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Subject: Re: cvs commit: ports/editors/bpatch/pkg COMMENT
To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 96 11:28:43 MET
From: Greg Lehey <lehey.pad@sni.de>
Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org, asami@cs.berkeley.edu
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