> I csn't help but to get in on this one...
> >> >I always wondered why Munich sometimes gets shown as Munchen.
> >> Because that's what the Germans call it?
> >Good enough reason. Beats me why it is taught to us as being Munich then.
Now, Munich has a lot of different names, like most old cities.
Over the centuries the people developed their own name as they
needed to name the city lets say for trading purposes. Also the
name changed thru the centuries. Some of these chages depend
on available information technology(!).
Somewhen in the 11th century the name was Muninsch(n) (hard
to write down a sound without having the propper letters :()
But as used back in those days, paper was expensive, writing
was expensive so the writers tend to leave out letters. Also
every writer had his own code (rules) for writing a sound (word)
- for example, the usage of c, s, ch, sh and sch was common for
sch (English sh). Further the language of the inteligencia was
Latin, so it had to be translated.
Depending on these old source, Munich was written Munichen,
Munich, Muni, MNCH. As you might see, the English term is
derivated from one of these version, althrough, even in English
the sound, associated with these letters has changed.
For other Languages, they have also adopted this pelling,
but with a complete different sounf, like in French (Munich),
or they did evolve into their own spelling.
Some Examples:
Munich (English)
Munich (French)
Monaco (Italian)
Mnichov (Czech)
And not to forget, our own language:
Minga (Bavarian :)
> Why do we call it Germany when it's really Deutchland?
Pronounced Do-itsh-laand (?)
Simple, Very Simple: The language is 'Deutsch' and the name implies just:
'Country of the Deutsch speaking' - Mayge cruel for todays nationalism
influenced idea, but the idea of nations and areas designed for nations
is a bit alien to German history - Maybe because evolved from an empire
spanning most parts of the (usefull to considere) world - I don't now.
Also some 1000+ years in the past, Empires and people where different
entities.
The now used term Germany (and Germany) is quite new - until some
2-300 years ago, the usage of Deutsch/Dutch included all the German
Lands, from the North sea until the Mediteran sea was, but due
political changes the term was restrict the Netherlands, and do
come up with a different name German/Germans/Germany was established.
In fact, this process did continue until the turn of _this_ century,
until the name was standard.
> >> > Extras? It's the same characters. Accented. If you think about it, it
> >> actually helps pronounciation.
> >Not really, well, not in English anyway..
> Yeah, the phonetic english letters confuse me also.
No, not accented - letters like U"/A"/O" are real basic letters,
jot just a morification (like long or shortpronounciation).
The German language contains some 28(30) letters and 35 sounds
24 Sounds displayed on the 26 Latin Letters (no Y and V = F)
the 3 Umlaute, the 'sharp' s, ch, sch, eu, au, tz/tsch, st
and ck (maybe also th, but this sound is almost vanished from
todays standard German).
With the exeptions of these 7 additional combinations, all
german letters just represent ONE single sound - there is
(basicly) NO modifications. German IS spoken as it is spelled.
Unlike English, where the pronounciation of one letter might
differ within a context AND one sound might be encoded in many
different ways (in this sense German is a lot more computer
friendly than english)
> >>Can you explain why English words are
> >> pronounced the way they are?
> >Some I can, others I doubt if Mr. Oxford himself could explain.
> >>Like not how they are spelt?
> >Indeed, english spelling and grammar is awkward to non native speakers.
> >Particularly since the rules seem to change depending on the word, in some
> >cases anyway..
> Three reasons... Mutations due to surrounding letters (very much the case
> in Welsh), Poor and/or lazy pronunciation (i.e. 'spelt' instead of
> 'spelled') and the introduction of foreign words (i.e. 'fajitas' & 'resume').
That are some explanations why spelling is changing, but the basic problem,
and his basic question is why more than 26 Letters, and the answer is simple,
because the there are more sounds than letters. The idea behind German is that
every sound should have his specific and unique encoding, unlike languages like
English or French, where encoding is random and historical based.
Nice Fact, if you look at some non-german languges that have been encoded
using Latin letters, you might see the German influence - especialy in
Languages like Polish, Czech, Hungarian or even the Latin based Serbocroatian
script (most codesystem has been formed while under German rule, or from
persons with a German background (like the actual Czech script). All these
scripts follow the German one-sound/one-letter rule and add a specific number
of letters (expressed as basic Latin letters with additional marks) to represent
their language sounds.
You could even see the progress and 'age' of the usage of this system.
Generaly, the 'younger' systems use the idea more strict than the older.
For example, in Polish, the 'tsh' sound is expresses as 'cz', while the
Czech did use the same system, but reformed their rules to use a c with
a Caron (an inverted Circuimflex (ASCII 5E))
Serbocroatian with Latin letters as developed in/for Croatia (opposed
to the cyrillic coding as used in Serbia) not only adds marks to some
letters, they also did define some digraphs - combinations, that are
treated as single letters, althrough written as two seperated - to
match specific cyrillic letters. These digraphs include even again
marked letters :). Also, when sorting these digraphs are treated as
special letters in acording positions (the Czech also include one
digrahp, the ch - a sound like a special h, ans cansequently sorted
after h rather than between c and d).
Sorting is also an interesting field for historic traces - for example,
Basicly the German rule is sorting as equivalents or 'pictures' (if
not possible as equivalent), oposed to sorting as additions.
Example: In german A" is translated to ae before sorting, if you want
to get the 'real' order. If this is not possible, A" is sorted between
A and B - this 'picture' sorting is also the way used in French or
Spanish. Other Languages, within the German language family (which
includes English - oh BTW, English has a lot of additional letters :)
sort their additional caracters after the Z (for example Swedish or
Norwegian). Now, the interesting historic fact is if you look around:
some Languages treat their letters seperate, some with special rules,
and some like in Germany.
> >> >all this masculine/feminine/neuter gender and case stuff. Confused the
> hell out of me.
> >> m/f/n is no that difficult. Just different from language to language.
> >Well, no not really. Simply doesn't exist in English. Everything is um,
> >neuter I guess, we don't have a term for it that we didn't pinch from
> >another language actually.
> >Trying to think of another language that doesn't do gender (in the
> >linguistic sense), Norwegian is almost that way I think, but Indonesian is
> >about the only one that is fully ungendered that I can recall. There may
> >well be others, I am far from being even mildy competent in this area..
English got also gender specificas, but most of them are faded in modern,
US influenced English.
Also, If you have problems with that idea, never ever try to learn
polish - you have not only to obey gender when refering to persons
or to insert the right article, you also have to change almost every
second word - every verb is different, depending on the gender of
the speaking person, or the addressed person, or even depending on
the gender of a thing ...
BTW trivia fact: Gender is Language dependant, even if looking
at two languages of the same language family, using the same rules:
In Standard German 'butter' (you know the yummy stuff below the
Wurst on your Butterbrot) is female, but in Bavarian, butter is
male :)
> Gender! YUCK! What a bad development (IMHO).
Got it's advantages :)
(private opinion)
Gruss
H.
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Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
Received on Fri Apr 16 1999 - 14:28:38 BST