# most studied



## thomas9

How would one say most studied in German?

For example

German is the third most studied language in America.
Deutsch ist die dritte Sprache am miesten studiert in Amerika?

Danke!


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## ABBA Stanza

My try:

_Deutsch ist die dritt meiststudierte Sprache in Amerika._

Cheers,
Abba


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## Frank78

Deutsch ist die am dritthäufigsten studierte/gelernte Sprache in Amerika.

"Studieren" can only be used in context of university for all other type of education you have to use "lernen".

Anyway I´m not fully satisfied with my sentence I´d probably simply say:
"Deutsch ist bei den Lernenden/Schülern/Studenten in den USA die drittbeliebteste Fremdsprache"


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## Tifoso Bonisolli

As Frank said, it's not quite possible to render this phrase in really good German. Honestly, "drittbeliebtest" is not overly pretty either, and has also a slightly different meaning (third most popular). To make this a beautiful German sentence, you'd have to put it differently: Unter den in Amerika studierten Fremdsprachen nimmt Deutsch den dritten Platz/Rang ein, if the context already makes clear that it's about *numbers* of students; if the latter doesn't apply, I'd say Deutsch gehört in Amerika zu den meiststudierten Fremdsprachen und liegt auf Platz 3 der einschlägigen Statistik.


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## KITTY123

Was meinen sie von folgendem? 
Deutsch ist die dritte, in Amerika meiststudierte Fremdsprache.

Ich habe gelernt das wenn wir mehr adjektive haben, es mag mehrere adkjevtive sein oder adjektive + partizialkonstruktion nebeneinader,  stellen wir erstens den kurzeren Begriff, plus komma,  und leztens den langeren, das heisst die Partizipialkonstruktion. Alles ist mit kommas geschieden.


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## Tifoso Bonisolli

No, that's impossible. Without having read this thread before, I wouldn't even understand that sentence, sorry.


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## ABBA Stanza

ABBA Stanza said:


> _Deutsch ist die dritt meiststudierte Sprache in Amerika._


Interesting that nobody is supporting my suggestion here, despite finding quite a number of hits on the web. Here's how I thought it worked:

_meiststudierte Sprache = most studied language
zweit meiststudierte Sprache = second most studied language
dritt meiststudierte Sprache = third most studied language
viert meiststudierte Sprache = fourth most studied language
...

am wenigsten studierte Sprache = least studied language
am zweit wenigsten studierte Sprache = second least studied language
am dritt wenigsten studierte Sprache = third least studied language
am viert wenigsten studierte Sprache = fourth least studied language
...
_
What's wrong with all this?  Too colloquial?

Cheers,
Abba


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## Tifoso Bonisolli

No, it's not too colloquial. It's ugly, bureaucratic, complicated - and unusual. It's mostly not wrong, get me right, that's why you've found more than just a few occurences  on the web. (Though you'd have to write "zweitbester", "drittbester" and so on in one word.) But as a rule, you can (if style and quality of language is an issue) combine only VERY few superlatives with zweit-, dritt- and so on. Zweitbester is excellent, zweitgrößter is common, zweitschönster is acceptable, zweitbegehrtester is ridiculous, zweitmeister and zweitwenigster is just plain wrong. Don't ask me why... those words don't simply exist.

And what's more... the combination of zweit-something plus past participle is outright impossible. Zweitbest gestrickt, zweitschönst gesungen, that's a kind of German you can only use if you intend to write jokes for comedians. Or tongue-twisters.


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## sokol

ABBA Stanza said:


> What's wrong with all this?  Too colloquial?


Too formal if anything - certainly not colloquial (I expect you only find "dritt meiststudierte Sprache" in written texts).

"Dritt meiststudierte" is just clumsy and not good in terms of stylistics. (I'm not sure if it should be written like that or "drittmeiststudierte", both look strange to me.)

"Drittwichtigste" is okay, "drittbeliebteste" more or less too (even though I wouldn't consider it good in terms of stylistics), but "dritt meiststudierte" just is a little bit weird (even though, it seems, used by native speakers; even "meiststudierte" is already strange, in my opinion).

If asked to translate this sentence:
"German is the third most studied language in America."
I would prefer an entirely different approach - rephrase, probably like that:

"Deutsch ist in Amerika die drittwichtigste Fremdsprache."
(This is not very exact because "drittwichtigste" doesn't necessarily mean "third most studied". But it has the advantage of not having to refer to a particular group of learners - the problem becomes obvious with Frank78's answer: formulated like that one would have to put in a group of learners.)

