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What level German is this? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| eccodandini Newbie United States Joined 5501 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 9 04 January 2013 at 5:19am | IP Logged |
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Just curious: what level (A1, B1, C1 etc) do you think the German spoken in these videos is?
Easy German - flirten Easy German - 4 Of course, not everyone is speaking about complex issues.... Anyway, allegedly this is "easy" German, but to my ears it must be at least B2. Would love to get some other opinions. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4952 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 2 of 9 04 January 2013 at 8:12am | IP Logged |
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Well, it's easy but there's two different things that can be categorized here, as it always happens with these videos in any language.
The questions themselves, asked by the hosts, are very standard German and they themselves can be categorized as simple A level stuff (Wie heißt du? Kommst du her aus der Gegend?, etc... ). This is pretty basic introductory stuff. The answers however are more spontaneous so they can range from a very simple "ja oder nein", all the way to answers that have multiple inbedded dependent clauses, which can be a high B level of comprehension.That is the difference between the controlled environment of a class, where you will be afforded structured, quasi robotic answers so that you can drill and practice (i.e "Ja, ich komme her aus der Gegend"... in real life you will not likely get such a mechanical answer). Furthermore, the respondents use street talk. Which of course is highly colloquial not just in vocabulary but also in contractions, which sadly many courses still refuse to tackle, in any language. For example, a German course will teach you that you will be asked "Willst du (irgend)was trinken?", but in colloquial German that becomes a rather disconserting and at first unintelligible "Wills'was trinkn? The reason street conversation grammar or vocab is so challenging to foreigner lerners is because they are simply neglected or not taught at all in proper courses... either from being remiss, or on purpose because they do not want to confuse the learner. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 9 04 January 2013 at 4:21pm | IP Logged |
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This is why speaking the language colloquially is so important; you'll learn what the
natural way to abbreviate things in speech are. When I speak French, for example, I use the French convention that the "ne" in a negation is dropped in speech. Il n'y a pas is usually just said as "y a pas" and you need to be aware of such things. It is funny because in a classroom I will sometimes unwittingly respond in the same way French people say these things whereas they are teaching the formal structure; and then people will point out that I am not using my "ne's" (f.e.) and I will say "oh right" and the teacher sometimes says something like "s ok, that is what all the French people do anyways". It works like that in German as well; there are many written constructions that are not used as such in the spoken language and if you hang out with youngsters then you will learn a lot of colloquial slang. When I was in Munich I hung out with Germans and I spoke mostly in German. What happened was that (apart from the dialect thing) I would sometimes have to ask why they are using x word for something. It turns out that some of these words (f.e. krass, doof, etc.) are words very commonly used in speech but no one writes them down. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4625 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 4 of 9 04 January 2013 at 8:47pm | IP Logged |
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The people in the video are all native German speakers but they are being asked very simple questions. I
don't think you can really pin a level on the language being spoken. It would have been more interesting if the video also featured people whose first language was not German. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| zepplin Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4353 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 5 of 9 04 January 2013 at 9:31pm | IP Logged |
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A bit offtopic but I think it is important to mention.
I think one should be careful with these kind of videos. At least unless you have learned to speak in "hochdeutsch". A bad example for one trying to learn deutsch with videos would be if the people are talking with a bavarian accent. So when you imitated the sound very good, it is possible that in another part of Germany no one will understand you. I myself have to ask bavarians to talk "hochdeutsch" because I don't understand them :) What I want to say is, be careful which kind of videos you learn from. Like tarvos pointed out it's a live conversation, nothing staged(?not sure if the right word) so you always have an accent and different pronounciation depending where the video is made. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| icicle13 Newbie Germany Joined 4287 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 6 of 9 16 March 2013 at 9:26pm | IP Logged |
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I am currently taking a B1 course and I understand pretty much everything in the videos fairly easily. There are a few words that I don't understand, and a few phrases and word uses that I don't recognise. I live in Germany tho', so probably, I am more used to hearing real German people speak (as opposed to language tapes and language teachers who may be German but are used to speaking to learners) than someone not living in Germany. Thanks for posting the links.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4671 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 7 of 9 16 March 2013 at 11:33pm | IP Logged |
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Hochdeutsch itself is an obsolete word in many parts of Germany.
Many people prefer terms like Standarddeutsch or Schriftdeutsch. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Astrophel Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5735 days ago 157 posts - 345 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Cantonese, Polish, Sanskrit, Cherokee | Message 8 of 9 16 March 2013 at 11:58pm | IP Logged |
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Outcast, you are SO RIGHT about contractions! I've found lack of listening comprehension to be so frustrating that when tackling Russian and Polish I focused on listening before anything else, just so I could learn how things are ACTUALLY pronounced and develop a feel for how they contract as well, before learning even the most basic stuff.
I used librivox and read along with the text, for the sole purpose of matching the written words to the spoken ones, without understanding much if any of what was said. I feel it really helped because even with my small vocabulary I can always pick out the words I know, and even if I don't understand anything, I can usually transcribe even fast speech with decent spelling...though I don't always get the word boundaries right if I don't know them yet. Elemenopee! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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