Most of us don't remember this anymore because we are now so used to the English sentence structure but when you start English lessons as a German you have to learn what order you have to put the words in, because as you see in this video: The order of the the words in a German sentence is quite different.
If you start learning a new language, you start with short sentences and after a while you start doing it automatically. It is very helpful to listen to and read the foreign language. Start with children's books, (gossip) magazines, children's shows on television, advertisements on television. After a while the wordorder will be engrained in your brain with the foreign language. I cannot speak Dutch in the english wordorder and the other way around. I don't have to think about it anymore allthough I sometimes mess up with for example an adverb.
I'm so darn happy that I grew up bilingual...in school I didn't have to do any work in english classes until 10th grade, although I saw my fellow students struggle with word orders all the time^^
@Hellequin Maskharat Indeed...but it's worse between german and f.e. french, romanic languages tend to switch gender of articles compared to germanic languages
@Hellequin Maskharat It was just a joke...I'm living right on the french-german border and although my french is en par, I got that thick german accent of a german officer in old french movies about WW2...sooo...I just avoid speaking in french^^
Wenn wir Deutsche Englisch lernen müssen, klingt es, als sei Yoda unser Lehrer. If we Germans English learn have to, sounds it like is Yoda our teacher.
As a german that learned english starting in elementary school my mind exploded when i first watched the video I also think the video of Nald is perfect german humor and many germans that understand english will think its really funny
When you learn to write German in school, the emphasis is on grammar from the start. So concepts like article, substantive, verb, and object are already familiar to us. English sentence structure is really simple, when you come from German. We grapple more with pronunciation, especially the fact that some English words seem to have no real connection between how they are pronounced and how they are written, which is different in German. Generally you can look at a German word you have never heard before and immediately know how to pronounce it, because the rules how letters or a combination of letters is pronounced are fairly rigid.
I get more confused with the words which are pronounced identically in English as they were German. Just I am thinking about it, I dont have any eyample on my mind but when I hear it, I can point it out.
@@vHindenburg Angst, Kummerbund, Leitmotiv, Doppelgänger, über, Kindergarten, Gesundheit, verboten, and there are many more German words used in the English language. But the pronounciation gets me everytime too 😀
@@LisaMaierLiest right? When I used it back in 5th, it was horrible and made so many mistakes. Now it's actually good! I was so impressed! But then again, fifht grade was nearly a decade ago... XD
@@thatviolingirl9879 fun fact: I did a test that was translated by google translate 12 years ago (and an university got payed for that...) The answers you could choose from were: a) Schlüssel b) Schlüssel c) Schlüssel d) Schlüssel Though I have to take back, some amazement ;) Today I translated: English: Northern Command is a Unified Combatant Command. German: Northern Command ist ein Unified Combatant Command.
Even for a German it sounds weird. I did understand barely half of the dialogues. It's not hard to learn new sentence structures. Can you talk like Yoda? If so, you already mastered the first level.
As a Russian speaker, it was quite easy to get a hold of the dialogues 'cause word order isn't really that important in my native language, but I am afraid that if I were to listen this version of Eglish for several hours, I would forget all English grammar
Englishman here ... I came to Germany when I was 17, been living here now for 53 years. The first 12 was in the Army after that I had a job until I retired. I had no schooling in German and lernt it by just mixing with Germans. The brain gymnastics to build correct sentences was at first a challenge but after a while it becomes second natur. At first I used to switch what was said into English in my brain then switch it back to answer in German, now I just understand it the same as when two English people speak to each other.
@@RichardJohansson I think in both really .... in day to day mostly German, but as I really only watch English YT clips I still use the English side of my brain. Switching from one to the other is no problem. Then I'm watching a clip and my wife asks me something I just switch to German. Or when the radio (in the background) is on I've got German from the radio and English from YT
Swedish, also as a Germanic language, has almost the same word order, like we have in German. Since English is also a Germanic language, it is not that complicated for us Germans to learn it, but word order and tenses can be tricky sometimes. However, many English-speaking people learning German will probably curse about German conjugations and declensions. Not to mention phonetics, although French phonetics is much more complicated, I think.
I would say that the Swedish word order is more similar to English than it is to German, like somewhat in between, perhaps. It's not the same as in English all of the time, but to me it seems like it's more often like English than German is. Let's look at some of the sentences from the video: English: Did you sleep well? German: Have you good slept? Swedish: Have you slept well? English: No, I had such a weird dream German: No, I had something so weird dreamed. Swedish: No, I had such a weird dream English: In the dream my arms were all of a sudden branches German: In the dream have been my arms all of a sudden branches Swedish: In the dream became all of a sudden my arms branches English: ..and I couldn't use my laptop keyboard anymore. German: ...and my laptop keyboard I couldn't anymore use Swedish: ...and I couldn't use my laptop keyboard anymore. English: But I had to write an important e-mail German: But have to an important e-mail write Swedish: But I had to write an important e-mail/But I had an important e-mail to write English: I prefer oatmilk, if you have it. German: When you oatmilk have prefer I this Swedish: I prefer oatmilk, if you have it.
@@Asa...S "German: No, I had such a weird dream - Nein, ich hatte solch einen seltsamen Traum." - "German: In the dream my arms were all of a sudden branches. - "In dem Traum, meine Arme waren alle auf einmal Zweige." Works also, as just two examples. German word order is more flexible. It is not static mostly.
Dutch has practically the same word order as German. There are some minor differences here the there but nothing more than that. English has an almost Romace word oder. I am learnig Italian and I keep on noticing that Itlian word order is similar to English word order, though not identical.
When learning a new language usually you get accustomed to it and it's grammar without having to compare it to your native tongue. I speak English and German fluently, along with a little French, and if I had to listen to any of these with a different sentence structure I couldn't deal with it. This video felt like I was having a stroke haha So, don't let this stuff intimidate you from learning languages, it's not as bad as you might think. Also, this video also transliterates idioms, which makes things extra confusing.
At a given moment stand the best pilots on wall when it there factually on with comes. Literal translation from a Dutch sentence with two expressions and a twist: Op een gegeven moment staan de beste stuurlui aan wal wanneer het er feitelijk op aan komt. So one on one translations do not work with expressions.
When learning a language, after knowing the meaning of a sentence I think it’s better to then remember the exact 1 for 1 translation without changing the grammar to suit English, because it teaches me that this expression’s grammar has a connection to the language I learn rather than being some random thought that day. Also it’s great grammar practice if you don’t have the vocabulary for unknown words.
I LOVE THIS. I studied German in college. I can't explain. you just get it - you start thinking in German instead of translating every word. an advantage to German is that it is spoken in smaller comprehensive bits instead of long run on sentences.
Your reaction was sooo funny 😂 - and I (as German) even had to read subtitles to understand all of it... My english grammar is not the best but when I speak or write in English I always switch the word order automatically. All the best to your little family and rest assured that pee and poop moments will keep coming... 🤣
In German must you always till the end wait, till you the complete sense of the sentence get can. 🤣🙃And besides, the German grammar provides wonderful ways to express the sense of a sentence in at least two or three different ways by using the same words! For you and your little family wish I a pleasant day! 😄
You should read Mark Twains humoristic essay: "The awful German language", where he - amongst other things - pokes fun at the differences in word order between German and English.
Read Shakespeare and find out, that once english was a rich language, providing the ability to transfer submeaning by choosing a special grammatical structure. I am happy to accept the compliment that german sounds like artificial intelligence. The structure of the English language has something more of punch card calculators of the 60s. 😉🤓🤗😘
I remember using a translation program on MS-DOS back in the 90ies which produced translations that sounded exactly like this. We have come a long way XD
Fun fact: English had the same syntax like german and other germanic languages until the vikings conquered huge parts of england. At first english was a central germanic language that took more and more words from the nordic germanic vocabulary after the vikings conquered england. But at some point the english people switched their syntax to the norwegian syntax and english became norwegian with mostly central germanix vocabulary. This is also the reason why it's so easy for norwegians to learn english and why native english speakers find it easier to learn norwegian than german or dutch. You can also see that on the dialects from parts of the UK that werend't conquered by the vikings such as welsh, irish gaelic, northern english etc. They mostly kept their central germanic syntax that is similar to dutch or danish and a middle ground between the english and the german syntax. I have to switch between german, english, french and my regions german dialect multiple times everyday and the syntax switches mess up my brain. At the end of the day it becomes pretty hard to form sentences. Not like in the video but i have to think about if i have to start or end the sentence with something.
