masculine genitive Nachts occurs only in the dated idioms des Nachts (“at night”) and eines Nachts (“one night”)». Maybe it was just formed after the model of tags and later interpreted as a genitive? – Jberkel 09:40, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

French or US German?

Peculiarities:

• Vereinigte Staaten Von Nord-Amerika
• Raeume, Gegenstaende, belaestigt
• Burger (without umlaut or ue)
• bescheidigt (for beschädigt)
• occupirt (for 1914 c and i instead of ie is less expected)
• unter den Schutze (unter dem Schutze)
• von Amerikanischem Burger (von einem amerikanischen Bürger or von amerikanischen Bürgern)
• dass (with ss and without comma before it)

Questions:

• Is this French (place) or US (author, office)?
• Are these pecularities common enough?

--幽霊四 (talk) 18:29, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

According to [1], this was printed by Herbert Clarke, a British printer who worked in Paris. I think the "ae" for "ä" and "ss" for "ß" can be attributed to the lack of appropriate German letters (he was probably used to printing only in English and French). The spelling "occupirt" for "okkupiert" was technically superseded in 1914, but it's common enough to encounter old-fashioned spellings well into '20s. The other things are probably simply mistakes arising from the printer's (or the ambassador's translator's) ignorance of German. It's telling that the French side doesn't have any obvious misspellings or otherwise unexpected spellings, at least as far as I can tell. The same blog points out that since the Germans never occupied Paris during WWI, the posters were never published or used; if they had been, perhaps they would have been proofread and corrected by someone with a better knowledge of German. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:12, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Should we transcribe -en as /n̩/ or /ən/?

I've seen both transcriptions in use, both in the IPA template as well as the rhyme template. See for instance Category:Rhymes:German/ɪŋn̩ which is basically a duplicate of Category:Rhymes:German/ɪŋən. Fytcha (talk) 23:55, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

In the IPA template both, in the rhyme template I tend towards /ən/ as it is the original and elevating /n̩/ to phonematicity seems pedantic and based on mere current unheedful use. Careful speech retains /ən/, only in affectedly “modern” poems with Atem-Rhythmus /n̩/ is intended. Fay Freak (talk) 00:53, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Fay Freak, use /ən/ for the rhymes. English has the same issue (look at the pronunciation sections of gotten vs shotten, or relatedly bottle vs throttle) and there too the rhymes pages use the "full" spelling. - -sche (discuss) 07:42, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

For English (outside rhymes pages) I try to follow the pattern that Kenyon and Knott use, which is roughly /l̩/ after obstruents and /n/; /n̩/ after a single dental/alveolar obstruent; and /əl/ or /ən/ elsewhere. But for German I'm uncertain and generally just follow whatever Duden does. For rhyme pages, though, we should definitely unify on a pattern, because having separate pages for ɪŋn̩ and ɪŋən is bad. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:15, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: I agree, we urgently need a policy for this and then either make a written rule for it or just generate an error in {{rhyme}}. --Fytcha (talk) 12:22, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

@-sche: A possible objection might be that /n̩/ can always correctly be replaced by /ən/ but not vice versa. So if we now decide to roll out everything with /ən/, there's little to no going back, whereas /n̩/ could just trivially be converted to /ən/ in the corresponding templates. --Fytcha (talk) 12:22, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Category:Rhymes:German/aχn This one is completely wrong, should either be /aχn̩/ or /aχən/. Fytcha (talk) 12:45, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

I've emptied and deleted it. But on second thought I'm not sure that I should have used /axən/ rather than /aχən/. There are some inconsistencies with it in Category:Rhymes:German. Ultimateria (talk) 19:02, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

[x] and [χ] are different realizations of the same phoneme. There is generally a lack of guidance as to what one should write into {{rhyme}} which is probably the root cause of the current inconsistent situation. My dream solution would be to have language-specific guidelines (maybe by using the pronunciation appendices such as Appendix:German_pronunciation) and then automatically checking the validity of transcriptions in {{IPA}} and {{rhyme}}. We could do this similar to how {{desctree}} does it: Scanning the corresponding page for template uses (in this case the pronunciation appendix for e.g. {{IPAlink}} (we could define a new one though)) which would then determine whether an error is emitted by the {{IPA}}/{{rhyme}} template. Fytcha (talk) 19:26, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Also, if somebody could chime in here, I would appreciate it because then I could do some cleanup work. Fytcha (talk) 12:47, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Note also the different broad transcriptions (for the same actual sounds) in schwierig and gierig. What to do here? FWIW, Appendix:German_pronunciation doesn't have /r/ so it could be argued that the information in schwierig is wrong, though I think we should codify this somehow. How about defining a set of allowed characters in the broad transcription and implementing this in {{IPA}} and {{rhyme}}? Fytcha (talk) 16:23, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Category:etyl cleanup/de almost done

Only three terms left (verbaseln, wispern, wringen) that I can't do on my own. Fytcha (talk) 12:15, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

•  Done —Mahāgaja · talk 13:32, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Allowing nonstandard graded adjective forms

I was thinking of extending {{de-adj}} to support more modes than just the binary ungradable/gradable, particularly the third mode {{de-adj|-|er|st}} that would display something like this:

illegal (traditionally not comparable, but see the nonstandard and/or colloquial comparative illegaler, superlative illegalsten)

The wording could be improved. I'm also not quite sure what to do with the categorization; do these still go into Category:German uncomparable adjectives?

