Month: March 2021

German adjective inflections demystified

I see lots of people still struggle with the German adjectives and especially the fact that there are three tables, one for each of definite articles, indefinite articles and when there’s no article, for 48 separate inflections.

Image
The German inflection table with the cases in the wrong order.
The correct order is: nom./gen./dat./acc.

It looks pretty intimidating and back in school my brain refused to do learn this. I crammed it for a test, immediately forgot it after and German classes turned into agony.

There are various mnemonics going around to make the table easier but I’m not in favor of rote memorization if there’s also a logic behind something. As with all language, the entire thing is based on the principle of energy conversation while maintaining essential information and harmony. That’s my non-linguist intuition. Linguists feel free to chime in.

The entire table can be boiled down to five rules.

  • Definite nom./acc. singular: all -e (because a definite article has all the information and is leading, so no further decoration or information required on the adjective) except for masc. acc. which is -en (because acc always has -en and it sounds weird without it)
  • Indefinite nom./acc. singular: all congruent with the article: einer guter Mann, für einen guten Mann, eine gute Frau, für eine gute Frau etc. (because the article still has all the information but it is weaker/indefinite so the adjective helps out)
  • Definite and indefinite gen./dat. singular: all -en (all the information is in the article so no need to repeat it but good to have some differentiation from the nom./acc. cases)
  • Definite and indefinite plural: all -en (because it’s plural)
  • No article: the adjectives take the endings that would normally have been carried by the article (because there is no article and otherwise the case information would not be there) except for masc./neut. gen. where the -s is on the noun

That’s it. I hope this adds some logic to something that otherwise feels totally random for German learners.

With practice you can look these inflections up in your head and with even more practice, anytime somebody uses the wrong inflection, it starts to sound wrong (that lack of harmony), just like it would to a native speaker.

Marijn Bolhuis sums up the devastating effects that a decade of Rutte government has in the Netherlands but people keep electing him. It follows from this that Dutch people are a bunch of piggies.

Taken from the title of Chinese sci-fi writer Liu Cixin’s 2008 book, “the dark forest” region of the web is becoming increasingly important as a space of online communication for users of all ages and political persuasions. In part, this is because it is less sociologically stressful than the clearnet zone, where one is subject to peer, employer, and state exposure. It also now includes Discord servers, paid newsletters (e.g., Substack), encrypted group messaging (via Telegram, etc.), gaming communities, podcasts, and other off-clearnet message board forums and social media. One forages for content or shares in what others in the community have retrieved rather than accepting whatever the platform algorithms happen to match to your data profile.
Additionally, dark forest spaces are both minimally and straightforwardly commercial. There is typically a small charge for entry, but once you are in, you are free to act and speak without the platform nudging your behavior or extracting further value. It is also interesting to keep in mind that the dark forest shares the same cables and satellite arrays as clearnet channels, is accessed via the same devices, and essentially all of its denizens continue to simultaneously participate in clearnet spaces (as contemporary professional protocol demands). It is therefore not analogous to legacy countercultural notions of going off-grid or “dropping out.”


https://www.documentjournal.com/2021/01/the-internet-didnt-kill-counterculture-you-just-wont-find-it-on-instagram/

A strong overview of the various considerations around going back to the office that will help a lot of companies who stand to make this decision right now. Particularly interesting how the German lagging context will deal with it and what consequences it will have on the commercial property markets.

http://blog.eladgil.com/2021/03/back-to-office.html

But on the other hand, it becomes a society where all the assets are in the hands of one group of people. And that group of people transmits these assets to the next generation. So I think it becomes a very interesting question, to ask whether current trends might not lead to an even more segmented and stratified society than the one we have now.


https://jacobinmag.com/2021/02/global-capitalism-inequality-branko-milanovic-interview