English is a west germanic language like dutch and german. While a certain influence of scandinavian is undeniable, it's actually highly disputed how much influence scandinavian languages had on english grammar and syntax. To say that english is closer to norwegian than german would be a controversial claim to say the least.
@@Rico-oz4ct English has most of it's vocabulary from french, danish and dutch because these are the regions the bretons had intercultural relations with and many people from there settled on the bretonic islands. During and after the vikings conquest also many norwegian words were introduced into the english language such as "husband", which is norwegian for "master of the house". But the english syntax was a west/central germanic syntax pretty much like proto german and dutch until later during the viking conquest when suddenly the english language switched the syntax from west/central germanic to the norwegian syntax. It's pretty rare that a language changes his syntax and it's more likely that core england started using norwegian than that they adapted their syntax. And it's not like the norwegian and the breton part of england were at a cold war during the viking conquest. They traded with each other, married and had children, the vikings in england added english (west/central germanic) to their vocabulary while the bretons added norwegian words to their vocabulary. And at the end they ended up with a new language that was a mix of breton, danish, french, dutch and norwegian. Pretty much like swahili that is spoken in many countries in africa and works as a common ground. And at one point the viking influence became so strong that they started using these common ground mixed language with the norwegian syntax instead of the old west/central germanic syntax. You can also see how big the norwegian influence on the english language is when you look at the speeling and pronounciation of english words. Many of them make no sense to native speakers of other germanic languages. Because these english words originate from nordic germanic words with nordic germanic letters and later the english people had to convert these nordic letters to similar sounding letter from the greek alphabet. Norwegian is a germanic/romanic language too but with a different syntax and alphabet to most other germanic/romanic languages because of his historical interconnections with slawic languages.
@omadduxo While you are right about Old English being influenced by old Norse, your post is a bit all over the place. These influences were predominantly vocabulary additions or alterations. Also, you differentiate between Germanic languages and the vikings, however, Old Norse was a Germanic language as are modern scandinavian languages as well. And fun fact, out of all modern Germanic languages, only German and Icelandic retain sometimes very similar archaic grammatical features. Other modern Germanic languages, English included, kind of "simplified" their grammar but that has had nothing to do with vikings...
@@omadduxo What is a romanic language ? Do you mean Romance language ? But where in the world did you get that Norwegian is part romance ? Also, Welsh and Gaelic aren't English dialects, they are Celtic languages and comparing them to the influence of ON on OE is redundant. And lastly, I think it is highly debatable that English speakers have an easier time learning Norwegian because of some loan words from the vikings. Highly debatable ... The only thing that makes learning Norwegian easier than German for a native English speaker would be the grammar. But that's because modern scandinavian languages' case system is not as extensive as it used to be, same as English today. That has nothing to do with Old English or Old Norse, however , because again, Old Norse had a much more extensive inflectional case system, as modern Icelandic, but also modern German retain. So you really confuse the difficult linguistic relations between old and modern Germanic languages. Also, mind you, modern Scandinavian lamguages borrowed extensively vocabulary wise from Low German, so there your whole argument between the relatabilty of English, German and Norwegian goes out the window...I would much rather argue, English speakers have an advantage when learning a Romance language like French or Spanish when it comes to vocabulary, due to the much more prominent impact of French on the English language...
I'm German and I found this super funny! 😂 And had troubles understanding at times, too even though I speak both languages quite well. How you figure out grammar? You usually consciously learn the rules (for example there are rules for the order of words, one in english is: place before time), and the more fluent you become the more natural these (and new!) rules come to you. So when you're fluent and you learn something new, you might just subconsciously add it to your "language file" in your head.
So their a couple of main differences in sentence structure: -the conjugated verb comes always in second position in the MAIN clause -all other verbs go to the end -in a side clause all verbs go to the end -to Form a question you put the verb in first place and the subject in second place -adjectives are placed before the noun (like english) -I THINK adverbs are placed after the verb if there is no verb at the end of the sentence. And before the verb(s) at the end of the sentence if ther's any. -the rest is pretty flexible due to the case system telling you wich role a sentence part has but the subject has to be placed at third place in the main clause IF it's not in first. So basically after the verb. And the subject has to be in first place in the side clause. Examples: 1. The kitchen have I washed because it dirty was. 2. I have the kitchen washed because it dirty was. Both is correct! We would actually us she instead of it because kitchen is feminin but that's another story BTW english had the same Syntax and dutch still has a similiar one with minor differences
Your two kitchen examples, while both are correct, only the second one is standard. The first one you would use to emphasize that you washed specifically the kitchen and not some other room.
It's mainly the danes and proto norwegians fault that they lost their old english syntax. (Me as a swede, is totally innocent though. We never invaded that island.)
It's so funny. I watched the video of Nalf a few days ago. Your reactions are so cool. And you are very smart. Congrats for the birth of your son. I'm an uncle of 5 kids. It's wonderful seeing them growing up.
My daughter gets 10 Years this Week, and if i remind the past ... the first 2 Years was the easiest (if your child don´t get often Sick). After that you get some Rebelphases, Toothterrors and Growthpains. But over all Congratiolations to You and your Wife and enjoy the Time with a Child in your Family !
Oh Mein Gott! Your reactions to NALF‘s video made my week! Too funny. With that being said, this video is going to be a great learning tool for English speakers to understand other languages.
My wife and I are binge-watching your channel more or less. This one was one of the most hilarous videos you made. Even as a German the whole thing feels so weird and it's even totally hard to follow and to understand sometimes. Keep up, by the way. 😘👍
Two things: One-tho is what milk carbs look like in germany. All of them, tall, square with a screw lid on top, and those folded down sides are glued to the bottle. The cardboard is aluminum and plastic wrapped on the inside. And two, hearing him talk felt like I was having a stroke lol. I'm native German and this was just tto much lol. My brain could not process. I literally had to read the german translation on the bottom to understand what exactly they were talking about 😅😅😅 In germany we learn english as our first foreign language and it's mandatory throughout your whole school life. Most start to learn it in elementary school. And the wrong English sentence structure are absolute rookie mistakes. But hearing someone talk like that broke my brain. 😅
I'm a native German and can understand English pretty good. To write English is also okay - I have enough time to translate and jumble the words around in my head. The more often you're doing that the more natural it feels and sounds. To speak English is not that common for me - so I'm not that good at it. I've learned English at school - but I've also read books and watched movies in English for the last 15 years. If you do something often enough you learn continuously. Speaking is much faster and I'm really proud when someone can understand me speaking English.
That was amazing. 🤣 I remember when I had English classes that the english grammar confused me so much because in my head it would sound exactly like this guys in the video I had the pleasure to watch right now. 👌
About the shape of the milk bottle. It’s folded like that so you can deconstruct it in a flat shape when it’s finished. In this way you have more space in the trashcan for other things.
When I watched Nalf's video for the first time, I have been wondering how long it may have took to shoot. It must have been so difficult to speak like this. And without subtitles I hardly understand anything.
the milk container is called tetra-pack and is usually cardboard on the outside and some kind of plastic coating on the inside. when you're done you can unfold the "ears" and flatten it to save space.
