Yes, that is a real German word.
Translation: my favorite free time activities
Too bad I didn’t have any after I was finished translating this word! Actually, my teacher wrote it up on the board this afternoon. That is why I know it is bona fide Deutsch, and not just a figment of my delirious imagination.
Today was my graduation from Day #17 of language training. The ceremony consisted of a solitary bike ride home. I was met with applause of screeching, yelping, a wide K9 smile, and the twinkle of 16 little toe-nails on hard-wood. I was gifted with a new level of utter confusion, neatly gift-wrapped and tagged: “für Trysta, liebe von Deutsch”.
I decided several years ago, in a small mountain-town of Peru, that to be a good traveler meant one could not judge a country by the standards of another. I had to adopt this principal in order to swallow beef heart and guinea pig for dinner. To say that the German language is illogical and border-line ridiculous would be to judge it by standards of the English language. This, I know, goes against the principals I work toward every time I leave my home country.
So, to rectify, I will just say that learning German is a challenge. Let me present my arguments:
1) ARTICLES – In German, there are three: der (masculine), die (feminine), and das (neutral/neuter). Every single noun in the world had an article. Learning Spanish, it was fairly reasonable. There are only two (el and la) and most of the nouns end in feminine vowels or masculine vowels to help you out. Not the case in German. One of the text books Joe was reading said to just memorize them all. Great…I’ll get right on those 30,000+ nouns! To top that off, half of the other words in your sentence depend on the gender of the noun. So if you guess wrong….you are really wrong.
2) PAST TENSE – In order to say anything in the past tense, you actually have to use the present tense of “to have” or “to be” in the beginning of the sentence and then end the sentence with the past-tense verb. Let’s use the following sentence in English as an example: Yesterday, I bought eggs, milk, and cheese in the market. When you put the German sentence together, what you are literally saying is: Yesterday, have I eggs, milk, and cheese in the market bought. (Gestern habe ich Eier, Milch, und Käse in der Markt gekauft.) As my teacher likes to say (in German), “Surprise, its past-tense!” He tries to lighten the mood when we are all frustrated because the listener/reader doesn’t find out until the end of the sentence whether the action is occurring now, or already did!
3) WORD COMBINATION- The title of this post is a doozy for sure. The combination of German words is usually amusing, but poses many challenges, in accordance with argument four below. If you put a shoe (Schuh) on a hand (Hand)….you obviously get a glove (Handschuh). However, what do you get when you put snow (Schnee) and a broom (Besen) together? No…not a shovel…that would be absurd! You get a whisk (Schneebesen)!! To learn something (lernen) is really important, as is to know something (kennen). To meet someone, however, is to learn know them (kennenlernen)!
Oh gosh, my teacher would be so disappointed. There is not an article in that entire paragraph.
der Schuh, die Hand, der Handschuh, der Schnee, der Besen, die Schneebesen
4) WORD SEPARATION – Once you think you’ve got a handle on the articles, the word combinations, and waiting on the edge of your seat to determine if the sentence is present or past tense, then comes the icing on the Black Forest Cake. Verbs that separate! Yes, one verb separates and makes a new home at the beginning and end of the sentence. So now, not only do you have to wait until the end of the sentence to get the tense, but you also have to wait to get the rest of the word!! For example, in English: In the mornings, I get up at six thirty. What the German sentence is literally saying in English is: Mornings get I at half seven up. “To get up” is one verb: aufstehen. The German sentence is: Morgens stehe ich um halb sieben auf.
Remember the verb “to meet”? kennenlernen Lets pretend you want to say, “We are meeting your mother quickly in the morning in Freiburg.” The literal translation of the German sentence is: We learn morning in the early quickly in Freiburg your mother know. German sentence: Wir lernen morgen in der Früh schnell in Freiburg deine Mutter kennen.
German makes perfect sense to all the millions who have learned it before me. The trick is to put aside everything I know about English sentence construction. In the words of mein Lehrer (who actually does say this in English, just to drive the point home), “Stop thinking. Just be a grammar machine and put the sentence together according to German rules!”
Yes, I learn slowly good German Mr. teacher. Ja, ich lerne langsam gut Deutsch Herr Lehrer.
I will German with the standard of English not judge. Ich will Deutsch mit der Standard von Englisch nicht richten.
(Sidenote added on Jan 15, 2012: I am looking back at these sentences, with an additional three months of German classes under my belt, and realizing how poorly they are written. I am not going to change them though. I am going to leave them exactly as they are, and enjoy them as a documentation of progress made!)
