So, I'm having a bit of trouble with my German class. Today, my professor wrote this very simple sentence on the board during our discussion of substantive adjectives:
Ex. Ich spreche gut deutsch.
He then asked what "deutsch" was in this sentence. I was under the impression that it was a noun despite the weird lack of capitalization, since it seems natural to me to think of the language you're speaking as the object of the verb "to speak", but he said it was an adverb. Apparently my understanding of "adverb" is severely lacking, because I'm just not getting how "deutsch" could ever be an adverb, let alone in this particular sentence. Is this actually a difference in the labeling of parts of speech between German and English, or something else?
Also, would it make any difference if the sentence had been "Ich spreche gut Deutsch" with an uppercase 'd'?
Similarly, about a week ago, my prof was explaining the difference between what he calls primary and secondary adjectival endings and wrote out something very similar to these two sentences:
Ex. 1: Mein Auto ist blau.
Ex. 2: Mein blaues Auto fährt schnell.
My understanding, which is based on my last two semesters of German with a different professor, is that the second example requires an adjective ending because the use is attributive, whereas "blau" is a predicate adjective and so doesn't require any dressing up.
Current prof says "blau" is used as an adverb in 1 and as an adjective in 2. Does he just mean something different when he says "adverb"? My ability to produce these sentences isn't really suffering for his explanation, but I am pretty confused whenever something I think is a noun or an adjective gets called an adverb during one of our in-class exercises.
Any help you could offer would be super! If I've made any stupid mistakes, I apologize. I'm not having a great grammar day.
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- Kirsten (
kirstenlouise) wrote in 
linguaphiles,
August 30 2012, 22:04:16 UTC 8 months ago
In the second instance, your professor is simply wrong. Presumably they're getting confused by the fact that adjectives don't take endings when used predicatively. But that doesn't make them adverbs.
August 30 2012, 22:09:37 UTC 8 months ago
Good to know, however. Danke! :)
August 31 2012, 11:10:30 UTC 8 months ago
I'll admit that I understand lower-case "deutsch" in such cases as an adverb, roughly parallel to the situation in - to my understanding - Russian, Hungarian, etc., but it's true that it doesn't act much like other adverbs in such situations.
For example, you can ask, "Welche Sprache hat er gesprochen?", where "welche Sprache" certainly looks like a direct object; attempting to analyse it as some kind of fossilised instrumental, adverbial, or something would be odd to me. And as soon as you add an adjective, it's obviously a noun ("er spricht ein sehr gutes Deutsch"), though that also has a different nuance in meaning to me with the noun vs. "adverb".
August 30 2012, 22:49:50 UTC 8 months ago
as a rule of thumb, if the adjective is used with an article preceding it, it's weak.
Blaues Auto - blaues is strong.
Das blaue Auto - blaue is weak.
The difference is that in the first case, the information - singular, neutral - is contained in the adjective.
In the second case, the information is contained in the article.
I guess that that is what your prof meant with adjectival endings.
I haven't seen in that way before, but you could say that in the case of "Mein Auto ist blau" the information about the car is contained in Mein so further information in "blau" is unnecessary.
And no, in your example, "blau" is no adverb.
Mein blaues Auto fährt schnell.
Schnell is an adverb, seeing as it is how the car is driving, how it is performing an action.
That does not apply to the "blau" as it describes how the car is, now how it does something.
and regarding the language question, I have always understood "I speak xxx" as a substantive; in my opinion, it is possible to use it as an adverb in lower case, but I'd say "Ich spreche Deutsch." myself. I agree with mucke that it is problematic, as you can ask very well what you speak, but not how you speak. That's why I'd call it a substantive.
August 30 2012, 22:52:51 UTC 8 months ago
"Iche spreche Deutsch" is what I would have expected. Thanks. :)
August 31 2012, 23:20:50 UTC 8 months ago
though I should say that a concept of parts of speech is completely vague, and yeah, that's what professional linguists think
and that's completely terrible that in teaching a language instructors too often rely on the conservative concepts without really being aware of strict criteria which could help to make some distinctions - but in fact, sometimes these test simply fail ;)