The German language

Ich habe durchfall

so I'm basically challenging myself to learn as much German as possible in the three weeks before my trip. I will try to form some sentences from memory. Forgive my spelling and grammar.

Ich heiße Josh. Ich bin neunundswanzig jahre alt. Ich wohne in Brooklyn. Ich bin verheiratet, aber
Ich habe keinen kinder. Englisch ist meine muttersprache. Sprechen sie englisch?

Das ist mein hund. Es heißen Struppi.

Heute ist Mittwoch. Morgen ist Donnerstag. Gestern war Dienstag.

Ich esse fleisch und bohnen. Ist es frisch? Ach, ja!

OK your dog's name is adorable.

Spelling grammar won't matter much as a tourist and if doing this well after only 4 days is a pretty good sign!

It's not really my dog's name. It's the name of the dog in the german program I'm using, but I want to get a terrier and name it that.

I get really obsessive about things like this for short periods of time. I've been reading my german book on the subway and in the bathroom every chance I get, and I use the program after my wife goes to bed.

My favourite German word is Gefährten which according to google translate thingy means fellowship.

lol

I like how they join a load of words together to make huge nouns so you can usually work it out from a literal translation of each segment. German engineering and technical dictionaries are great for huge words that essentially mean "join all the bits together and you've got one of these."
― Onimo (GerryNemo), Thursday, July 27, 2006 5:12 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark

That is my favorite part about German too.

Ken picked "handschuhe" as his favorite word and it's one of mine too. HAND SHOES!

Hurting - you should totally get a dog and name it Struppi - it's amazing.

I just learned that stricken means to knit. I think that's funny.

I'm not 100% certain that it still is but for a long time the longest German word was Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän which means something like "the hat of a steamboat captain who sails on the Danube River". Yes, there was actually a word for that.

nurse is krankenschwester. This whole language is hilarious. How do germans not laugh constantly as they talk to each other?

It's a good question.

I've always like the word for oxygen - Sauerstoff.

i like the word for (bicycle) spoke wrench: nippelspanner, i think

OK - here are some other funny ones followed by their meaning and then literal translations.

Flugzeug - airplane - fly thing (or stuff depending on who you ask)!
Brustwarze - nipples - breast warts :-(
Schlagzeug - percussion instrument - hit thing

What might just be the best:

Antibabypille - birth control pill

haha!

ausgezeichnet

todlich verungluckt - learned that in GCSE German class, means "fatally injured in a road accident" (IIRC). Proved very useful on my exchange trip to Nurnberg as a 14 yr old...

Nosebear!

"Handy", which is actually the word for cell phone, which - obviously - is handy, but is not called this in English, despite what they might want to believe.

sehenswuerdigkeiten = sights (i.e. where you go sightseeing) = literally, worthseeingnesses

loving this thread. I think I'm ready to my lifelong German-learning hell next September.

to go back to it, that is

Not forgetting Schaufensterpuppen by Kraftwerk. How much better in German?

hey hurting, i just started learning too. i only have school french, no german, but i'm moving to munich in two months, so i'm cramming. starting with pimsleur tapes, will pick up a textbook in the next week or so. schnell!

You should really look through the deutche welle site linked above. The Deutsch-Interaktiv course is really good and they also have lots of free podcasts, including the news read slowly in German.

ty

I've been taking German evening classes for the past couple of months and they've been fun - usually someone brings a bottle of German wine along - but I don't feel like I've learnt much, partly because I am bad at making time to do the homework and go through my notes, but mainly because the teacher is very easily distracted and usually ends up just talking in English to the one guy of similar age to him. So totally going to check out that site, thanks!

I didn't expect German vowels to be too different to English, but they're really stumping me. They're... higher in the mouth than my native vowels, I think? Like, I can hear that the long E sound is not just English "ay" but almost like "ee" but somehow different to the long I sound, but I can't seem to get my mouth round it at all. So I must have the most English accent ever.

Schornsteinfeger - chimney sweep
add 'in' at the end for female sweeps

srsly tho have degree can help if required

One of the hardest sounds for me to make in German is the "-er" at the end of words, because it's so close to the English but subtly different, and I keep wanting to say it as "airr"

btw, I hate to be a downer and post a holocaust poem, but this is blowing my mind (have side-by-side translation, of course):

Paul Celan - Todesfuge

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken sie abends
wir trinken sie mittags und morgens wir trinken sie nachts
wir trinken und trinken
wir schaufeln ein Grab in den Lüften da liegt man nicht eng
Ein Mann wohnt im Haus der spielt mit den Schlangen der schreibt
der schreibt wenn es dunkelt nach Deutschland dein goldenes Haar Margarete
er schreibt es und tritt vor das Haus und es blitzen die Sterne er pfeift seine Rüden herbei
er pfeift seine Juden hervor läßt schaufeln ein Grab in der Erde
er befiehlt uns spielt auf nun zum Tanz

