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I'd suggest discussions should be in either German or, since it's the lingua franca, English. If a translation from, say, Danish to German is wanted, using Danish is fine too, but the question should be summarized as good as possible in German or English so non-Danish speakers may have a chance at answering it. – deceze Aug 19 '10 at 9:36

To get in the mood, German summary of the above: Dies ist ein Vorschlag für eine Fragen- und Antwortenseite für Deutschlerner, Muttersprachler, welche Feinheiten der Sprache diskutieren wollen, und für Übersetzungen von allen Sprachen ins Deutsche. Fragen sollten in Deutsch oder ggf. Englisch gestellt werden. Fragen die sich spezifisch um eine andere Sprache im Zusammenhang mit Deutsch drehen sollten zumindest so gut es geht auf Deutsch oder Englisch zusammengefasst werden. – deceze Aug 19 '10 at 10:55

Germany has a very vivid online community, so you can be sure to get some native speaker's help. I'm really crossing fingers that this goes beta! :) – Franziska Mar 18 '11 at 11:54

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39 Example Questions (7 closed)

active newest votes

up vote 22 down vote

added by Pekka 웃 Aug 22 '10 at 9:21

up vote 21 down vote

added by deceze Aug 19 '10 at 8:59

Simply said: yes. – NoCanDo Aug 19 '10 at 18:58

Totally depends on context IMO. Kerl is close to the british "bloke" and does not always work for "guy". – Pekka 웃 Aug 21 '10 at 18:29

If someone actually asked this question, I would ask them to be more specific (I realize you only have a little space right now). I think what they really mean is to ask, "Is the usage the same?" – Mark C Sep 18 '10 at 2:24

up vote 21 down vote

added by Daniel Trebbien Aug 21 '10 at 0:34

Professorin, Doktorin, Frau, ...? – Daniel Trebbien Aug 21 '10 at 0:36

Frau Professor and Frau Doktor. – Pekka 웃 Aug 21 '10 at 18:32

And if she is both, she is "Fr. Prof. Dr." (in official documents with 'med.' added). We had a neighbor downstairs with that title on her incoming mail. – Mark C Sep 18 '10 at 2:41

up vote 20 down vote

added by deceze Aug 19 '10 at 9:01

	That may be a bad example word, but in general the question is nice. – mafutrct Aug 19 '10 at 15:24
	I am a native German speaker and I don't know that word. So that might answer that question :) – Plankalkül Aug 20 '10 at 15:57
	New to me :). I guess "Marienkäfer" is way more popular. – morfu Aug 22 '10 at 12:10

up vote 19 down vote

added by WikiSpeedia hang-around Aug 20 '10 at 19:05

up vote 12 down vote

added by morfu Aug 19 '10 at 16:45

wos für a ding? – herzmeister Aug 19 '10 at 22:12

Scheinbar nicht. :) – deceze Aug 19 '10 at 23:10

Absolut ja! Zumindest in Schwaben. – Pekka 웃 Aug 22 '10 at 9:28

Hier in Hamburg sagen alle nur Dom, daher mein Unwissenheit :). – morfu Aug 22 '10 at 12:05

"Dom" für "Kirmes"? Echt? – Pekka 웃 Aug 22 '10 at 13:39

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up vote 11 down vote

added by Stefano Palazzo Aug 19 '10 at 19:53

netzäser :P – Tobias Kienzler Aug 20 '10 at 14:39

There is none. Web Browser oder Webbrowser is the common word used in German. – Plankalkül Aug 20 '10 at 16:13

In Norway they use the equivalent of net + reader (Nettleser) so it could be Netzleser :-) – WikiSpeedia hang-around Aug 22 '10 at 13:44

Netzbrause. :-) – deceze Aug 24 '10 at 6:12

Ich glaube "Netzerkunder" wurde dereinst mal von den Deutschtümelfa-, äh -fetischisten vorgeschlagen. Aber des hätte wohl sowieso eher nur für den IE gegolten. :-> – herzmeister Aug 29 '10 at 18:08

show 1 more improvement suggestion

up vote 10 down vote

added by deceze Aug 19 '10 at 9:03

	Was ist ein trennbares verb? :) – Pekka 웃 Aug 19 '10 at 14:00
	@Pekka de.wiktionary.org/wiki/trennbares_Verb :) – deceze Aug 19 '10 at 14:52
	krankschreiben = krank + schreiben untergehen = unter + gehen ausgehen = gehen + aus fernsehen = fern + sehen – NoCanDo Aug 19 '10 at 19:00
	@NoCanDo Besseres Beispiel: krankschreiben → er schreibt gerne und oft krank – deceze Aug 20 '10 at 1:36
	Aha, merci! ---- – Pekka 웃 Aug 20 '10 at 7:08