So I actually study English and German so I can teach these subjects in German schools and I am well experienced in learning a foreign language. What you can experience in this video is that German (or basically every language) has its own linguistic pattern. A linguistic pattern contains things such as grammar, sentence structure, sayings, expressions, and so on. If you would speak German with an English linguistic pattern that would sound hilarious aswell. When you learn a new language you also kinda automatically learn the linguistic pattern that comes with it and also quite a lot of the culture. When learning a new language you not only learn vocabulary and grammar, you also learn using the language in authentic situations or conversations. That makes you learn the linguistic pattern and you get this gut feeling when using the language, you implicitly gain knowledge about the use of the language. I actually learned a lot about languages and language in general and how it shapes the way we think due to a TED talk, I'll link it to you if you want to watch it. It's really interesting. ua-cam.com/video/RKK7wGAYP6k/v-deo.html
Many grammatical concepts cannot be copied. In English, the meaning of “The dog bites the man“ and “The man bites the dog“ changes, the role of a word is determined by its position, which is why there is a rigid word order (SVO, subject-verb-object). In German, the role of a word depends on the grammatical case. It’s quite common to start a sentence with the object, and word order is used to shift focus and emphasis. And of course there are a lot of things that cannot be translated word for word. This is already the case in very simple sentences. Overall, the video conveys well that another language is more than just other words, even if some translations are questionable.
The thing is you can find the second position verb order as well in English when you have to distinguish the subject whether it is a new sentence like introduced as a subordinate clause or is it still the subject of the main clause.. for example: the apples are I today in case you didn't know. The emphasis is on the apples, pretty common in rural areas. While using: the apples I ate today we're delicious. This sentence consists of two clauses, while I ate is the subordinate clause.
That video was super helpful explaining to my online friends why i get fatigued by speaking english with them for super long periods. Jumbling around thoughts is very tiring.
In German supermarkets we have all the variations of milk-containers: We have glass bottles, (usually more fancy ones), we have soft plastic bags (although not as soft as the ones you know from Canada) and we have these so-called Tetra Pak. The Tetra Paks are easily the most famous ones and also get used for juices and other fluids a lot of times. They are easy to store, because they have a cuboid form, so you can stack them. They are very sturdy, yet light, so you have no issue pouring milk or juice out of them and they feel nice like smooth cardboard on the outside, but are waterproof on the inside.
Love your reactions and congratulations again! I would love you to react to childbirth in Germany! There are several videos by Americans who have moved here. Would love your reaction and insight on American sight on it. Greetings from Northern Germany
There used to be a method for language learning called the Birkenbihl-method (that didn't really catch on and was just an idea of one single person) where languages were supposed to be learned like this. Translate sentenced word for word into your native language in order to get a feeling for the language you want to learn.
theres usually outtakes after the "thanks for watching" card that are super funny. in this one for instance we saw how mikey struggled with getting the words in that order :D
This made me realize how different German grammar is from English, as a German i never had any problems with learning English grammar and i understood almost everything.
7:18 Yes, that's the hardest part. Grammar always blows you away once you start learning a new language. Some are easy like English, but then look at French ;).
speaking english since i was 6, i can roughly remember learing to restructure the sentences, now it comes naturally, but watching nalfs video showed me again how different our sentence structures are in different languages :D
There is a little fun fact: Vera Birkenbihl (Psychologist) has developed a special method to learn a language by separating grammar and vocabulary. It is easier to learn the grammar when learned with the vocabulary of the student's native language. Check out Birkenbihl - Methode
Haha that was funny to see your expression. I am Canadian, born and raised but my parents and sisters emigrated from Germany. The German grammar is difficult for sure and the English language has more words as well so translations are not exact. My parents both spoke, & read English quite well but there were a few things that my dad never wrapped his head around. I used to get ribbed a lot especially in high school when my friends would call the house for me. My father used to say I was making my homework and was not available at the moment. The word to do or to make is basically the same word in German depending on context. Language is fascinating! I do enjoy your video's and reactions very much, especially the ones where you are learning about Canada. Thanks for sharing! Ps...the majority of us do not say "aboot" and I've never seen anyone use copious amounts of maple syrup on everything though it is yummy! 😉
to make is "herstellen" in some cases so I wouldn't say that. Also we have the word "tuen" (do) wich isn't used that often and has a meaning wich is more restrict than machen. Also what's your source for the word number cuz the german dicitonary Duden has 18 million words with 300 to 500 thousend words beeing commonly used.
@@braincytox7314 Hi! I guess I was speaking in a more broad general sense and what is spoken in the home on a day to day basis. Also in my case even though I grew up speaking German & English simultaneously my first language spoken is English and I've never had any schooling in German. At this time my sister's and parents would've been also learning to speak English as a first language so again it would've lessened my knowledge of many words in German and what I was used to speaking/hearing. The story above about my father wasn't derogatory in any sense but more of a fond memory that I'm sure many children of immigrants to Canada etc have. As for the amount of words it was something I was told , don't even remember the source to be honest, however when I googled this is what came up: How many German and English words are there? According to the Duden, the standard dictionary for correct spelling of German, the German language comprises of around 500,000 words (including foreign and loan words). As far as I know, English has around 1 million words. But in both cases much less are used by normal people. Either which way, hope you have a wonderful day and thanks for the info!! 🙂
The number of german words is unlimited. I could easily form a brand new word every second, because of our word-combination-system (we would really just write wordcombinationsystem ;) For example: House - housekeeper - housekeepercontract - housekeepercontractsigningappointment - housekeepercontractsigningappointmentcancelation - housekeepercontractsigningappointmentcancelationfee etc. A real german shop sing says: Parkettfußbodenschleifmaschinenverleih (company to lend machines to grind parquet floor)
Since we start learning English at school, just imagine some ten year old kids (nowadays even younger) learning the English grammar and our own at the same time while trying not to confuse them. Lots of fun. 😂I think confusing the grammar rules is one of our most common mistakes at the beginning. Maybe not as bad as in the video, but you will hear those kind of sentences from time to time. But I think we have an advantage over English natives who want to learn German. We are surrounded by English with music and media, so after a while (when we start to really understand the language because our vocabulary is good enough) we know kinda naturally how it's supposed to sound. I still have moments where I write something, stop, think about it because it kinda looks wrong or sounds wrong in my head and rearrange the sentence though. And often times I'm still not sure afterwards which part of my brain caused it. The one who knows the German rules or the one who knows the English ones. So did I really correct it or was it correct before? It's interesting though how wrong it sounds to me now when I hear them talk in English using German grammar. I'm wondering how long they had to practice for this video and how many takes they needed.
To your knowing. The milk Box is not folding down through here. These are already like that when you buy it. Because you can put other package over it with that way
Everything in Nalfs Video was correct english👍👍🤣🤣 so easy to understand👌And anyway you are funny too👏 or in german grammar: anyway are you too funny😉 and you are for sure a good Dad👍
Oh, So Japanese is closer to German than English in sentence structure. Good to know.... that I would also suck at learning German. ALSO, I guess because I am used to hearing Japanese talk, I am having less difficulty in understanding this skit. HAHAHA
Not really. I learned Japanese as a German, and the structure is quite different. For example, the verb is almost always at the end. Also, Japanese has a lot of different grammatical concepts from the germanic languages that negates any advantage.
@@Cau_No I don't really know the specifics of both languages because I am not a native speaker of either. And my Japanese isn't that great... yet (I am still hopeful). That is why I said "closer to" rather than the same or similar. But I see what you mean. Which language do you think would be easier to learn by a native English speaker - Deutsch OR Nihongo?
@@jholmes553 my dad told me it was very easy for him to learn german back then when he came here. it´s actually not that different as you think after seeing this vid. and since german is such a literal language it´s very easy to learn. the only hard part is der die das and that comes natural at some point. and it´s not rly that bad if you get some of it wrong. the sentence will still make sense. even germans argue about some of them ( das nutella and die nutella for example ^^) I mean french would be very easy for a native english speaker, but only if you like ignoring half of the letters :)
@@steviegi584 Oh... That makes sense because Deutsch and English share common linguistic origin. Although, Nihongo is a phonetic language and easy to pronounce. While Deutsch, well... a non-native might not be ready for the tongue gymnastics. At least my tongue isn't ready for it.
Reminds me of Toki and Skwisgar from Metalocalypse somewhat lmao, 'We goes now to food-libraries " a clear joke, but they just apply Swedish/Norwegian verb forms and preposition case to everything.
I watched this video a couple of days ago. Being fluent in both languages it boggled my mind. It also reminded me of an experiment me and a friend undertook. We only spoke English with the saxonian accent. We became super proficient after a while and "normal" English sounded really weird.
