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Gemüse auf einem Spaziergang
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Gemuse
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 3884 days ago
818 posts - 1189 votes

Speaks: English
Studies: German

Message 65 of 180

27 March 2014 at 12:01am | IP Logged

German:
CD intensive (just got this today). Gespräch 1-3
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Gemuse
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 3884 days ago
818 posts - 1189 votes

Speaks: English
Studies: German

Message 66 of 180

29 March 2014 at 2:44am | IP Logged

German:
CD intensive: Gespräch 4, 5

Learned the difference between the two ö sounds, eg, in schön and köln.

Realized I have been saying "Welche" as "Welshe".

Loving the rolling r's in of the speakers in the course.

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Gemuse
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 3884 days ago
818 posts - 1189 votes

Speaks: English
Studies: German

Message 67 of 180

30 March 2014 at 3:05am | IP Logged

Did half of Hugo Chapter 9.

Took the DW online A2 test. Good practice, good audio.

Quote:

Your overall result is 72%.

EVALUATION:

60% - 79%
Very good! You have reached the CEFR A2 competence level. If you would like to continue
improving your German, you should enroll for a course that is now starting towards the
B1 level.

Way too optimistic. No way am I A2. I would put myself at A2.1.
Readers may also recall that I had failed the A2.1 exam (received 57% on it) just a few
weeks earlier. I have not progressed THAT much. I just hope that I get placed in the
A2.2 class based on the placement test I will have to take in 3 weeks. The course
director had actually recommended that I repeat the A2.1 class when I went to see him
about my result.

It took me 70 minutes to do the DW test. I was also reading the German translations of
the instructions and questions, so that was good practice.

Edited by Gemuse on 30 March 2014 at 3:07am
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Gemuse
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 3884 days ago
818 posts - 1189 votes

Speaks: English
Studies: German

Message 68 of 180

31 March 2014 at 4:32am | IP Logged

Finished first pass of Hugo Chapter 9.
This chapter was a disappointment. There were a ton of words, with past partizip forms,
but not many example sentences. Lots of new words relating to how time is expressed (eg
nun, eben, vorhin), and again no example sentences. The chapter should have been twice
the length with lots of example sentences.

English:

Quote:

Maybe it would be easier to navigate the dissolving boundaries between public
and private spaces if we all had a variety of names with which to signal the aspects of
ourselves currently on display.

Man, I wish I could write as well as this.
Snippet from
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/opinion/s unday/can-we-learn-about-
privacy-from-porn-stars.html.

Weekly bit of ItchyFeet http://www.itchyfeetcomic.com/2014/03/diminishing-returns.ht ml
Can relate to losing native tongue :(

Edited by Gemuse on 31 March 2014 at 4:38am
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Gemuse
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 3884 days ago
818 posts - 1189 votes

Speaks: English
Studies: German

Message 69 of 180

06 April 2014 at 9:11am | IP Logged

German:
Slacked off during the week, but got it back together from Friday.

Hugo: Did a first pass of chapter 10. The passive construction kicked my behind. Hugo
German really needs to be a 750 page book rather than a 250 page one. There need to be
more examples, more explanations.

The following two reviews from amazon.co.uk sum up my feelings nicely

Quote:

The smash-your-bones-out approach

The book boasts that you will attain a good working knowledge of German in a mere three
month period, which is of debatable merit. While she lulls you into a sense of security
for the first seven chapters, easing you into the language like a lathering, hot,
relaxing bath, she then proceeds by jerking you back out by your gonads: dangling you!

But of course this shouldn't be a surprise, since you must have paused to contemplate
the inevitable choking from cramming large language pieces into your head without
chewing it sufficiently - Everything she writes is succinct, and I would advise anyone
who decides to proceed with this book to pay close attention to what she writes: no
verbosity included.

----------------

It doesn't just immerse you in German, it throws you in at the deep end, and puts it's
foot on your head to keep you drowning.

I was looking at my German A2 text, and I dont think it covers passive voice at all!

Had there been more examples, and explanations, this would have been a super awesome
book.

LingQ: I explored the site for the first time today, I like it! I like the text with
vokab approach. I add "Schritt für Schritt", and I will cover the passages. I learn
vokab in context, isolated word lists do not work for me. I will use this resource for
"light" study, to be used as a supplement to my usual intensive in-depth approach to my
learning learning resource.

I also toyed with the idea of going through the important highlighted words in the
collins easy learning dictionary to improve my vokab, but decided to postpone it for a
month. I do not yet know enough German to be comfortable with the example sentences in
the dictionary. I will do this after I finish Hugo German.

Here is a chill melodious German song I came across.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=C08akCUyjrw

Passive voice
Outcast made a really helpful post on passive voice.
Sentence in question: Ihr wurde der Führerschein abgenommen.
The translation says "They took away her driving licence".

outcast wrote:

Remember that in your sentence, the ACTUAL agent of the action (the
person that takes away the driver's license), is left out. That is one of the only
reasons people use the passive in language.

The agent of the action in an active sentence is the subject (nominative)
The object that is directly the target of the agent's action is the direct object
(accusative)
The person affected or that is the "patient" ("suffers" or "enjoys") the action of the
verb is the indirect object (dative)

Thus in the active:

Man hat ihr den Führerschein abgenommen

(man = agent that takes away the license; DEN Führerschein = the object directly
affected by the verb, it is the thing taken away; ihr = the person "suffering" this
action, usually called the "patient")

You could replace "man" with "Die Polizei", if you knew it was them who took the
person's license away. Thus:

Die Polizei hat ihr den Führerschein abgenonmmen.

This helps make the Transformation to the passive more clear. In the passive, the
direct object or accusative becomes the subject or Nominative. Thus, Führerschein
becomes the subject:

Der Führerschein...

The dative, or the "patient", the person that suffers the taking away of the license,
cannot be changed, EVER. Thus:

Der Führerschein wurde ihr abgenommen.

In German that sounds a bit ackward because German word order tends to favor pronouns
before actual nouns. "Ihr" is a dative pronoun, "der Führerschein" is an actual noun.
Therefore Germans will usually place "ihr" first, which places the grammatical subject
"der Führerschein" to follow after (thus triggering inverted verb 2nd order)

Ihr wurde der Führerschein abgenommen.

It is this word order that at times throws us non-natives off and takes some time to
get used to. We think it should be the subject when it is not.

Finally, the subject or nominative of the formerly active sentence (the Agent of the
verb), COULD be introduced with "von", if you knew who it was.

Ihr wurde der Führerschein (von der Polizei) abgenommen.

I hope the step-by-step helps.

Something I missed in last weeks ItchyFeet.

http://www.itchyfeetcomic.com/2014/03/diminishing-returns.ht ml
Standpunkt = point of view (standing place in comic)
Lebensmittel = food (Life stuff in comic)

Thanks to the commenter who pointed that out :)

Edited by Gemuse on 06 April 2014 at 10:43am
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yantai_scot
Senior Member
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4604 days ago
157 posts - 214 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: German

Message 70 of 180

08 April 2014 at 11:25am | IP Logged

Outcast's post (which I hadn't read since I wasn't on the forum lately) is excellent. I
can't take it in right now, but I'll definitely come back to it in the next day or two.
Thanks very much for posting it!

Annett Louisan's so easy to listen too! I might not know every word but it's lovely to
hear something slow and clear. She's now on my youtube collection. I've not heard of
her before. Is she well known in Germany?

I don't know if you like older/weirder music...I came across a Weimar Republic music
hall (Vaudeville) act called The Comedian Harmonists. The Nazis hated them. They're
just so jolly and the music is fun. Not all the recordings are as clear as each other
but they all make you smile:

Personal favourites:
Irgendwo auf der Welt ("Somewhere In the World")
Kannst Du pfeifen, Johanna? ("Can you Whistle, Johanna?")
Mexico
Ich wollt' ich wär' ein Huhn (I wish I were a chicken)

Downloadable mp3s here

Apparently, they were 'rediscovered' in the 70s when a German film called 'The
Harmonists' was made about them...
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Gemuse
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 3884 days ago
818 posts - 1189 votes

Speaks: English
Studies: German

Message 71 of 180

08 April 2014 at 12:01pm | IP Logged

yantai_scot wrote:

Annett Louisan's so easy to listen too! I might not know every word but it's lovely to
hear something slow and clear. She's now on my youtube collection. I've not heard of
her before. Is she well known in Germany?

I dont know if she is well known here, but here is the story of how I discovered her.
In my Goethe Insititut class, a song of hers was played. Right when I heard that song,
I became enamored with it, and the singer. When I returned from class, I spent quite
some time hunting for the song from whatever lyrics I had managed to decipher (I did
not know the singer either). I could have asked the instructor, but I guess I was too
shy. Found the singer finally. Here is another song of hers you might like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn7QCknl8tw

And the song which started this all for me (the theme of the day was adjectives):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43HAtuyUZwA

There songs are songs which I would have loved, German or no German. It's a pity non-
English songs get orders of magnitude less coverage than English songs. There are some
great non-English songs out there.

Thanks for the mp3 links, I will check the group out.

Edited by Gemuse on 08 April 2014 at 12:02pm
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Gemuse
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 3884 days ago
818 posts - 1189 votes

Speaks: English
Studies: German

Message 72 of 180

12 April 2014 at 7:55pm | IP Logged

German:
Ugh, was planning to review Hugo German but could not get to it.
Lingq:
Schritt für Schritt Lessons 1,2

I decided to cover the A2 vocab list that I posted:

http://www.goethe.de/lrn/prf/pro/hdb/Pruefungsziele_Testbesc
hreibung_A2_Fit2.pdf
List starts around page 70. 15 pages.
Was planning to do 4 pages today and 4 pages tomorrow. Nope, not gonna happen. It took
almost the whole day to do just 2 pages. I had a dictionary by my side, made notes, and
looked at the example sentences. The sentences are great as they are at A2 level, and
teach stuff which I can assimilate, with the kind folk at HTLAL helping. There were
many words which I had encountered before, but the meaning of which I had forgotten.

Edited by Gemuse on 12 April 2014 at 7:57pm

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