My good friend German Mickey O’Flanagan has been teaching me how to speak German. I’m not really good at learning, preferring not to learn whenever possible. German Mick has a way with words and is an excellent teacher. He makes everything easy to understand and if you’re thinking about learning German, I can say with hand on whatever side your heart is supposed to be on, that he is an amazing teacher. I know I’ve a lot to learn but I already feel like I know so much:
I lived in Germany for two years back in the 70s. By the time I was there just a short while, I could speak German “fliessend, obwohl falsch.” In other words, I made mistakes but I made them while speaking fast.
I was able to become fluent because I had no choice. It was either speak German or not talk to anyone except a few expatriates and one or two Germans who wanted to practice their English. It was no fun talking to almost nobody, so my German became usable in a pretty short while.
Bitte sehr!
I had a similar experience but in my own country. The west of Ireland has a community called the “Gaeltacht” who continue to speak Gaeilge which is the Irish language. When in school, we are taught Gaeilge but it is a hard language to learn and some people would be sent to the Gaeltacht for the Summer months where Gaeilge is exclusively spoken. We would get into trouble if we spoke English and even though we were only kids, like yourself in Germany, we had no choice but to learn. I always thought it was an interesting way of teaching.
German is so expressive! 🙂 I learned German is high school and college, but have no opportunities to use it. BTW, the last example needs the proper body language to accompany that “Bitte?”!
When I was in school, I was thought that German was the business language and how right that turned out to be. Germany is running the entire business of Europe.
I went to Austria a few years ago, and I learned that if I said Bitte enough, people just spoke English. I don’t know why they couldn’t tell me at the beginning they spoke English instead of me butchering German, but Bitte.
I’m one of those people who visit a country for a day and am convinced I can speak the language fluently!
My grandmother had an old Spanish phrase book that she picked up back in the 1940s in California, on a road trip. Along with the usual stuff (“Hello,” “Good day,” “Good evening”) it contained such gems as “You are a pig.” That could be useful, I suppose, if someone cut you off in traffic or stole your wallet. The international incident that would result might not be so desirable, though.
Okay, you’ve hit the bonus and this is where Bill Y shares a secret and hopes that yourself and Donna only see it as it’s tucked nicely away at the end of the post: When I was younger, I had a thing for Scandinavian women. This has not changed to this day and I’ve been lucky enough to go out with a few Swedish and Finish women. I realized when I was a teenager that girls liked the fact that you attempted to speak their language soooooooooo I leaned 10 or 12 sentences in lots of European languages which totally got me away with all sorts of stuff. Now, “You are a pig” could well have been applied to me back then and some would say, today, too. Those words are fact.