"In Amerika hat Deutsch beim Fremdsprachenunterricht den dritten Rang/steht an dritter Stelle."
(This would be closer to the original sentence - but the sentence don't looks very good in terms of stylistics if you try to avoid mentioning a group of learners, which I've done here.)


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## ABBA Stanza

Tifoso Bonisolli said:


> But as a rule, you can (if style and quality of language is an issue) combine only VERY few superlatives with zweit-, dritt- and so on.


Why only VERY few? What's wrong with saying (for example):

_Ich habe das zweitteuerste Modell gekauft._



Tifoso Bonisolli said:


> zweitbegehrtester is ridiculous


Why "ridiculous"? For example, can't one write ...?:

_Laut einer neuen Internet-Umfrage ist Verona X die zweitbegehrteste Frau Deutschlands!_

(No reference to any living personality intended! )



Tifoso Bonisolli said:


> the combination of zweit-something plus past participle is outright impossible.


Are you sure that saying it's "outright impossible" is not overstating the case? Wiktionary, for example, quotes precisely such an example:

*Beispiele:*
[1] Der _zweitmeist_ gewählte Kindername in Deutschland ist xy.
...



sokol said:


> "meiststudierte" is already strange, in my opinion.


Just out of interest, what do you (or anyone else for that matter) think about the alternative formulation I mentioned above?:

_Spanisch(?) ist die *am meisten studierte* Fremdsprache in Amerika._
_Deutsch ist die *am drittmeisten studierte* Fremdsprache in Amerika._

Yes, I know that one can always reformulate. But sometimes (especially in fast-flowing conversation) one doesn't want to spend time reformulating and just wants to say what comes directly to mind.

Last but not least, thanks to everyone for making this such an interesting thread! 

Cheers,
Abba


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## sokol

ABBA Stanza said:


> Just out of interest, what do you (or anyone else for that matter) think about the alternative formulation I mentioned above?:
> 
> _Spanisch(?) ist die *am meisten studierte* Fremdsprache in Amerika._
> _Deutsch ist die *am drittmeisten studierte* Fremdsprache in _


_
This alternative formulation is okay (and idiomatic): while "drittmeiststudierte" would be strange "am drittmeisten studierte" definitely is okay - what makes it okay is "am" put before it.
But for some reason with "wenigsten" this sounds again "borderline idiomatic" to me (at best), the ones you've given above: "am drittwenigsten": for some reason the superlative of "weniger" don't goes well with "zweit" and "dritt" (even though, grammatically, the construction is valid).

So while in my opinion "die drittmeiststudierte Sprache" is not idiomatic "am drittmeisten studierte" is - but it is still not what I would choose, I'd avoid such constructions at all cost for stylistic reasons. (But that's probably just me. )


And by the way, I agree with you that "die zweitbegehrteste Frau" certainly too is a valid construction (idiomatic, too).
But again, for stylistic reasons, I wouldn't use this._


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## Tifoso Bonisolli

Sorry to disagree once more... zweitmeist is never ok, not even "borderline idiomatic" (I LOVE your coinage, sokol!), and not even "am zweitmeisten". The word doesn't simply exist. Internet occurences (Wiktionary included) don't prove the contrary - there are soooo many people out there who have not the faintest idea about their own native language, and soooo many of them are leaving traces on the web.
Of course, I totally agree with sokol that "am drittschönsten formuliert" and the like is possible and in some cases even pretty (not in the one I've been using this moment ). But never "am zweitmeisten" - the proper term here is "am zweithäufigsten", that's perfectly idiomatic. Die am dritthäufigsten studierte Fremdsprache in Amerika ist Deutsch. Ok. That's still bureaucratic language, but correct and, even in terms of style, acceptable.
I also agree with sokol that already meiststudiert is not very pretty (though I don't hesitate to use it - maybe I shouldn't!). No doubt that "am häufigsten studiert" is a thousand times better.
Drittbegehrtest, *no*! Sorry ABBA - it's not always possible to explain WHY an expression is not idiomatic. It's just not idiomatic because native speakers don't use it. And why don't they use it? Because it's not idiomatic . Always for reasons of style, you'd have to say (as I suggested above) "unter den am meisten begehrten Frauen Deutschlands nimmt Frau Y laut einer Umfrage den dritten Platz ein". Or something like that.