up vote 6 down vote

added by Ivan Cherevko Aug 19 '10 at 20:29

Vot are zese Podcasts you are talking about? – Pekka 웃 Aug 21 '10 at 18:35

germangrammarpod.blogspot.com German Grammar Pod is a really good, if infrequent, guide to the finer points of Grammatik. Deutsche Welle also publishes a wealth of audio material which you may find useful. 'Deutsch - Warum nicht?' is good for beginners, and there are free audio files to download. Unfortunately, there's no podcast but you can certainly download and store the files in a music player. dw-world.de/dw/0,,2548,00.html They have a podcast/RSS feed attached to this page which contains short snippets of news articles with transcripts. – grw Aug 23 '10 at 15:49

pukkagerman.com – itsaboutcode Sep 10 '10 at 0:15

up vote 6 down vote

added by itsaboutcode Sep 9 '10 at 23:41

Here is what you should do: Always, always treat the article as part of the word. It's not "Apfel", it's "Der Apfel". After some practice you will see the problem should mostly go away. The trouble comes simply from ignoring the article as an "extra" item when learning the word, which is why you have trouble later. When you visualize the word, visualize the entire word, with the article. The articles should be treated just as much a part of the word as the other half. Train the brain! – Mark C Sep 18 '10 at 2:35

This is one of the hardest things for beginners (myself as well), and I think it is because they are not taught the proper way to do it. – Mark C Sep 18 '10 at 2:53

@Mark C I think you are right, if i try to remember the word with their article, it will be easy. Thanks, – itsaboutcode Sep 18 '10 at 8:11

You're welcome! (Bitte schön!) – Mark C Sep 18 '10 at 9:11

up vote 5 down vote

added by deceze Aug 19 '10 at 9:03

I guess we should stick to German - English translations. General consensus? – mafutrct Aug 19 '10 at 18:26

I think we should allow any-language-to-German translations, even if those have a lesser chance of getting answered. I wouldn't want to go via English for everything, since some translations and meanings are a lot easier between x and German than x > English and German. Say, a Dutch-German translation may be straight forward, but the question would lose half its meaning when trying to explain it in English. Japanese may be an extremely exotic example, but where else could you ask this question? Good luck trying to get a specialized German-Japanese forum off the ground. :) – deceze Aug 19 '10 at 23:00

In the interest of sticking to my own summarize-in-English rule though, I revised the question. – deceze Aug 19 '10 at 23:22

@deceze That's true, and while I can't bring myself to upvote this question I removed the "not a good example". – mafutrct Sep 12 '10 at 23:40

First of all, the question is unclear (and too long, but I realize you only have that space to work with at this point). "What's the grammatical form" is not clear and is also unnecessary here. "Imperative that..." is also not clear---is that a literal translation of the quoted phrase? Is it a grammatical term? If so, does "what's the grammatical form" mean "what's the translation of the grammatical term" or "what's the proper way to say"? The sentence could be read any of several ways. This kind of question needs some work. – Mark C Sep 18 '10 at 2:22

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up vote 4 down vote

added by Ivan Cherevko, edited by sth Aug 26 '10 at 21:43

Could you propose an example answer for this one as well? :) – deceze Aug 19 '10 at 23:06

deceze: /kəˈnœpflə/ should be very close: k as in "knish", ö as in 'øre' (which isn't much help i know, try a very old english 'over' that sort of thing), pfl as in "dropfall", and le as in «lè» (the short one, hard L). It's a regional, particularly south-western diminutive of 'der knopf', the button, exclusively non-formal. Sorry I know you just wanted to make fun of German, and for the very best of reasons :-) I just couldn't resist trying to explain. – Stefano Palazzo Aug 20 '10 at 2:22

@stefano No no, good explanation. I just wanted to see if and how this question could be answered to determine whether it makes sense on the site. Pronunciation questions are somewhat tough to answer in written form... :) – deceze Aug 20 '10 at 2:29

I expect many language buffs know some rudimentary IPA (hopefully not as rudimentary as mine). Of course it's intimidating to non-experts if everybody starts answering in funny glyphs. There is also an immense amount of audio samples available from various sources (such as leo.org). Come to think of it, maybe someone should create a service like twitpic for audio recorded from a users microphone. But, as I was saying, I don't think pronunciation questions will be prohibitively hard to answer. – Stefano Palazzo Aug 20 '10 at 2:41

