Deutsche Grammatikfrage

[Friederike in Persia]

Bei meiner Fuenftklaesslerin kommen im Sprachbuch gerade die Faelle. Beim Genitiv kommt sie voellig durcheinander, da ihr die Frage "wessen" nicht gelaeufig ist. Nach etwas Ueberlegen bin ich zu dem Schluss gekommen, dass ich, da schwaebisch sprechend, "wem" benutze, anstatt "wessen". Ich weiss, dass es hier ein paar Bayern gibt, vielleicht macht Ihr das ja auch. Wuerdet Ihr versuchen Euch umzustellen und "wessen" benutzen, oder soll sie es lernen wie der Rest der Schwaben es eben auch lernen muss.

Ganz auf Hochdeutsch will ich nicht umstellen, da ich finde, dass sie der Dialekt besser an meine Heimat bindet und sie damit auch sehr gut reinpassen, wenn wir Verwandte besuchen.

Noch eine Grammatikfrage. Kann man dieses Fragestellen (wer oder was, wessen,....) auch aufs Englische uebertragen? Im Dt. kann ich Nomen gut beugen, aber wenn wir das bei CW Homer tun sollen komme ich fast jedes Mal ins Schleudern.

 

Vielen Dank fuer Eure Gedanken,

[In The Great White North]

Dd tells me that although she believes wessen is correct (ie. High German), the area of Switzerland she was in used wem.

 

In English, it would be called a relative pronoun.

 

That's the girl, to whom I gave the book.

 

Here's a link with explanations:

 

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/645/01/

[Matryoshka]

It is a relative pronoun, but the genitive case roughly corresponds to the possessive in English - the translation of "wessen" would be "whose", never "whom" or "who". There's also "dessen" and "deren" which also translate to "whose" - you'd use "wessen" in the same places - does Schwäbisch also use dative (dem or der) in those places? Dative roughly corresponds to the indrect object. Ich habe ein ganzes Jahr im Schwarzwald gewohnt, und es gab Schwäbisch überall um mich herum, aber ich hab's nie richtig gelernt, weil die Familie mit der ich wohnte Ostpreußisch war. Ich kann aber ein bisschen Schwäbisch verstehen und hab in der Zeit eine schwäbische Akzent gehabt (zum Enzetzen meine Verwandten im Rheinland). Ich weiß, dass im viele Dialekten die Artiklen für die Nomen sich auch ändern, aber ich spreche nur Hochdeutsch. Mein deutsche Grammatik ist auch schon lange nicht Perfekt, aber meine größte schwäche sind die Adjektivendungen - so ich werd's versuchen.

 

Anyway, I think I can explain grammar better in my native tongue... :tongue_smilie:

 

So, a sentence with "wessen" would be:

"Ich bin nicht sicher, wessen Buch das ist"

(I'm not sure whose book that is)

 

I can't imagine putting "wem" there any more than using "whom" in the English sentence, but then English itself used to have all the cases German did and just happily did away with them, so language does that kind of thing all the time.

 

Examples with "dessen" and "deren" - (I admit to getting these examples out of my German in Review grammar text, as I wanted to make sure I got it right :))

 

Der Mann, dessen Hilfe du brauchst...

(The man whose help you need...)

 

Die Stadt, deren Bürgermeister...

(The city whose mayor...)

 

Wem in Hochdeutsch would be properly translated to English as "whom" (except where English speakers forget to use it, as we often forget or don't bother to and use "who" instead :D)

[Friederike in Persia]

"Ich bin nicht sicher wessen Buch das ist" wuerde ich auf Schwaebisch zu " Ich bin nicht sicher wem das Buch gehoert" umbauen.

 

But I would mainly do that when speaking, not when writing, since I write Hochdeutsch. DD reads a fair bit of German, so I was astounded that she didn't know what "wessen" means (we had a few rounds of "What do you not get?" and she'd say "Genitiv" and I'd go "Which bit do you not get?",....until she pinpointed it to "wessen"). Anyway, now she sort of does know. I'll try and throw it into my spoken German as well, though it's not that easy to change one's speach patterns.

 

If any Germans are reading, you get what I mean with the questions for finding out the case. Do you use that for English?

[momof165]

Friederike,

 

I know exactly what you mean. I have the same problem with my ds. I try to speak Hochdeutsch to him - but it's hard (just like you said) to change a habit - especially when the grandparents don't speak Hochdeutsch (one is from the Black Forest, the other one is from Franconia). Talk about dialect and major confusion on my son's part. :tongue_smilie:

 

Sonja in CO

[Matryoshka]

"Ich bin nicht sicher wessen Buch das ist" wuerde ich auf Schwaebisch zu " Ich bin nicht sicher wem das Buch gehoert" umbauen.

 

You can do the same in English, and it also changes it from a possessive to an indirect object (well, technically not since in English the object of a preposition is not considered an indirect object, but coming from a German perspective it's still Dative, so I still think of preposition forms such as "to him" as being another form of an indirect object. Just know not to label them that way in English. :D)

 

So, the first sentence would translate as "I'm not sure whose book that is." (where "whose" is possessive/genitive case) and the second to "I'm not sure to whom that book belongs" (where "to whom" is objective/dative case). I guess you could also say "I'm not sure whom that book belongs to." - then "whom" really is an indirect object, even in English - that latter is a prime example of where people would tend to use subjective "who" rather than objective "whom" in conversational English.

 

If any Germans are reading, you get what I mean with the questions for finding out the case. Do you use that for English?

