Today's German exercise
Jul. 13th, 2004 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperLet's see if I can make it to the end of this paragraph about Gandalf, shall we? Slowly but surely, I'll put a dent in this thing yet by the end of the year. ;) Sort of like trying to write my own novel. This is oddly similarly paced!
Reading my way through this paragraph, I see a whole bunch of usages of what![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kriski calls the Konjunctiv. In fact, this has been scattered all over the initial pages of this book--just because these sorts of constructions are all over Tolkien, so the translator gets to inherit them.
But. Hrmm. I just hit a wall trying to parse stuff, so I think it's time to stop!
alldem: This is confusing me a little. The relevant fragment is und ich habe nur sehr wenig gehört von alldem, was es da zu hören gab. I break this down as "and I have heard only very little of all there was to hear about him". alldem seems to be a sort of compound construction; it's not in my dictionary. (For that matter, I'm also confused by es ... gab in this fragment, not because of the meaning, but because it seems to switch to past tense if I understand it correctly. The English text doesn't do that--it says "and I have heard only very little of all there is to hear".)
auch: OH. I know this word from days of old, so by itself it wasn't a problem. I know this is "also". But taken in context I couldn't figure out what purpose it was serving in the sentence because it didn't seem to make sense. What I have here is Wenn ihr auch nur ein Viertel von dem gehört hättet, and I was parsing this as "if you also had heard only a quarter about him". That didn't feel right. Then I realized that auch has a usage of auch wenn in my dictionary, and suddenly I got "Even if you had heard only a quarter about him". Which makes much more sense.
bestimmt: This looks like the adjective form of bestimmen in context, rather than a verb. Certain, definite.
dem: See the fragment quoted above for auch. This threw me, because I was trying to figure out why an article was being used there. But then I read a little further in the dictionary and saw that dem can, in fact, be used as a pronoun! So "him" makes sense in the reading.
Geschichten: Stories. Dative case plural, I figure.
höchst: Highest.
ihr ... gehört hättet: This seems to be the conditional pluperfect tense, second person formal, for hören. Taken with wenn, it's saying "if you had heard".
über: This is another word I knew already used in a way with which I was previously unfamiliar. I hadn't known über could be used to mean "about"! I do now.
verwunderlich(e): Surprising. The fragment this appears in is so würdet ihr bestimmt höchst verwunderliche Geschichten erwarten, and I read this as "so would you certainly expect most surprising stories". Or perhaps, less literally, "you would certainly expect most surprising stories." The equivalent English text is "you would be prepared for any sort of remarkable tale".
ein Viertel:Quarter. I was pretty sure that was what this meant even though I had to look it up to verify.
wenn: Having just had this come up in the thread from yesterday, I'm pretty sure this would be "if". *doublechecks dictionary* Yes! But it can also be "when". "If" makes better sense in context, though.
würdet ihr ... erwarten: Conditional present tense, and again, second person, formal. "Would you ... expect/wait for/anticipate".
Reading my way through this paragraph, I see a whole bunch of usages of what
kriski calls the Konjunctiv. In fact, this has been scattered all over the initial pages of this book--just because these sorts of constructions are all over Tolkien, so the translator gets to inherit them.But. Hrmm. I just hit a wall trying to parse stuff, so I think it's time to stop!
alldem: This is confusing me a little. The relevant fragment is und ich habe nur sehr wenig gehört von alldem, was es da zu hören gab. I break this down as "and I have heard only very little of all there was to hear about him". alldem seems to be a sort of compound construction; it's not in my dictionary. (For that matter, I'm also confused by es ... gab in this fragment, not because of the meaning, but because it seems to switch to past tense if I understand it correctly. The English text doesn't do that--it says "and I have heard only very little of all there is to hear".)
auch: OH. I know this word from days of old, so by itself it wasn't a problem. I know this is "also". But taken in context I couldn't figure out what purpose it was serving in the sentence because it didn't seem to make sense. What I have here is Wenn ihr auch nur ein Viertel von dem gehört hättet, and I was parsing this as "if you also had heard only a quarter about him". That didn't feel right. Then I realized that auch has a usage of auch wenn in my dictionary, and suddenly I got "Even if you had heard only a quarter about him". Which makes much more sense.
bestimmt: This looks like the adjective form of bestimmen in context, rather than a verb. Certain, definite.
dem: See the fragment quoted above for auch. This threw me, because I was trying to figure out why an article was being used there. But then I read a little further in the dictionary and saw that dem can, in fact, be used as a pronoun! So "him" makes sense in the reading.
Geschichten: Stories. Dative case plural, I figure.
höchst: Highest.
ihr ... gehört hättet: This seems to be the conditional pluperfect tense, second person formal, for hören. Taken with wenn, it's saying "if you had heard".
über: This is another word I knew already used in a way with which I was previously unfamiliar. I hadn't known über could be used to mean "about"! I do now.
verwunderlich(e): Surprising. The fragment this appears in is so würdet ihr bestimmt höchst verwunderliche Geschichten erwarten, and I read this as "so would you certainly expect most surprising stories". Or perhaps, less literally, "you would certainly expect most surprising stories." The equivalent English text is "you would be prepared for any sort of remarkable tale".
ein Viertel:Quarter. I was pretty sure that was what this meant even though I had to look it up to verify.
wenn: Having just had this come up in the thread from yesterday, I'm pretty sure this would be "if". *doublechecks dictionary* Yes! But it can also be "when". "If" makes better sense in context, though.
würdet ihr ... erwarten: Conditional present tense, and again, second person, formal. "Would you ... expect/wait for/anticipate".