Date: Mon, 25 Mar 96 11:28:43 MET From: Greg Lehey <lehey.pad@sni.de> To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org, asami@cs.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: cvs commit: ports/editors/bpatch/pkg COMMENT Message-ID: <199603251031.LAA01533@nixpbe.pdb.sni.de> In-Reply-To: <199603232256.XAA26069@uriah.heep.sax.de>; from "J Wunsch" at Mar 23, 96 11:56 pm
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> As Marc Ramirez wrote: > >> Off the top of my head: >> >> Nouns >> >> English German >> nom-sng the heart der Knopf >> nom-plu the hearts die Knopfen > die Knöpfe >> acc-sng the heart den Knopf >> acc-plu the hearts die Knopfen > die Knöpfe >> dat-sng the heart dem Knopf >> dat-plu the hearts den Knopfen > den Knöpfen >> gen-sng the heart's des Knopfes >> gen-plu the hearts' der Knopfen > der Knöpfe > > Ya'know, we're proud of our umlauts. ;-) Even without, it's good to know the correct spelling (if you don't have an Umlaut, don't just replace Knöpfe with Knopfe; write Knoepfe instead). >> English has four forms for weak verbs (walk, walks, walked, walking) while > > ... > > The worst English has in this field is that its irregular verbs are > being used in about 50 % of all verbs (my rough estimation). > > German is only slightly better, it's also proud of a long list of > irregular verbs. I assume that, in both cases, you're talking about strong verbs. There aren't very many irregular verbs in German. Even the verbs for 'to be' aren't overly irregular, they're just multiple and incomplete (reduced to the (frequently non-existant) infinitive, they are sein, wesen, and bien). Greg
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