Hello everyone,
and welcome to the second episode of our Grammay special. In this special, we go over the common grammar terms and look at what they actually stand for, where that comes from and we’ll also ask ourselves the question if we really need the stuff the particular term stands for. Like… do we really need grammatical gender, for instance? I’m sure most of you are thinking the same thing. And you might be right. But we won’t find out today, because before we look at gender, we’ll look at the thing that actually has the gender. So today, we’ll take a quick look at
the noun
The term noun comes from the Latin word nomen, and I’m sure many of you can guess which other word comes from that root … it is the word name.
In Latin, nomen meant both things, name and noun, and we can actually find noun in the more general sense of “naming things” in a few English verbs like to announce or to pronounce. And even though the term noun itself slowly shifted toward being a fancy grammar term, it didn’t change in its essence, because all that nouns are is basically just names people gave to objects and concepts within their reality.
“Yo fellow cavemen, what are are you drinking?”
“Don’t know… but everyone asks that, so I’ll call it what are.”
“Ahhhhh… nice. I’ll have some what are, too. “
And so the noun water was born.
***
What Nouns Are – Names for things
Nah, I am kidding of course, but there’s a bit of truth to that insofar as that nouns usually are not completely random names. So there’s a reason why people chose it. The noun beer for instance is most likely related to beverage and comes from the Latin verb for to drink.
But yeah, nouns basically represent the various “things” in our reality. So they’re essentially the counterpart to verbs in our language universe.
If you’ve read the article on verbs, you’ll probably remember that analogy – the universe is made up of energy and mass and we can find this duality reflected in languages. The verbs are names for action or energy. And the nouns, together with actual real names for people, are the names for mass.
Now, generally it is a good thing in life to at least sometimes ask yourself if your way of perceiving reality, your way of looking at the world is the only way (spoiler: it’s not). Not through a lens of what’s right or wrong or which way is better, but simply in a sense of what options there are. And this is especially helpful when learning a language, and that’s why, even though nouns seem to be such a basic building block of language, I think it’s worth asking ourselves the question… do we need them.
Do we need nouns?
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So everybody says that a Schildkröte is a “shield-toad” but how do we know it’s not a toad with an information sign
That is a very very very very legitimate question! And their shell does look like it has alien carvings on it.
Super good article as always :) and thank you so much for the membership, I’ll try to put it to work as best as I can !
Super :)!
Bad boy Emmanuel. You put the nouns up in the picture without their articles to let us know gender. There is NO POINT learning nouns WITHOUT their gender. Bad boy.
There’s no point in learning these nouns, imo ;). I left the article, so you wouldn’t even consider it :D
A clever excuse, Emmanuel. Aber eine kleine Flunkerei… If you were right, how would I sing Schubert? (Meine Laute hab ich gehängt an die Wand…)
I like the physics analogy! Very timely since I am taking physics at college right now.
I think you might have skipped a word in the section “ironically, it makes a lot of sense to focus on learning nouns”… Did you mean “not focus”? (I’m doubting myself since Elsa didn’t catch it!) In my experience it has worked quite well to focus on verbs first rather than nouns. Also, learning the alphabet (the names of the letters, not the pronunciation) is way overrated!
Do you suppose a language could work without negation, theoretically? Or are there any that already do?
Don’t doubt yourself!! You’re totally right. Oh man, how could I forget that, it’s quite crucial to the message. So yeah… one should NOT focus in nouns.
As for negation… that’s a REALLY interesting question. I never thought about this.
I think in theory, it’s quite easy. You’d just have to phrase any kind of negation as a “lack” or “difference”
– I miss beer.
This could easily mean “I don’t have beer.”
– I lack that thought.
– I think different.
This could be “I don’t think so.”
But I don’t think such a language actually exists.
Except start-up corpo speak of course. There are no problems, there are just solutions!!!
I wish to extend my heartfelt gratitude to all members who made it possible for me to learn German by sponsoring my membership
Thanking you for your kind gesture
Viv
I understand Danish dropped capitalization of nouns a few years ago. This would not surprise me at all, since they would not let Germany keep northern Schleswig…..(OK, non sequitar!)
I was pro uppercase already in kindergarden. Up-cay or out of the way, as we used to say…
That made me laugh out loud. Thank you.
p.s. English for Kindergarten is kindergarten.
I article brain. You thanks.
What I never understand about genders is how it works with pronouns when it’s not clear what noun is being referred to. E.g. is it wrong to say “Sie ist ein tolles Mädchen”? Should that be “Es ist ein tolles Mädchen”? Probably yes, but this is someone you’d normally refer to as a she because she is also eine Tochter/Schwester/Schulerin etc..
