tenlittlebullets

D: I just realized I can't speak German anymore. This is deeply disturbing, you guys! Once upon a time my French was mostly literary and German was the only non-native language I could actually hold a conversation in. Now every time I open my mouth or put my hands on the keyboard with the intention of saying something in German, it comes out in French.

And this is actually relevant because I have met German-speaking acquaintances in real life and been hideously embarrassed that I could understand what they were saying but I couldn't answer. Not to mention I WILL be taking advantage of my year abroad to travel around Europe, and it would suck to have half-assed German in most of the places I want to visit.

And yes I still listen to German music, but listening comprehension is not the problem here. I feel like I need to read a book or something to get a feel for it again (because that's how I got used to thinking in French), except my grasp of literary German has always sucked. Maybe I could start small. Like with fanfiction. Except all the German Les Mis fic I've ever seen sucks ass and is actually more entertaining in Babelfished English than in the original.

Hmmmmm. I will have to ponder this. And go watch Lola Rennt without subtitles. That might help.

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Oh, good luck.

I discovered the other day that I can still read really basic level French, which surprised me since I can't speak it any further than being able to apologize and explain that I don't speak the French. I suspect my continued studies of Spanish might be helping. Romance languages support each other like that.

Yes, they do! I've never taken a word of Spanish, but I once found myself translating a newspaper article (very roughly) out of Spanish for someone who doesn't speak any Romance languages. And although I've only ever taken a semester of Italian, I suspect I could get to an intermediate level fairly quickly.

Except my accent. I have the most egregious French accent when I try to speak Italian. *hangs head*

I've never done much with Italian, but it's so similar to Spanish that I bet I could pick it up pretty quickly. I took the one year of French after I'd been studying Spanish for some while, and I had the worst time convincing my brain to send French words out of my mouth. *g* For the first few weeks, whenever I spoke in class, I was just as likely to speak Spanish as French.

And, because I was into anime at the time, there was also the occasional word of Japanese, just to keep my teacher on her toes.

(I also did this in Spanish class a couple semesters ago: "Spanish spanish avec spanish -" Instructor: "Wrong language." Me: "What?" *mentally reviews* "Oh, right.")

I don't have the code-switching problem if I'm actively studying several languages at the same time--at one point I was taking Latin and Italian and reading Hugo in French, and that was miraculously okay because I was getting regular reinforcement of all of them. But a language like German that's just rattling around in the back of my head with no recent practice... yeah, it's always the prepositions and the simple ubiquitous verbs like 'put' and 'start' and 'take' that my brain helpfully replaces with something from another language. Thanks, brain.

Apparently Spanish and Italian are (mostly) mutually comprehensible, which is pretty cool. And would explain why I can squint at an obituary written in Spanish and come up with an approximate translation.

Deutsch ist als Fremdsprache aber auch ziemlich schwer, oder? Englisch ist zum Glück extrem einfach :-)

Deutsch war eigentlich sehr einfach für mich--die Grammatik ist regelmässig, oder mindestens mehr als Französich. (Französiche Grammatik ist völlig verrückt; so viele Ausnahmen...) Und der Wortschatz ist verwandt mit Englisch; ich kann noch viel verstehen, aber wenn ich ein Wort suche, ich finde nur das französiche Wort im Kopf.

And you don't want to know how long I spent with an online dictionary to write that. *groan* It's not as bad as I thought--most of it is a matter of forgetting genders or "god dammit I KNEW that word, why did I look it up?"--but I definitely cannot carry on a conversation in real time.

I always thought French grammar - or Romance languages in general - was complicated (there are so many unnecessary tenses, aaah! :D), but at least very regular. And I started learning French in 5th grade and still had French classes nine years later when I graduated. But of course I can't really judge what it's like to learn German as a foreign language - it's just that lots of people told me that it was really difficult for them, and I keep thinking there are lots of irregularities. Don't know. :D

Your German seems to be really good, though :-) I'm not sure I could have written something like that in French.

I know, right? There is something obviously perverse and wrong about a language that has more tenses than its ancestor, especially when that ancestor is Latin. And French is full of irregular verbs and "this is how you use 'y' and 'en' except you're not allowed to use them if you're talking about a person except for x, y, and z, and oh by the way here's a reflexive verb that does weird shit with agreement in the passé composé..." It probably looks very regular next to English and its nightmarish orthography, but I'm blind to the craziness of English since I grew up speaking it.

I think the people who have trouble with German are the ones who don't like learning grammar rules explicitly, or looking at charts. It's harder to just pick up informally than most Romance languages. I actually like learning about grammar, though, and while some German grammar is rather strange (like when to put case endings on adjectives), once you learn the rules it mostly follows them. And, thank God, there are almost no irregular verbs.

Your icon, is that from that band Die Artze? (The only German band I know, heh).

Oh, it's funny, has a bunch of German songs up today, so that might help you. It's a french music blog and the stuff is usually pretty good.

Nope, it's Rammstein. When I was fourteen I thought Rammstein and Megaherz and their ilk were the best thing EVAR.

German music doesn't help me, actually! *sadface* My comprehension has always been pretty good, I just can't produce anything anymore.

German music doesn't help me, actually! *sadface* My comprehension has always been pretty good, I just can't produce anything anymore.

Yeah, I hear you. I can read/understand French OK but if someone asked me to write something complex I couldn't do so.

woe!

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