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## sokol

Tifoso Bonisolli said:


> Sorry to disagree once more... zweitmeist is never ok, not even "borderline idiomatic" (I LOVE your coinage, sokol!), and not even "am zweitmeisten". The word doesn't simply exist. Internet occurences (Wiktionary included) don't prove the contrary - there are soooo many people out there who have not the faintest idea about their own native language, and soooo many of them are leaving traces on the web.


Well, it does exist on the web, there's plenty of examples even on (say) "more prestigious" sites like this news site: Ebay hat die zweitmeisten Besucher in Deutschland, or even HR (a German regional TV station, partner of national TV station ARD where you could expect more or less German as it "should" be written if you're doing it by the book): Hessen hat zweitmeiste Raucher.

There's even worse (in my opinion as well as in yours, obviously): there's an Austrian radio station (I won't mention its name) claiming "we're the most music": "Wir sind die meiste Musik".

We're both agreeing that this isn't good German but I wouldn't go as far as you (by claiming it wouldn't "exist" at all): my point of view here is clearly descriptive, if it is used by native speakers, and not only by a few or uneducated ones but also by educated speakers (and "prestigious" websites).

(Personally I consider "die zweitmeisten Besucher" as acceptable - even though I wouldn't use this myself -, "zweitmeiste Raucher" to me is definitely worse and "die meiste Musik" just is laughable: but even the latter is already quite common. This Austrian station probably stole the slogan from a German one claiming similarly to play "the most music": "Wir spielen Bayerns meiste Musik". You can easily google both slogans if you want to find out the stations I'm writing about. 

But again, that's just my opinion. Whether I like it or not, this use is part of contemporary German language.)


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## berndf

ABBA Stanza said:


> Interesting that nobody is supporting my suggestion here


I think this construction only works with adjectives and not with adverbs. If you wanted to use "meist", you would have to say "die am drittmeisten studierte Sprache". Here, "am meisten" is formally an adverbial phrase constructed with a noun-equivalent adjective "meisten" created from an adverb. Of course this is horribly clumsy and it is preferable to use a real adjective in the first place, hence "die am dritthäufigsten studierte Sprache".



sokol said:


> ...Personally I consider "die zweitmeisten Besucher" as acceptable...


Because in "die meisten Besucher" "meisten" is an adjective and hence the prefix "zweit-" is possible.


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## trbl

Tifoso Bonisolli said:


> Sorry to disagree once more... zweitmeist is never ok, not even "borderline idiomatic" (I LOVE your coinage, sokol!), and not even "am zweitmeisten". The word doesn't simply exist. Internet occurences (Wiktionary included) don't prove the contrary - there are soooo many people out there who have not the faintest idea about their own native language, and soooo many of them are leaving traces on the web.



Sorry, but that's an overly prescriptive understanding of language. If a word is used by thousands (or, in this case, probably millions) of people, then obviously it exists, regardless what some self-proclaimed language experts think. 

Personally, I think that ABBA Stanza's suggestion is perfectly acceptable, though there might be more elegant ways to put it in written German.


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## Tifoso Bonisolli

But there are also thousands of native German speakers who think that "nämlich" is being written "nähmlich". So do we have to accept that there are two synonymous words, nähmlich and nämlich, regardless of what self-proclaimed experts like myself are thinking? (Even though we might admit that nämlich is perhaps more elegant than nähmlich?) So why, bottom line, do we even work on a dictionary here? Everybody feel free to use the language as s/he pleases, and if you find some more people who are making the same mistake (as only the self-proclaimed experts would call it, however!), then you've invented a new word or a new grammatical rule. Hooray!


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## dec-sev

berndf said:


> I think this construction only works with adjectives and not with adverbs.


Meinst du die Konstuktion mit "meist"?
ABBAs Vorschlag:
_Deutsch ist die dritt meiststudierte Sprache in Amerika._
Wie wäre mit 
_Deutsch ist die dritte meiststudierte Sprache in Amerika._
_Dritte_ -- Zahlwort
_meiststudierte _-- Adjectiv
Wenn du "works" sagst, meinst du, dass die Konstruktion idiomatisch klingen soll? 
Und gibt es überhaupt einen Unterschied zwischen "die _dritt_ meiststudierte" und "die _dritte_ meiststudierte"?



trbl said:


> Personally, I think that ABBA Stanza's suggestion is perfectly acceptable, though there might be more elegant ways to put it in written German.


How would _you _put it in a spoken German? I mean it shouldn't sound formal. 


Tifoso Bonisolli said:


> I'd say Deutsch gehört in Amerika zu den meiststudierten Fremdsprachen und liegt auf Platz 3 der einschlägigen Statistik.


