der Sprachesalat - language salad
i had a breakthrough today in german class. i finally figured out when to use the accusative case and when to use the dative case! okay, just sort of. i'm getting the hang of it.
as i get a little more advanced (beyond building vocab and into grammar rules) i am apparently forgetting the basic stuff. we had a quiz today and i missed all of the easy questions. then a man on the street asked me where the u-bahn stop was and i couldn't muster one simple sentence. i got nervous and ended up pointing - the wrong way. oh well.
on instant message dan recounted to me a similar story from his lunch today:
"I was so proud of myself - I ordered everything in German, asked for no veggies in German - understood when she asked if I wanted sauce. I was able to say 'a little' - all in German. I felt really good about myself then I went up to pay and totally failed to communicate with the cashier. He made some joke - I didn't understand - we spend a while establishing that I couldn't speak German then ended it with a 'never mind'."
everyone in my german class speaks at least one other language. when we try to communicate we often end up using a little english, german, russian and spanish meshed together. my venezuelan classmate calls our brains "ein Sprachesalat". no one can be expected to communicate effectively with salad for brains.
as dan said about today's experience: "ho hum - you win some and lose some, I guess."
as i get a little more advanced (beyond building vocab and into grammar rules) i am apparently forgetting the basic stuff. we had a quiz today and i missed all of the easy questions. then a man on the street asked me where the u-bahn stop was and i couldn't muster one simple sentence. i got nervous and ended up pointing - the wrong way. oh well.
on instant message dan recounted to me a similar story from his lunch today:
"I was so proud of myself - I ordered everything in German, asked for no veggies in German - understood when she asked if I wanted sauce. I was able to say 'a little' - all in German. I felt really good about myself then I went up to pay and totally failed to communicate with the cashier. He made some joke - I didn't understand - we spend a while establishing that I couldn't speak German then ended it with a 'never mind'."
everyone in my german class speaks at least one other language. when we try to communicate we often end up using a little english, german, russian and spanish meshed together. my venezuelan classmate calls our brains "ein Sprachesalat". no one can be expected to communicate effectively with salad for brains.
as dan said about today's experience: "ho hum - you win some and lose some, I guess."
posted by jordan at
4:21 PM
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