u/YourDailyGerman

In some regions (Berlin for one), there is a somewhat weird way to indicate possession.

- Maria ihr Auto ist gelb.
- Ich habe Thomas seinen Bruder getroffen.
- Ich habe ihm ihm sein Geld gegeben. (pushing it here)

Now I just had an idea where this MIGHT have come from or at least have been facilitated by:

- Der Dieb hat Maria ihre Brieftasche geklaut.

This is a proper possessive pronoun, but you can also read it as this exact colloquial structure above.

Native speakers... what do you think? Does it have some merit or nah? Or do you have some insight as to where the sturcture comes from?

(asking in English so all the beginner learners in this sub can read it)

Duden says "außer" is a Dative preposition, and doesn't give any indication that it might also be used with other cases.

However:

• - Ich kenne alle außer ihn/ihm. (I much prefer ihn here)
• - Ich kenne alle außer sie/ihr. (Even more so)
• - Alle haben geschlafen... alle außer ich. (I find that more natural than "mir".)
• - Keiner hat sich vorbereitet ... außer er. (with a speaking pause, I would find ihm extremely awkward here)
• - Sollen wir was mitbringen? Nichts außer gute Laune. (I find gute better here, while "guter" sounds more exclusionary, which defeats the purpose because Laune IS what we need to bring)

I'm from the Berlin region, so this might be the reason for this but I don't believe it is.
I'm pretty sure I can find a LOT of "wrong" cases after außer online, so much so that I would think the case after außer is more determined by the role of the element and calling it a pure Dative preposition doesn't reflect spoken reality anymore.

I read someone justifying stuff like "alle außer ich" as außer being a conjunction but I find that kind of bending over backwards just to be able to keep calling it a Dative preposition.

Any thoughts are much appreciated.

I keep seeing posts in this sub and another German learning sub of people saying things like

"I'm B2, but I can't talk more than short daily interactions"
"I'm B2 but I have poor vocabulary"

Folks... if this is you, then YOU ARE NOT B2.
Even if you hold a B2 certificate, you are NOT actually a B2 speaker.

B2 means that you can FLUENTLY talk about pretty much ANYTHING (edit) ANYTHING YOU USUALLY TALK ABOUT with native speakers.

If you can listen to podcasts and read newspapers with a dictionary on the side, but you fall apart when trying to discuss something, then you're not B2.

B2 means full fluency, EDIT: functional fluency, so native speakers can talk to you without slowing down and without having to repeat themselves all the time and you can respond coherently.

B2 means that you can write a nice, proper email in a formal context.

I know it's frustrating for some of you, but you need to be realistic about where you are in order to make actual progress.

You can't plan a hike with a navigation tool and enter your starting location 1km from the top, when you're actually 3 km from it.

EDIT:

If you downvote this, please explain, why you disagree. The official definitions about what B2 means are very clear.

I know that German can use "es" as a stand-in for either a subject or object sentence.

- Es passt mir nicht, wie du kaust.
- Ich schaffe es, mich zu konzentrieren.

Now I thought about prefix versions of "schaffen" that are about "reaching" and noticed that they do need an "es" too (es runterschaffen, es raufschaffen)

- Wir haben es vor dem Sturm runtergeschafft.

This grammatically is an Accusative object I guess, but it doesn't stand for anything and cannot be filled.
It can also not be replaced by anything.
And it has a super fixed position.

- Es haben wir runtergeschafft... NOPE
- ..., dass es wir haben runtergeschafft.

Does this particular type of "es" have a special name in grammar?

I know that there is not always super deep logic to it, but usually there IS some reason for the gender imported words settle on.

However, for "der Song", I cannot think of any.

• das Lied
• das Stueck

Both German words for the same thing are neuter.

The only thing I can think of is that it's because several "high profile" wods that end with the sound of -ong are "der".

• der Karton
• der Balkon
• der Gong
• der Beton
• der Salon

If anyone has any insight or a better idea why it ended up "der Song" instead of "das Song", I'd love to know.

Not directly German, but I had several interactions now here with people where it happened and it caused a lot of confusion.

!! Reddit has a new auto translate feature. !!

You might read a question in English here and wonder what's going on, but in reality, the question and discussion is in German.

Once, I spent 6 comments going back and forth about past conditional where the other person was talking about English because that's what they saw and I was talking about German.

So yeah... watch out :)