Every time I hear the word "statistics" that famous Mark Twain's phrase comes to my mind  That's what really sound bureaucratic to me. 


sokol said:


> So while in my opinion "die drittmeiststudierte Sprache" is not idiomatic "am drittmeisten studierte" is - but it is still not what I would choose, I'd avoid such constructions at all cost for stylistic reasons.


What are these stylistic reasons? I would understand it you you said "I´d avoid using "lol" translating _Crime and Punishment_ for stylistic reasons". You and Tifoso Bonisolli have used "style" and "stilistic" several times during the discussion but have failed to give any example. Sorry for the criticism but I don´t think that such explanations make matters any clearer. At least to me.


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## berndf

dec-sev said:


> Und gibt es überhaupt einen Unterschied zwischen "die _dritt_ meiststudierte" und "die _dritte_ meiststudierte"?


Ja, im ersten Fall ist "dritt" ein Adverb und bezieht sich auf "meiststudierte", im zweiten auf "Sprache". "Dritt" soll sich aber auf "meist" beziehen. Gemeint ist aber ein Bezug auf meist (nur dies ist ein Superlativ) und dafür gibt es keine idiomatische Konstruktion, d.h. "drittmeist studierte Sprache" ist zumindest in idiomatischem Deutsch nicht möglich.


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## dec-sev

berndf said:


> Ja, im ersten Fall ist "dritt" ein Adverb und bezieht sich auf "meiststudierte", im zweiten auf "Sprache". "Dritt" soll sich aber auf "meist" beziehen. Gemeint ist aber ein Bezug auf meist (nur dies ist ein Superlativ) und dafür gibt es keine idiomatische Konstruktion, d.h. "drittmeist studierte Sprache" ist zumindest in idiomatischem Deutsch nicht möglich.


Wie wäre es mit "...die dritte von den meiststudierten Sprachen in..."?
Das ist interessant, worauf sich "the third" in diesem Fall im Englischen bezieht.


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## Tifoso Bonisolli

dec-sev said:


> You and Tifoso Bonisolli have used "style" and "stilistic" several times during the discussion but have failed to give any example. Sorry for the criticism but I don´t think that such explanations make matters any clearer. At least to me.


I'm aware of that, and I'm sorry, but as I said to ABBA above, it's simply not always possible to explain why something is idiomatic or not. Statistics may be important for the world of bureaucracy, but the wording is not bureaucratic, otherwise I'd not have suggested it. And "dritte meiststudierte Sprache" is even worse than "drittmeiststudierte". "Drittmeiststudierte" sounds, as I think I said above, like a joke written for a comedian mocking at bureaucratic language, but it conveys the sense at least. "Dritte meiststudierte" doesn't do the job at all, because it's obvious from similar cases where it IS possible to combine "zweit-", "dritt-" and superlative that it has to be ONE word, not two: zweitbester, zweitgrößter.


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## Tifoso Bonisolli

Oh pardon, das letzte Posting war noch nicht da, als ich zu schreiben anfing. Ja, das wäre möglich. Mit der oben von sokol vorgebrachten Einschränkung, dass "meiststudiert" ohnehin hässliches Deutsch ist. Wie schon gesagt: Es sollte besser heißen "von den am häufigsten studierten Fremdsprachen". Man könnte vielleicht schreiben "Deutsch ist unter den in Amerika am häufigsten studierten Fremdsprachen die dritte."


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## dec-sev

Tifoso Bonisolli said:


> I'm aware of that, and I'm sorry, but as I said to ABBA above, it's simply not always possible to explain why something is idiomatic or not.


"not idiomatic" and "not stylistic" are two different things, I believe. 


Tifoso Bonisolli said:


> Statistics may be important for the world of bureaucracy, but the wording is not bureaucratic, otherwise I'd not have suggested it.


Das fällt mir ziemlich schwierig zwischen Bürokratischem und nicht-Bürokratischem im Deutschen zu unterschieden. 
Dieser Sommer, als ich am Strand in Balaklava war, saßen neben mir zwei Jungs aus Deutschland oder Ösrerreich. Ich weiß nicht, aber sie sprachen Deutsch. Eiener von ihnen wollte Bier un ging zum Kiosk, aber Bier was ausverkauft. Er kam zurück und sagte zu sienem Freund: "Ohne Ergebnis".
Wenn ich die Phrase ins Russisch wörtlcih überstetzte, wäre es zu formal, oder bürokratisch. Die Erwähnung von Statistik in dienem Satz schien mir auch was bürokratisch. 
Ich habe einen anderen Vorschlag:
_Deutsch ist die dritte Sprache, die man in Afrika am meinsten studiert._
Ich kann mich nicht daran erinnern, ob die Variante schon vorgeschagen wurde oder nicht


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## Tifoso Bonisolli

dec-sev said:


> "not idiomatic" and "not stylistic" are two different things, I believe.