My rationale is that such forms would net a German learner an error when writing an essay but they are attested nonetheless. The above proposal bringt beides unter einen Hut. Thoughts? — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 01:26, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I'd prefer to follow the example of English unique: list the comparative and superlative in the headword line, but add a Usage note explaining that using them is nonstandard and/or proscribed. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:12, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

That's an option as well but I think I prefer having a warning in the headword line right next to the forms. The spatial proximity wins me over on this one; some people will inevitably look at the headword but not scroll down to the usage notes. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 03:31, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

PP/Adjective

Do we have a criterion by which to determine whether a German past participle should have a separate adjective definition? I don't see anything on WT:ADE. Having an adjective at gescheitert and listing it as a related term in Scheitern seems a bit ridiculous, frankly. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 03:27, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

The usual test in English is whether it can modified or compared like an adjective, and we can apply that test to German too. If it's possible to say sehr gescheitert, ziemlich gescheitert, gescheiterter als, am gescheitertesten etc., it's an adjective. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:51, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

herum-/rum-: synonym or alt-form?

Is rumlungern an alt-form or synonym of herumlungern? — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 20:20, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

(Notifying Matthias Buchmeier, -sche, Atitarev, Jberkel, Mahagaja, Fay Freak): Opinions on this? This comes up a lot (for practically every herum- verb) so defining a consistent standard would be nice. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 19:33, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I'd call it an alt form. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:36, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

It is a colloquialism that is perfectly fine in informal speech, but should be avoided in formal/literary German, where the long form herum should be used. Огненный ангел (talk) 20:32, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Suffix -en in verb etymologies

(Notifying Matthias Buchmeier, -sche, Jberkel, Mahagaja, Fay Freak): As we lemmatize verbs at the infinitive, many editors (my past self included) are tempted to add {{suffix|de|...|-en}} to the etymology section in some form or another. This is relevant if a verb is derived from a German noun (docken, schmirgeln) or from a foreign verb (adden, outen). I personally hold it that the underlying representation of German verbs is actually their root (i.e. dock-, schmirgel-, add-, out- in the above cases, making the latter two unadapted borrowings from English) because that's the form with which compounds are formed and to which derivational verb suffixes are added (-eln, -sen). This matter has also been brought up by @Surjection in the Beer parlour a couple of months back: Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2022/June § WT:ETY lemma form clause. As that discussion has fizzled out with neither {{adapted}} being created nor WT:ETY being overhauled and made policy, I bring up this issue again so that we can (hopefully) come to a conclusion this time at least regarding German. In deciding whether we want to abolish the -en suffix in verb etymologies, please also consider cases such as gewanden (what would that surface etymology look like?) and be- -en. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 12:30, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's codified as a policy or even a suggestion anywhere, but my personal preference is to have "terms derived from this affix" categories only for derivational affixes, not inflectional ones, and I consider the infinitive -en ending an inflectional suffix. I'd prefer if CAT:German terms suffixed with -en contained only terms suffixed with etymologies 3 and 4 of -en, not etymologies 1 and 2. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:25, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

I also wanted or succeeded to make this point somewhere – that it isn’t even a derivational suffix so cannot be used for etymology, but the truth appeared to offensive to pursue, as it would require large scale deletions and restructurings, so I found more interesting things to do. Fay Freak (talk) 14:41, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Subjunctive realis and Subjunctive irrealis

This commenter at a YouTube Short video clip discussed about a feature of the German language, that relates to whether one believes, disbelieves or is uncertain about anything.

The user gave the following example of indirect language:

• Indicative: "Er hat mir gesagt, dass meine Schwester den Jungen getreten hat." -> "He told me that my sister had kicked the boy (and I think that's the truth)."
• Subjunctive realis: "Er hat mir gesagt, dass meine Schwester den Jungen getreten habe." -> "He told me that my sister had kicked the boy (and I don't know whether that's actually true)."
• Subjunctive irrealis: "Er hat mir gesagt, dass meine Schwester den Jungen getreten hätte." -> "He told me that my sister had kicked the boy (and I think that's false)."

Is there any literature that explains what the commenter was talking about? -- Apisite (talk) 10:21, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I feel like "getreten habe" is used only formally, especially news reporting. I don't think you hear it much if at all in colloquial conversation, where "getreten hat" implies "and I think or know that's the truth" and "getreten hätte" implies "I don't know if it's true or not but I kinda doubt it" (a bit like "He claimed that my sister had kicked the boy"). —Mahāgaja · talk 11:46, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Of course there is, this is standard, and all informal enough to be casually used on the internet when arguing with strangers. Mahāgaja left out what subjunctive realis means. It means “I neither confirm nor deny right just right now but report the content of another perspective”, so unlike your name suggests there is formally no claim about reality.

Note that that due to syncretism of indicative and subjunctive realis in the plural the forms of the subjunctive irrealis are taught to be used in the place of subjunctive realis (whenever subjunctive I is indistinguishable from indicative), which doesn’t hold in Middle High German or dialects that retain the distinct -nt as ending of the 3rd person plural. Fay Freak (talk) 14:17, 3 January 2024 (UTC)