First briefly, I snuck in some more pictures HERE over the weekend. I've posted a few more shots from the Arsenal match. Also exciting news--I've got two more photo albums to upload later this week. One from my trip to the Jewish Museum here in Berlin, and another from my trip to Wittenberg on Saturday. Keep your eyes pealed.
Since essentially my goal over here is to learn German, some of you might be asking yourselves, "How's the German coming, Will?" Good question, friends and family. It is coming along wonderfully. Now that I'm (just over) half way finished, I can notice a marked improvement in my German already. Speech is coming more naturally, my vocabulary is growing, and I can read a lot quicker than I could before.
There are a few things that I'm noticing, though, about how I speak German. When I think about things to say in German, I notice that I first think about them in English. When I have the English in my head, I then translate it and say it. Of course this can be helpful when one is just starting. To say simple things like "I would like a beer," you use Ich (I), möchte (conjugated form of the verb 'would like') and ein Bier (a beer). Simple as that. For the majority of things, I thought, "Huh, I can just translate the English phrase directly into German, and that works just fine." Increasingly I'm finding that that not only isn't the case, but it also upsets an entire language.
Take this for example. When we understand something, in English we say "It makes sense." To directly translate in German, you would say "Es macht Sinn," es (a pronoun), macht (conjugated form of the verb 'to make') and Sinn (sense). In German, though, that's not correct. Germans say "Es hat Sinn," or directly translated "it has sense." Same for "You are right." In German, they don't use the infinitive "to be" verb, they say "Du hat Recht," and "du bist richtig" (you are right) isn't correct. Do you follow?
One thing that Ulle complained to me about on the train was that all of the English sentence constructions are starting to flood into German--"Es macht Sinn" instead of "Es hat Sinn." While these might be small things, he seemed to be concerned about the overall integrity of the German language. The same goes with prepositions. Prepositions are one of the toughest things for me to understand in German because it is so different than in English. The preposition "nach" can mean so many different things. Primarily when I hear "nach," I think of the English word "after." But when you say "Ich gehe nach Hause," you are saying "I am going home." Additionally, the preposition "zu" generally means "to." But when you say "Ich bin zu Hause," you're saying, "I'm at home." Bah.
I've said all of that to say this--German is hard. There's no getting around it. I am getting much better. I'm beginning to be more and more comfortable with prepositions, with turns of phrases, and with German constructions. I am more confident because my vocabulary is increasing, and I can tell that I'm learning a lot. The immersion aspect of this all is really driving all of this home because I have to use German to get around and, in most cases, to entertain myself.
Recently, I've begun reading Harry Potter in German. Actually, I first started with Franz Kafka. I stopped because I didn't have a good enough grasp as to what was going on, but I was surprised because it wasn't due to the sentence structure like in the past. Now, it was because of my limited vocabulary. It is encouraging, but I felt like I could be doing something more constructive with my reading time. So, I picked up a copy of Harry Potter for two reasons. One, the reading level is relatively low. Two, I am familiar with the story. So when I'm not familiar with words that I come across, I can use context clues and my knowledge of Harry Potter to learn new words. It's like a game. I get to learn normal words like "to survive" and "to complain" in German (überleben and beklagen, respectively), and bizarre (seltsam) words like goblin (Kobold). I know some of you out there are Harry Potter haters (I'm looking at you, Sarah), just rest assured that it is serving me well, not only to entertain, but also to teach.
Happy Monday, one and all. Bis Morgen!
Deutsches Wort des Tages:
der Unterricht -- education
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