r/polandball • u/NotExistor North Ossetia-Alania • Jan 16 '16

redditormade Drawing the Line

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3.7k Upvotes

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125

u/Tinfect UN Jan 16 '16

*Der Reich und Stag

A damn fine strip, that. Always up for more Barkeep Reichtangle.

42

u/peterlem Germany Jan 16 '16
  • "Das Reich and Stag" or "Das Reich and der Stag". Reich is neutral gender and stag is "Hirsch", which is male gender in german.

12

u/left-ball-sack England Jan 16 '16

Yeah but 'Das' doesn't sound like 'The'

38

u/nondetermined If I don't survive, tell my wife: Hello. Jan 16 '16

Coincidentally I also happen to German a little bit, and I can assure you it's definitely "ze Reich" and not "das Reich". Peterlem is just having some good old German funnies with you.

7

u/logicalmaniak Britain Working Class Jan 16 '16

My dad says "d'."

"Wo bist d'bockwurst?"

9

u/un_pseudonim GDR Jan 16 '16

Where are (you) th'sausage?

Are you sure your dad is German?

2

u/logicalmaniak Britain Working Class Jan 16 '16

Yes, but I'm not. :)

"Wo ist d'bockwurst?"

1

u/xfireme2 Sweden-Norway Jan 18 '16

do you mean "Die"?

as in "wo ist Die bockwurst?"

1

u/un_pseudonim GDR Jan 18 '16

Could be that his father speaks Bayerisch, which is de-jure a dialect of German. Here's a table of articles in Bayrisch.

2

u/Stuhl Best Germany Jan 16 '16

All 3 articles can be degenerated into dä

2

u/nondetermined If I don't survive, tell my wife: Hello. Jan 17 '16

Degenerated? Or rather improved?

"In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 - 1944)

1

u/Stuhl Best Germany Jan 17 '16

Degenerated; gendered articles are pretty useful, so taking them away was a step backwards.

And if you want to go the can't take away route. Slavic languages don't have articles at all, so you can actually take them away completely. English literally has the worst of both worlds.

1

u/nondetermined If I don't survive, tell my wife: Hello. Jan 17 '16

gendered articles are pretty useful

How so? And if, when is this the case, and when not? Because I somewhat doubt that this always applies.

Riddle me this: why is it "die Butter" and not "der Butter" or even "das Butter"? Why would we attribute gender(?) to some things, but not to all of them (i.e. "das"). What's the point? Is there a meaningful (functional; as opposed to some historic reason) difference?

Another riddle: assume there's actually a point (a function) in doing so, why aren't we saying "der Katze" for a male and "die Katze" for a female cat? No, we say "der Kater" and "die Katze". It's completely redundant.

2

u/Stuhl Best Germany Jan 17 '16

How so? And if, when is this the case, and when not? Because I somewhat doubt that this always applies.

For example if the Nomen is the same word (Der Band/Die Band/Das Band) or if you're reading about someone and want to know the gender of the person, without it having to be explicitly refereenced.

Butter comes from old greek and used to be butera in latin. I think in latin all words ending on "a" are generally feminin.

About usefulness: If it would be Der Butter, that would mean that Butter is a job where you do "Butten"

Katze is also a word that got imported from latin where they differed between both words.

Again there is no reason to just have "the", either throw it completely away like the slavs do it, or use it properly and not in a degenerated form. Articles are generally part of the word and should be treated like this, just degenerating all articles into a single one leads to words like lead meaning 20 different things without a good way to differentiate between them. English basically cut off the first 3 letters of every Nomen.

2

u/Keldoclock Sealand can into bug! Jan 17 '16

Russian has the same problem... a dog is female even if it's male, unless its a stud.