UNFORTUNATELY, you're right.


dec-sev said:


> _Deutsch ist die dritte Sprache, die man in Afrika am meinsten studiert._
> Ich kann mich nicht daran erinnern, ob die Variante schon vorgeschagen wurde oder nicht


Ich bin nicht einverstanden, tut mir leid. Da sich "dritte" inhaltlich ja sehr wohl auf "am meisten" bezieht, ist der Satzbau einfach misslungen, entgleist, aus den Fugen.


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## dec-sev

Tifoso Bonisolli said:


> Wie schon gesagt: Es sollte besser heißen "von den am häufigsten studierten Fremdsprachen". Man könnte vielleicht schreiben "Deutsch ist unter den in Amerika am häufigsten studierten Fremdsprachen die dritte."


Biz jetzt habe ich "häufig" im Sinne von, so zu sagen, Frequenz getroffen. z.b.
_Wie häufig gehst du zum Schwimmenbaden?_
Wenn ""Deutsch ist unter den in Amerika am häufigsten studierten Fremdsprachen die dritte." richtig ist, dass das Folgende auch richtig sein muss:
_Man studiert Deutsch in Amerika sehr häufig._
Kling was schief. Oder?


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## Tifoso Bonisolli

Klingt etwas schief, ja - aber nur etwas. Diesen Satz zu kritisieren, ist schon fast ein bisschen beckmesserisch, aber da bin ich ja in meinem Element , also bitte: Es gibt dabei zwei Probleme. 
Erstens ist "man" (auch wenn es bekanntlich keineswegs nur eine Einzelperson meinen muss) grammatikalisch Singular, und die Einzelperson schwingt daher ein wenig mit. Dass "häufig" die Frequenz bezeichnet, ist schon richtig, das kann sich aber auch auf die "Frequenz" (also, jawohl, die Häufigkeit) innerhalb einer größeren Gruppe beziehen. Und das passt nicht perfekt zum Singular von "man". Also besser: Man studiert in Amerika sehr oft Deutsch. "Oft" ist unspezifischer bzw. wird sehr, jawohl, oft sozusagen als Mengenangabe gebraucht. Aber: Angehende Philologen wählen in Amerika sehr häufig Deutsch als Studienfach - kein Problem ("oft" könnte man hier aber natürlich ebenso gut sagen).
Zweitens hat "oft" (so gut wie) keinen Superlativ, man muss sich also behelfen, indem man steigert oft - öfter - am häufigsten. ("Am öftesten" kommt zwar vor, ist aber hässlich/umgangssprachlich/zumindest in Schriftsprache nicht ok.) Daher kommt "häufig" im Superlativ weitaus häufiger  vor als im Positiv, wo man stattdessen eben sehr oft "oft" sagt.
PS: "Schwimmenbaden" gibt es auf Deutsch nicht. Entweder Schwimmen oder Baden!


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## trbl

Tifoso Bonisolli said:


> But there are also thousands of native German speakers who think that "nämlich" is being written "nähmlich". So do we have to accept that there are two synonymous words, nähmlich and nämlich, regardless of what self-proclaimed experts like myself are thinking? (Even though we might admit that nämlich is perhaps more elegant than nähmlich?) So why, bottom line, do we even work on a dictionary here? Everybody feel free to use the language as s/he pleases, and if you find some more people who are making the same mistake (as only the self-proclaimed experts would call it, however!), then you've invented a new word or a new grammatical rule. Hooray!



I apologize if my post offended you. By 'self-proclaimed language experts' I didn't mean you in particular but prescriptivists in general. However, with the way you presented your opinion as absolute fact (and it seems to be a pattern) you shouldn't be surprised if someone disagrees with you.

I believe that the purpose of a dictionary is to provide information about a language as it is actually used by its speakers, not as the authors of the dictionary think it _should_ be used. The process you described actually comes pretty close to how I think new words and grammatical rules are created. How else would languages evolve? There are countless examples of words that have changed or broadened their meaning through prolonged incorrect use by a significant percentage of speakers to the point they became standard. Many things that even the most educated and eloquent speakers say were once considered wrong. Of course it isn't always easy to establish when exactly a critical mass has been reached for a 'mistake' no longer to be considered as such, but then again I don't think language is ever black and white.

