Looking at all the things that make German hard to learn (e.g. 4 grammatical cases for 3 genders, tons of irregular verbs, different pre- and suffixes for the same meaning…), I don’t get the joke “haha look at that long word”.
They’re perfectly readable unless you skip on learning your vocabulary. So what you’re saying is you haven’t been doing your homework.
Nahrungsmittelunverträglichkeit:
Nahrung - sustenance
Mittel - resource or means
Nahrungsmittel - means of sustenance, foodstuffs (the s ist just a connector without meaning)
un - negating prefix, as in English
verträglich - tolerable, agreeable, so “unverträglich” = intolerable
keit - a suffix making a noun out of the preceding adjective, so “intolerable” > intolerance
Reading German is probably the easiest thing about it, letters pronounce the same no matter where they are, and the order of words is also always the same. But grammar and conjugation are really freaking hard (at least, coming from French)
As a Ukrainian speaker, the worst part is remembering which noun class (grammatical gender) which noun belongs to. Ukrainian also has those, but they’re often obvious from the word endings
Looking at all the things that make German hard to learn (e.g. 4 grammatical cases for 3 genders, tons of irregular verbs, different pre- and suffixes for the same meaning…), I don’t get the joke “haha look at that long word”.
They’re perfectly readable unless you skip on learning your vocabulary. So what you’re saying is you haven’t been doing your homework.
Nahrungsmittelunverträglichkeit:
Reading German is probably the easiest thing about it, letters pronounce the same no matter where they are, and the order of words is also always the same. But grammar and conjugation are really freaking hard (at least, coming from French)
As a Ukrainian speaker, the worst part is remembering which noun class (grammatical gender) which noun belongs to. Ukrainian also has those, but they’re often obvious from the word endings
Thanks indeed its quite logical, well its a meme so nothing to take too serious 😉
Oh, I don’t. And I don’t mean to rain on your parade, you do you.
I just don’t think it’s a good joke because it stems from ignorance.
Edit: I guess I am taking it too seriously. Fulfilling the cliché of the humorless German, fantastic.
No problem and as we know tastes are different we can also agree on that…
Also happy to have more contributions to this community that do not come from me 😁
More accurate to say “What makes German seem intimidating to a beginner.”