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich morgens und mittags wir trinken dich abends
wir trinken und trinken
Ein Mann wohnt im Haus der spielt mit den Schlangen der schreibt
der schreibt wenn es dunkelt nach Deutschland dein goldenes Haar Margarete
Dein aschenes Haar Sulamith wir schaufeln ein Grab in den Lüften da liegt man nicht eng

Er ruft stecht tiefer ins Erdreich ihr einen ihr andern singet und spielt
er greift nach dem Eisen im Gurt er schwingts seine Augen sind blau
stecht tiefer die Spaten ihr einen ihr andern spielt weiter zum Tanz auf

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich mittags und morgens wir trinken dich abends
wir trinken und trinken
ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamith er spielt mit den Schlangen
Er ruft spielt süßer den Tod der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
er ruft streicht dunkler die Geigen dann steigt ihr als Rauch in die Luft
dann habt ihr ein Grab in den Wolken da liegt man nicht eng

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich mittags der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
wir trinken dich abends und morgens wir trinken und trinken
der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland sein Auge ist blau
er trifft dich mit bleierner Kugel er trifft dich genau
ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete
er hetzt seine Rüden auf uns er schenkt uns ein Grab in der Luft
er spielt mit den Schlangen und träumet der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland

dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamith

I wonder if I could pronounce German (or French) as well as I do English? Probably. I have the nasty habit of "losing" my own accent if I talk with someone over a long period. :-(

Meine Mutti fragte mir ob ich Rilke kenne. haha My German is soooooo crap.

Glad Hurting 2 posted a poem. German poetry is beautiful, always overlooked against romance language poetry. Brecht had a great gift, viz the just opening of his 1933 poem 'Deutschland'

Deutschland

Mögen andere von ihrer Schande sprechen
ich spreche von der meinen.

O Deutschland, bleiche Mutter!
Wie sitzest du besudelt
Unter den Völkern.
Unter den Befleckten
Fällst du auf.

the translation can only grab the meaning and the rhythm

Let others speak of her shame
I speak of my own.'

O Germany, pale mother!
How soiled you are
As you sit among the peoples.
You flaunt yourself
Among the besmirched.

There's a film called 'Germany, pale mother' where the poem is recited at the start. Utterly beautiful.

'bleich' is a quality word

Mutter, ich bin von allem abgetan.

Eine No-Go-Area

I thought loan words tended to be neuter but the only one of those new imports to be neuter is "It Girl". Goodbye, any chance of me guessing at genders of German words!

Thanks for the article, whatever. I'm curious about the proliferation of hyphens in German, not least given that the Germans aren't usually shy when it comes to super-size-pile-up compound nouns. Why Olympia-Stadion and not Olympiastadion, for example?

I am having fun doing this. Just about to finish Pimsleur 1, which is 15 hours of tapes, 30 mins per day. We have not done du, or tenses, but I am surprised at how much progress I feel like I'm making.

I will be finishing level 3 when I move to Germany at the end of September, so I hope I can at least get by, even if I will have to rely on friends for things like arranging utilities/accommodation.

Zahn = tooth, Zahnfleisch = gums [i.e. tooth meat]

Textilfrei = nude.

Frei Körper Kultur = going nude.

FKK is a lot more than that. It's a Weltanschauung.

Nipple = Brustwarze ('breast wart').

I was once told that the literal translation of 'imagination' is 'picture making power'.

xpost: The bolted-on conceptualism is why I love it! Das ist so typisch Deutsch.

Same thing goes, markedly less lovavbly, for Wohngemeinschaft: literally "living community", but actually "flatshare". (But then again, so very much more than "flatshare"...)

That thing about cell phone being "handy" is kind of symptomatic, every other word spoken on german tv these days is a poorly adapted english word. "Jetzt wird das team richtig stark fighten", was the last one I caught.

For some reason the Germans also use the English word "slip" for "undies". My German friend was kinda surprised when I told her that English speakers don't actually use that word for undies.

Then again, I've never understood why the term "WC" is used for toilets in many countries except the English speaking countries, even though it comes from the English words "water closet".

It's a privilege of the English to export these words, and then immediately change them for a lark. All those Americanisms like 'fall' and 'pants' and 'gotten', I think they were ditched here just so we could act all snooty.

gotten?

Americans still say "gotten", don't they?

Yes, but so do English people, nicht wahr?