Dragaera

A Linguistic Note

Mark A. Mandel thnidu at yahoo.com
Tue Dec 28 09:45:37 PST 2004

Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> asked:
> > Spelling is certainly painful in English - but have you ever tried to use
> > a comma correctly in German?

David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b at dd-b.net> wrote:
> Well, that's an interesting question.  I lived in Zurich in 1966-67,
> and then took 4 years of German in highschool (straight As), and then
> scored a perfect 800 on the SAT German Achievement test.  I don't
> recall that commas were particularly an issue in German, though.
> (I've hardly touched it since, so I'm sure I don't have it all
> straight *now*.)

It's not particularly complicated, but it's different than in English, and it
requires some understanding of grammar. If you don't grok clauses, you can't do
it right.

-- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian,
   Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody
   a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel


		
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