This is definitely something that has left me confused. My past comments have been replied to with the explanation that written German is so precise but verbal German, because of the lack of precise tenses, often leaves me having to make assumptions. I chalk it up to my elementary understanding of German, but you explaining the difference a bit helped me pin point what I mean.
I don’t know if I’d say I’m complaining, and I’m definitely not rating the languages against each other. But to be clear German also has variable pronunciation and loan-in words that are pronounced differently. They also have dialects and I have struggled to get consensus on several language related topics with small groups of native speakers before - so like… It is for sure random in many ways, including pronunciation.
Again, no issue with the language any more or less than others. I personally all wish we could like scientifically conlang our way into a less obtuse communication medium. But I’m also a DM so like of course I would like someone to make a conlang for humanity :D
Much appreciated. I’ll do my best! I want to be here for life, so I need to learn.
As someone learning German right now, I guess it’s hard to argue with relative terms but I find the German language to be built with a ton of traps and abnormalities for seemingly no explicable reason.
For instance we conjugate every verb but we maintain the subject, unlike in Spanish where we would conjugate and drop the subject. I don’t see any reason why we would do that except to make the language less efficient and more obtuse.
That being said, it hasn’t been too hard and I agree with the general sentiment that learning any language is a good hobby to have so I don’t want to discourage anyone.
Elon should not be welcome in the EU. He should be seen as antithetical to what the EU should be striving for and it’s common values.
Anyone who says this should be removed from politics because they’re clearly willing to make a deal with the devil if it means a quick influx of cash.
Guy works for Black Rock and then makes his main policies:
And then he talks about how people need to work more, as if he’s ever had a real job in his life or as if that’s some good marker for a person. A good man wants to improve society for everyone, and working more efficiently (aka less hours, not more) is improvement.
Merz is a classic conservative, he wants to make everything worse for everyone but the rich and wealthy and pretend it’s because he’s business savvy. He’ll sell this vision as necessary or for the economy or against the wave of invading foreigners, and all the while life will get worse for working Germans. For good people.
Don’t get fooled, Merz and the CDU are bad for Germany in the same way Trump and Republicans are bad for the US (or insert your local conservative party of choice).
Just attempting to understand what you wrote here, are you saying that German writing requires a massive number of references to past statements to be understood and that somehow makes it more precise?
As someone learning German right now, I can agree on complex but I’m not sure precise is very accurate. There seems to be a lot of assumptions based on context to know what one means. Maybe a more educated person could chime in, but I have not felt like the German language has made things more precise in communicating concepts (but full disclosure I’m at the A1 level going into A2).
That’s sorta my point, it shouldn’t be seen as a start. We can agree that the AfD would be an immediate loss, they would make things immediately worse and the country would very quickly decline for everyone but the elite who would be insulated from their own policies.
I need people in Germany to see the CDU as a slow loss, because they make things worse at a slower time scale, and the country will continue to decline under their guidance for everyone but the elite who will benefit from their policies.
The AfD losing is good. The CDU winning over the AfD winning is better. But both scenarios are still a loss, and they are the signals that the system is organically producing worse results and it’ll continue to increase the magnitude of those poor results until we improve the system.
The CDU should barely be considered a win in Germany. They pave the road that the AfD will walk down. Conservatives make everything worse and fascists thrive in poor conditions.
The future can and should be about getting better! That means more efficient, that means more money for more people for less work, that means less hours spent working.
Merz and conservatives want a worse future for you and your family and your kids. They want to enrich themselves and their friends while asking you to work yourself to death. Don’t vote against your self-interests, don’t vote in the AfD or those that inevitably bring them to power like the CDU.
Vote for progress, vote progressives.
Again, you’re defending him under the notion that the ~3 political parties in this coalition couldn’t produce a single other valid candidate from among them. That’s unbelievable and if true should be punished by the voters. There’s just no way 3 massive political parties contain zero candidates as willing and as qualified as Merz (if not exceedingly more so) and if all of them can’t put the country first instead of their ambitions (which is arguably evident already) then we deserve chaos at the government level. And quite frankly I don’t know how much better we are with CDU in power vs no one in power. For most policies I’d argue the CDU in power means a decline in quality of life for Germans not an improvement.
The AFD grows not because of chaos at the federal level but because of the decline in quality of life for Germans. CDU is not fixing that they’re worsening it. I think there’s a solid basis to challenge the notion that a CDU government ran by Merz is better than any other candidate within those three parties and even a basis for argument on the notion that Merz over no one is better. I think the CDU actively harm this country based on their actions.
So no, I don’t think I’m misinterpreting what you’re saying - that only Merz exists as a viable option. And yes I do believe you’re defending him on the basis that it’s him or the AfD growing and I think that’s incorrect. The AfD will grow regardless because he won’t improve things and arguably faster because as corporate taxes go down and public services lose funding, quality of living goes down and more people become amendable to radical change which by their nature centralist parties don’t propose. I’m not seeing a left party capitalize on this in the same way the right is, probably because the funding for facism/racism is larger than for wealth equality but that’s off topic.
