An Interior Understanding: The Language Inside the Language

Almost 5 months of speaking German, in Germany.  I have managed to grasp on fluidly moving around in the German lifestyle.  I am no where near fluent in the language though.  It was said to me before I left, 'German is one of the easiest languages to learn', in fact, in a way that is true.  Although it is not a Latin based language, there are so many Latin/English conjugates-and just as many false conjugates (read: Gift is not the word for present)- that it can be easier to remember the word for computer is- in fact -Computer (although pronounced differently), than it is for the word for Christmas Tree (Weihnachtsbaum).

Take the words of Mark Twain from (The Awful German Language)


"I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper of it with my German. I spoke entirely in that language. He was greatly interested; and after I had talked a while he said my German was very rare, possibly a "unique"; and wanted to add it to his museum.

If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also have known that it would break any collector to buy it. Harris and I had been hard at work on our German during several weeks at that time, and although we had made good progress, it had been accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance, for three of our teachers had died in the mean time. A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is."


If all you want to do is memorize words, German is the language for you.  But after this, the easyness comes to an end.  The German grammar system is one of the most difficult in the world.  For every rule, there is at least 3 exceptions to that rule.  And sometimes the exceptions will have exceptions.  I have talked to some of the Asian inbounds who speak Japanese or Chinese.  They too agree with me.  Apparently, the Chinese and Japanese grammar is simpler than the German grammar (although the Kanji and Characters make up in difficulty ;-))

Again, in the words of Mark Twain:


"Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns over the page and reads, "Let the pupil make careful note of the following exceptions." He runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it. So overboard he goes again, to hunt for another Ararat and find another quicksand. Such has been, and continues to be, my experience. Every time I think I have got one of these four confusing "cases" where I am master of it, a seemingly insignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground from under me. For instance, my book inquires after a certain bird -- (it is always inquiring after things which are of no sort of consequence to anybody): "Where is the bird?" Now the answer to this question -- according to the book -- is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account of the rain. Of course no bird would do that, but then you must stick to the book. Very well, I begin to cipher out the German for that answer. I begin at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the German idea. I say to myself, "Regen (rain) is masculine -- or maybe it is feminine -- or possibly neuter -- it is too much trouble to look now. Therefore, it is either der (the) Regen, or die (the) Regen, or das (the) Regen, according to which gender it may turn out to be when I look. In the interest of science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it is masculine. Very well -- then the rain is der Regen, if it is simply in the quiescent state of being mentioned, without enlargement or discussion -- Nominative case; but if this rain is lying around, in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is then definitely located, it is doing something -- that is, resting (which is one of the German grammar's ideas of doing something), and this throws the rain into the Dative case, and makes it dem Regen. However, this rain is not resting, but is doing something actively, -- it is falling -- to interfere with the bird, likely -- and this indicates movement, which has the effect of sliding it into the Accusative case and changing dem Regen into den Regen." Having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answer up confidently and state in German that the bird is staying in the blacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) den Regen." Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark that whenever the word "wegen" drops into a sentence, it always throws that subject into the Genitive case, regardless of consequences -- and that therefore this bird stayed in the blacksmith shop "wegen des Regens."

And that, is just the begining.


I have included a link to the story above.  It isn't very long, but it is VERY interesting.

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But continuing on, with words that relate to more to the title of this post.

An Interior understanding.  Sure you can speak a language pretty well with a dictionary and a little luck.  But actually having an understanding of the language takes work.

For instance, if you wanted to ask someone 'Can you take a photo please?', and you decided to go to the dictionary and directly translate it, you would probably come up with something like 'Kannst du Einahmen ein Bilder bitte?'

The person would look at you like you're crazy.

The actual German translation is 'Kannst du bitte ein Foto machen?' (Can you please a photo make?)

Makes sense huh?

Lets move on to words that don't exist in English:

The other day I was in Spanish class, and I was talking to one of my friends.  He was talking about Christmas songs and how some of the English ones were SO annoying, and how they were giving him an Öhreworm. My dictionary told me that an Öhreworm=earworm.

What the hell is an earworm?

I asked him to explain himself. He explained that an earworm is when a song gets stuck in your head.

May I also direct you HERE if you are interested in more non-existant English words :-)

To go even further in the subject, how about German slang?

I was with my host mother the other day (Hallo Bettina, wenn du diese lesen) and we were talking about movies, she used a verb that sounded like 'kookin' several times.  When I asked, she told be it was a slang word that was used in speech but not in writing.  It doesn't really have a spelling.  It means to look, to do, to see, to check out, to browse, to skim.... a whole lot of stuff.

Ha. Confusing much?

Too much Grammar for now... I think I am going to go to sleep!  I have another post coming up about the 'Stern Singers' in the next week or so... I still have to get the photos from my first host mom.

Guten Nacht Leuten

Sarah

I also invite you to check out my friend Angies blog, she is another inbound to my district, and she has some great posts! HERE IS THE LINK!