Tenses in German/English

As far as tenses are concerned, in German from what I know you can get by mainly by using the simple present i.e. 'ich mache' and the past perfect 'ich habe ...gemacht' (and occasionally 'ich werde'), whereas in English you have to decide a lot more between the progressive form and the difference between the simple past/past perfect/past progressive/future etc.

I know this is not absolute, there are times when you should use the simple past in German or maybe even say something like 'Er ist am schlafen' instead of 'Er schlaeft'. But still from my understanding you can get by reasonably well with the tenses mentioned above without being seen as not speaking correctly.

So, while all German's cases and endings are a bit of a headache, I find the main use of tenses in the language a blessing. You never have to think about it too much. And native German speakers who have been learning English for a long time still seem to find it hard to get this right completetly.

I wonder why people seem to think it is very important and difficult to get the inflections in a language right, but don't worry about when they might get a tense wrong, as we often hear from non-native speakers speaking English.

Oh and I am not talking about things like the subjunctive here.

You might be right about tenses in spoken German being more manageable than in English. In spoken German, the past peferct is often used instead of past simple.

The form 'Er ist am schlafen' is only dialectical, I think, not part of standard German.

Fredrik from Norway

Thanks for the reply. I agree, but why is German perceived as being far more difficult? You're just as likely to make a mistake in English i.e. if someone says 'Yesterday I have gone to my English class' as opposed to 'Yesterday I went to my English class' ( the latter is right). Is that worse than 'Gestern bin ich zu meiner Englisch Klasse gegangen' as opposed to 'Gestern bin ich zu meine Englisch Klasse gegangen'.

Sorry, if my inflection here is wrong, but I believe English in this sense doesn't need to be inflected, it's not an adjective, we're talking about a class teaching English, not an English class as such.

If I'm wrong, then yes indeed German I guess has its difficulties

Sorry, I meant whether Englisch in German should be inflected i.e. die Englisch Klasse, as opposed to die Englische Klasse. No, I know that's incorrect, we're not taking about the adjective English describing the class, but rather the class being about teaching English. so die ENGLISCH KLASSE I hope lol

Yes, making a tense mistake is often more serious than an inflection mistake, I would say, as a tense mistake often changes the meaning of the utterance.

You are perfectly right about "Englisch" not needing to be (wow, I sense I am making a tense mistake here?) inflected in this case. But on the other hand it has to, to as German "Klasse" can only refer to a group of people (or things), like a social class or a school class of pupils, not a lesson! So in this case you would have to inflect it, as the only logical variety is "eine Englische Klasse", a class of English pupils.

An Enlish lesson would in German be Englischunterricht, Englischstunde or Englischkurs.

<<The form 'Er ist am schlafen' is only dialectical, I think, not part of standard German.>>

Yes - it's the Rheinische Verlaufsform, as they call it round here (Nordrhein-Westfalen)

Ça serait pas plutôt <Er ist am *S*chlafen> ?

Hi Fredrik

I think I used a bad example of German inflection, since it was one I wasn't sure about, whereas there are many that I am sure about. I should have used something simple like 'Gestern bin ich in DIE Stadt gegangen' as opposed to 'Gestern bin ich in DER Stadt gegangen' to make my point. Never mind though, the example I used is interesting.

I did think we learnt that 'Klasse' could be used as a class or lesson, as in a class for teaching English. So I did think you could probably say 'die Englisch Klasse' meaning the same as 'die English Unterricht'.

But I have to say, it's been a long while since I studied any formal German grammar, so one does tend to forget lol

Anyway, Fredrick, I didn't see any mistakes as far as tenses are concerned, in what you wrote. Not sure where you thought you might have made a mistake, but from what you wrote (have written? lol) you could easily be a native speaker :)

Oh sorry, I know it's Fredrik, not Fredrick, my English brain seems to compel me to add the 'c' though hehe

According to my Duden Deutsches Wörterbuch, "Klasse" in an educational sense can only mean class of pupils, year/level in school (erste Klasse etc.), a class room or a university department, not a course.

Feel free to call me Fredrick, Friedrich, Federigo or whatever! I don't mind having my name translated.

Thanks Fredrik

Yes, I must have learnt that 'der Englischunterricht' or 'die Englischstunde' is correct. I think it's one of those instances where English and German seem similar, but actually the meanings aren't directly translatable i.e. the word for class, so that it is easy to get confused. Even if I had thought about 'Englischunterricht, I probably would have written it as two words i.e. Englisch Unterricht.

You Anglophones and your Worttrennung....
In Norway this trend is starting to penetrate Norwegian, which traditionally uses German-style Zusammenschreibung or a barrell (-). For most educated Norwegians "data maskin" instead of "datamaskin" (=computer) looks very wrong and it can also be misleading, as you can read it "(I) dated (a) machine!). Another example is "fiske kaker" instead of "fiskekaker" (=fish cakes - an integral part of the Norwegian cuisne), which also is misleading, as it can be read "(to) fish cakes".
An organisation, "Astronomer mot orddeling" = "Astronomers against word division" has been founded to fight it!
:-))

Fredrik

Why astronomers? Does that literally mean astronomers (i.e. those who study the universe) in English? Or am I missing something here?

Fredrik

I have now looked this up on Wikipedia and see that the organisation was founded by three astronomy students, hence the name :)