CodeOptimist Posted February 21, 2004 Share Posted February 21, 2004 I've noticed that, generally, native Dutch/German people will add a space at the end of a sentance that's ending with an exclamation or question mark.For example - Great !Are you sure ?Compared to "traditional" American:Great!Are you sure?I've been curious about this for a while. Anyone care to enlighten me? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Tutankhamun Posted February 21, 2004 Share Posted February 21, 2004 Interesting, never noticed that. I don't know why. Maybe in learning 'traditional' American they are over overly neat in grammar and add too many commas or spaces in that case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam Posted February 21, 2004 Share Posted February 21, 2004 Thats kind of weird because I just noticed this today while I was reading something by Tim. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MAT Posted February 21, 2004 Share Posted February 21, 2004 Hmmmm.... I'm german. It is unusual to do that. In the german part of the usenet this (using unnecessary spaces) has a specific term. Is called 'plenken' and undesirable. You will also never see this in german books. It's just a mistake like using the ' in wrong places as in 'Fritz's Schuhe'. Usually the ' stands for 1 or more omitted characters. The right diction is 'Fritzs Schuhe'. Unfortunately the number of people writing wrong german is growing. Btw.: I've never learned 'traditional' American. Just English RegardsMAT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkAngelBGE Posted February 21, 2004 Share Posted February 21, 2004 Well I often use it when I form a non-question, but want to show that I care for other opinions..like:I think we better want to do this and that(.) ?Hope that makes sense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Night Hawk Posted February 21, 2004 Share Posted February 21, 2004 I'm dutch but I don't do it that way, as far as I know "Great !" etc. is wrong Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CodeOptimist Posted February 21, 2004 Author Share Posted February 21, 2004 Yeah, I guess saying "Dutch/German" people is too specific. I have just noticed it with people who are natively German (Tim, for instance ), and Dutch.RE: "Traditional" American: I meant "how I've always seen it" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Night Hawk Posted February 21, 2004 Share Posted February 21, 2004 atleast it's not common here, problebly depends on the person you talking to Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curufinwe Posted February 21, 2004 Share Posted February 21, 2004 I may have an answer ... as a French man using Microsoft Word, when I type "Bonjour?" , the software tells me that I should type "Bonjour !"As a matter of fact, that is common French punctuation. I guess it might be the same in German ... though I am not fully sure!Just a habit of reading in our own own language Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klaas Posted February 21, 2004 Share Posted February 21, 2004 Lol, I'm Flemish (so I also speak Dutch) and haven't seen Dutch/German people doing it more than anyone else. Can't be because we aren't trained well enough in our spelling. Dutch is such a hard language in terms of grammar that we're trained very severely in it. I bet some Dutch people know the dt-mistake, if you would make one like that in an essay you'll loose 25% of your marks for each one, so four of those = 0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZeZar Posted February 21, 2004 Share Posted February 21, 2004 Well, we got Curufinwe... He does it too (and i have started a bit). But Curu is from France though Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akya Posted February 21, 2004 Share Posted February 21, 2004 I'm a french Canadian and we were always told to add a space before ? or ! when we write on the computer (whether in french or in english)... makes it clearer I think So I didn't notice that...interesting fact Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CodeOptimist Posted February 21, 2004 Author Share Posted February 21, 2004 Oh, ok, so maybe it's French that is influencing the extra space then. Curiousity satisfied Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klaas Posted February 22, 2004 Share Posted February 22, 2004 Yeah after thinking a while that's possible. Well if you've seen Dutch speaking people doing it it could be Belgians because of our bilinguality (hope that's an existing word ) (dutch-french). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Prophet Posted February 25, 2004 Share Posted February 25, 2004 I dont care what ya say about the german's I will always love the country. (You guys should really consider going. It was very fun for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Tutankhamun Posted February 25, 2004 Share Posted February 25, 2004 It dose sound like lots of fun to go there. Maybe during summer I will buy some German Language Software, so I could try to learn it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kor Posted February 25, 2004 Share Posted February 25, 2004 Afaik it's not done in German nor in Dutch, however I did notice that Tim does it, but I think he's the exception rather than the rule in this case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Tutankhamun Posted March 6, 2004 Share Posted March 6, 2004 Another thing I noticed is that some Europeans replace the '.' with a ',' in decimals. I also saw it in some screenshots from some other country, it was 2,54 instead of 2.54 . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caedus Posted March 6, 2004 Share Posted March 6, 2004 That's right. Europeans use the , as a . and the . as a ,. Is that clear ?So 10.02 (American) would be 10,02 in Europe. And 10,000 (10000) can be written as 10.000 here (10000). It comes from the time, that the Americans fought themselves free from the Britons. They wanted to show they were their own boss, so they exchanged the , and the ..It is the same with driving left or right. Napoleon made a law that said all people should drive right. The English though "He is a idiot, but that idea isn't that bad." so they imitated it, but they changed it to driving left, to show their independance. So guess what happened when America gained independance ? They changed it to driving right, because they hated the English then.I think it is about time to generalise all standards globally. Same with measurements (meters, foot).And about the "space" thing. It's computerlanguage I guess. I'm Dutch and it is standard to put the . or ! or ? at the end of a sentence without a space. However, when one is typing, you must remember that after each word, you would automatically place a space, so it could be a "blind-typing" issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
av_nefardec Posted March 7, 2004 Share Posted March 7, 2004 The right diction is 'Fritzs Schuhe'.That's the way I was always taught German :/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sukkit Posted March 8, 2004 Share Posted March 8, 2004 At least in Spain we use ' instead of , (or .).^^This is rather confusing, so I'll use an example:3'712.584 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klaas Posted March 8, 2004 Share Posted March 8, 2004 The English though "He is a idiot, but that idea isn't that bad." so they imitated it, but they changed it to driving left, to show their independance.What I heard is it depended where they sat on the carriage. If they sat left it was standardized to driving left because then you couldn't hit the pedestrians with your whip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rohirwine Posted March 8, 2004 Share Posted March 8, 2004 Moreover Napoleon could make that law only "after" the American Indipendence War, even if France and the U.S. were allied for most of the napoleonic wars period... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caedus Posted March 8, 2004 Share Posted March 8, 2004 Moreover Napoleon could make that law only "after" the American Indipendence War, even if France and the U.S. were allied for most of the napoleonic wars period... Why could he only make that law after that war?@Klaas: that's what I was thaught, so blame my history teacher for that. Anyway, it could be because of both that reasons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rohirwine Posted March 8, 2004 Share Posted March 8, 2004 Moreover Napoleon could make that law only "after" the American Indipendence War, even if France and the U.S. were allied for most of the napoleonic wars period... Why could he only make that law after that war?@Klaas: that's what I was thaught, so blame my history teacher for that. Anyway, it could be because of both that reasons. Because the American Independence wars were fought starting from 1774 to 1777 (IIRC), wether Napoleon siezed power in 1799: in 1777 he was pretty young. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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