 

Oh absolutely. I think that's one of the things that's made my English grammar so strong - if I can figure out the cases in German (and I'm still working on those &^* adjective endings - strong, weak, der-words, ein-words... AAAHHH!), then figuring out when to use subjective vs. objective pronouns in English (which seems utterly beyond many people :001_huh:) is stunningly easy. The key to figuring out sentences is asking questions and figuring out which words answer them. Easy Grammar I thought explained that fairly well when we did it last year.

[Friederike in Persia]

 

 

 

Oh absolutely. I think that's one of the things that's made my English grammar so strong - if I can figure out the cases in German (and I'm still working on those &^* adjective endings - strong, weak, der-words, ein-words... AAAHHH!), then figuring out when to use subjective vs. objective pronouns in English (which seems utterly beyond many people :001_huh:) is stunningly easy. The key to figuring out sentences is asking questions and figuring out which words answer them. Easy Grammar I thought explained that fairly well when we did it last year.

 

:confused: sorry I didn't get that paragraph. Are you a native German speaker who asks .... to figure out English cases? Do you use English questions to figure out German grammar? In either case I'd be interested, cause dh (native English speaker) really stuggles with German cases.

It was actually rather cute the other day, as dd and I were doing cases and I pointed out to her that her dad had to figure this out each time, before building a correct German sentence (not that he does, he tends to just bang any old ending on). She felt very sorry for him :001_huh: and I've heard her encourage him a few times since:lol:

[Friederike in Persia]

I couldn't read your post. My husband is a native speaker though. And my BIL teaches high school German (in Germany). If you have any more questions I could pass it along to my BIL.

 

I can't tell if you do because I can't read your post. LOL :D

 

You can PM me if you want me to ask him.

 

Thanks for the offer, but it's more of a questions for native German speakers, who are teaching their kids German and English on an equal level. Those are rare, but they do show up on this board sometimes.:001_smile:

 

Didn't you plan to learn German? How is it going?

[Matryoshka]

Oops, double post - read the next one. :D

Edited December 20, 2009 by matroyshka

[Matryoshka]

:confused: sorry I didn't get that paragraph. Are you a native German speaker who asks .... to figure out English cases? Do you use English questions to figure out German grammar? In either case I'd be interested, cause dh (native English speaker) really stuggles with German cases.

It was actually rather cute the other day, as dd and I were doing cases and I pointed out to her that her dad had to figure this out each time, before building a correct German sentence (not that he does, he tends to just bang any old ending on). She felt very sorry for him :001_huh: and I've heard her encourage him a few times since:lol:

 

:lol: I'm a native English speaker, but of German hertiage - my mom started teaching me German when I was young, and I spent a couple summers with my relatives there, and then after high school a whole year at Gymnasium among the Schwaben. :D When speaking, people think I'm a native speaker - guess it's easier to fudge those adjective endings when speaking than typing. :tongue_smilie: My kids go to German Saturday School, and I'm hoping to get them fully bilingual (well, trilingual, but the German's ahead of the Spanish at the moment). I sent one of my 11yo dds to Gymnasium in Koblenz for 6 weeks last spring.

 

About the questions to figure out cases - the thing is, it's the same questions! I can figure out German case itself fairly well on the fly, my biggest problem is that there's the three different genders on top of that. I tend to get the case right, but I may not be declining the right gender - since I'd have to have memorized every single noun with its gender, and well, I haven't. I did that with all my basic vocabulary, but I just kind of absorbed most of my vocabulary through reading and speaking, and I have to guess at gender.

 

The problem with the questions they teach native speakers (looking at the 5th grade grammar book for native speakers I was having my kids go through last summer) is that the German questions are recursive - they assume you already know what each case implies, and if you don't (because you're not native or if your dialect doesn't use that case), then you're hosed. :tongue_smilie:

 

So, to figure out if something is Nominative (subject case) in German, the question is Wer? or Was? - In English, who or what is doing the action?

 

For Accusative (direct object) the question is Wen? or Was? - "wen" being accuastive implies who or what the action is being performed upon.

 

For Dative (indirect object) the question is Wem? - which being itself dative also assumes knowledge that it implies "to whom" the action is being performed.

 

For Gentive (possessive) the question is Wessen? (lol) - which implies knowledge that you know wessen is itself possessive/genitive (which was what was throwing your dd for a loop) - whose is it - who does it belong to?

 

In English we require a whole phrase to ask the question that is just one word in German. :) So I guess I'm using the questions in English (with the phrases), but they do mean the same thing as the German questions.

 

The prepositional cases in German are of course a whole 'nother thing, but besides the obvious memorizing which prepositions take which case, they do tend to follow somewhat the case rules - does the preposition imply an action being performed directly upon the object, or indirectly, or are you implying possession? Although this doesn't follow completely logically or we'd all have a much easier time of it, lol.

 

So what I was getting at, is that if I can figure out German cases, then English is nothing! English grammar is just soooo easy in comparisoin!

 

There are additional questions you ask to figure out other parts of speech, like to figure out if it's an adjective or adverb - those should also be the same in either language.

Edited December 20, 2009 by matroyshka

[Friederike in Persia]

What an impressive post, thanks!!

 

So I've come to the conclusion that we'll stick with the recursive German questions, since my dc generally have a good enough feel for the cases and for English we'll go along with whatever Harvey (hopefully soon MCT) tell us to do. If they ever miraculously mesh we'll:party: