|
 |
101 Reasons German is a Great Language! | ||
Tags: Reasons for study | German | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5839 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 1 of 55 28 March 2010 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Why you should seriously consider studying German and feel great about it:
1) The biggest mother tongue in the EU. 2) The language of the unified Germany, a leading European country dedicated to quality and a high level of organisation in everything it does, and dedicated to supporting growth, peace and prosperity across Europe. 3) Also the language of Austria (glorious Vienna, the gateway to Eastern Europe) + Switzerland (Zurich, serious expanding business hub of Europe, plus lots of other lovely places), The Alps in general and some minor pockets of speakers elsewhere in Europe. 4) The language of Göthe, Schiller and lots of other great writers and poets, plus a very large number of Nobel Prize winners, perhaps 15 or so. 5) The language of some major classical music pieces including classical symphonies and opera. 6) Many Eastern Europeans seem to speak it better than English, therefore very useful as a Lingua franca in that part of Europe. 7) Great way to learn formal grammar - it naturally falls into place as you learn German. 8) If you are a fan of industrial rock, techno etc, like Rammstein, basic German is a must-have... 9) It is very misleading to say that "all Germans speak great English". Simply not true, even in business. 11) Lots of helpful German-speaking people out there, willing to help people learning their language. 12) Germans themselves are quite serious about learning languages so it goes both ways. Plus this is not a "compulsory" language, just a "great-to-have" and you can drop it any time...TRY IT! ----------------------------------------------------------- HELP ME ADD SOME MORE REASONS TO MOTIVATE ME AND OTHER LEARNERS OF German... And perhaps inspire new learners to take it up. And no, I was not bribed to write this by Angela Merkel, the Göthe institute or BMW.... ;-) I just have eyes to see with.... and I wanted to counterweigh some previous threads, so please add all the good reasons to learn German! Edited by cordelia0507 on 28 March 2010 at 3:10pm 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6471 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 3 of 55 28 March 2010 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | ||
Actually 95 (list), assuming you're counting all fields, not just chemistry or the like. Already between 1988 and now there were 15 German Nobel Prize winners... Germany produced many well-known philosophers: not just Marx and Engels, but also Heidegger, Kant, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Habermas, Simmel and von Weizäcker, and there were many others (also Martin Luther if you want to count him among the philosophers). Some of the most well-known German scientists: * Copernicus * Kepler * Albert Einstein (born in Germany, discovered relativity in Switzerland and only then emigrated) * Karl Benz, the inventor of the gasoline-powered automobile, and Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the Diesel * Wernher von Braun, rocket scientist * Alexander von Humboldt, inventor of biogeography * Justus von Liebig, inventor of fertilizers * Carl von Linde, invented and patented the first practical refrigerator * Otto Lilienthal, one of the first men to build a flying machine * Wilhelm Messerschmitt, who produced the first jet airplane * Gottfried Leibniz, who discovered the fundamental theorem of calculus * Max Planck, who layed the groundwork in quantum physics, and Arnold Sommerfeld, another pioneer of that field * Wilhelm Röntgen, inventor of the X-ray * Heinrich Schliemann, the archeologist who found Troy and several other sites * Levi Strauss, who first produced blue jeans * Ferdinand von Zeppelin, inventor of the Zeppelin * Konrad Zuse, who build the first Turing-complete computer and the first high-level programming language Edited by Sprachprofi on 28 March 2010 at 2:24pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5586 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 4 of 55 28 March 2010 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | ||
hahahahaha I cannot stop laughing :D German Rap > American Rap. You can appreciate the beauty in the language (Grammar, words, speaking) To an outsider it appears rough, but to a student or speaker it's amazing. Super-long words like Windschutzscheibewaschanlage! (Windshield washer :D) 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5867 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 5 of 55 28 March 2010 at 4:45pm | IP Logged | ||
Here is a good reason: Because Deutsche Welle has such a marvellous web site for learning German via the news and various themes about Germany. I provided the following link to Brian91 on another thread although I have not been learning German actively for a long time. Just looking at that web site this morning has convinced me that it is too great a resource to pass up. It has excellent, high-quality, parallel text/audio. Google Translate provides very good pop-up English<>German parallel text. So I am adding German to my 'actively-learning' list. The site has German courses, slow and normal speed news, video, etc. etc. all focussed on language learning. Here is a link directly to the low-speed news with parallel text/audio. The other links are on the left side of the page. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0,,8030,00.html 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5449 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 6 of 55 28 March 2010 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Apparently there are a lot of resources for learning obscure languages in German. Is that true?
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5436 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 8 of 55 28 March 2010 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | ||
The question is whether this really is a word. You can pluck nouns together to your heart's content, but you don't have to. Such monster words are not exactly good style. They still can be understood easily if you know how to separate the parts: Heiz=öl-rück=stoß-ab=dämpfung where = stands for what you would call a double bond in chemistry. A rather short compound noun derailed me once. I saw this in a shop window: Ölöfen This looked like Finnish to me. It took me a few seconds to figure out it meant Öl-öfen (oil furnaces). This can be tricky for language learners, as I know from Russian and even Swedish, where many words are extremely short. A few weeks ago I didn't grasp the meaning of the Swedish word "delta" at the first glance, because I reminded me of the Greek letter. When I heard it spoken I realised it must be read as del-ta (part-take -> partake), which makes perfect sense. 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. |
