Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden)

[David Kastrup]

Wols Lists <address@hidden> writes:

> On 20/05/15 18:18, David Kastrup wrote:
>> James <address@hidden> writes:
>> 
>>> However [English] is a very forgiving language, you can really mangle
>>> our sentence structure and we'll still know what you mean ;)
>> 
>> Uh no?
>> 
>> "The dog bites the man" has a different meaning from "The man bites the
>> dog" whereas in German "Der Hund beißt den Mann" and "Den Mann beißt der
>> Hund" have the same unambiguous meaning.  Star War's Yoda's speech
>> patterns would not be particularly distinctive in German.  "Den Mann zu
>> beißen der Hund sich nicht entbrechen konnte" is still almost pristine
>> even though "Den Mann zu beißen konnte der Hund sich nicht entbrechen"
>> would be slightly less archaic though not staggeringly so.
>> 
> Except you're doing a ghoti Bernard Shaw on our sentence structure.
> German declines its articles, so you can tell subject and object by
> article, in English we have to do it by position *relative to the verb*.
>
> "Bites the man the dog" is weird but unambiguous because we haven't
> messed up the declension rules.

"Beißt den Mann der Hund" is _also_ possible, but it is a setup.  It is
proper German when followed by a consequence: "Beißt den Mann der Hund,
gibt es Ärger."  It can be used as a standalone sentence in a story
setup as well.  While that is not really "proper German" but rather
Yiddish, it is commonly employed in German jokes (probably because
Germans don't have germane humour and consequently no high German joke
architecture): "Kommt ein Pferd in den Saloon.  Sagt der Barkeeper:"

-- 
David Kastrup