anyone able to teach themselves German?

[burnedout]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
I don't agree with you all who say it's easy. Yes, English and German have their similarities, but many find the German sentence structure to be bass-ackwards. Getting various endings to agree with a word's proper gender takes some skill too (from nominative to accusative to dative to genitive, etc.). Conversationally, I'd say I am quite fluent, but put me in a business or political setting and my fluency fades. The vocabulary is quite extensive. Nine years later and I am still working on it.

(Yes, compared to the likes of Greek, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, German is easier I'd say. But it's still not a cake walk.)

At first, I had considerable problems with gender. That really required some application and study. A couple of times, I was assigned to assist in some translations of support agreements between the Bundeswehr and the U.S. Army on a unit scale. Now there was a challenge. Couldn't have completed the assignment without a comprehensive Wörtebuch. Went to court as a witness over there a couple of times. What a mess. Head hurt tremendously after those experiences.

I've always heard that Spanish, French and Dutch were much easier than German for an English speaker.

 

[FrustratedUser]

Schnalt euch die Sicherheitsgurten an!

 

[halik]

Ich studiere Deutch 6 jahre. Die Spreche ist ziemlich schwerr, abere du kannst es lernen.

Kartoffel Puffer Kaninche = pancake bunny 😀

 

[kleinesarschloch]

Originally posted by: halik
Ich studiere Deutch 6 jahre. Die Spreche ist ziemlich schwerr, abere du kannst es lernen.

warum hasst du es nicht gelernt? ;-) j/k you're all right

 

[Eli]

My girlfriend is taking german.. heh.

 

[no0b]

nein

 

[Miramonti]

with motivation, i.e. a woman in mind, you can do it yourself. 🙂

get some books and tapes/cd's. berlitz stuff is great.

 

[rudeguy]

Originally posted by: no0b
nein

I took three years of German in HS...its not that hard of a language....IIRC, english and german are both romance languages, which means the basics are pretty much the same...except german has the feminin/male/neuter versions of words

 

[GTaudiophile]

Originally posted by: rudeguy

Originally posted by: no0b
nein

I took three years of German in HS...its not that hard of a language....IIRC, english and german are both romance languages, which means the basics are pretty much the same...except german has the feminin/male/neuter versions of words

LOL! German is FAR from a romance language 😀 You're thinking of French, Italian, Spanish, etc.

 

[Mayhem1869]

ich habe in uberschule 4 jahre deutsch klasse gehabt, aber seit schule nicht viel deutsch gesprachen.

speaking german well enough for people to think that you speak it is easy, but it is hard to remember
all of the genders and verb conjugations.

 

[rudeguy]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile

Originally posted by: rudeguy

Originally posted by: no0b
nein

I took three years of German in HS...its not that hard of a language....IIRC, english and german are both romance languages, which means the basics are pretty much the same...except german has the feminin/male/neuter versions of words

LOL! German is FAR from a romance language 😀 You're thinking of French, Italian, Spanish, etc.

german is a romance language...or at least google says so

 

[GTaudiophile]

Originally posted by: Mayhem1869
ich habe in uberschule 4 jahre deutsch klasse gehabt, aber seit schule nicht viel deutsch gesprachen.

I can't help but give a little lesson here...

I use to call "high school" hoch schule in German, but you don't do that. When referring to it in German, just say "high school."

Use the verb lernen when referring to more informal education like kindergarten through high school.

Use the verb studieren when referring to more formal education like college, graduate school, etc.

 

[Mayhem1869]

like i feebly tried to say...it's been a few years.

 

[alphatarget1]

Originally posted by: halik
Ich studiere Deutch 6 jahre. Die Spreche ist ziemlich schwerr, abere du kannst es lernen.

Kartoffel Puffer Kaninche = pancake bunny 😀

Hast du Deutsch als Hauptfach?

Ich lerne schon 6 Jahren Deutsch.

IMO it's not *hard* to learn the language and use it, using it *perfectly* is hard.

 

[Cyberian]

Originally posted by: halik
Kartoffel Puffer Kaninche = pancake bunny 😀

That may be all the German most people need.

🙂

 

[Yossarian]

All my German knowledge comes from WW2 video games. Schnell!!! Achtung!!

 

[Aceshigh]

I know it doesn't seem like it but German is supposed to be closer to English than Spanish is. English originally developed from Old German.

 

[burnedout]

Originally posted by: rudeguy

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile

Originally posted by: rudeguy

Originally posted by: no0b
nein

I took three years of German in HS...its not that hard of a language....IIRC, english and german are both romance languages, which means the basics are pretty much the same...except german has the feminin/male/neuter versions of words

LOL! German is FAR from a romance language 😀 You're thinking of French, Italian, Spanish, etc.

german is a romance language...or at least google says so

I may be wrong on this, but I always thought the classic "romantic" languages from a linguistic sense were Spanish, Italian, French and Portugese. German and English, as well as Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish are "Germanic" languages.

Here is a link explaining more.

 

[Shantanu]

German is most definitely *not* a Romance language.