@@daimhaus es kommt drauf an, denke ich. In unserem Fall ist es sehr aufgefallen, da wir Englisch mit einem deutschen Akzent gemischt haben. Aber es gibt ja im Englischen mindestens genauso viele Akzente wie im deutschen.
German gives great opportunity ford funny word games because we have so many different meanings for one word. For example "umfahren" means to drive around somebody/something AND to run over somebody/something. The secret is the pronunciation. "UMfahren" means to run over somebody/something while "umFAHREN" means to drive around somebody/something
Well for me grammar has always been a "feel" thing. Of course we learn the structur and rules for german and later on english, but for me it has always been about applying it until it's second nature. I started playing videogames in english and played online games with ppl from other countries. I also started watching shows, which were easy to understand in english, like How I Met Your Mother. It's just about getting as much exposure to it as possible. Now with UA-cam and all the english speaking creators our daughter started picking up the english language even faster than me.
7:22 "How do you guys... [...] figure out the new grammar" Actually all practice and patience. After a time your sentences kinda subconsciously 'feel' right. It's hard to explain 🤔 Best advice I can give for learning any foreign grammar is to "not try to make sense of it in your language, but embrace it's peculiarity whole". I had lessons in english since 5th grade (around 11 y/ old), and "renouncing" german grammar while building up sentences in english was one of the core principles early on. What really helped me get into it was playing video games (RPGs in particular) and reading books (e.g. Harry Potter at that age) in english, also improving my spelling as a side effect. After learning the basics that way conversations get easier and you can concentrate on pronunciation. Edit: Also, german grammar is more "lax" or rather complex than english grammar in comparison, which tends to be stricter.
It is not as hard as you think I taught my selg German in about 2 years . The sentence structure is easy when you listen to Germans speaking it comes almost as second nature to build a sentence correctly. I learned mostly by watching reruns of TV shows that I saw as a kid in America and knew what they were saying.
Numbers above 20 are also very complicated in german (and in reverse): e.g. 89 -> English: eighty-nine; German: neun-und-achtzig (literally: nine-and-eighty)
Usually acquiring base grammar is as easy as 2 weeks of lessons and just listening to a language. You relatively qickly pick up what sounds right (in terms of word order).
My head hurt so much trying to get along 🤣 As for the question of how to learn new grammar, after some time it just sounds off if you say it the wrong way and then you correct it until it sounds right ^^
I had to do a similar exercise at school when I learned english. The class had to use the english sentence structure while talking german and we had to sound out the german words as if they where english. That was fun 😄
This exactly is the technique how, the Birkenbihl training for foreign languages works. First step: you hear your language in the grammar of the language you want to learn.
as a german i totally understand this :D hahahahaha probably i understand this kind of English better as the "correct one" haha. Such a cool video thanks for sharing this !
3:33 That's a TetraPak. Cardboard. Common all over Europe, we don't really use bottles here for that. Also juices come in these cardboard boxes, sometimes also plastic bottles or glass bottles but for milk the absolute majority is TetraPak.
It actually helps that english grammar is easy compared to a lot of other languages. The only thing you go nuts with are irregular verbs and the fact that the way words are written does not always tell you how it's supposed to sound. That there are spelling bees tells you everything.
Irregular verbs are something Americans struggle with as well. It has reached a point at which you can hear and read "He should have went" (incorrect) just as often as "He should have gone" (correct). Of course, many Americans can't even get the "have" right and say or even write "of" instead.
The "grammar" is the easiest part in the long run. Yea, you'd struggle in the beginning but you'd also develop a feeling for it very quickly, like you did with your mother tongue.
The main difference is that you can (must) put additional adverbial information between the auxiliary verb and the past participle in german, while you must not separate the auxiliary verb from the past participle in english. I have eaten in the city => Ich habe in der Stadt gegessen. (I have in the city eaten)
If you speak german like English its pretty easy baby German. Thats why we can adapt to English fast because its like kids talk in German even they cannot speak very well. So its simple for me. It makes english a very easy language cause you speak it like without grama rules at all.
I think the most distracting thing is that in German the verb of a sentence can be at the end or even split in two. Example (verb in bold/cursive) : I *_am_* *_dismantling_* something Ich *_baue_* etwas *_ab_* The verb "abbauen" (to dismantle) splits and the first part is placed at the end of the sentence. If you then have a sentence in a sentence (something..., something else..., rest of the other sentence) the first part of the verb is very far away from the second so the coupling of the verb and the rest of the sentence can be difficult. For me learning English was really easy except from all the weird spelling. In Germany spelling contests are literally not a thing and I always wondered what the point was in movies. When I learned English and was confronted with all the weird spelling I got it😂
Hey Ryan, there is a funny german book on this topic, check it out, it's called "The afterlast english letters", written by one Ulla Renner.Enjoy the syntax 😁
Most of us don't remember this anymore because we are now so used to the English sentence structure but when you start English lessons as a German you have to learn what order you have to put the words in, because as you see in this video: The order of the the words in a German sentence is quite different.
If you start learning a new language, you start with short sentences and after a while you start doing it automatically. It is very helpful to listen to and read the foreign language. Start with children's books, (gossip) magazines, children's shows on television, advertisements on television. After a while the wordorder will be engrained in your brain with the foreign language. I cannot speak Dutch in the english wordorder and the other way around. I don't have to think about it anymore allthough I sometimes mess up with for example an adverb.
I'm so darn happy that I grew up bilingual...in school I didn't have to do any work in english classes until 10th grade, although I saw my fellow students struggle with word orders all the time^^
@Hellequin Maskharat Indeed...but it's worse between german and f.e. french, romanic languages tend to switch gender of articles compared to germanic languages
@Hellequin Maskharat True...I just don't speak frog, like any normal person^^
@Hellequin Maskharat It was just a joke...I'm living right on the french-german border and although my french is en par, I got that thick german accent of a german officer in old french movies about WW2...sooo...I just avoid speaking in french^^
If we Germans English have to learn, it sounds as Yoda our teacher is.
Wenn wir Deutsche Englisch lernen müssen, klingt es, als sei Yoda unser Lehrer.
If we Germans English learn have to, sounds it like is Yoda our teacher.
Das ist genau das was ich geschrieben habe 😂
This is neither German nor English grammar 😂
@@erdbeerschosch2839
Es kommt der Sache aber schon recht nahe.
However, it comes the matter quit close.
However, it comes pretty close to the point.
@very incognito
That have I too thought 😄
As a german that learned english starting in elementary school my mind exploded when i first watched the video
I also think the video of Nald is perfect german humor and many germans that understand english will think its really funny
when I watched the original my brain fried. it actually hurt to hear this wrong structure and my brain was: noo no no this is so wrong, stoooop.
Indeed do we that :D
When you learn to write German in school, the emphasis is on grammar from the start. So concepts like article, substantive, verb, and object are already familiar to us. English sentence structure is really simple, when you come from German. We grapple more with pronunciation, especially the fact that some English words seem to have no real connection between how they are pronounced and how they are written, which is different in German. Generally you can look at a German word you have never heard before and immediately know how to pronounce it, because the rules how letters or a combination of letters is pronounced are fairly rigid.
I get more confused with the words which are pronounced identically in English as they were German. Just I am thinking about it, I dont have any eyample on my mind but when I hear it, I can point it out.
@@vHindenburg Angst, Kummerbund, Leitmotiv, Doppelgänger, über, Kindergarten, Gesundheit, verboten, and there are many more German words used in the English language. But the pronounciation gets me everytime too 😀
@StrawberryStar True, but as many adopted german words, it's mostly used in american english...which pronounces "a" already like our "ä" ^^
As a German this was really confusing to hear :D sounds like straight out of the Google Translator.
old google translator
I was amazed about the progress of google translator when I checked it out this year.
@@LisaMaierLiest right? When I used it back in 5th, it was horrible and made so many mistakes. Now it's actually good! I was so impressed! But then again, fifht grade was nearly a decade ago... XD
@@thatviolingirl9879 fun fact: I did a test that was translated by google translate 12 years ago (and an university got payed for that...)
