Einen Im Tee haben

I love it when you come across a bizarre phrase and it turns out to be an idiom. Was just reading GuteFrage and someone posted

'I know you can smoke tea - but what kind is best?'

And someone replied

'Wer Tee raucht, hat einen im Tee'

He who smokes tea has one in tea

Eh?

So googled "einen Im tee haben" and one of the top results was gute frage (of course- it is the source of all knowledge on the Internet)

Was bedeutet "einen I'm tee haben"? 

 Turns out it means to be drunk and one answerer conveniently listed other ways of saying it -

"er ist besoffen, blau, hacke, dicht oder wie du sonst sagst..."

Thanks again gute frage - an invaluable resource not only for tea smokers but also for german learners!

deutschrock

Today I have been mostly listening to music tagged as deutschrock on Last FM. After all About.com tells me "German popular music can be a fun way to learn German." As one of their writers says

"Would you like to explore the world of modern German music? Would you like to download rock, pop, or rap songs in German? How about watching a German music video online? Well, I just did all that, and boy was it fun!"

Oh About.com. I wonder why no one talks to you at parties.

 

But it's half term and I'm in work, my colleague is on holiday so he can't complain - time for a bit of deutschrock!

Die Toten Hosen - ich bin die Sehnsucht in dir

Lyrics

"The Dead Trousers" Hmm ok.. Oh wait Last FM helpfully tells me dead trousers is a phrase meaning "nothing's happening", well that makes a bit more sense. These guys seem like they're the German Green Day- catchy punky tunes with lots of guitars and tattoos.

Grammatically speaking the lyrics to this song are really useful. It's like they sat down and said "hey those folks learning German really have problems with dative pronouns- let's write a song to help them out!"

Ich hab dir deine Wege gesucht ..huh? I think this is I sought your paths for you. My first I thought was I searched for your paths to you. ..It's a good example of dative pronouns being bloody confusing- so thanks dead trousers.

Sportfreunde Stiller - (tu nur das) Was dein Herz dir sagt

Lyrics

This very catchy- and bonus points for featuring what I'm pretty sure is a saw as one of the instruments. Also good cos it's clear, slow, and mostly in the present tense so easy to follow.

More dative pronoun action in the title - do only what your heart says to you. Or more elegantly just do what your heart tells you. Feel like I'm starting to get the hang of them!

Also some good words verkehrt - wrong, and verdreht - twisted. Really like the rhymes on this song.

Christina Stürmer - Nie genug

Lyrics

Upbeat positive song sung by young people. This feels like it was on an advert - maybe for a car or deodorant or soft drink. She sings about how she hasn't gotten enough out of life and there's always more. Mainly this seems to consist of wandering around on beaches and running down the middle of roads.

Wie schnell kann sich die Erde dreht, Fr mich nie schnell genug

How fast can the world turn, for me never fast enough

Well that's the kind of scientific ignorance we can expect from the young people of today.

Cynicism aside tho- this is a nice catchy tune and good for her getting the most out of life. For me this song taught me the verb umdrehen - to turn around, and weiter zu weit gehen which took a while to figure out because weiter is one of those annoying words with far too many meanings. I think means to continue to go too far - not the most useful phrase, unless you are like Christina Stürmer.

Gosh it's late - maybe more deutsch rock later, time for schlafen now.

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German film night: Goodbye Lenin!

Eine richtiges tolles deutsches Film! I really enjoyed this film, funny and moving but never schmaltzy. It was full of nostalgia for a bygone time -but not rose tinted.

 

The central premise is so original but easily explained- it's no surprise this film won funding from BBc four amongst others. The idea is this- Alex's mother slipped into a coma, right before the Berlin Wall came down. Now she has woken up eight months later and her beloved DDR no longer exists. Her doctor says she must not have any shocks- but how can he achieve this, as Germany goes through one of the most exciting times of its history? So he pretends the wall is still there, that East Germany still exists, putting the new imported food into old jars and faking news stories. The result is very funny, but touching as well.

I loved the way Alex scrambled to explain a coca cola advert, and the heartbreaking idea that he came up with to explain the presence of western cars, that all the west Germans had realised life was more than televisions and VCRs, and they were all coming to the East to seek a more fulfilling life.

In the end I guess it was about memories and lies and the way families deal with both.

 

From a German learning point of view it was pretty good. The older people spoke nice and slowly and there was some interesting slang. I got a few new words and phrases which I'll write down so I don't forget.

Genosse, comrade - very useful everyday word...

Chef being used informally as in Na klar Chef!

Sandmann, a very cute looking kids show.

Laune, mood

Überraschung, surprise

That's all I can remember for now- I'm off to look up sandmann videos on YouTube :)

 

 

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Warum nicht?

When I tell friends I'm learning German the most common question is Warum?? (But for why?? Why???) the answer- ich weiß nicht. I'm not planning to move there, I don't have a German boyfriend or even know any Germans. So really no logical reason. Maybe because it's there.

