The German language

link to langsam gesprochene nachrichten upthread iirc

DW has lots of lessons. i found them a bit slow for learning, but i think they're useful once you've reached say B1 to kick on with just listening to lots and lots of german at an appropriate level.

http://www.dw.de/learn-german/german-courses/s-2547

Who knew that "Farmer Wants A Wife" was a successful export of British TV?

Huh so the neverending story is german, that kind of explains why some germans love to say say 'neverending story', in english, when something goes on and on.

The movie was also directed by the same guy who did Das Boot.

http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u641/Lixenixen/mitt.png

okay lol

learnt some weird german watching the master in OmU

"das Versuchskaninchen"

ha

Did anyone else learn German using suspense thriller audio/books "Gefahrliche Wege" and "Geheime Mission?" I can still remember parts many years later.

fremdschämen

Wait, is Versuchskaninchen rabbit hunt?

ha. almost. der Versuch = attempt/trial

Ah, just looked it up. hahahaha!

what a beautifully literal language

"das Versuchskaninchen"

lol ... no wonder that the German equivalent of "scaredy cat" is "Angsthase"!!

come to think of it -- since the best use that Germans apparently have for rabbits is to use them as Versuchskaninchen and as the main ingredient in Hasenpfeffer, it's only right for Germans to have a LOT of Angst.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4QlZmS5gO7s/SnptC75rgSI/AAAAAAAAAaE/r3Q3cNE8BM4/s320/Hasenpfeffer05.jpg

German RABBITS, that is.

Fremdschämen is a bullshit word for a bullshit concept, and fuck everyone who uses it.

native german speakers: please tell me "blackbeat" doesn't mean what i think it means

Non-native, but fluent -- it does mean that. "Black Music" gets said without flinching and almost always in English. But German's not alone there (have heard this in Swedish, Dutch, and French as well).

oh je

The expression 'you are what you eat' is much better in German: man ist was man isst

yeah -- it's even better w/t the ess-tset.

you get marked down on language tests if you put a ß in isst.

i miss ß

;_;

ripß

The expression 'you are what you eat' is much better in German: man ist was man isst

― Daniel Giraffe, Monday, March 18, 2013 4:26 PM (1 month ago

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22490560

die Kuh ist über die Fence gejumpt!

"Kopfball"

how's the class going, caek?!?

Abgeschlossen! That was an intensive thing at the Goethe inst last summer. Had a couple of tandem partners this year too. Much improved imho. But I'm moving to the US next month tho. I'm still doing my vocab flashcards but I've given away the text books :(

Don't give up! Deutsche Welle has a ton of stuff here you can use: http://www.dw.de/deutsch-lernen/s-2055
(or http://www.dw.de/learn-german/s-2469), especially the daily Langsam gesprochene Nachtrichten and the various weekly podcasts such as Sprachbar, Alltagsdeutsch, Wort der Woche, Top-Thema. OK, I see a Video-Thema as well, let's see what that is about.

yeah the problem isn't opportunities to hear/read german, but obligations to hear/read and especially speak it when i have to start a new job.

i do like langsam gesprochene nachtrichten tho (linked it upthead i think)

That Texas German report is kind of pathetic -- if there was a Texas German dialect, it's long dead -- what's left is old Texans who kinda remember how their grandparents spoke.

Fwiw I've spoken German in Hill country and been understood.

True the ppl in that report in their 60s were v basic, but that old lady the professor was recording sounded pretty fluent.

Oh, sure -- but I think it's total German academic self-parody to say "one aspect of this dialect is that it's highly individual" rather than admit that he's at least 10 years too late.

tbf to him, i assume he's talking to more ppl than that old lady, and it was the bbc person who found those good old boys in their back yard claiming to speak german it sounds like they got from a michel thomas tape. maybe it's the bbc that's 10 years too.

the longest german conversation i ever had in texas was in a mall in el paso but that was girl who was basically fluent from school, but had never left juarez/el paso.

Liebe Grüße zu Fronleichnam

q. abt. 'zu tun haben':

i think that in english, we use the expression 'to have to do with' almost always negatively, e.g. 'what does that have to do with me?'. there's an implicit denial of any connection to the thing at all.

but apparently in german positive usages are routine? a la 'to be concerned with', 'to deal with'?

q: as a consequence, is there a stronger implication of literal dealing-with, being-concerned-with, when the expression is used negatively in german?

doch! personally i use "have to do with" neutrally more than negatively in english, but i agree it can be negative.

it's certainly my impression that "hat zu tun mit" is neutral, although i don't see why it couldn't be negative in context. "warum erzählst du mir? es hat nicht zu tun mit mir!"

"das geht dich nichts an"/"das ist nicht meine Sache" has more of the the "that's none of my business" meaning.

i don't know an idiomatic expression that means "why should i care?"

"es geht um" is kind of in this area, but i think it's closer to "it's about..." as in "it's a book about a an old man trying to catch a marlin"

(native british english speaker)

donkey, caek!

can you think of circumstances where 'zu tun haben' would be preferred to e.g. 'behandeln' or 'sorgen'?

i'm guessing here so wait for one of the more fluent speakers to chime in before mailing any letters, but i just use zu tun haben mit as a direct translation of "to have to do with" and behandeln (in this context) as "to deal with" or "to cover". i'm struggling to think of an example in english that makes the differences between those two clear though. "to have to do with" is certainly a bit more coloquial. i guess it's also a bit less specific about the nature of the connection, whereas "to deal with"/"to cover" implies that the coverage must be comprehensive.

sorgen is something different. or can it be translated as "to concern" kind of like betreffen? in which case, i was not aware of that.

j., i don't personally have seen 'what does that have to do with me?' in an especially negative context yet but i'm no native speaker.
if it should express a negative attitude to a certain topic and is at the same time used for distancing from it the most fitting german equivalent should be "nichts angehen" -> "das geht mich nichts an", esp. "was geht mich das an?"

although "und was hat das mit mir zu tun?" / "damit hab ich nichts zu tun" can be meant negative as well, per se it's more neutral.

i guess i can imagine the question being asked genuinely, presupposing that it doesn't have anything to do with the asker but believing that the answerer is going to be able to provide the relevant connection to the asker. i just usually hear the question as a form of denial ('that has nothing to do with me; what's to say otherwise?').

Umgangssprache

that's a lovely word

Talking of lovely words...

"...when Chancellor Merkel used it at a public meeting, nobody batted an eyelid, our correspondent adds."

Uhhhh, what??!?! *checks calendar to make sure it isn't April 1st*

awesome