#24

I meant more like people who can barely order a beer or understand a menu.

I work in Austria going round schools doing English workshops normally, and sometimes you encounted (mostly older) teachers who have this attitude of “I am here to teach English, not to learn German”, and it’s not like people in rural Austria have the hottest English.

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#25

They don’t always have the hottest Standard German either, admittedly.

#26

How people sound in Vienna (old man in the 80s complaining about the cost of living and calling far-right politican Jorg Haider a piece of shit)

#27

Ja, ich kann. :slightly_smiling_face:

When first learning, I also tried out all sorts of things like audiobooks, textbooks and apps, took lots of language school lessons. Found lots of those quite useful for getting the fundamentals, but I just didn’t seem to be able to get past a certain level learning the normal way like that.

For me, it was much much more so in just making it a part of my every day life. Podcasts about topics I was genuinely interested in, original German tv series that I actually wanted to watch, so it didn’t feel like ‘homework’. (One of my favourite shows of all time, the Norwegian series Skam, got a German remake, highly highly recommend that for anyone wanting more exposure to how German is actually used by The Youth today!)

Also, somewhat helpfully, my fiancée is German, so we started off doing one day a week speaking only German. Used to play lots of language driven games on those days (really recommend Rory’s Story Cubes, a great way to get you using vocabulary and putting yourself in unusual situations that wouldn’t normally come up). That was when the real major breakthroughs came and I really noticed a huge improvement, and more than anything, a confidence.

I still don’t really know anyone here (also a Berliner) who’s learned the language and would actually call themselves fluent or not have huge confidence wobbles from time to time.

Applying for German citizenship just now - Daumen well and truly gedrückt!

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#28

I think German is the most attractive language, everything takes on an extra sexy dimension when Deutsch gets spoken.

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#29

I had a temp job (in London) doing quality control for HoH subtitles for ORF. I think they were hoping to get an Austrian student or something in, but German speakers who understood Austrians and needed short term temp work were in short supply, so they got me. I had to sit and watch 10 minute clips of Austrian tv shows, and rate how accurate and well synced the German subtitles were.

The main one I really got into was this comedy-drama about a family in Vienna who win the lottery but don’t tell anyone. Never got to watch whole episodes at work though.

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#30

Sorry, that sounded like I don’t know anyone here who’s learned German. I know lots and lots! Just all so aware about how much we don’t know and how much we’re mostly bluffing our way through most of the time! :blush:

#31

One of my least favourite things are those stupid ‘words spoken softly in every language then spat angrily in German’ videos to show how ‘harsh’ a language it is. Nonsense. It’s beautiful!

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#32

I used to be pretty decent at German

My dad’s parents were German WWII refugees and even though they both died before I was born my dad grew up speaking German and started teaching me some basic German from the age of 8. He actually used an old school textbook of his called ‘Heute Abend!’ (Good Ebening) which I remember from its hardback yellow cover and big fold-out map of pre-wall Berlin in the centre pages

When I started doing German at school for GCSE I was a bit cocky I guess plus I kind of half ironically fancied our German teacher Mrs. Wilson. One time we were given the exercise of ‘Imagine you have recently stayed at a German hotel and returned back to England to find that you have left an important item behind. Write a formal letter to the hotel requesting return of the item.’ So 14 year old me invented the scenario of having stayed in an exclusive Bavarian castle hotel for some Eyes Wide Shut style party and wrote requesting the return of an overnight bag containing a gold Venetian Masquerade mask, a red velvet cape, gold cufflinks and assorted lingerie (which I described in detail).

It was very formal & grammatically perfect and although Mrs. Wilson was obliged to give me an ‘A’ she noted both on paper and in person that she was ‘singularly unimpressed’ with my ‘perverted sense of humour’

Relations were strained after that. I got a B at GCSE and all the German I once knew has long since been evicted from my brain real estate and Swedish lives there now

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#33

I will take a look at that book, thanks!

I’m about halfway through the whole German course on Duolingo, just did the level 5 test but I glossed over the last few bits before that to get to the test a bit quicker, so currently going back to finish them off properly.

it gets really frustrating when they just throw concepts in with no explanation (I know that the tips on the website are loads better than on mobile, but I use the mobile version a lot more), seperable verbs are one thing that stands out as being particularly annoying as they don’t teach the verbs themselves, don’t even seem to acknowledge them properly but will throw them in and trip you up.

originally I started all this cos I was going to Berlin for a week, but that got cancelled with a view to rescheduling for 2020. given how this year is going, at least I should know a little bit of the language by the time I actually go!

#34

Yeah separable verbs are a big thing in German with lots of subtleties. First of the all the rules on where to put the separated bit, and also the differences in meaning between them.

For example:
bringen- to bring
umbringen- to do someone in

This website has really good lessons about all this kind of stuff: https://yourdailygerman.com/meaning-bringen/

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#35

Kann das echt sein? Hund spielt Klavier.

#36

Wish I’d studied German when I was younger and had the opportunity. I remember being offered the choice of German and Japanese to study on top of French, and as a naive young boy of Jewish ancestry decided that I didn’t want to study German as they were the bad guys, so opted for Japanese.

#37

I had the option of doing an additional language but it would have been in lunchtime classes, think Japanese was on offer but there were others too. and obviously I didn’t even consider it cos I’d rather be shit at football/just stand around with my mates. bad decision from young me.

#38

Well Japanese is hardly useless- there’s a whole country of 120mi people speaking it after all.

#39

This is true, there just wasn’t a lot that stuck in my 11-year-old head unfortunately.

I think I can say hello my name is Adam, pleased to meet you, how are you, bullet train.

(also are you Em who used to post but left? Welcome back if so!)

#40

My only memories of high school german were looking up rude words in the dictionary and watching badly dubbed episodes of friends. Still remember popo = bum

#41

Oui, c’est moi. I am bored and unemployed.

#42

There’s this horrendous German novelty song guy called Mickey Krause who goes round all the holiday resorts and does his songs that are basically rhyming rude words with places and yelling “Mickey Krause in the house”

His most famous one is “Finger In Po- Mexico!” which I guess in English would vaguely work as “Finger up your arse! Honduras!” (it’s the same quality that’s for sure)

He looks like Jay from the Inbetweeners but middle-aged too, and I think his hair might be a wig.

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#43

Wilkommen!! I hope things pick up for you soon on both fronts (if that’s what you want anyway)