Ich möchte Deutsch lernen.
I think the above says "I want to learn German.", but I wouldn't bet the rent on it.
All nouns in German start with capital letters. Despite reading a bunch of German in the last few weeks I didn't realize that was a constant until I read it yesterday. Interesting.
I've now printed out an ASCII chart to help me write out German words with accents. I'm discovering that not all these ASCII codes seem to work in LJ, though they work in my word processor program :-/. Ie.- I couldn't type alt 148 in LJ earlier to get the accented "o", because the command alt 14 seems to flip my LJ journal page back to the home page no matter what I did. I had to cut and paste the title above from Clarisworks. I have no idea why this is happening, but if you don't see accents on my German words at this point, that's why- I'm afraid of losing the entire message I've typed with a misplaced code command. Computer languages are even more of a mystery to me than German...
I've concluded I need to spend the next several weeks of German study building up my vocabulary. Debbie was inspiring to me yesterday because as we sat in the restaurant before going to "Urinetown" she had us learn the names of everything on the table in German. Tisch is a table, Teller is plate, Messer is knife, etc.. And it worked well, because I went over and over it and I did retain the words the next day. It taught me that the best way to learn German vocabulary is just to question everything around me, how do I say this in German and then look it up while it's still meaningful to me. So, I came back from hiking on the Seaton Trail today to look up hiking (Wandern), tree (baum), river (Fluss), leaf (Blat) and turtle (Schildkrote). And each time I look up a new set of words I'm going to write them on a cue card and keep them in a box on my computer desk to review them every once in awhile.
Bought a book at "Chapters" yesterday called "German in 10 minutes a day" (was amused by Paul Kwinn's response to learning I was going to buy such a book, "Yeah, if you're willing to study it for the next fifty years.".). This book has the very basic vocabulary the CD-ROM program I have is missing- the days of the week, the months, the colours, the numbers, etc., plus guides on how to pronounce it all, writing exercises, flash cards. I was also amused that the book has two pages of reusable stickers of German translations of familiar words that you are encouraged to stick up all over your house on the door (die Tur), the clock (die Uhr), the telephone (das Telefon), etc. so that every time you look at those items you will see the German word. I don't think I'll go to that extreme at this point :).
It's cool, as well, to have a husband who is interested in learning some German, too. John learned all the dinner words in the restaurant yesterday and tried to guess the English equivalent of the German words I was reading out of "German in 10 minutes a day" in the van today. It makes it more fun when he plays along, too.
All nouns in German start with capital letters. Despite reading a bunch of German in the last few weeks I didn't realize that was a constant until I read it yesterday. Interesting.
I've now printed out an ASCII chart to help me write out German words with accents. I'm discovering that not all these ASCII codes seem to work in LJ, though they work in my word processor program :-/. Ie.- I couldn't type alt 148 in LJ earlier to get the accented "o", because the command alt 14 seems to flip my LJ journal page back to the home page no matter what I did. I had to cut and paste the title above from Clarisworks. I have no idea why this is happening, but if you don't see accents on my German words at this point, that's why- I'm afraid of losing the entire message I've typed with a misplaced code command. Computer languages are even more of a mystery to me than German...
I've concluded I need to spend the next several weeks of German study building up my vocabulary. Debbie was inspiring to me yesterday because as we sat in the restaurant before going to "Urinetown" she had us learn the names of everything on the table in German. Tisch is a table, Teller is plate, Messer is knife, etc.. And it worked well, because I went over and over it and I did retain the words the next day. It taught me that the best way to learn German vocabulary is just to question everything around me, how do I say this in German and then look it up while it's still meaningful to me. So, I came back from hiking on the Seaton Trail today to look up hiking (Wandern), tree (baum), river (Fluss), leaf (Blat) and turtle (Schildkrote). And each time I look up a new set of words I'm going to write them on a cue card and keep them in a box on my computer desk to review them every once in awhile.
Bought a book at "Chapters" yesterday called "German in 10 minutes a day" (was amused by Paul Kwinn's response to learning I was going to buy such a book, "Yeah, if you're willing to study it for the next fifty years.".). This book has the very basic vocabulary the CD-ROM program I have is missing- the days of the week, the months, the colours, the numbers, etc., plus guides on how to pronounce it all, writing exercises, flash cards. I was also amused that the book has two pages of reusable stickers of German translations of familiar words that you are encouraged to stick up all over your house on the door (die Tur), the clock (die Uhr), the telephone (das Telefon), etc. so that every time you look at those items you will see the German word. I don't think I'll go to that extreme at this point :).
It's cool, as well, to have a husband who is interested in learning some German, too. John learned all the dinner words in the restaurant yesterday and tried to guess the English equivalent of the German words I was reading out of "German in 10 minutes a day" in the van today. It makes it more fun when he plays along, too.