Every language has some way of showing the function of nouns and pronouns within a given sentence. Some languages, such as modern English, rely heavily on word order and prepositions whereas other languages rely on declensions. Declensions are the changes that occur to the endings of articles, pronouns, possessives, adjectives, nouns etc. to show their function in a given sentence.  (Changes that occur to verbs are called conjugations).

Declensions in Modern English

Modern English has retained declensions mostly in pronouns only. Look what happens to the word “he” as it goes through its three manifestations for English as its function in the sentence changes from subject, to object to possessive.

1. He is a pilot.                     ‘He’ as subject-the person/thing doing the action

2. I see him.                          ‘Him’ as object-the person/thing receiving the action

3. His friend is here.          ‘His’ showing possession

Declensions in Modern German

German features one extra case to distinguish direct from indirect objects. Indirect objects receive an action indirectly; it shows to/for whom something is done. English relies on word order or prepositions to make this distinction.

Therefore, German has four cases in total each of which has been given a Latin name: subject = nominative case, direct object = accusative case, indirect object = dative case, possessive = genitive case.

1. Er ist Pilot.                        ‘Er’ as subject of the sentence.  = nominative

2. Ich sehe ihn.                    ‘Ihn’ as direct object                      = accusative

3. Ich gebe es ihm.             ‘Ihm’ as indirect object                = dative

4. Das Ei des Mannes.   ‘Des Mannes’ as the possessor   = genitive

The advantage of the case system found in German is more flexibility with word order:

Ich sehe ihn./Ihn sehe ich. = I see him.

Objects of Prepositions:

In German, nouns and pronouns can also become objects of specific prepositions forcing them into the accusative, dative or genitive case (the nominative does not have any prepositions) depending upon the preposition used. One must memorize with which case each of the prepositions is associated.

1. Ich lebe ohne einen Hund. = Accusative

2. Ich lebe mit einem Hund.   = Dative

List of Prepositions by Case:

Accusative

durch (through), entlang (along), ohne (without), um (around, at), gegen (against), für (for)

Dative

aus (from), ausser (except), bei (at, near), mit (with), nach (after), seit (since, for),  von (from, by), zu (to),  gegenüber (across from)

Two-Way 

These prepositions may be used with either the accusative or the dative case.  The accusative is used if there is motion from point A to B whereas the dative is used if there is no motion, or motion within a restricted area i.e. pacing back and forth.

in (into, in), über (over, above), an (to, onto, on), unter (under, below), auf (onto, on), vor (in front of), hinter (behind), zwischen (between), neben (next to)

Genitive 

trotz (despite), während (during), wegen (because of), (an)statt (instead of)

Speak: a short history of languages, was written by Tore Janson, a Swedish linguistics and language professor. The book uncovers the history of how the world’s languages have evolved over the years from prehistory through to modern day touching on the earliest civilizations of Africa, Asia and Europe. The book gives a good overview of the world’s large language groupings and explains how languages go from being spoken in small isolated areas, to becoming the majority or ‘big language’ of a large number of speakers.

I especially enjoyed Chapter 2 titled The Large Language Groups, which focuses on the histories of Germanic, Slavic, Romance and Bantu languages. The author describes how Bantu, a grouping of Southern African languages, was comprised of a number of scattered speakers as recently as 3000 years ago but with the development of farming there was a massive expansion in population and an increase in settlement throughout the southern half of the African continent. Currently there are about 180 million speakers of an approximate 300-600 Bantu languages of which only the major ones such as Swahili, Zulu and Xhosa are well known to outsiders.

In Chapter 11, How Languages Disappear, Janson discusses the various reasons why languages die out. The author makes a point of saying that most languages undergo a slow death rather than a rapid decline. Generally this occurs as over a number of generations another language comes to prominence in a given area, as knowledge of a more largely spoken language becomes more economically important. Globalization in general is causing large shifts in the use of language throughout the world with more and more people speaking one of the world’s major languages in addition to their local dialect. In future, these local dialects may be seen as unnecessary and die off as has happened with many indigenous languages around the world.

Currently there are between 6000 and 7000 languages in use globally, but Janson hypothesizes there may be as few as half as many within 100 years. He states, “the 60 largest languages, in terms of numbers of speakers, share more than 4 billion speakers among themselves. That is, about 1% of the [world’s] languages are used by about 75% of the speakers.” The breakdown of the number of languages per continent is roughly: Africa 30% of the world’s total with 2000 languages, the Americas at 15% with 1000 languages, Asia at 32% with 2200 languages, Europe at 3% with 230 languages, the Pacific at 19% with 1300 languages including the island of New Guinea with an estimated 1000 languages alone!

