The General Chat Thread (2024)

TastyReuben said:
I remember being handed a chart for the different versions of “the” very similar to this one on my first day of German language class and feeling my stomach tighten:

View attachment 116474

I ended up just slurring it when speaking, like “de…,” but always got caught out on the written exercises.

…and all the adjectives change form as well…a nightmare for me.
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Yeah, I did exactly the same.
We had to do German, so it got drilled into us and I can still remember the der die das etc, just not when to use them :)
 
karadekoolaid said:
Everyone to their own!
But imagine you see the partner of your dreams in a bar and you just have to introduce yourself.
My way, you say "HEY! You and me - let's go!" because you communicate, albeit with errors On the other hand, you might be thinking "now should I use the present perfect or the subjunctive, and is it better to use a modal verb or not? Errmm - nominative, accusative, genetive, ermmm..."
Too late - he/she's gone. :laugh: :laugh:
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Ah, but I was talking minimal grammar ...
I get by in a lot of European languages, but stuggle with Nyanja...
One small thing is that the word for tomorrow and yesterday is the same ...
So whereas in English I can use present tense and add "yesterday" and you know I mean it happened in the past.
No such solution here. But I'm getting there
 
TastyReuben said:
all the adjectives change form as well…a nightmare for me.
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It still is quite difficult in German for me to this day, too. They are just difficult, almost like Latin.

I was blessed to have a stunning German course at a Goethe institute in Freiburg. We had lessons the whole morning, and were encouraged to speak a lot, a little bit of Grammar and writing and homework too, but listening to a native and speaking was fantastic.
 
badjak said:
but stuggle with Nyanja...
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Is that you father's native language?

Assuming how far the goal language is, logically, yes, one needs more explanations and plenty of examples, but at the end you would want to speak, or maybe I err...and you want to understand being spoken to (that is demanding)


So picking up sentences, 'instant' phrases is not a bad way to get your speaking going, and building up all around it...

We are also very different learning personalities, so you know best what works best for you...

Falling in love with the sounds and poetry of the language works mountains, so if you got the motivation, and do small steps continually, that's success already. To me.

Different situations.

Sometimes we Have to study a language.

To me I had the Dutch or German option to study abroad ( scolarship), but went with the German. Would have preferred the Dutch, linguistically. Then later, I came to love the structure of the German, it is so beautiful in its own way, you can construct endless sentences, vast literature, very orderly, almost like high math.

Every language has its own beauty, and we each have our preferences and circumstances. I would always start a series of lessons with funny videos or movie excerpts...Grammar won't run away...plenty of time...

Education systems evolve...
 
Nah, Dad's language was Dutch same as mam's and mine.
He could speak Malay though.
Nyanja is one of the 73 languages spoken in Zambia.
Generally the most spoken one together with English (both of them quite often as a 2nd language) and spoken in Malawi as well.
I live in a Tonga speaking area. It's a very much smaller language, hence my choice for Nyanja.
 
SandwichShortOfAPicnic said:
And now I’m stuck
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That happens every now and then to everyone.
I meant to reply to you first, and got sidetracked, sorry.

To me, practising, as you did, even after leaving Spain is wonderful, and praise for keeping up.

I would try to reheat the motivation by easing it off, leaving Grammar for now, and watching and listening to a favourite topic in the goal language.

Figure skating, fashion chat, an interview with the spanish Queen, ( oh those would be mine😊)... whatever you fancy...motorbike tour through Spain reportage...

And then pick 1 or 2 idioms and work them through, with the items that got you stuck, and trying to create 2 exemplar sentences to unstuck you...and that's it...for the day...it ought to make you feel victorious. To proceed...

There are paralells with music education, we all get stuck, as said, in the role of students, my students get stuck twice a week, at every lesson. But those are the diamonds that propell ( oh this does not look spelled correctly, apologies) us, or shine on us...a hidden treasure...

Muy bien ( Gosh, I know 0,04% what I am saying or writing in Spanish)😅
 
I just had a message off my neighbour...

Screenshot_20240724_212456_Messages.jpg
 
SatNavSaysStraightOn said:
can only laugh really.
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Which is good. I froze. A python is crawling around your estate somewhere?
Oh dear oh dear... would the neighbours not set out a vet to search for it?
Would it ever come back?

Flash memory, I don't recall if I shared this story already, sorry to repeat if I did...the previous owners of my now flat, had also had a python as a pet in the flat.

THe plumber some years ago remembered traumatised, when he fixed around the bathroom, that he saw a python...

Talk about stress at work...Goodness...
 
Timenspace said:
That happens every now and then to everyone.
I meant to reply to you first, and got sidetracked, sorry.

To me, practising, as you did, even after leaving Spain is wonderful, and praise for keeping up.

I would try to reheat the motivation by easing it off, leaving Grammar for now, and watching and listening to a favourite topic in the goal language.

Figure skating, fashion chat, an interview with the spanish Queen, ( oh those would be mine😊)... whatever you fancy...motorbike tour through Spain reportage...

And then pick 1 or 2 idioms and work them through, with the items that got you stuck, and trying to create 2 exemplar sentences to unstuck you...and that's it...for the day...it ought to make you feel victorious. To proceed...

There are paralells with music education, we all get stuck, as said, in the role of students, my students get stuck twice a week, at every lesson. But those are the diamonds that propell ( oh this does not look spelled correctly, apologies) us, or shine on us...a hidden treasure...

Muy bien ( Gosh, I know 0,04% what I am saying or writing in Spanish)😅
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Very nice advice 👍 but watching and listening doesn’t work for the deaf. TV in a foreign language is pretty pointless!
 
For languages, I like to watch movies in the native language and with the native language subtitles on, so I can quickly attach sounds to words. The way words blend into one another can make that very difficult.

Where I grew up, “sing a song of sixpence” would sound like:

Sin’ a son’ of sixpence

Hard to articulate that in a post, but we swallow a lot of trailing hard consonants, where when I’m watching a British show, I’d hear it more like this:

Sin’ Gay Son’ Guv sixpence

That hard G sound is definitely present, and pushed over to the following word, if that following word starts with a vowel sound.

That’s hard for me to follow without the text in front of me to help me along when it’s French or Italian or Spanish. German doesn’t pose that much of a problem for me, because it’s so phonetic - almost always, the way it’s spelled is the way it sounds (I do remember an epic back-and-forth over the German word for horse, “pferd,” with a native-German instructor that would have made a cracking Monty Python sketch :laugh: ).

…and I do think German is an incredibly beautiful spoken language; so many people make fun of it for being harsh, but I find it extremely sexy! :eek:
 
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