Stefano, "language buffs" would probably not be asking how to pronounce that name. If they were, all you would have say is "like Knöpfe" but with a "le" ending. – Mark C Sep 18 '10 at 2:32

up vote 4 down vote

added by adolf garlic , edited by WikiSpeedia hang-around Sep 28 '10 at 14:08

up vote 4 down vote

added by Mark C Sep 18 '10 at 2:50

Example question. – Mark C Sep 18 '10 at 2:51

up vote 3 down vote

added by Pekka 웃, edited by WikiSpeedia hang-around Aug 22 '10 at 20:04

	Example: "Fünf" is pronounced like english "five" in some Swabian sub-dialects, and there are a few similarities in grammatical constructions. (This is probably a really dumb question in the eyes of a linguist, because there is not likely to be a connection, but who cares!) – Pekka 웃 Aug 22 '10 at 9:44
	In most cases (excluding imported words, of course!) the causality goes the other way---Old and Middle German affected English, and just image someone asking this question about regional accents in English. – Mark C Sep 18 '10 at 2:27

up vote 3 down vote

added by adolf garlic Aug 26 '10 at 17:46

e.g. schlimm vs schlecht and the implications of something being not schlimm, schlect – adolf garlic Sep 28 '10 at 16:32

up vote 3 down vote

added by herzmeister Aug 29 '10 at 18:14

	Ich hätte da eine Parallelfrage: Was bedeutet dieser Satz denn genau? :-3 – deceze Aug 29 '10 at 23:09
	I'd translate with "You're really looking smooth today." – herzmeister Aug 30 '10 at 7:45
	This is a great question, and I've asked myself the same thing for a long time. "fei" is schwäbisch only, correct? I know no similar construct in any other language. (Out of votes, sorry) – Pekka 웃 Aug 31 '10 at 14:29
	@Pekka nah, des sagn mir in bayern scho lang :-> – herzmeister Aug 31 '10 at 20:09
	@herzmeister interessant, das wußte ich nicht! – Pekka 웃 Sep 1 '10 at 17:43

show 3 more improvement suggestions

up vote 3 down vote

added by itsaboutcode, edited by WikiSpeedia hang-around Sep 28 '10 at 14:05

Good question, but out of votes. In case you actually want to know, I basically regard "im" as an extremely common abbreviation of "in dem" with reduced emphasis on the following word. – mafutrct Sep 12 '10 at 23:52

up vote 3 down vote

added by Mark C Sep 18 '10 at 2:51

up vote 2 down vote

added by Pekka 웃, edited by WikiSpeedia hang-around Aug 22 '10 at 20:05

Let's not mention "Dei Mudder sei Gsicht" for Suebian. :) – Pekka 웃 Aug 22 '10 at 9:46

up vote 2 down vote

added by Daniel Trebbien Aug 22 '10 at 19:33

I think this is a fair question to ask, but it depends on what the site's final vision is going to be. – Mark C Sep 18 '10 at 2:47

However, translation questions are much better taken over to the gloassary at proz.com/search . ProZ is where real translators meet to get mutual help and find clients. Remember, this site is mainly for people wanting to learn German. – Mark C Sep 18 '10 at 2:49

@Marc It's not necessarily "mainly for people who want to learn German." The description says otherwise. – deceze Sep 18 '10 at 4:58

up vote 2 down vote

added by adolf garlic , edited by WikiSpeedia hang-around Sep 28 '10 at 14:09

up vote 2 down vote

added by itsaboutcode, edited by WikiSpeedia hang-around Sep 28 '10 at 14:08

up vote 1 down vote

added by Mark C Sep 18 '10 at 2:55

Example question. – Mark C Sep 18 '10 at 2:55

up vote 1 down vote

added by swegi Oct 10 '10 at 7:54

up vote 0 down vote

added by WikiSpeedia hang-around Aug 20 '10 at 19:30

closed as off topic by Blake, fruight, swegi, bitmask, Ryan Berger Oct 21 '10 at 23:39

This question does not relate to the topic of the proposal.
It was closed as part of an automated migration of off-topic to close votes on September 29, 2011.

	(I may need some help with grammar, etc. Or just edit if you can.) – WikiSpeedia hang-around Aug 20 '10 at 19:31
	(Erich Fried: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Fried) – WikiSpeedia hang-around Aug 20 '10 at 19:31
	Ist Erich Fried's Gedicht "Es ist was es ist" (1983) außerhalb des deutschsprachigen Raums bekannt? – deceze Aug 20 '10 at 22:41
	This is a damn great poem. – Pekka 웃 Aug 20 '10 at 23:36
	@deceze: thanks. – WikiSpeedia hang-around Aug 20 '10 at 23:49

show 2 more improvement suggestions

up vote 0 down vote

added by Pekka 웃, edited by WikiSpeedia hang-around Aug 23 '10 at 7:52

	Hey, how do I translate "Herkunft"? What is the most fitting english word? – Pekka 웃 Aug 22 '10 at 9:30
	Why is this not a good example? – Pekka 웃 Aug 23 '10 at 16:58
	I think it's alright, but I have used up my votes already... – deceze Aug 24 '10 at 1:50