She could also be ein Mensch:
Deine Tochter, die (oder das?) ein tolles Mädchen ist, ist ein Mensch, der/die/das weiß, wer sie/es/er ist.
I think it just sounds clearer to a German. “Sie ist ein tolles Mädchen” is exactly right, as would be “Er ist eine gute Person.” Gender doesn’t have to line up between subject and predicate, since the point of the sentence is to say something about the subject (in this case, equating it with something).
To take the personal weirdness out of it: “Dieses Werkzeug ist der Hammer.” (see what I did there??) This equals that; they don’t have to match up in gender, because the equation is what you’re being told about.
So:
It’s a bit of a weird formulation, but grammatically pretty clear. The relative pronouns need to match in gender to link them to what they describe – if you don’t do that, you end up with real confusion (wait, what’s a great girl? who knows who what is?).
If church ever fires you, hit me up.
I just learned something too, from that explanation :)
Nice question.
I’d definitely prefer “sie” and “die”.
I wouldn’t even notice if it comes right after.
– Ich sehe das Mädchen. Sie spielt mit Autos.
Not sure if this is correct or not, a professional editor has to answer that, but people do talk that way.
I’ll use that example when we talk about Gender, I think.
Ermazzinngg! Danke, Emanuel! Your posts never cease to balance unique & interesting tidbits with a touch of hilarity.
Hahaha, danke :)!
Have you heard of Nicaraguan Sign Language? Where a bunch of deaf kids basically invented a language all on their own starting in the late 1970’s.
It has nouns and pronouns and they get marked for the subject, object, and topic. No prepositions, because the verbs show location and direction. There are words for “the” and “that”, but it isn’t clear if there are indefinite articles, from what I read. The vocabulary and grammar apparently started out simple and are getting more complex over time.
Just thought it was an interesting way to think about, what do we really need to talk about the world around us.
Incredible!
I’m actually curious for the first AI to develop its own language to talk to another AI.
Ich war in einem Café in Grenada Nicaragua wohin alle Mitarbeiter deaf war, und nur diese Sprache sprechen. Es gibt eine Karte mit all das was man sagen können will. Just point! Sie waren sehr nett. Cool Erinnerung!
Wow, das klingt echt interessant!!
Thank you very much for the membership I got for free
Wow, you are fast :). I just send you the email like five minutes ago!!
Hallo lieber Emanuel
Ich habe just deinen Artikel gelesen . Es ist immer eine immense Freude dir zu lesen, diesmal eine Lektüre voll von Philosophie der Deutschen Sprache . Das is nicht ein Spoiler ! Du liebst die Sprache und deine Leindenschaft is beeindruckend .
Bis bald
Freut mich, dass es dir gefallen hat :). Viele Grüße nach Paris.
Hello,
I’m the first typoerer to have seen your article today!
“And we’ve seen example how the line is blurry also in English” (And we’ve seen examples of how the line is blurry also in English)
“you’d note loads of names” (you’d notice loads of names)
“we refer to all these st”goal posts” (the st is surplus)
“Substantiv is Can’t tell you why” (substantive is… ???)
“So an englisch Sentence with german Spellingrules” (So an english Sentence – and of course you know English and German are capitalised in English, but that’s part of your example of how things differ)
“a german Sentence without upper Case Nouns looks about as shitty an English Sentence” (a german Sentence without uppercase Nouns looks about as shitty as an english Sentence – uppercase is just one word and is an adjective so it wouln’t be capitalised in German – I corrected the word “English” to germanise the sentence)
“can see right away what word are objects” (can see right away which words are objects)
By the way, your example about decluttering sentences:
“I beer stomach” reminded me of the way stomach can be used in English as a verb, e.g.
“I can’t stomach beer” (of course I can!)
Bis bald!
Capitalizing nouns in English is an interesting thing – like, I don’t perceive it as looking bad or wrong, necessarily, just maybe old-timey (it used to be quite common) or quirky.
That brings to mind a book recommendation: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. It’s written in the form of journal entries by the main character, who also capitalizes lots of his nouns. Really, really good (not just because of the capitalized Nouns).
That doesn’t happen to play in the town of Piran?!
No, it’d be a bit of a spoiler to talk about where it’s (mostly) set :D
Wow, that book is actually super new!
Protocol demands that I say “I’ll check it out” but the truth is that … I barely ever read anything :D. Still waiting for that spark to come :). It does sound interesting though, I checked out the Klappentext.
Ooh, neat, looks like I got a new book to read!
Haha it’s awesome, kept me up way too late a couple nights. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is fantastic too, if you haven’t read/heard of it.