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As an English speaker, what confuses me about languages like Spanish/French/German is articles like "of" are often not very consistent. For instance, take something like The Lord of the Rings and the third book/movie "The Return of the King". In other languages its:
Spanish: El retorno del Rey
French: Le Retour du Roi
German: Die Rückkehr des Königs
In French "du" can mean just "Of", in German "des" can make just "of". In Spanish I guess "del" is pretty solidly "of the" though. But I dont understand why the word "the" can just be left out. In these languages is the article "the" just often not seen as necessary?
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I'm pretty sure de le turns into du for french
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'Des' just means 'of the'. Or more precisely, 'des' means 'the' but the grammatical case it's used in (gentive) is possessive showing that it is the King's return. So neither 'the' nor 'of' are "missing" exactly. They're just subsumed into a single word and the grammatical case.
t. German learner
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context? king is a big figure so you might not need a definitive article to make it apparent its not just any king but rather the return of a specific king. at least thats how it works in languages without articles.
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del is a contraction of de el, so the is already implied there
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>>78585103
This
If it was the queen then it's "de la Reine"
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What's the difference between "the King's return" and "the return of the King"? Seems like it's the same
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>>78585480
Emphasis I'd say. In the first one, you're emphasizing the king while the second emphasizes his return.
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Another random question: in German, "game developer" is "Spieleentwickler", because "spiel" means game and "entwickler" means developer. But why the extra "e" in there? Do most german words, when combining nouns, add extra letters? For what purpose, simply to aid in pronunciation?
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>>78585691
>Do most german words, when combining nouns, add extra letters? For what purpose, simply to aid in pronunciation?
Yes. Ex: Black-haired => Schwarzehaarig. Schwarz is black and haarig is haired. 'e' in between for readability/pronunciation.
Not all do it though. Fire Goblet/Goblet of Fire => Feuerkelch (Feuer + Kelch).
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>>78585767
That seems confusing as fuck
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>>78585767
But this is what really confuses me. Why not kelch des feuer? Surely that is somewhat of a different meaning than "feuerkelch?" Why abandon the "of"?
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>>78585043
>tfw I speak a based language without any articles
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>>78585828
Meh, you get used to it. Once you know enough to recognize the individual words you can make sense of it in your head.
>>78585883
'Des' is genitive, so possessive.That implies the goblet is owned by the fire. See >>78585144
Do note, I'm not fluent so don't take my answers as Gospel.
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>>78585883
Well it's the same as in English. There's no real reason why it has to be one reason and not the other - J.K Rowling could just have easily made her book "Harry Potter and the Fire Goblet" - except that one just sounds better.
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In Modern English you inflect a word to make it plural (book, books)
In German you inflect a word to make it plural (Buch, Bücher). In German you inflect an article to express possession or association. In German you inflect a lot of words.
Old English is probably similar to German in that regard.
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>>78585883
Feuerkelch sounds alot better.
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