I started, as I've said before, with Duolingo- just planning to learn a few useful phrases for a holiday (like "the woman is wearing the jackets" for instance) but then I just couldn't stop. I wanted to know more and the more i learned the more i liked it. I love the way German sounds and the way they squish all the words together to make new words. And the way so many of their words are related to English but in odd and unexpected ways. Like i read that wesentlich meaning essential has the same w as was and were, it came from the same original root. And "Tier"(animal) is from an ancient word that in English became "deer"

The question that usually follows warum? is wie? (Can you tell I've been doing question words?) as in -have you enrolled in a class or are you doing a course online or what? Nein. Keine Klasse, keine Bücher, keine Lehrer - I'm just using free online tools and I'm just doing it for fun.

And so far, it's going well. So i thought I'd share my course, how to learn German for free, the Judy way, purely for fun and entertainment-

 

Every day

get up, maybe if time run through a bit of vocab on quizlet or memrise.

On the way to work stick a podcast on (currently the bonkers but wonderful "deutsch:warum nicht?" )

Lunchtime - vocab or read German websites (gutefrage, Wikipedia.de, news, pictures of cats, whatever you fancy at the time.)

You can always find somewhere to practise your German on the Internet

Drive back from work and if Eddie Mair is on radio 4 put a german podcast on

Evening- do vocab in the ad breaks whilst watching tv.

Watch a YouTube video.

Before bed read a chapter of a German book. Bore partner with tales of the German words you have learnt today. (Two reasons for this -1. it helps you remember new words, 2. it annoys him)

Every week

Watch a German film. Try not to use the subtitles. (Get annoyed when you almost understand but not quite and the subtitles disappear before you can read them)

Spend some time reading up on a grammar topic that's been bugging you (recent grammer lessons include- exactly what is the German word for "it", how come sometimes there's s's on the end of words and how many words for "the" does one language need anyway)

And that's about it. It's difficult without any kind of assessment but I feel like I've learnt more in two months doing this than I did in four years of school. I should say however- I'm mainly learning for reading and understanding, rather than speaking. My ultimate goal is to read a book without having to go to a dictionary every 10 words, or watch a film without subtitles. I am investigating some ways I can get some practice speaking, it would be good to have a simple conversation and not sound like a total idiot, but it's not my main goal.

Also, bin ich glücklich; jede Tag, vermehrt mein Vokabeln, verbessert mein verstehen und übersetzte ich ein bißchen mehr vor ich die Wörterbuch zu gehen muss.

 

 

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Where it began- duolingo

One of the things I want to do on this blog is talk about my experience with the various tools and apps available for language learning. So it seems right to start with the one that got me started -Duolingo.

Duolingo's very own nag bot -the nameless "owl who must be kept happy" - emails you every day reminding you there's German to be learnt.

Duolingo is a popular iPhone app and was named Apple's "App of the year" last year. It's very simple and colourful and makes ppl like me, nervous about embarking on a complex subject, feel welcome and supported. It also has all the usual "gamification" tricks to make you feel like you're making progress and give you a nudge to keep going. Hey you only need 10 more made up things to reach the next made up thing! -now I am human (and worse a gamer) so it works, but that kind of motivation is only going to take you so far.

After a few weeks I stopped using Duolingo. It was great to get me going but as I started actually wanting to learn rather than earn made up things the appeal started to wear off. It was all a bit simple and repetitive and I didn't feel like I was learning anything. Also the example sentences are not very useful and some are down right odd-

"die Ente ist ein Haustier" says the strange dead voice of the Duolingo woman
What? Hit repeat
"Die Ente ist ein Haustier "
Eh? The duck is.. something... hit repeat again
"Die Ente ist ein Haustier"
The duck is a ...pet? Really??

I can't see this being useful, unless I buy a duck and invite some Germans round...But maybe that's what duolingo wants me to do?

Other great examples include " the fly is eating the bread" and " the woman is wearing the jackets".

Also you can't really get an understanding of grammar from apps like this- I got up to the "dative" section and there's not much explanation just suddenly there's a lot of dems flying around and it's not really clear why.

But that said, it has become a bit of an easy target for ppl who think apps are all just whizzy nonsense and you can't be learning unless you're sat in a classroom. Which I really, really disagree with, so I feel the need to stick up for it.

Good things about Duolingo -

It got me started- without it wouldn't have got anywhere.

It's completely free. Which is amazing when you think about it.

And it did teach me a fair bit of vocab, like "duck" for example.

 

Im die Haustier Geschäft

 

Guten Tag ich möchte ein Ente kaufen.

Wir sind ein Haustier Geschäft , wir haben keine Ente.

Oh ich glaubte die ein sehr beliebte Haustier in Deutschland

Nein. Sie sind verrückt. Auf Wiedersehen

 

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