Friday, February 20, 2009

German Lessons

So week five of lessons we finally learned the German alphabet. Suddenly I understand why I find German so confusing. The a makes a short o sound, the e makes a long a sound and the i makes the long e sound. No wonder I am so confused!

6 comments:

Jenn said...

I don't even remember what long and short mean anymore! Hah!!

Susan said...

Ha! It gets worse. Our 2 year old is now is saying "Der Ball" which is correct German. But also putting "Der" in front of English words right now like "Der Bob" or "Der Bubble".

Anonymous said...

I would be confused too! And like Jenn, I think I'd be hard pressed to remember long and short sounds. Good luck with your lessons.

Jenn said...

HEY. More pictures and stories please and thank you.

Rasmenia said...

I've been trying to work on some basic German phrases recently. The grammar is so complicated - it's quite overwhelming.

I don't get any of the rules, but I've found that the pronunciation isn't too difficult - as far as actually being able to force my mouth into making the desired sound.

The sounds make more sense to me, as opposed to French, which is basically a bunch of different vowel sounds, talking through the noise & making a weird purring sound, which is supposed to be an "R". After 3 years, I still can't make these sounds very well.

However, after 1 week, I can manage, "Hallo. Mehr Bier. Toilette und Wurst, bitte. Danke."

Ok... I need more practice. :)

Anonymous said...

i was lucky to find a good language school near berlin where i live.

I took some private german lessons and was really suprised how much better i picked up the language