Cath recently linked to this amazing poem about all those English words that look so similar and sounds so different (on Facebook). As a language geek, I obviously loved it. But now I want a native speaker to read it to me with proper pronunciation, and to explain me all the words I didn’t know.
Cath hat vor kurzem dieses tolle Gedicht mit all den englischen Wörtern, die zwar ähnlich aussehen, aber ganz anders ausgesprochen werden, verlinkt (auf Facebook). Mit meinem Faible für sprachliche Seltsamkeiten hat mir das natürlich gleich gefallen. Aber jetzt hätte ich gern einen Muttersprachler*, der mir das alles richtig vorliest und mir all die Wörter erklärt, die ich dann doch nicht kannte…
* oder natürlich eine Muttersprachlerin. Manchmal ist deutsch eben auch kompliziert.
Wasn’t it great?! So cleverly done.
I could try a recital, but not until this cough clears up, otherwise it would be most unpleasant for all. (Actually, I’m not even sure about all of the pronunciations myself, but I can infer most of the unknown ones from the rhyme structures).
Oh that’s great! I’d love to hear you recite it, Cath! In English-English, no less. :)
I recently had reason to look at the websites of some German colleagues. Some of the pages had English versions or were even written in English initially, but I had to translate some others. I used Google Translate, which seemed to do a decent job. Today I decided to see what it returns for your German text. In some cases it’s very similar to the English version you wrote, and in others it gives a very strange translation. The one about the fireworks is particularly odd.
Mistakes aside, it’s pretty amazing that you can get an instant translation of text to/from >50 languages!
Cath, I’d love to hear that, too!
EGF, it’s true that the automatic translation can work pretty well, if construction and meaning of the sentences are straightforward. But as soon as you leave that area… I just tried the fireworks post, and the result is odd indeed, though I cannot quite see why. My translations are not necessarily literal — sometimes I add notes that only make sense in one language or the other, and I tend to rely on the fact that I know what I want to say… ;)
I think I found it: “Daumen drücken” means “fingers crossed”, but apparently Google doesn’t know that and uses the literal translation, “press thumbs”. Why it does not know that “Feuerwerk” is a firework is beyond me though.
that was exhausting! and i am not sure on a few!!!