Well your original comment translates to defending Merz. To answer your follow up question, I don’t know the names of individual politicians in the CDU as I’m still new to German politics and learning as fast as I can. But I have no doubt the CDU has a handful of less ambitious people who could strive to produce some form of centralist policies. Will any of them be good in an absolute sense? No, if Merkel was the best they could do then no. But could someone be relatively better than Merz, who from what I can see would sell his mother down the river for more power and money, yes - most likely.
Yes, really. My alternative would have been any progressive party and failing that any centralist party, and failing that the CDU with any centralist leader, but all of those failed and now we have Merz. He will damage the working class, exasperate the issues that promote the AFD, and he will normalize them. He is, and the CDU are, Republicans 20 years ago in the US. He will lead to Germany’s Trump and the decline of the standard of living for the common man.
Merz is bad for the working class and for Germany. Every day out of power is a good day for the world.
I think in the US we’ve seen a small rise in characters like Bernie pulling in new blood along the same ideological lines like AOC which didn’t feel present 20 years ago. I also think Obama’s tenure was sold to the public as a period of progress and change and I think in all actuality whatever good it did it wasn’t enough to steer the boat. To me that was the sign that the US was likely too far gone from a political standpoint to recover. BUT if there is a chance, I think the past 25 years have been a clear enough signal to me that things must drastically change for things to get meaningfully better. Trump is the dark side of that “drastic change” coin and we’ve yet to see what the good side looks like but I would argue the US is running out of time to figure out which side of the coin is going to come up the winner.
Britain is seeing a minor rise in Wealth Inequality awareness. I think that knowledge could be the exact anti-bodies the world needs distributed to reverse this course. In Europe wealth taxes, capital gains taxes, etc are higher than in the US but still not enough. Unions are also more prevalent, at least in Germany. I like to compare it by saying both the US and Germany are on the same graph of declining living standards and for the exact same reason, Germany is just a decade or two behind the US. We still have a lot of power in the hands of the people, but it seems to me that the media is still able to whip up 30-40% of the population into being conservative despite their best interests and something like another 30% being too moderate to make a difference.
Right now we have a conservative government, things will only get worse while they’re in power, but if the wealth disparity conversation continues anywhere in the world and billionaires are removed from the population, the entire world benefits. If the next progressive government enacts a tax plan like Die Linke’s or takes step to removing land lords from existence or provides a UBI I think the results will speak for themselves rather quickly.
It’s a big pendulum, right now in Germany and the US it’s swung to the right (yours further than ours) but it all comes down to how effective the left swing can be. Take hold of all the power you can at the local level, form a union, conquer the state level offices, and educate people. That’s the best advice I can give.
It buys us time to elect a party capable of making good changes. As long as a conservative or centralist government is in power I would agree with you that the root causes will not change, in fact with Friedrich Merz and the grand coalition things will get worse faster. But if we can buy the population some time not going fully into fascism we can hopefully point to the decline into fascism brought on by the CDU/SPD/FDP and elect politicians that actually care to serve Germans.
I think it’s important to treat the rise of fascism, the growing wealth inequality, the new wave of media, as a flu we have to fight but also get through. We need to build up anti-bodies against these things. That means taxing wealth, strengthening unions, breaking up monopolies, etc.
I find that relativity is one of the greatest frictions against doing better - and it’s frustrating for this reason. 5 years is better than most other countries. That’s true. Is that a good number though, or is it just better? That’s the actual conversation I want to have, and I think relativity ruins meaningful progress and improvement.
Eating bland, unseasoned chicken is better than eating raw chicken - but that doesn’t mean we should settle for it.
Just because other nations have antiquated and arguably bad citizenship requirements doesn’t mean we shouldn’t improve ours. And reversing progress is worse than being stagnant, and defending that is encouraging it imo.
This is fucking depressing to read. As someone who moved to Germany two years ago, gaining citizenship is important to us. When we moved here they were just announcing the expedited opportunity and we were stoked to know we were welcome in this country. It reinforced our decision. Now they look to take it away and although the 5 year plan will still exist, it signals clearly that the CDU don’t want highly educated immigration - they will blame immigrants while they raid the coffers of their country - and the SPD will gladly move further to the right if it means they get to stay in power.
This is incredibly disappointing. It’s not enough to change our plans, like if the AFD won, but I consider the grand coalition to be a “continued decline” coalition. If another country offered me and my family a guaranteed path to citizenship, with similar worker rights and benefits as Germany, we’d now have to consider it seriously. As aerospace engineers we’re not exactly struggling to find technical work.
Furthermore the fact that both parties considered revoking citizenship for any reason from anyone is unbelievably terrifying. If anyone’s citizenship can be removed, everyone’s citizenship can be removed and that’s something I completely disagree with. It’s dangerous territory and completely disgusting to read that the SPD considered it.
That’s how I felt/feel, but couldn’t/can’t refute a native speaker because I just don’t know enough. Thanks for the comments!