The answers you could choose from were:
a) Schlüssel
b) Schlüssel
c) Schlüssel
d) Schlüssel
Though I have to take back, some amazement ;)
Today I translated:
English: Northern Command is a Unified Combatant Command.
German: Northern Command ist ein Unified Combatant Command.
Even for a German it sounds weird. I did understand barely half of the dialogues.
It's not hard to learn new sentence structures. Can you talk like Yoda? If so, you already mastered the first level.
It was easier to understand for me in that version.
As a Russian speaker, it was quite easy to get a hold of the dialogues 'cause word order isn't really that important in my native language, but I am afraid that if I were to listen this version of Eglish for several hours, I would forget all English grammar
The bizarre Milk jug is a "Tetra Pack".
You can get basically everything in these from milk to juice and ice tea, sometimes even water
And yes, they exist with a " roof"
and this "bizarre" bottle can be folded very small after use and will be recycled for 100%
@@barfuss2007 Recycling is wichtig and richtig.
Tetra Brick, the original Tetra pack is shaped like a pyramid
or even wine ... sometimes called "Marke Pennerglück" ("brand hobo luck").
Englishman here ... I came to Germany when I was 17, been living here now for 53 years. The first 12 was in the Army after that I had a job until I retired. I had no schooling in German and lernt it by just mixing with Germans. The brain gymnastics to build correct sentences was at first a challenge but after a while it becomes second natur. At first I used to switch what was said into English in my brain then switch it back to answer in German, now I just understand it the same as when two English people speak to each other.
What language do you think in?
@@RichardJohansson I think in both really .... in day to day mostly German, but as I really only watch English YT clips I still use the English side of my brain. Switching from one to the other is no problem. Then I'm watching a clip and my wife asks me something I just switch to German. Or when the radio (in the background) is on I've got German from the radio and English from YT
Swedish, also as a Germanic language, has almost the same word order, like we have in German. Since English is also a Germanic language, it is not that complicated for us Germans to learn it, but word order and tenses can be tricky sometimes. However, many English-speaking people learning German will probably curse about German conjugations and declensions. Not to mention phonetics, although French phonetics is much more complicated, I think.
I would say that the Swedish word order is more similar to English than it is to German, like somewhat in between, perhaps. It's not the same as in English all of the time, but to me it seems like it's more often like English than German is.
Let's look at some of the sentences from the video:
English: Did you sleep well?
German: Have you good slept?
Swedish: Have you slept well?
English: No, I had such a weird dream
German: No, I had something so weird dreamed.
Swedish: No, I had such a weird dream
English: In the dream my arms were all of a sudden branches
German: In the dream have been my arms all of a sudden branches
Swedish: In the dream became all of a sudden my arms branches
English: ..and I couldn't use my laptop keyboard anymore.
German: ...and my laptop keyboard I couldn't anymore use
Swedish: ...and I couldn't use my laptop keyboard anymore.
English: But I had to write an important e-mail
German: But have to an important e-mail write
Swedish: But I had to write an important e-mail/But I had an important e-mail to write
English: I prefer oatmilk, if you have it.
German: When you oatmilk have prefer I this
Swedish: I prefer oatmilk, if you have it.
@@Asa...S "German: No, I had such a weird dream - Nein, ich hatte solch einen seltsamen Traum." -
"German: In the dream my arms were all of a sudden branches. - "In dem Traum, meine Arme waren alle auf einmal Zweige."
Works also, as just two examples. German word order is more flexible. It is not static mostly.
Dutch has practically the same word order as German. There are some minor differences here the there but nothing more than that. English has an almost Romace word oder. I am learnig Italian and I keep on noticing that Itlian word order is similar to English word order, though not identical.
And I speak english, german and swedish, hi, hallo, hey! Du auch? 🤗
@@SkandalRadar I just commented on the sentences the way they used them in the video though, not German in general.
When learning a new language usually you get accustomed to it and it's grammar without having to compare it to your native tongue. I speak English and German fluently, along with a little French, and if I had to listen to any of these with a different sentence structure I couldn't deal with it. This video felt like I was having a stroke haha
So, don't let this stuff intimidate you from learning languages, it's not as bad as you might think.
Also, this video also transliterates idioms, which makes things extra confusing.
At a given moment stand the best pilots on wall when it there factually on with comes.
Literal translation from a Dutch sentence with two expressions and a twist:
Op een gegeven moment staan de beste stuurlui aan wal wanneer het er feitelijk op aan komt.
So one on one translations do not work with expressions.
When learning a language, after knowing the meaning of a sentence I think it’s better to then remember the exact 1 for 1 translation without changing the grammar to suit English, because it teaches me that this expression’s grammar has a connection to the language I learn rather than being some random thought that day.
Also it’s great grammar practice if you don’t have the vocabulary for unknown words.
To me it sounded more like Henry Tudor courting another floozy into his bed.
the most important thing is the sence of understanding . My french is also very poor but I had poitical discussions in french for two hours...
I LOVE THIS. I studied German in college. I can't explain. you just get it - you start thinking in German instead of translating every word. an advantage to German is that it is spoken in smaller comprehensive bits instead of long run on sentences.
Your reaction was sooo funny 😂 - and I (as German) even had to read subtitles to understand all of it... My english grammar is not the best but when I speak or write in English I always switch the word order automatically. All the best to your little family and rest assured that pee and poop moments will keep coming... 🤣
I bet if you would listen to something like that for a couple of hours it would stop being weird and you would understand everything :)
You would at least be able to recognize a pattern like verb often at the end of a sentence and so on
Haha, i was waiting for this. 😆
For me english grammar feels like Yoda's german grammar.
I have that video really enjoyed. I have myself dead-laughed
I have myself away thrown🤣
I don't know why. The English in the video was one-wall-free! 🤣
@@geneticcat909 Kennst auch, wie Otto Waalkes Ausländern das Wort "Kohldampf" ins Englische übersetzt?
@@MarsOhr jepp: ua-cam.com/video/Vcsu6417b1g/v-deo.html
In German must you always till the end wait, till you the complete sense of the sentence get can. 🤣🙃And besides, the German grammar provides wonderful ways to express the sense of a sentence in at least two or three different ways by using the same words! For you and your little family wish I a pleasant day! 😄
🤣🤣
was this the way of the english aristocracy speaking? it sounds like a german trying to do so.
@@aegirmeingott No, this was with german grammar rules applied.
Also the way Yoda speaks naturally
@@Nuin. irgendwie machen alle hier Yoda bashing 😂
@@Auvas_Damask Come on, wenn die im Video quatschen hört es sich echt manchmal so an wie wenn Yoda Sätze bildet. Zugeben du das mußt 😁
You should read Mark Twains humoristic essay: "The awful German language", where he - amongst other things - pokes fun at the differences in word order between German and English.
Yeah... when the literate German starts a sentence he dives into the ocean and emerges on the other side with the verb in his mouth...:-)
I think it’s so cool you learn about beautiful Germany, I’ve watched every single video you did
Read Shakespeare and find out, that once english was a rich language, providing the ability to transfer submeaning by choosing a special grammatical structure.
I am happy to accept the compliment that german sounds like artificial intelligence. The structure of the English language has something more of punch card calculators of the 60s.
😉🤓🤗😘
I really thank you for this intelligent comment
I remember using a translation program on MS-DOS back in the 90ies which produced translations that sounded exactly like this. We have come a long way XD
Fun fact:
English had the same syntax like german and other germanic languages until the vikings conquered huge parts of england. At first english was a central germanic language that took more and more words from the nordic germanic vocabulary after the vikings conquered england. But at some point the english people switched their syntax to the norwegian syntax and english became norwegian with mostly central germanix vocabulary. This is also the reason why it's so easy for norwegians to learn english and why native english speakers find it easier to learn norwegian than german or dutch.
You can also see that on the dialects from parts of the UK that werend't conquered by the vikings such as welsh, irish gaelic, northern english etc. They mostly kept their central germanic syntax that is similar to dutch or danish and a middle ground between the english and the german syntax.
