Mich!

Hallo! My name is Dale and I moved with my family to Germany in August last year (07). We live about 50km East of Frankfurt Am Main. We came here as my wife was seconded by the UK Goverment to work in the European School in Frankfurt. We have two children of 6 and 1, the eldest goes to the European School and has 5 hours of German a week - this goes up every year so I am sure she will soon be better than me!! We come from Oxford in England. I am a Roman Catholic Deacon and was a prison chaplain something I miss very much. I have been asked by the Diocese here in Germany to learn German as the I will be able to run a parish here. A duanting prospect since I have never studied German in my life before. The good news is that the church are paying for private lessons for me twice a week and I am supplementing these with Rocket German and also using the Michel Thomas CD's which I think are very good too! The problem for me is lack of confidence, although I am in the ideal place to learn German unless I think I know what to say perfectly I don't say it and go all shy and revert to English - terrible I know!! My wife however is the opposite and doesn't care what kind of a fool she makes of herself! Would be great to hear of other peoples stories! Ciao! :lol: Dale

Dear Dale I understand well how you can be shy and use only English rather than imperfect German. From my own experience, I would suggest you try to put yourself in situations where you have no choice but to speak German. If you can go to some event without your wife, on whose willingness to try German you rely, you may have more success. For many years my Geliebte and I travelled to Germany and I always relied upon him to make all arrangements. Then one time I left him behind when I returned to the USA and he fell seriously ill on a train journey and I had to fly back to Germany and speak to hospital personnel, and train staff and airlines and hotels and make all kind of arrangements. And I managed it all with my limited German, because there was no-one else to do it for me. I'm sure that you could do it too, if push came to shove, so give yourelf a little push, and just try. In every country in the world, people respond much more positively when you say even a few words in their own language. viel Glück! Caroline

Thanks Caroline for your wise words which I have taken onboard. The other problem however, is as so many people speak English (especially around here in Frankfurt) when they sense that I am struggling they just speak perfect English to me!! - which makes me think why am I bothering!! I am thinking now to pretend I am French or something similar and when they respond in English I will say "Je suis Francais" "I kann nicht Englisch sprechen"!!! Salut! Dale

Hallo! Sei gegrüßt! Your story reminds me of a girl when I was at school (some decades of years ago). :) Am coming from Cyprus and at our school we were studying foreign languages. This girl that am talking about was not a good pupil at all but when she had to talk in another language she was using it no matter how, instead some others, being perfect pupils in written language and in the class, were not so good in spoken language as they were afraid not to make a mistake. What turned out at the very end was that this girl she could speak better a foreign language than the other ones. I wouldn´t say that you have lack of confidence but you are rather a perfectionist and you don´t like to make any mistakes. My husband was telling me the same thing for himself some days ago. He is a German citizen and he moved to Cyprus in 2004 because we would get married and decided to live there. Unfortunately, in 2006 he lost his job and in 2007 he was offered another one in Germany so he had to move back to Germany. In January 2007 we were blessed with the coming of our baby boy and, unfortunately, our baby was growing up without knowing his dad so in November 2007 I decided to quit my place and my job and come to Germany to join my husband so that we are all together, as a family should be! The problem is that the town where his job is it´s not a touristic one and people here they talk at all English! (The town is called Braunschweig and is near Hanover). That is quite frastrating because I can´t do anything and I can´t go anywhere alone because I don´t know any German at all. I started some months ago studying alone from another book and audio cd´s but with a kid running around all the time was not so easy. I´ve recently purchased the Rocket German with the hope that I´ll be able to learn faster as I tried the 6-Day Course and I found out that it is very well explained. Well, so far I found it easy because as I said I was studying from another book so all this is quite familiar to me and much of what I´ve been able to cover till now I already knew it. I will see how I´ll get on with the more advanced and unknown to me words and phrases. I need to learn German very fast not only because I want to be independent and not need to count on my husband all the time but also because of my child. Soon he will start talking and soon he will have to go to the kindergarden so I need to learn the language in order to understand what he tells me. Last month we moved to a new apartment and I started using some of my German (no matter how) with some of the neighbours here. I ask my husband many times to tell me how I should say something and then I use it (some times I forget something but they show to understand me). Last week, we visited my parents-in-law and I used again my "so far" German. Later my husband told me that they were quite impressed from my German knowledge and he was as well. He told me that, unfortunately, he is not the same concerning the Greek language. He is just like you. He is afraid to say anything in Greek with the fear not to make a mistake. But this is wrong because if he doesn´t dare to talk he will never speak Greek. And so you too. You better start talking with the people around no matter how you´ll say it. Slowly-slowly you will learn how to express yourself correctly. Try it, what do you have to loose? Nothing. I apologise for my long message but I thought to let you know about my personal experiences in order to help you. Good luck then with your German and do let us know how you proceed. Be sure that I´ll do the same. Gute Nacht and Bis Bald! Paulina

Hallo alles! I was studying the last days the 1st chapter of the German Grammar and while I was making the exercises of the verb sein I had some questions that I wanted to raise concerning the Sie and sie. I wanted to know how we can distinguish whether is You formal (either singular or plural) or they. I understood very well that we can distinguish it from the meaning of sentence and that if it´s a formal You the Sie will be with capital S but there were some cases where the Sie was at the beginning of the sentence and from the phrase you can´t say clearly whether this is a You or they (as for example in the number 7 of the exercise - "Sie sind die Verlierer des Spieles." Let´s say that the English translation was not given to us. In case we were asked to translate the sentence from German to English how could we distinguish this? I asked my husband to explain this to me because he is German and I gave him this example and he remarked that there is a slight mistake on the translation. The translation says "You are the looser of the game." But "die" is either a feminine-singular article or a plural form, right? It couldn´t be feminine-singular because in this case the noun should have been "Verliererin" and the verb "ist", is that correct? So, it should be either "der Verlierer" or the translation should be: "You are the lossers of the game." I don´t know if I made myself clear. It´s not that serious but I just thought to mention it for the rest there to pay some attention on this and, if it´s indeed wrong, for you to correct it. Thanks for going through this message. Bis Bald! Paulina