|
 |
Has anyone learnt German as an adult? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| blackcherries Groupie Canada Joined 4749 days ago 41 posts - 48 votes Studies: German | Message 41 of 53 11 December 2011 at 11:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Whoa, is this true: http://www.brighthub.com/education/languages/articles/49298. aspx
Berliners say ick and not ich?? Is that article accurate? I thought it is foreigners who always make that mistake. And here I am perfecting my iCH. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 42 of 53 11 December 2011 at 11:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
No, you're probably learning standard German with a Southern German accent. German and English are both 'pluricentric' languages. There is no one 'hochdeutsch' accent: there are different ones for different cities, just like there's no one "American" or "British" accent, much less one standard accent for all of English. You can pretty safely assume courses are for Hochdeutsch, unless they clearly say otherwise. Having it be for Austro-Bavarian dialect would be like picking up a course for English and finding out that it was teaching heavy a Newfoundland "I's the b'y"-style dialect, rather than 'standard' English with a North American accent.
In Northern German dialects, people say 'ick'. Most Berliners say 'ich', in my experience. I spend a lot of time in Berlin, and hear almost no Berlin dialect, ever. Basically, in Northern Germany, there's a little more similarity with Dutch. The word for 'I' is 'ik' in Dutch, and dialectal 'kieken' is very similar to Dutch's 'kijken', etc. Edited by Volte on 11 December 2011 at 11:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4773 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 43 of 53 11 December 2011 at 11:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
What Volte said. Hochdeutsch isn't an accent, it's a standard language. There are some acceptable variations in pronunciation that still fall under the category of Hochdeutsch. And speaking standard German with a Bavarian accent is not the same as speaking Austro-Bavarian, just like there is a difference between Scottish English and the Scots language. Edited by vonPeterhof on 12 December 2011 at 12:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| blackcherries Groupie Canada Joined 4749 days ago 41 posts - 48 votes Studies: German | Message 44 of 53 12 December 2011 at 12:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thanks for the responses everyone. None of that article is accurate?...where do peoople get their info? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4773 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 45 of 53 12 December 2011 at 12:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5694 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 46 of 53 12 December 2011 at 11:47am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
blackcherries, I'm glad you're learning German. It's an awesome language. I started learning it when I was 20, and because I was very motivated, it was never too difficult for me. Motivation is always important, but with a slightly harder language such as German, it becomes even more so. It sounds like you do have a pretty good motivation, so I wouldn't worry about that. You can do it!
As for dialects/accents, do NOT learn them!!! I can't stress this enough. Imagine someone from Beijing or Paris learning English with a broad Texan accent (which they would surely fade in and out of, because it's difficult to standardize accents in language learning material and therefore reproduce them accurately). It would just be absurd, and only make them harder to understand. Learning Hochdeutsch won't make you an "outsider" at all. If you live in a certain area of Germany for a while, you'll start naturally picking up a bit of the local accent and/or dialect (like the Croatian Hauptkommissar in Tatort München, which I would recommend if you want to hear some lovely Bavarian German!). Yes, some Berliners say "ick", but it's definitely not something to worry about learning. It's like if a foreigner was studying English and stressing about when to say "Yup" instead of "Yeah" – you would just tell them, don't worry about it! Just learn "Yeah" and start using it while talking to Americans, and you'll pick up "Yup" eventually without even realizing it. The same goes for "ick" and other local German variations. (ETA, here's an even better example: imagine a foreigner carefully learning how to pronounce "sure" like a cowboy – "shore" – because s/he wanted to sound Texan!) I guess this is the main problem with learning dialect/accent in German: if you're NOT planning to live in the area where that particular dialect/accent is used, there's no point to learning it; and if you ARE planning to live there, you'll never trick the natives into thinking you're a local, so it would be better to learn the standard language. Young people all over the country generally speak Hochdeutsch most of the time anyway. As for other German-speaking countries... my first German professor was Swiss, and my first German tutor was Austrian. I also had tutors from Bavaria and the Ruhrgebiet as well as another from Austria later on. ALL of them spoke Standard German. There are very slight accent differences, and of course if I had eavesdropped on them phoning home to their families I might have had trouble understanding their dialects, but the point I want to make is that it's perfectly normal for people from all over German-speaking Europe to speak Standard German to foreigners, to each other, and even among themselves (especially with young people). I'm quite sure that your course isn't teaching you Bavarian German. The only courses I've seen (in Germany) for Bavarian were meant jokingly, because it's a common complaint among Germans that the "Bajuwaren" are impossible to understand. I've only been in Bavaria very briefly, but as soon as I started speaking Standard German to people there, they would respond in kind, and we had no trouble understanding one another. My aunt has lived in Munich for fifty years and still speaks Hochdeutsch. In fact, I've spoken Standard German with natives in Vienna, Munich, Baden-Württemberg, Leipzig (Saxony), and Berlin, and never had a problem. In all of these places except the first two I had hardly any trouble understanding the local accent/dialect as well. As for the article you linked to, yes, it's clearly a tongue-in-cheek expression of annoyance. Things such as the sixteen ways to say "the" are indeed true, but that and adjective endings are in my opinion two of the hardest aspects of the language, and besides them it's all easier. (Even the "backwards" word order starts making sense after a while.) The point is, as I mentioned before, if you have enough motivation it won't stop you. :) Go for it! (Long comment is long... but I hope it was helpful too.) ETA: Oh, and about quoting: just make sure the tag with the slash only goes at the end. That is, put [/quote] at the end of your quotation and [ quote] (without the space) at the beginning. Edited by Jinx on 12 December 2011 at 12:11pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5566 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 47 of 53 12 December 2011 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Neither my wife (who is from the Danish/German border) nor I have had any trouble speaking Hochdeutsch in Switzerland (where we both work some time of the year) or in Austria. Its not that people will not understand you, its just that they will know you are not from around there.
Just bring Geordies back into the mix..... :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5Sa_QkbcS0&feature=related I would say - if you came from somewhere other than Newcastle and tried to speak Geordie in the 'toon - you probably wouldn't leave alive. So it is never a good idea to 'learn' accents - you just pick them up if you live in the area for long enough. Edited by Elexi on 12 December 2011 at 12:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| comeauch Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 5210 days ago 8 posts - 11 votes Speaks: French*, English, German Studies: Dutch, Japanese | Message 48 of 53 25 January 2012 at 8:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm currently in Germany and almost no one ever switched to English with me! Of course they'll do if you can't express yourself, but they really are not that good, generally speaking. Learning German was easy now that I think about it. First of all, the written language corresponds with the spoken language. I don't know for you, but I like to read and reading directly helps oral fluency with German. Not like English... or Japanese... That's really a BIG plus, from my point of view. Sure, there are three genders, but there are some guidelines that might help you guess. Worst case scenario, you get it wrong and it won't be much of a problem for the listener anyway. I've learned it since 3-4 years and I'm able to read novels including classics (and that, before I moved to Germany ;) And I'm not hard worker, I just read a lot). GO GET AT IT! 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