I have to switch between german, english, french and my regions german dialect multiple times everyday and the syntax switches mess up my brain. At the end of the day it becomes pretty hard to form sentences. Not like in the video but i have to think about if i have to start or end the sentence with something.
English is a west germanic language like dutch and german. While a certain influence of scandinavian is undeniable, it's actually highly disputed how much influence scandinavian languages had on english grammar and syntax.
To say that english is closer to norwegian than german would be a controversial claim to say the least.
@@Rico-oz4ct
English has most of it's vocabulary from french, danish and dutch because these are the regions the bretons had intercultural relations with and many people from there settled on the bretonic islands. During and after the vikings conquest also many norwegian words were introduced into the english language such as "husband", which is norwegian for "master of the house".
But the english syntax was a west/central germanic syntax pretty much like proto german and dutch until later during the viking conquest when suddenly the english language switched the syntax from west/central germanic to the norwegian syntax. It's pretty rare that a language changes his syntax and it's more likely that core england started using norwegian than that they adapted their syntax.
And it's not like the norwegian and the breton part of england were at a cold war during the viking conquest. They traded with each other, married and had children, the vikings in england added english (west/central germanic) to their vocabulary while the bretons added norwegian words to their vocabulary. And at the end they ended up with a new language that was a mix of breton, danish, french, dutch and norwegian. Pretty much like swahili that is spoken in many countries in africa and works as a common ground.
And at one point the viking influence became so strong that they started using these common ground mixed language with the norwegian syntax instead of the old west/central germanic syntax.
You can also see how big the norwegian influence on the english language is when you look at the speeling and pronounciation of english words. Many of them make no sense to native speakers of other germanic languages. Because these english words originate from nordic germanic words with nordic germanic letters and later the english people had to convert these nordic letters to similar sounding letter from the greek alphabet.
Norwegian is a germanic/romanic language too but with a different syntax and alphabet to most other germanic/romanic languages because of his historical interconnections with slawic languages.
@@omadduxo Surely you mean Briton not Breton.
@omadduxo While you are right about Old English being influenced by old Norse, your post is a bit all over the place. These influences were predominantly vocabulary additions or alterations. Also, you differentiate between Germanic languages and the vikings, however, Old Norse was a Germanic language as are modern scandinavian languages as well. And fun fact, out of all modern Germanic languages, only German and Icelandic retain sometimes very similar archaic grammatical features. Other modern Germanic languages, English included, kind of "simplified" their grammar but that has had nothing to do with vikings...
@@omadduxo What is a romanic language ? Do you mean Romance language ? But where in the world did you get that Norwegian is part romance ? Also, Welsh and Gaelic aren't English dialects, they are Celtic languages and comparing them to the influence of ON on OE is redundant. And lastly, I think it is highly debatable that English speakers have an easier time learning Norwegian because of some loan words from the vikings. Highly debatable ... The only thing that makes learning Norwegian easier than German for a native English speaker would be the grammar. But that's because modern scandinavian languages' case system is not as extensive as it used to be, same as English today. That has nothing to do with Old English or Old Norse, however
, because again, Old Norse had a much more extensive inflectional case system, as modern Icelandic, but also modern German retain. So you really confuse the difficult linguistic relations between old and modern Germanic languages. Also, mind you, modern Scandinavian lamguages borrowed extensively vocabulary wise from Low German, so there your whole argument between the relatabilty of English, German and Norwegian goes out the window...I would much rather argue, English speakers have an advantage when learning a Romance language like French or Spanish when it comes to vocabulary, due to the much more prominent impact of French on the English language...
I'm German and I found this super funny! 😂
And had troubles understanding at times, too even though I speak both languages quite well.
How you figure out grammar? You usually consciously learn the rules (for example there are rules for the order of words, one in english is: place before time), and the more fluent you become the more natural these (and new!) rules come to you. So when you're fluent and you learn something new, you might just subconsciously add it to your "language file" in your head.
Congratulations on your baby ❤️ love the videos love from the 🇬🇧
So their a couple of main differences in sentence structure:
-the conjugated verb comes always in second position in the MAIN clause
-all other verbs go to the end
-in a side clause all verbs go to the end
-to Form a question you put the verb in first place and the subject in second place
-adjectives are placed before the noun (like english)
-I THINK adverbs are placed after the verb if there is no verb at the end of the sentence. And before the verb(s) at the end of the sentence if ther's any.
-the rest is pretty flexible due to the case system telling you wich role a sentence part has but the subject has to be placed at third place in the main clause IF it's not in first. So basically after the verb. And the subject has to be in first place in the side clause.
Examples: 1. The kitchen have I washed because it dirty was.
2. I have the kitchen washed because it dirty was.
Both is correct!
We would actually us she instead of it because kitchen is feminin but that's another story
BTW english had the same Syntax and dutch still has a similiar one with minor differences
Your two kitchen examples, while both are correct, only the second one is standard. The first one you would use to emphasize that you washed specifically the kitchen and not some other room.
@@silkwesir1444 yeah I thought about writing you are putting focus on the kitchen but the comment was allready long. And as you said both is correct
It's mainly the danes and proto norwegians fault that they lost their old english syntax.
(Me as a swede, is totally innocent though. We never invaded that island.)
For long time have i not more so hard laughed. Finally an English video that I understand can. Ryan your videos are great.
It's so funny. I watched the video of Nalf a few days ago. Your reactions are so cool. And you are very smart. Congrats for the birth of your son. I'm an uncle of 5 kids. It's wonderful seeing them growing up.
My daughter gets 10 Years this Week, and if i remind the past ... the first 2 Years was the easiest (if your child don´t get often Sick). After that you get some Rebelphases, Toothterrors and Growthpains.
But over all Congratiolations to You and your Wife and enjoy the Time with a Child in your Family !
Oh Mein Gott! Your reactions to NALF‘s video made my week! Too funny. With that being said, this video is going to be a great learning tool for English speakers to understand other languages.
My wife and I are binge-watching your channel more or less. This one was one of the most hilarous videos you made. Even as a German the whole thing feels so weird and it's even totally hard to follow and to understand sometimes. Keep up, by the way. 😘👍
Two things:
One-tho is what milk carbs look like in germany. All of them, tall, square with a screw lid on top, and those folded down sides are glued to the bottle. The cardboard is aluminum and plastic wrapped on the inside.
And two, hearing him talk felt like I was having a stroke lol. I'm native German and this was just tto much lol. My brain could not process. I literally had to read the german translation on the bottom to understand what exactly they were talking about 😅😅😅
In germany we learn english as our first foreign language and it's mandatory throughout your whole school life. Most start to learn it in elementary school. And the wrong English sentence structure are absolute rookie mistakes. But hearing someone talk like that broke my brain. 😅
For me it felt like I just woke up and someone is trying to talk with me
I'm a native German and can understand English pretty good.
To write English is also okay - I have enough time to translate and jumble the words around in my head. The more often you're doing that the more natural it feels and sounds.
To speak English is not that common for me - so I'm not that good at it. I've learned English at school - but I've also read books and watched movies in English for the last 15 years.
If you do something often enough you learn continuously. Speaking is much faster and I'm really proud when someone can understand me speaking English.
"When you oat milk have, prefer I this" Yoda said
NALF is the best.... very interesting Videos even for a german.
That was amazing. 🤣
I remember when I had English classes that the english grammar confused me so much because in my head it would sound exactly like this guys in the video I had the pleasure to watch right now. 👌
About the shape of the milk bottle. It’s folded like that so you can deconstruct it in a flat shape when it’s finished. In this way you have more space in the trashcan for other things.
In Germany we would say „I’m a freshly baked dad now…“
No we would say ,,I am now a freshly baked dad"
When I watched Nalf's video for the first time, I have been wondering how long it may have took to shoot. It must have been so difficult to speak like this. And without subtitles I hardly understand anything.
the milk container is called tetra-pack and is usually cardboard on the outside and some kind of plastic coating on the inside. when you're done you can unfold the "ears" and flatten it to save space.
