Olham...you'd be proud!

[UK_Widowmaker]

My Son is now 13...and has decided to take Languages as a key subject in his future school curriculum...specialising in German!...He loves the Language, and according to his German Tutor..has a gift for learning the subject!

 

I'm very pleased that he's going to study German..as we Brits (including myself) are extremely lazy at learning Languages.

 

If he learns to speak and write German half as well as you speak and write English..I will be very proud of him

Edited March 23, 2011 by UK_Widowmaker

[+Olham]

A gift for learning languages is probably the first important thing you should have,

when you decide to learn German. The grammatic is pretty difficult.

And where English just uses "the", we have "der, die, das" in German - so you have

to remember, what is male, what is female, and what is objective.

Sounds easy? Well, the moon for example is male - der Mond ; the sun is female -

die Sonne; and a child is objective - das Kind. As if sun and more are more human

than a child??? It is crazy in parts!

But yes, I feel something like pride, that an Englishman is learning my native language -

we all sure can do with a better understanding. You may even feel more proud (prider?),

when you hear, that English is the first foreign language on German schools. So most

Germans learn English.

I then had to make a choice for the second language to be either French or Latin.

As I didn't plan to go into nay medicine or historical business, I picked French.

But I am very "basic" in French, to be honest.

 

If he should ever want to know the correct way of saying this or that sentence, you may

write them to me in a PM, and I will answer you. I wish him all the best with it.

 

PS: our native Ostfriesisch, which is not a form of low-German, but an old language -

partly related to Skandinavian as well as to Dutch - shows many same roots as English.

Edited March 23, 2011 by Olham

[UK_Widowmaker]

Thank you for the kind Offer Olham..I will keep it in mind

[Slartibartfast]

Must admit I am trying to learn German or German with an Austrian Dialect... and I am having problems thankfully I have stuff for the supermarket asking directions and also on purchasing a motorbike sorted... its just the conversational stuff I fail on... So I know how tough it is to learn so good luck to him...

[+Dej]

I studied French, German and Latin at school and college, then Old English, Welsh and Irish as a part-time hobby (also Sindarin and Quenya, ahem, if I'm forced to admit it).

 

If your son would take one word of advice from me WM, I'd say 'Vocabulary'... learn as many words as you are given the chance to, especially in a language with strong gender, declension and conjugation rules.

 

The grammar is important of course and will 'slot into' the brain over time but the more words you learn the more rapidly will your 'feeling' for the language increase, the stronger will be your recognition of the Germanic commonality and the easier it will become.

[NS13Jarhead]

you have to remember, what is male, what is female, and what is objective.

Sounds easy? Well, the moon for example is male - der Mond ; the sun is female -

die Sonne; and a child is objective - das Kind. As if sun and more are more human

than a child??? It is crazy in parts!

 

I took German for 1 year in college. Like you say, I found that it was somewhat strange to assign genders to objects. Neuter (genderless) children [die Kinder] and masculine pencils [der Bleistift] (makes sense if you think about it). But it does help to figure things out by capitalizing all the nouns. However, combining nouns and the adjectives that modify them into one word makes for some pretty large spelling challenges.

 

After a year I realized that I just have enough trouble with English.