The Joys of Learning German

The first week I arrived here I have a massive head cold, probably curiosity of the teeming hordes of Dubai or Sydney airport. This combined with the extreme change of temperature made for a rather unpleasant first week. Australia and your heat and beaches, I am sorry please come back, the kids miss you…

Having now finished a two week course and worked out how the whole language learning ranking works. I have now figured out that the class was almost a whole two course books ahead of where I left on in NZ. So suffice to say I spent most of the time in the corner, wearing the Dunce hat, having my brain explode and blowing my nose at the same time.

Our teacher was strict too and I would fumble through the passages I had to read, and watch in horror as the temperament of some of my less friendly classmates change as I tried to find the correct adjecktive endung for the feminine, dative case while the class waited, having never been taught the four cases before. At least I can remember what witch is in German, die Hexe. No I am sure she is a lovely person outside of class..

For a culture that has a reputation for timeliness and efficiency their language is overly complicated.  For example to make a correct sentence you need to know, the order of nouns, verbs etc, which changes with each type of sentence, statement, question, command etc, the gender of all the nouns (masculine, feminine, neutral eg: die Banana and der Bus why the Banana is a girl and the Bus a boy and what value that has to do with anything is beyond our entire class), what case each noun is in (this changes in accordance with which place it occupies and can be one of four Akkusitive, Nomaitive, Dative and Genativ of which there are over 20 possibilities ) the correct adjective ending, the correct conjugated verb etc.. you get the idea. This explains a large portion of why most people with half an education can speak good English. Coming from German, reasonable English is easy. 

                Does a bus have a schlanger? Does a Banana have womens bits? Am I missing something? Who are you kidding by calling them genders? When a new word enters the German Language there is considerable debate over which gender is should have.  EG: Most foreign machines/electronics are neutral or Das, das Auto (car), das Handy (cell phone). Dear Germany, I have a suggestion, why do you just get rid of all your genders, where is the value in having them?

I tend to agree with Oscar Wilde who said : "Life is too short to learn German".

Having never studied languages before, the fumbling continues. Oh well, so many Germans speak English quite well. It is a constant surprise for me. 

Well its not all perfect.