up vote 0 down vote

added by itsaboutcode, edited by WikiSpeedia hang-around Sep 28 '10 at 14:07

up vote 0 down vote

added by itsaboutcode, edited by WikiSpeedia hang-around Sep 28 '10 at 14:06

up vote 0 down vote

added by Fuxia Sep 19 '10 at 22:31

up vote 0 down vote

added by thebeav Sep 24 '10 at 17:20

up vote 0 down vote

added by adolf garlic , edited by WikiSpeedia hang-around Sep 28 '10 at 14:04

One of the unsolved riddles of humankind… BTW, here's a real ü if you need one: ü. :) – deceze Sep 28 '10 at 12:08

up vote 0 down vote

added by adolf garlic Sep 28 '10 at 11:58

up vote -1 down vote

added by deceze Aug 19 '10 at 9:06

closed as off topic by Ladybug Killer, qbi, mafutrct, Alex, Ivan Cherevko Aug 19 '10 at 20:30

This question does not relate to the topic of the proposal.
It was closed as part of an automated migration of off-topic to close votes on September 29, 2011.

Intended off-topic. – deceze Aug 19 '10 at 9:07

up vote -1 down vote

added by morfu Aug 19 '10 at 20:16

closed as off topic by Ivan Cherevko, Pekka 웃, qbi, Daniel Trebbien, deceze Aug 22 '10 at 10:30

This question does not relate to the topic of the proposal.
It was closed as part of an automated migration of off-topic to close votes on September 29, 2011.

	Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän, for obvious reasons :) – grw Aug 23 '10 at 15:51
	I want that as my job title :). – morfu Aug 23 '10 at 16:05
	Does nobody want to be a Teetassenuntersetzermustermalpinselgebrauchsanweisungsübersetzer? The whole industry will die if nobody steps up! – deceze Aug 24 '10 at 6:09

up vote -1 down vote

added by Ivan Cherevko Aug 19 '10 at 20:29

closed as off topic by sth, Blake, leoluk, Pekka 웃, deceze Aug 22 '10 at 5:46

This question does not relate to the topic of the proposal.
It was closed as part of an automated migration of off-topic to close votes on September 29, 2011.

Seems off-topic, since it doesn't have much to do with language. OTOH, I'm totally fine with entertaining some culture questions as well, especially since movies may be used to learn the language, too. Where to draw the line to real off-topic questions though? – deceze Aug 19 '10 at 23:09

I think culture is a key part of learning any language. Without culture, the point of learning the language is lost. It is important to draw a clear line, however; that will be a difficult problem. – StrixVaria Aug 21 '10 at 3:12

After giving it some more thought, the question as-is doesn't really belong here. I'd vote on-topic if you skewed the question a little more towards the language. Something along the lines of "good German films for students with good, natural German". – deceze Aug 21 '10 at 6:37

Let's vote off-topic on this one. Can somebody make another on-topic version of this question which is more language-oriented? I have used up my quota. :) – deceze Aug 22 '10 at 5:48

@deceze I added two. – Pekka 웃 Aug 22 '10 at 9:22

up vote -1 down vote

added by Blake Aug 21 '10 at 2:44

closed as off topic by deceze, Pekka 웃, Michael Konietzka, Ivan Cherevko, Daniel Trebbien Aug 22 '10 at 19:35

This question does not relate to the topic of the proposal.
It was closed as part of an automated migration of off-topic to close votes on September 29, 2011.

up vote -1 down vote

added by Blake Aug 21 '10 at 2:45

closed as off topic by deceze, Michael Konietzka, Marek, Tea Drinker, Dominik Aug 29 '10 at 1:52

This question does not relate to the topic of the proposal.
It was closed as part of an automated migration of off-topic to close votes on September 29, 2011.

up vote -7 down vote

added by Blake Aug 21 '10 at 2:43

closed as off topic by Pekka 웃, Michael Konietzka, Ivan Cherevko, Daniel Trebbien, Simiil Aug 23 '10 at 6:16

This question does not relate to the topic of the proposal.
It was closed as part of an automated migration of off-topic to close votes on September 29, 2011.

Sure! Please transfer €100 on my bank account. I will send you a translated version within 24 hours. :) Don't mind the Amazon.com package: I like to add it for style. – Pekka 웃 Aug 22 '10 at 13:40

Dear Sir, I am Mrs.Bianca Denis from Republic of Ghana. i am married to late Mr.Denis Minkah from Cote D'Ivoire. he was the executive accountant with the Ivory Coast ministry resources and energy. And during the period of our marriage we have only one son Andrew.Though this message might come to you as unexpected hence we have not meet before and the only means of communication is via internet and you are being contacted because of my condition here in the hospital in Cote D'Ivoire. [...] – Mark C Sep 18 '10 at 2:45