So I actually study English and German so I can teach these subjects in German schools and I am well experienced in learning a foreign language. What you can experience in this video is that German (or basically every language) has its own linguistic pattern. A linguistic pattern contains things such as grammar, sentence structure, sayings, expressions, and so on. If you would speak German with an English linguistic pattern that would sound hilarious aswell. When you learn a new language you also kinda automatically learn the linguistic pattern that comes with it and also quite a lot of the culture. When learning a new language you not only learn vocabulary and grammar, you also learn using the language in authentic situations or conversations. That makes you learn the linguistic pattern and you get this gut feeling when using the language, you implicitly gain knowledge about the use of the language. I actually learned a lot about languages and language in general and how it shapes the way we think due to a TED talk, I'll link it to you if you want to watch it. It's really interesting.
ua-cam.com/video/RKK7wGAYP6k/v-deo.html
Many grammatical concepts cannot be copied. In English, the meaning of “The dog bites the man“ and “The man bites the dog“ changes, the role of a word is determined by its position, which is why there is a rigid word order (SVO, subject-verb-object). In German, the role of a word depends on the grammatical case. It’s quite common to start a sentence with the object, and word order is used to shift focus and emphasis.
And of course there are a lot of things that cannot be translated word for word. This is already the case in very simple sentences. Overall, the video conveys well that another language is more than just other words, even if some translations are questionable.
The thing is you can find the second position verb order as well in English when you have to distinguish the subject whether it is a new sentence like introduced as a subordinate clause or is it still the subject of the main clause.. for example: the apples are I today in case you didn't know. The emphasis is on the apples, pretty common in rural areas. While using: the apples I ate today we're delicious. This sentence consists of two clauses, while I ate is the subordinate clause.
ate* were*
For us its like..turning the structures around.The verb is sometimes at the end or they Split.
That video was super helpful explaining to my online friends why i get fatigued by speaking english with them for super long periods. Jumbling around thoughts is very tiring.
In German supermarkets we have all the variations of milk-containers: We have glass bottles, (usually more fancy ones), we have soft plastic bags (although not as soft as the ones you know from Canada) and we have these so-called Tetra Pak.
The Tetra Paks are easily the most famous ones and also get used for juices and other fluids a lot of times. They are easy to store, because they have a cuboid form, so you can stack them. They are very sturdy, yet light, so you have no issue pouring milk or juice out of them and they feel nice like smooth cardboard on the outside, but are waterproof on the inside.
Love your reactions and congratulations again! I would love you to react to childbirth in Germany! There are several videos by Americans who have moved here. Would love your reaction and insight on American sight on it. Greetings from Northern Germany
Hello, I am German and have me the video watched. I don't know what's there so funny is. that sounds it all quite normal!
There used to be a method for language learning called the Birkenbihl-method (that didn't really catch on and was just an idea of one single person) where languages were supposed to be learned like this. Translate sentenced word for word into your native language in order to get a feeling for the language you want to learn.
theres usually outtakes after the "thanks for watching" card that are super funny. in this one for instance we saw how mikey struggled with getting the words in that order :D
This made me realize how different German grammar is from English, as a German i never had any problems with learning English grammar and i understood almost everything.
Building sentences in german and translate it word by word to english. Funny for you, perfect english for us. 😊
7:18 Yes, that's the hardest part. Grammar always blows you away once you start learning a new language. Some are easy like English, but then look at French ;).
the jug is a tetrapack, a box of carton, the inner side has a foil layer so less plastic
speaking english since i was 6, i can roughly remember learing to restructure the sentences, now it comes naturally, but watching nalfs video showed me again how different our sentence structures are in different languages :D
There is a little fun fact: Vera Birkenbihl (Psychologist) has developed a special method to learn a language by separating grammar and vocabulary. It is easier to learn the grammar when learned with the vocabulary of the student's native language. Check out Birkenbihl - Methode
Haha that was funny to see your expression. I am Canadian, born and raised but my parents and sisters emigrated from Germany. The German grammar is difficult for sure and the English language has more words as well so translations are not exact. My parents both spoke, & read English quite well but there were a few things that my dad never wrapped his head around. I used to get ribbed a lot especially in high school when my friends would call the house for me. My father used to say I was making my homework and was not available at the moment. The word to do or to make is basically the same word in German depending on context. Language is fascinating! I do enjoy your video's and reactions very much, especially the ones where you are learning about Canada. Thanks for sharing! Ps...the majority of us do not say "aboot" and I've never seen anyone use copious amounts of maple syrup on everything though it is yummy! 😉
to make is "herstellen" in some cases so I wouldn't say that. Also we have the word "tuen" (do) wich isn't used that often and has a meaning wich is more restrict than machen. Also what's your source for the word number cuz the german dicitonary Duden has 18 million words with 300 to 500 thousend words beeing commonly used.
@@braincytox7314 Hi! I guess I was speaking in a more broad general sense and what is spoken in the home on a day to day basis. Also in my case even though I grew up speaking German & English simultaneously my first language spoken is English and I've never had any schooling in German. At this time my sister's and parents would've been also learning to speak English as a first language so again it would've lessened my knowledge of many words in German and what I was used to speaking/hearing. The story above about my father wasn't derogatory in any sense but more of a fond memory that I'm sure many children of immigrants to Canada etc have. As for the amount of words it was something I was told , don't even remember the source to be honest, however when I googled this is what came up:
How many German and English words are there?
According to the Duden, the standard dictionary for correct spelling of German, the German language comprises of around 500,000 words (including foreign and loan words). As far as I know, English has around 1 million words. But in both cases much less are used by normal people.
Either which way, hope you have a wonderful day and thanks for the info!! 🙂
The number of german words is unlimited. I could easily form a brand new word every second, because of our word-combination-system (we would really just write wordcombinationsystem ;) For example: House - housekeeper - housekeepercontract - housekeepercontractsigningappointment - housekeepercontractsigningappointmentcancelation - housekeepercontractsigningappointmentcancelationfee etc.
A real german shop sing says: Parkettfußbodenschleifmaschinenverleih (company to lend machines to grind parquet floor)
this is my beautiful hometown. Nalf plays american football in Unicon team, my son knews him very well.
Since we start learning English at school, just imagine some ten year old kids (nowadays even younger) learning the English grammar and our own at the same time while trying not to confuse them. Lots of fun. 😂I think confusing the grammar rules is one of our most common mistakes at the beginning. Maybe not as bad as in the video, but you will hear those kind of sentences from time to time.
But I think we have an advantage over English natives who want to learn German. We are surrounded by English with music and media, so after a while (when we start to really understand the language because our vocabulary is good enough) we know kinda naturally how it's supposed to sound. I still have moments where I write something, stop, think about it because it kinda looks wrong or sounds wrong in my head and rearrange the sentence though. And often times I'm still not sure afterwards which part of my brain caused it. The one who knows the German rules or the one who knows the English ones. So did I really correct it or was it correct before?
It's interesting though how wrong it sounds to me now when I hear them talk in English using German grammar. I'm wondering how long they had to practice for this video and how many takes they needed.
To your knowing. The milk Box is not folding down through here. These are already like that when you buy it.
Because you can put other package over it with that way
I haven't seen the old Star Wars films in the english original, but I could imagine they just used English with German grammar for Yoda.
Everything in Nalfs Video was correct english👍👍🤣🤣 so easy to understand👌And anyway you are funny too👏 or in german grammar: anyway are you too funny😉 and you are for sure a good Dad👍
It also sounds very funny for a german when you use the english syntax in german. 🙂
Hahaha oh my god. The muscle cat. Love it.
the "muscle cat" ... hilarious 🤣
Never thought about this, but it somtimes sounds like old english, the shakespeary timey one. especially the coffee scene with the oatmilk.
As a native English speaker in Germany (B2, intermediate German level) this makes perfect sense and is complete comprehensible
Oh, So Japanese is closer to German than English in sentence structure. Good to know.... that I would also suck at learning German.
ALSO, I guess because I am used to hearing Japanese talk, I am having less difficulty in understanding this skit. HAHAHA
Not really. I learned Japanese as a German, and the structure is quite different. For example, the verb is almost always at the end.
