Way of track. German language question

[jon_norstog]

Man,

Thai is probably my best language, learned on the spot. There is no gender in that language, whatever. What they got instead is pronouns and forms of address that indicate social status relationships.

My wife will use he, she, it indiscriminately, but she mostly likes "she" for a pronoun. She has learned ho to streamline the English language in a way that I find useful as well.

Gnner, thanks for coming in on this thread.

jn

[andiarisaka]

I was going to college in the 90's and thought it would be cool for a fellow with the last name of Wolfe to speak a little German. According to testing in the AF, I didn't have much of an aptitude for foreign languages. They were right, didn't take me long to drop that class!

[gunner]

As Borders is going out of business I had a chance to pick up three CDs by by Instant Immersion. Looked at Rosetta Stone but that was $500.00. With that you get to talk with people who allready speak the laguage.

I committed to give this a try and now are moving to cultery and food. Some are easy like bread or Das Brot. Thanks for the prior tips as those were not covered at all. If I would have a complaint, it would be on how well must you know the lesson before you move on.




They say six months to learn. Many Pa,. Dutch go to the auctions here but their language is a mixture of Dutch and a different style of German. The kids must learn their native language first (to 2nd grade) and the English....

Try the Langenscheidt´s version. It contains 2 Cd´s and a book for around $20. They have an dealer at the USA so no prblem to get the Material.

Langenscheidt: German Instruction, school, textbooks, self study, dictionaries

---------- Post added at 02:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:11 PM ----------

You´re welcome, Jon!

[Mk VII]

many years ago a friend of mine jumped in the back of a cab, and said something like "die bahnhof, bitte". "Das bahnhof" said the driver firmly, and set off.

[gunner]

Wow, than your friend met exactly the only friendly cab driver we have!

[villiers]

Well, there you go then. Most taxi drivers here in Deutschland are foreign and don´t know their *rse from their elbow. It´s DER Bahnhof!! It´s taken me more then a decade to learn some of them but the general rule is that der is masculine, die is feminine and das is neuter. But a large number of inanimate objects are considered to be masculine or feminine and Mädchen (girl) is neuter (as are all diminutive forms ending in -chen) as they´re considered to be "small". And so the list of exceptions to the rule goes on and on ... and on.

But it doesn´t really matter as Germans are generally well pleased that they know the rules and we don´t. Unlike the (*§!*#) French, they love you to try, however wrong your attempt may be.

[bouletbill]

I was going to college in the 90's and thought it would be cool for a fellow with the last name of Wolfe to speak a little German. According to testing in the AF, I didn't have much of an aptitude for foreign languages. They were right, didn't take me long to drop that class!

No-wonder you struggled, WOLFE with the 'e' is English or maybe Anglo-Irish.( Unless you know of specific German roots). Wolf could be British or German or Jewish, but put the 'e' on the end and that plonks you well into ye olde worlde Bretayne.
Perhaps you have a distant link with Major-General James P. Wolfe ?

[TDH]

And I thought Americanized English had most of the crazy rules. But then again it's a language made up of words from all the other languages and some we made up all on our own. So throw a Louisiana Cajun, A Minnesota Scandnavian, A Boston man, and a New Mexico cowboy and a California Valley girl into a conversation and watch the fun

[Patrick Chadwick]

Anyone who is familar with that eminent Glaswegian philosopher Rab. C. Nesbitt knows that all the above-mentioned speak Standard English (wossat?) by comparison!

[Patrick Chadwick]

And I thought Americanized English had most of the crazy rules.

Not so. In the matter of spelling, American English is often more rational: color, honor etc without the irritating redundant "u" introduced by British Francophiles. But there is one noteworthy exception. Americans are shy of the word arse (from Germanic "Arsch"), which is odd, considering the substantial numbers of settlers of German origins. An *** is an animal, a.k.a. donkey. The story of Baalam's *** was not about Baalam's posterior, but about his donkey. So the quaint old American invitation to kiss one's *** fails for the simple reason that we no longer have donkeys. But it is good to know that the folks on the West side of the pond are such animal lovers! And note that the forum software is not bothered by the word arse, but has replaced the word a-s-s- by ***. I wrote it as ***.

Otherwise, I favor those American spellings that move the English language just a wee bit in the direction of phonetic rationalisation. But I draw the line at thru!