In the final chapters, the author hypothesizes what the language situation on earth may be in 200, 2000 or 2 million years. I have often wondered about the future of languages. No doubt, the English spoken far in the future will be nearly unrecognizable to today’s English as languages are always changing as long as they are in use. It is hard to visualize this as a learner or speaker of a modern language as the changes happen so slowly as to be easily overlooked in one or two generations. Nevertheless, if you pick up a book written a mere 200 years ago there will be a lot of grammatical structures and phrases unfamiliar to the modern speaker.

Of particular interest to me was the second chapter titled The 6000 Languages Develop into Clusters of Sublanguages. This chapter includes a treatment of the German language. With good humor the author explains how hard it was for him at times to communicate with German-speaking people in certain regions of Germany, even after having studied  standard German for a number of years.  This is due to the deep variance found between regional dialects and standard German or Hoch Deutsch. He  includes humorous examples of the comic strip Asterix and Obelix  to demonstrate his point. McWhorter makes the interesting argument that what is considered the standard form of a given language is somewhat arbitrary as someone unfamiliar with that language would not be able to distinguish between various dialects and what is accepted to be the standard form.

Another interesting topic of this book is language complexity. The overarching theme is that the more isolated a language is, the less speakers it has, and without the standardization writing brings, certain languages have developed to the point where it takes children until age 10 to be able to communicate in it on a basic level.  These kind of complexities are hard to imagine for those of us whose primary language is one of the world’s top 20 languages. The author specifically references Luo, a language of Kenya. It has over millennia developed an entirely different plural form of each noun! For example, singular for the word man is bawo and the plural men is bape. Another language, this time a Native American language, Pomo, uses prefixes to demonstrate remarkable precision. For example, da-represents “by pushing with the palm” and therefore dayol means “to fold in dry ingredients!”

In sum, for an interesting read on linguistics without the dryness sometimes found when reading on this topic I highly recommend The Power of Babel by John McWhorter. Another work of his entitled What Language is and What it Isn’t and What it Could be is also a great read. If you have any book recommendations on languages, linguistics or related topics please comment below.

When learning a new language there are always those words that you just can’t seem to keep straight. They generally look or sound similar to each other and lead to recurring confusion and frustration. Here is a sampling of a list of commonly confused words I have put together for the use of my students. Writing out sentences containing troublesome words is helpful, as is creating a special page in the vocabulary section of your study binder for your reference.

In Spanish:

si, sí, se, sé   –>  if, yes, himself, I know

hoy, hay   –>  today, there is/there are

la mujer, mejor, mayor   –>  woman/wife, better, older

nueve, nuevo, el novio   –>  nine, new, boyfriend

primero, el primo, primavera   –>  first, cousin, Spring

el papa, el papá, la papa  –> pope, daddy, potato

Example sentence                                                

“Yo no sé sí se levanta temprano.”

“I don’t know if he is getting himself up early.”

In German:

die Küche, kochen, der Kuchen  –>  kitchen, to cook, cake

das Gesicht, die Geschichte, das Geschenk, das Geschäft  –> face, story/history, gift, store

leben, lieben –>  to live, to love

gegessen, gesessen  –> eaten, sat

man, der Mann  –>  one, man

wen, wenn  –> whom, when

Example sentence

“Ich backe den Kuchen in der Küche.”

“I bake the cake in the kitchen.”

Both Spanish and German are gendered languages which means that inanimate objects are either male or female and in the case of German even neuter. However, gender in neither of these languages is totally arbitrary as in many cases the final letter or letters of the word can be a key indicator in determining its gender.  I strongly believe it is more effective to learn the following rules and their exceptions than it is to simply learn each word with its gender.

Native speaking children of these languages learn to recognize the following gender patterns and then learn the exceptions through exposure to the language. Similarly, native English speaking children at first form the past tense by simply adding -ed to every verb. Over time however they learn that while that is the general pattern there are irregularities.

Keeping in mind that the following are guidelines only and exceptions must be memorized independently, here are some useful tips for determining gender:

For German:

1. 45% of nouns are masculine, 35% feminine, and 20% neuter

2. Gender is determined by the final word in a compound word combination:

die Bahn = die Autobahn

• Generally masculine endings:             –el, -el, -er, –ling, -ig, -ich, -or, -us

• Generally feminine endings:               -e, -in, -ung, -schaft,  -heit, -keit, –ik, -tät, -tion

• Generally neuter endings:                   -chen,-lein,-um,-ett,-o,-ment

For Spanish:

• Generally feminine endings:               -a, -ción ,-sión, -d , -umbre
• Generally masculine endings:             -o, -or, -ón, -men

• The following are also masculine:      months, numbers, languages