Both the long term readers of the blog will know of my off-on attempts to learn German and in particular my 18 year battle to complete the informative tome (unhelpfully titled) "German in Three Months!"
Recently I discovered a new resource called simply "German" by Michel Thomas which was enormously helpful and at last given me a handle on the future (my German 'til then could pretty much deal only with the past and present). It's not yet got me to the stage yet where Stu P (regular reader) doesn't laugh when I speak German, but there's definitely progress.
BUT, I now have an even more dynamic learning resource in that we have a German lady living with us and we have become a falteringly bi-lingual (and sometimes bi-confused) household. Although last night I was trying to talk about the elections that had happened in Germany that day and found I could not pronounce 'Angela Merkel' in a way that our guest had the slightest clue who I was talking about, so more work needed yet.
(I'm also learning a bit more German slang from the Pukka German site)
So, maybe (just maybe) I am getting a bit closer to being able to speak a language in a way that my school predicted I never would ..... and that would be uber cool, nicht wahr?
Stimmt!
Neal,
always good to find you on the blog, and you made me laugh!
Funny that. At my eldest daughters party I suggested to one of her friends that she might want to impress her German teacher with a phrase which was one of only two phrases a friend of mine knew in German. I said it would come in very useful. The phrase ? "Mein hubschrauber ist voller eller" !
I'd like to stress that I now know more than two phrases and am now more attached to this phrase, a response to enquiries as to my well being
mir geht's so gut ich konnte die ganze welt umarmen
Google translates this as "kiss me's going well so I knew the whole world" !?!?!?
Stu,
*laughing* I reckon that might mean I now speak better German than google. But if we are going to be all uber pedantish about it:
geht es so gut mit mir, ich könnte die ganze Welt umarmen
PS
mein alter freunde, Wann können wir zusammen ein Bier trinken?
Ich komme zu Newbury Messegelände im Oktober, so dass wir ein paar Bier kann dann
wahoo, a "bier kann" sandwich