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My German 2010 Diary | ||
Tags: German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| tennisfan Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5363 days ago 130 posts - 247 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: German | Message 9 of 12 11 April 2010 at 11:14am | IP Logged | ||
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A bit of a random thought on my German studies: I think German is a beautiful language.
I browse around the forum a lot. I have seen a few threads on the "ugliness" of German, and they seem to have covered almost every possible opinion. So I'll throw my two cents in with no great aim other than a late night musing. I felt inspired to write this entry after stumbling upon a post on another German thread suggesting the following website as a supplement to Michel Thomas: http://www.german-grammar.de/ It's a well put together site that covers all the aspects of German grammar. Very useful. But I noticed something odd on one of the preface pages: http://www.german-grammar.de/grammar/chapter_2/2_1_how_does_ German_sound.htm He said what? "You often hear that German sounds ugly. The author has to admit that if you are referring to the sound of the German language, it hardly passes as a beautiful language." Why does this German feel he needs to be an apologist for his language? and where does he come up with the idea that the language is "admittedly" not beautiful? I speak English natively, and I also speak Spanish and Italian fluently. I find German to be quite alluring and quite beautiful, both aurally, in terms of simply how it sounds to my ears, and beautiful in its structure. Aesthetically speaking, I like the clear sounds, I like how crisp and finite the words are, I like the smoothness that the dipthongs create on my ears. Structurally, I love how flexible the preposition + verb combination makes the infinitive (i.e., kommen to ankommen to zukommen), and I find the inverted word order (what MT calls "weil" situations) absolutely poetic, a small piece of literature in every day language. I'd venture to say that for me, it's more beautiful than Spanish or Italian, even though I enjoy both languages very much. There's something sexy about German. I'm sure people's stereotypes have a lot to do with their perceptions of it, but a normal person just speaking German, there is something very alluring in the way the language sounds, the fluidity with crispness of words, flexibility of both nouns and verbs, and so on. So yea. I think German is quite beautiful. Gute Nacht. :) Edited by tennisfan on 11 April 2010 at 7:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5447 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 10 of 12 11 April 2010 at 11:54am | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, German is sexy, especially if spoken by Julia Jentsch. Nice. 
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 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5850 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 12 11 April 2010 at 1:27pm | IP Logged | ||
Good idea to post the transcript of your German podcast as well. Ich habe mir deinen Podcast angehört und finde, dass du eine gute und klare Aussprache hast. Dein "r" ist völlig akzentfrei Deutsch, nur bei deinen Vokalen a, e, i, o, u kann ich einen leichten amerikanischen Akzent hören. Wenn du so mit Muttersprachlern sprichst, wird jeder dich sehr gut verstehen. Hat mir Spaß gemacht, den Podcast anzuhören! Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 11 April 2010 at 1:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tennisfan Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5363 days ago 130 posts - 247 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: German | Message 12 of 12 16 April 2010 at 12:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I am finished with Part 1/4 with MT Advanced German. It seems that on this pace I should be done with MT Advanced within about a week, and I'm trying to figure out my next step. I have Assimil's German with Ease, but after looking at it and after reading several Assimil threads, it seems I may have taken the steam out of the entire Assimil process by doing MT's program. I'll keep going with Deutsche Welle's Warum Nicht, but I prefer to have more than one source since it seems to do a good job of inculcating and reinforcing what I'm learning. Assimil might be my only option.
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