Re: Weekly Vocab 6: to know / German

Hi!

Daniel Ryan Prohaska <daniel@...> writes:
> <Formally, yes, but not always in dialects. I know native Germans who
> say
> <things like "Ich kann auf Englisch." or "Ich muss in Buero."
>
> The former needs an object. "Ich kann es auf Englisch" with the <es>
> mostly reduced to [s].
Or 'Ich kann Englisch', which is perfectly ok, too.

My own dialect allows even more freely to drop main verbs compared to
Standard German. E.g.:

   'Kann ich noch ein Bier?'
  *May   I   another  beer?

is typical.  It's understood, but people outside Westfalia seem to
find it ungrammatical.

Dutch is even less rigid:

   'Openbare borstvoeding mag.'
  *Public breastfeeding may.

Or
   'Dat kann.'
  *That can.
   That is possible.

That's not possible in German.

(The above beer phrase is possible in Dutch, too: 'Mag ik nog een biertje?').

**Henrik

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