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Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmütze nstricker - the German support group

Red Herring

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I have a friend living in austria who speaks hoke deutch. He is very proud about it. Is it a big deal to learn it?

I guess that is the English pronounciation of "Hochdeutsch" which is Standard German. However, there is a German, an Austrian and a Swiss standard.

If your friend is proud of speaking Hochdeutsch in Austria he probably means that he does not speak in a regional dialect and that he doesn't sound very Austrian either. But I am guessing here.
 

Red Herring

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- "Mayday. We are sinking! "
-"Hello! Zis is German coastguard. Vot are you sinking about?"
 

Raffaella

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It's quite awesome that once you know German, you can leapfrog into the other Scandinavian languages. I'm very flaky when it comes to learning new languages, I learn new words and phrases easily but drop them as soon as I become interested in something else. I've been consistent with my interest in German and French but I definitely want to learn them in a formal manner. I've looked into classes at the local college but I had to delay until next year since I'm swamped with work this year.

I've watched a few episodes of Durch die Nacht mit... without subtitles and I really enjoyed them. Mostly because they went around Berlin and certain parts of Berlin look exactly like Melbourne (or the other way around). I didn't understand much of the conversations, just the general gist but I really liked the casual format - I just need to download more episodes.
 

Fregoli

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Ich hab’s gelernt in die Schüle, aber ich hab nur alles vergessen!

I found German a hell of a lot harder than French or Italian; even though English and German are both Germanic languages, English, in terms of vocab and sheer learnability, is much closer to French.

Whereas German seemed to be a grammar course for masochists. The cases were murder (der, die, das, den, dem, des, usw - and an article that was feminine in one case would suddenly become masculine or neuter in another), the prepositions were confusing and bitty, and there were crackjaw compound words.

Still, they gave us science, culture, art and music!
 

Mad Hatter

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Ich hab’s gelernt in die Schüle, aber ich hab nur alles vergessen!

I found German a hell of a lot harder than French or Italian; even though English and German are both Germanic languages, English, in terms of vocab and sheer learnability, is much closer to French.

Whereas German seemed to be a grammar course for masochists. The cases were murder (der, die, das, den, dem, des, usw - and an article that was feminine in one case would suddenly become masculine or neuter in another), the prepositions were confusing and bitty, and there were crackjaw compound words.

Still, they gave us science, culture, art and music!

The grammatical gender doesn't change, but belongs to the word and remains with it. What does look confusing though is that with some forms, you can't determine which case, gender or number it is without further context.

paradigm.jpg

Thus, "der" for example can be both nomiative singular masculine determined, dative feminie determined, or plural genitive determined. Add to that that grammatical gender is something that appears to be pretty random, I can understand that this causes a lot of confusion. I'm glad that I'm a native speaker of German, but I also have troubles with languages that work similar than German where I have to remember the gender that goes with every word.
 

Red Herring

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Time for a revival? How are you guys doing all these years later? :newwink:
 

skimpit

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I was just looking at this thread, wondering if I should post in it. I wasn't involved in its creation, but it seemed interesting since I love to learn languages and German is on the list.

Thank you for taking that big step forward lmao [MENTION=10251]Red Herring[/MENTION]
 

Doctor Cringelord

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I wanted to learn it but my parents forced me to take Spanish instead
 

Red Herring

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Que? Deutsch ist gut.

Bueno, si vives en EEUU el español probablemente te viene mucho más útil que el alemán. Aún así, diría que haber estudiado una lengua romana puede ayudar con el alemán, por lo menos si tu lengua materna es el inglés. Es una primera iniciación al mundo del genero gramatical, de la conyugación de los verbos y todas esas bellezas... quizás podrá reducir el choque :D
 

Jaq

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Bueno, si vives en EEUU el español probablemente te viene mucho más útil que el alemán. Aún así, diría que haber estudiado una lengua romana puede ayudar con el alemán, por lo menos si tu lengua materna es el inglés. Es una primera iniciación al mundo del genero gramatical, de la conyugación de los verbos y todas esas bellezas... quizás podrá reducir el choque :D

I read that as "To continue press any key" and I'm here looking for the any key.
 
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