Not really German here:
“Ich bin zuhaus(e)” -> “I’m home”
“Ich bin in der Bäckerei”, “Ich bin bei der Post”, “Ich bin bei den Großeltern” -> “I’m at the bakery”, I’m at the post office", “I’m at my grandparents place” (or “I’m with my grandparents”)
It must confuse English learners to hear phrases like, "I'm home", instead of "I am at home." We don't say I'm school, or I'm post office.
Submitted 6 months ago by ParabolicMotion@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
Small correction:
“Ich bin bei den Großeltern” → “I’m at my grandparents (or grandparents’)”
“I’m at my grandparents’ place” only exist as “I’m at my grandparents‘ house” → “Ich bin im Haus meiner Großeltern”
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Thank you.
Edited the comment :)
mister_monster@monero.town 6 months ago
Also “going to 'ospitol”
andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I’M A BUS.
BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
I read that it in Ralph Wiggums voice.
ben16w@lemmy.world 6 months ago
One of my favourites to think about is “How are you?”. Taken literally that question makes no sense. “How are you?” “Well one day my parents had sex and I sort of grew from there…”
flerp@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Home is a state of being in addition to a location.
Daft_ish@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well, tell them that home is more than just a location.
wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
Honey, I am at home!
nednobbins@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Only a little.
Every language has some set of rules to how your supposed to construct sentences. Every language has a ton of exceptions to those rules.
The main thing that makes English difficult is that it’s a kind of hybrid language. It’s in the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages but it borrows a ton of words from the Romance branch. The grammar is also a weird hybrid (for example we preserve grammatical gender in pronouns, like in German, but we’ve mostly dropped grammatical gender in nouns and articles, like in Chinese.
This is one of the simpler types of exceptions.
Consider the Chinese phrase: 好久不见 Litterally: “good time not see” But then someone explains that while 好 normally means “good” it can also mean “quite” or “alot”.
So it’s fairly easy to remember that it’s generally translated as, “long time no see”.Those steps are pretty simple for a Chinese learner to understand. It’s also not the hard part of learning a language.
owenfromcanada@lemmy.world 6 months ago
If home is where your heart is, and I have my honey’s heart, then saying “Honey, I’m home!” makes perfect sense.
Underwaterbob@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Absolutely. I’m an ESL teacher in Korea, and gettings my students to use prepositions properly is a significant portion of my job. The difference between something like “He is coming to you.” and “He is coming for you.” isn’t obvious at all if you think about it, but there are definitely proper and improper use cases for them.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This is a fun little bit of fluff on this subject- huffpost.com/…/35-confusing-things-about-the-engl…
A_A@lemmy.world 6 months ago
“I feel like fish” 🤣
fsr1967@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’m the law!
zueski@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I am away?
GnomeKat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
barsoap@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Similar irregularities exist in Standard German (e.g. “Ich steige Stefansplatz aus”, “I get off [at] Stefansplatz”, when say driving the bus), and there’s a whole sociolect that regularises it to also say “I’m going school”. And, no, the “that noun is an adjective now” explanation doesn’t really work in German.
Understanding those kinds of (usually informal) uses is trivial if you know the language, it’s using them like a native that’s difficult. Forget studying grammar they need to be learned by osmosis. Grammars linguists produce, even highly detailed ones, have a very hard time capturing the possibilities of what’s acceptable when playing around with the language.
yuri@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
There’s a song with the lyric “If you need us we’ll be backyard in our new tree fort” and it fucks with me that it sounds as okay as it does. Reckon it makes a little more sense when the place-word includes a relative direction, like in “upstairs” or “courtside”.
I have heard some gems in the wild though, like “Ima go run bathroom”.
TheOakTree@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Well, backyards are in the back of the house, so I figure that’s why it feels natural.
Whayle@kbin.social 6 months ago
An old I Love Lucy episode comes to mind, it's got to be tough! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZV40f0cXF4