Now, the question whether a word exists is yet a different one. To me, if people use and understand a word, then of course it must exist.

Orthography, by its nature, is more normative than other aspects of language, as it pertains only to the written form. Denying the existance of a word in my opinion is more like denying that some people spell 'nämlich' as 'nähmlich'. Still, I think that if a certain deviation from the standard spelling of a word is so common that it appears in newspapers, books etc. it should be included in dictionaries. 

Anyway....that was way off-topic. Apologies to the OP for hijacking his thread.


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## sokol

Tifoso Bonisolli said:


> But there are also thousands of native German speakers who think that "nämlich" is being written "nähmlich".


Das Eine hat mit dem Anderen nichts zu tu (und ist ausserdem Off-Topic: wenn, dann diskutieren wir das bitte in einem neuen Thread). 
Erstens geht es in diesem Fall um Rechtschreibung, und zweitens geht es in diesem Thread ja nicht darum, ob "drittmeist" ein Wort der deutschen Sprache ist (der Gebrauch dieses Wortes auch von gebildeten Sprechern und prestigeträchtigen Medien ist aber wohl schon ein schwer zu entkräftendes Argument dafür; ist aber wie gesagt wenn dann bitte Thema für einen neuen Thread ).
Hier geht's darum, ob diese Übersetzung möglich und idiomatisch ist.



dec-sev said:


> sokol said:
> 
> 
> 
> So while in my opinion "die drittmeiststudierte Sprache" is not idiomatic "am drittmeisten studierte" is - but it is still not what I would choose, I'd avoid such constructions at all cost for stylistic reasons.
> 
> 
> 
> What are these stylistic reasons? I would understand it you you said "I´d avoid using "lol" translating _Crime and Punishment_ for stylistic reasons".
Click to expand...

I would avoid it because it sounds clumsy: I consider "am drittmeisten" idiomatic and I know that it is used even by sites like Deutsche Welle:
"In diesem Industriestaat, der nach New York und Kalifornien die drittmeisten Delegierten zu vergeben hatte, hatte sich Edwards noch Chancen ausgerechnet, ebenso wie in Maryland oder im Südstaat Georgia."
But here "drittmeist" is very much acceptable (I might use similar constructions myself) and much better than "drittmeist studierte Sprache": the problem is that the phrase becomes more awkward if a participle (studierte) is inserted: this extends the so-called "Satzklammer" - and I passionately hate constructions with a long "Satzklammer" (even though they're of course perferctly correct, and _may_ be perfectly idiomatic).

So that's just personal preference - standard that I'm setting for my own use. It does not mean necessarily that this standards of mine are shared by German language teachers - not at all.


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## Tifoso Bonisolli

trbl said:


> There are countless examples of words that have changed or broadened their meaning through prolonged incorrect use by a significant percentage of speakers to the point they became standard. Many things that even the most educated and eloquent speakers say were once considered wrong.


If you put it this way, I basically agree, though I think the question about where to draw the line between mistake and new rule is more complex than just reaching a critical MASS - it's a question not only of quantity but also of quality IMO. A very interesting discussion, but both of you are right: not the topic of this thread.



trbl said:


> Denying the existance of a word in my opinion is more like denying that some people spell 'nämlich' as 'nähmlich'.


 
Let me try to make clear that I didn't deny that (some, many or very many, never mind) people are using it, so I didn't deny that it exists. What I'm denying is that it's a word, i.e. that it's correct. It may be improper to say, in such a case, "it doesn't exist", but I thought the context made clear enough what I was trying to say. (Not everything people are actually using is a "word" in standard language. For example, many of you might have difficulties to understand "Gspusi". Nobody in Vienna has, and Vienna is a city of more than 1.5 million people - it's our term for "Techtelmechtel". But still, I would dare saying Gspusi is not a word. Not in German standard language. But that's, of course, leading off-topic once more.)


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## elroy

What about something like "In Amerika hat Deutsch unter den Fremdsprachen _die drittmeisten Lernenden_"?


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## berndf

elroy said:


> What about something like "In Amerika hat Deutsch unter den Fremdsprachen _die drittmeisten Lernenden_"?


This is certainly possible. But I still like Frank's suggestion best:


Frank78 said:


> Deutsch ist die am dritthäufigsten studierte/gelernte Sprache in Amerika.


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