Questions about German Thread

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Viktor77
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Re: Questions about German Thread

Post by Viktor77 »

The people I'm staying with in Hannover have a sign in their bathroom that I just can't figure out. I probably just lack the grammatical knowledge only having studied German for 1.5 college semesters, but even when I got desperate and Google translated it I didn't understand it.

Can anyone pick it apart for me, please?

There's an image of a little boy lifting a heavy weight and it says:
Aus mir wird noch was.
Falgwian and Falgwia!!

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Re: Questions about German Thread

Post by Astraios »

“More comes out of me than you might think”. It looks like a joke based on There’s more to me than meets the eye, made gross and hilarious by putting it in a toilet.


*Not that I know anything about German, but.

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Re: Questions about German Thread

Post by hwhatting »

The meaning is more like "I'll become someone (great / important / respectable) one day."; aus X wird noch (et)was is a fixed expression. Astraios is right that placing it on a toilet is probably meant to have a humorous effect.

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Viktor77
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Re: Questions about German Thread

Post by Viktor77 »

hwhatting wrote:The meaning is more like "I'll become someone (great / important / respectable) one day."; aus X wird noch (et)was is a fixed expression. Astraios is right that placing it on a toilet is probably meant to have a humorous effect.
I figured it would be a fixed expression. Thanks. This often happens to me in French too where there's an expression that I simply can't break down meaning wise grammatically and end up searching and finding out it's just a set expression.
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Re: Questions about German Thread

Post by Imralu »

Wie spricht man über Sprachen und Völker, die nichtadjektivische Namen haben?

Adjektivische Namen:

1. Wir sprechen auf Deutsch.
2. Ich übersetze das ins Deutsche.
3. Es gibt im Deutschen vier Fälle.
4. Das wurde aus dem Deutschen ins Italienische übersetzt.
5. das deutsche Volk
6. die Deutschen
7. die deutsche Sprache

Zum Beispiel, wenn man über Pirahã spricht, oder meine Conlang Wena ...

1. Wir sprechen auf Pirahã.
2. Ich übersetze das ins Pirahã. (??)
3. Ich weiß nicht, ob es in Pirahã Fälle gibt. (??? Mein Bauchgefühl sagt mir: "Artikel weg!" Stimmt's?)
4. Ich übersetze das aus dem Pirahã ins Deutsche. (??)
5. das Pirahã-Volk (??)
6. die Pirahã
7. die Pirahã-Sprache (??)

Ich versuche, in Wikipedia Beispiele zu finden, doch ich finde nichts und werde sowieso immer abgelenkt und vergesse, was ich eigentlich gesucht habe.

Vielen Dank im Voraus! :-)
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Re: Questions about German Thread

Post by Cedh »

Ich würde das wahrscheinlich so sagen (also fast genau so wie du vermutet hast):

1. Wir sprechen (auf) Pirahã.
2. Ich übersetze das ins Pirahã.
3. Ich weiß nicht, ob es im Pirahã Fälle gibt.
4. Ich übersetze das aus dem Pirahã ins Deutsche.
5. das Pirahã-Volk
6. die Pirahã
7. die Pirahã-Sprache

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Re: Questions about German Thread

Post by Imralu »

Danke schön!
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Re: Questions about German Thread

Post by Imralu »

Hi! Is there an acceptable and elegant way to translate "one of the three owners/teachers [etc]", when the one referred to is female but it is not known whether the others are (or when you know that they are not)? I'm assuming eine der drei Besitzer doesn't work and I really don't want to use anything like Besitzer/innen or Besitzerinnen und Besitzer because I don't know the gender of the other two owners ... and don't care either ... WHY DO YOU MAKE ME CARE, GERMAN, WHY!?
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Re: Questions about German Thread

Post by Cedh »

For me, eine der drei Besitzer/Lehrer is indeed very questionable, but the more colloquial eine von den drei Besitzern/Lehrern works just fine. In written business communication you'd probably have to use eine der drei Besitzer*innen/Lehrer*innen though.

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Re: Questions about German Thread

Post by Imralu »

Thanks a lot!

It's funny that it works better with von.

I really dislike this "Lehrer*innen", "LehrerInnen", "Lehrer/-innen" stuff ... it's such an ugly way to write. Especially when you bring articles into it and get to something like Sollte der/die Lehrer/in, der/die an dem Tag ...
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linguoboy
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Re: Questions about German Thread

Post by linguoboy »

According to Wiktionary, lauter can be used quantitatively to mean simply "a bunch of". Is this true? Because I always thought it connotated homogeneity. I would have understood the example sentence there as "I met nothing but old friends at the party."

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Re: Questions about German Thread

Post by hwhatting »

linguoboy wrote:According to Wiktionary, lauter can be used quantitatively to mean simply "a bunch of". Is this true? Because I always thought it connotated homogeneity. I would have understood the example sentence there as "I met nothing but old friends at the party."
It implies both - "nothing but" plus some kind of plurality / higher quantity; you can use it with the singular only of abstract / mass nouns, otherwise it requires the plural. The definition at wiktionary you link to is incomplete.

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Re: Questions about German Thread

Post by Cedh »

hwhatting wrote:
linguoboy wrote:According to Wiktionary, lauter can be used quantitatively to mean simply "a bunch of". Is this true? Because I always thought it connotated homogeneity. I would have understood the example sentence there as "I met nothing but old friends at the party."
It implies both - "nothing but" plus some kind of plurality / higher quantity; you can use it with the singular only of abstract / mass nouns, otherwise it requires the plural. The definition at wiktionary you link to is incomplete.
Also, the "nothing but" connotation is not 100% strict; it does not necessarily exclude "something else" - the example sentence Ich habe auf der Party lauter alte Freunde getroffen does mean that I met lots of old friends there, to the point of feeling like everyone I met there was an old friend, and it may mean that a large majority of guests or even all of them were old friends, but it does not strictly mean that there was indeed nobody who was not an old friend.

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Re: Questions about German Thread

Post by hwhatting »

Added note: in some cases, lauter can be better translated as "all that / all those", espcially in vor lauter X "due to all that / those X": er sieht den Wald for lauter Bäumen nicht "he doesn't see the woor for all those trees"; er tanzt vor lauter Freude "he dances due to all that joy"..

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Re: Questions about German Thread

Post by Io »

Does Dutch have a cognate with German Laib?

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Re: Questions about German Thread

Post by linguoboy »

Io wrote:Does Dutch have a cognate with German Laib?
Apparently not.

The expected reflex would be *leef, which doesn't seem to exist except as an inflected form of the verb leven.

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