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From: J Wunsch <j@uriah.heep.sax.de>
Message-Id: <199603232256.XAA26069@uriah.heep.sax.de>
Subject: Re: cvs commit: ports/editors/bpatch/pkg COMMENT
To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 1996 23:56:17 +0100 (MET)
Cc: asami@cs.berkeley.edu
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.91.960323115242.1609E-100000@mramirez.sy.yale.edu> from "Marc Ramirez" at Mar 23, 96 02:11:02 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. ;-)

> Once I was in a bar in Germany and I got into an argument with some
> real-live Germans about the gender of Apfelmuss (it's neuter, btw. :). 

It's neutral?  Nope, it's actually maskulinum. :)

(Both are valid.)

> 			Verbs
> 
> 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.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)