Also, Japanese has a lot of different grammatical concepts from the germanic languages that negates any advantage.
@@Cau_No I don't really know the specifics of both languages because I am not a native speaker of either. And my Japanese isn't that great... yet (I am still hopeful).
That is why I said "closer to" rather than the same or similar. But I see what you mean.
Which language do you think would be easier to learn by a native English speaker - Deutsch OR Nihongo?
@@jholmes553 deutsch ofcourse. the asian languages are completely different.
@@jholmes553 my dad told me it was very easy for him to learn german back then when he came here. it´s actually not that different as you think after seeing this vid. and since german is such a literal language it´s very easy to learn. the only hard part is der die das and that comes natural at some point. and it´s not rly that bad if you get some of it wrong. the sentence will still make sense. even germans argue about some of them ( das nutella and die nutella for example ^^) I mean french would be very easy for a native english speaker, but only if you like ignoring half of the letters :)
@@steviegi584 Oh... That makes sense because Deutsch and English share common linguistic origin.
Although, Nihongo is a phonetic language and easy to pronounce. While Deutsch, well... a non-native might not be ready for the tongue gymnastics. At least my tongue isn't ready for it.
Reminds me of Toki and Skwisgar from Metalocalypse somewhat lmao, 'We goes now to food-libraries " a clear joke, but they just apply Swedish/Norwegian verb forms and preposition case to everything.
I watched this video a couple of days ago. Being fluent in both languages it boggled my mind. It also reminded me of an experiment me and a friend undertook. We only spoke English with the saxonian accent. We became super proficient after a while and "normal" English sounded really weird.
denkst du Akzente fallen im Englischen weniger auf als im deutschen?
@@daimhaus es kommt drauf an, denke ich. In unserem Fall ist es sehr aufgefallen, da wir Englisch mit einem deutschen Akzent gemischt haben. Aber es gibt ja im Englischen mindestens genauso viele Akzente wie im deutschen.
German gives great opportunity ford funny word games because we have so many different meanings for one word.
For example "umfahren" means to drive around somebody/something AND to run over somebody/something.
The secret is the pronunciation. "UMfahren" means to run over somebody/something while "umFAHREN" means to drive around somebody/something
Well for me grammar has always been a "feel" thing. Of course we learn the structur and rules for german and later on english, but for me it has always been about applying it until it's second nature.
I started playing videogames in english and played online games with ppl from other countries. I also started watching shows, which were easy to understand in english, like How I Met Your Mother. It's just about getting as much exposure to it as possible. Now with UA-cam and all the english speaking creators our daughter started picking up the english language even faster than me.
7:22 "How do you guys... [...] figure out the new grammar"
Actually all practice and patience. After a time your sentences kinda subconsciously 'feel' right. It's hard to explain 🤔
Best advice I can give for learning any foreign grammar is to "not try to make sense of it in your language, but embrace it's peculiarity whole". I had lessons in english since 5th grade (around 11 y/ old), and "renouncing" german grammar while building up sentences in english was one of the core principles early on. What really helped me get into it was playing video games (RPGs in particular) and reading books (e.g. Harry Potter at that age) in english, also improving my spelling as a side effect. After learning the basics that way conversations get easier and you can concentrate on pronunciation.
Edit: Also, german grammar is more "lax" or rather complex than english grammar in comparison, which tends to be stricter.
🤣🤣🤣 greatings from Trier, Germany..
Fun Fact: Speak like this, Yoda does. And the grammar that Yoda uses, is correct.
Nice you should come to Garmisch-Partenkirchen Germany it’s really nice!!
It is not as hard as you think I taught my selg German in about 2 years . The sentence structure is easy when you listen to Germans speaking it comes almost as second nature to build a sentence correctly. I learned mostly by watching reruns of TV shows that I saw as a kid in America and knew what they were saying.
I'm dutch and I learnt to speak Spanish your way...totally immerse yourself and sentence patterns get ingraved in your brain.
Numbers above 20 are also very complicated in german (and in reverse): e.g. 89 -> English: eighty-nine; German: neun-und-achtzig (literally: nine-and-eighty)
This was very funny! I liked it really.😂
There we have the salad! My english is under all (female) pig!!
And congratulation on being a new dad, everything must bei quite exiting. :)
You missed the best part of the NALF Video at the end. There are some outtakes. Greetings from Germany
We Germans are probably all descended from Yoda and that's why we speak so funny. That's not the yellow of the egg as we speak, but sponge over. 😂
Usually acquiring base grammar is as easy as 2 weeks of lessons and just listening to a language. You relatively qickly pick up what sounds right (in terms of word order).
I am glad they did not mention numbers: nineteen, twenty, one and twenty, two and twenty...
Super funny how he the whole time not checked that the verb at the end comes.
My head hurt so much trying to get along 🤣
As for the question of how to learn new grammar, after some time it just sounds off if you say it the wrong way and then you correct it until it sounds right ^^
I had to do a similar exercise at school when I learned english. The class had to use the english sentence structure while talking german and we had to sound out the german words as if they where english. That was fun 😄
This exactly is the technique how, the Birkenbihl training for foreign languages works. First step: you hear your language in the grammar of the language you want to learn.
Dude this is your funniest video reactionwise.
We have really a special grammar. that I'm struggling with until today,and it makes it difficult to build sentences in other languages
When I´m hearing this... Are we germans basically...Yoda? 😳😂
as a german i totally understand this :D hahahahaha probably i understand this kind of English better as the "correct one" haha. Such a cool video thanks for sharing this !
3:23 You wouldn"t be able to fold conventional one together like that, it's a vendor specific shaping.
3:33 That's a TetraPak. Cardboard. Common all over Europe, we don't really use bottles here for that. Also juices come in these cardboard boxes, sometimes also plastic bottles or glass bottles but for milk the absolute majority is TetraPak.
I think he just referred to the classic shaoe with a "rooftop". 😉
It actually helps that english grammar is easy compared to a lot of other languages.
The only thing you go nuts with are irregular verbs and the fact that the way words are written does not always tell you how it's supposed to sound. That there are spelling bees tells you everything.
Irregular verbs are something Americans struggle with as well. It has reached a point at which you can hear and read "He should have went" (incorrect) just as often as "He should have gone" (correct). Of course, many Americans can't even get the "have" right and say or even write "of" instead.
The "grammar" is the easiest part in the long run. Yea, you'd struggle in the beginning but you'd also develop a feeling for it very quickly, like you did with your mother tongue.
Nice effect at the beginning 🙂
The main difference is that you can (must) put additional adverbial information between the auxiliary verb and the past participle in german, while you must not separate the auxiliary verb from the past participle in english. I have eaten in the city => Ich habe in der Stadt gegessen. (I have in the city eaten)
If you speak german like English its pretty easy baby German. Thats why we can adapt to English fast because its like kids talk in German even they cannot speak very well. So its simple for me. It makes english a very easy language cause you speak it like without grama rules at all.
Well, it's like when we say pretty please. They have a pretty thank-you. As you already know: Danke shöne.
I think the most distracting thing is that in German the verb of a sentence can be at the end or even split in two. Example (verb in bold/cursive) :
I *_am_* *_dismantling_* something
Ich *_baue_* etwas *_ab_*
The verb "abbauen" (to dismantle) splits and the first part is placed at the end of the sentence. If you then have a sentence in a sentence (something..., something else..., rest of the other sentence) the first part of the verb is very far away from the second so the coupling of the verb and the rest of the sentence can be difficult.
For me learning English was really easy except from all the weird spelling. In Germany spelling contests are literally not a thing and I always wondered what the point was in movies. When I learned English and was confronted with all the weird spelling I got it😂
07:23 That's actually very easy. Just the verb or something changed places.
That video is the biggest mindfck I’ve ever experienced 😭 the first Nalf video I couldn’t watch not even half a minute
Hey Ryan, there is a funny german book on this topic, check it out, it's called "The afterlast english letters", written by one Ulla Renner.Enjoy the syntax 😁