Das Deutsch
I looked some more at the page, which says (bcz it's on an English-language collection of "sites", apparently)
- German Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of German wanting to discuss the finer points of the language and translation.
despite all the discussion being conducted in German.
You might be interested that translation into German is "in Deutsch", and (i guess i was careless) for example, "... im deutschen Gebrauch..." would, i think, be correct for "... in German-language usage...". The word "im" is a contraction of "in dem" ("in the", with dative case reflected), and there are places (of course, i guess) where they expect a definite article but we would find its use there stilted.
There are a lot of cases subtle enuf that it stopped being fun to read them. (BTW, you might, as a more serious lexicographer than i, be interested in wikipedia:Duden which describes a great example of deutsche Grundlichkeit or German thoroughness; the participants in the GLSE keep saying "Look, here's what Duden has about yet another special case.")
Thanks again,
I have great sympathy for Mark Twain when he wrote
- Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns over the page and reads, "Let the pupil make careful note of the following exceptions." He runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it.
But then you take a look at Old Irish verb conjugations, and crawl back to German, everything forgiven.