Jo has started a 5 week intensive course in German. She has classes 5 mornings a week and is not allowed to speak any English during the lesson!. This has been interesting as there are 3 other people in her class, only one of which can speak English anyway. The method works quite well, although its hard if you don’t know any German to start with. Fortunately Jo had been learning for a year in Australia before we left.
Nathan isn’t having any lessons yet, but has been trying to speak German at work. One day he had an audience of local Germans who wanted to watch him order Italian takeaway over the phone. He thinks they didn’t really believe he was going to get it right, since he was ordering their food as well!
So far it’s still the fun stage of learning a language. Making progress and trying out new words. Whenever you say something in German, everyone is pleasantly surprised that you are making an effort. We’ve heard that after a while it gets harder because people start to expect you to speak German, and get frustrated when they can’t communicate well with you.
Even so, it has got to Nathan in some way. Last night he had a terrible nightmare, where he was sitting a German exam. Halfway through he had to go to the toilet, and forgot how to get back to the exam room. He spent valuable writing time wandering around the grounds trying to find someone who knew which room he was supposed to be in, and panicking that the assessors would accuse him of cheating once he found his way there. By dream’s end, he was on the ground digging the ground in frustration.
Nathan considered putting up a photo of a re-enactment of his dream, but thought better of it.
Useful German Word #1 – Dingsbums (can be masculine, feminine or neuter) = Thingy-mi-jig. Can be used to describe anything that you don’t know the German word for.
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