On Wednesday, I have my first observed lesson in Germany. This is obviously taken a lot more seriously than it was in Latvia. In fact, I worked for one school in Riga for two years, and wasn’t observed once.
Of course, they tell you that it’s “routine” and designed to “support the development of the teacher”, but the fact that it could just as easily be used as ammunition to fire you is always top of your mind – or maybe that’s just me. (Gives self a kick and a lecture on being positive.)
I first received notification of my observation in mid-December in the form of a rather lengthy email. And, as with most things in Germany, there is a shitload lot of paperwork to be completed – both pre- and post-observation.
Oh, and to add insult to injury, the observation is at 8am. On my birthday.
As it happens, this lesson is the last lesson with that particular group – one of my favourites – so it will mainly be a review of what they should have learned. This meant that it was time to reach for The Notebook of “Huh?”.
When I’m teaching, I generally prefer to leave error correction until the end of the lesson. Instead of interrupting students all the time (and risk them clamming up), I just jot down some of the more common mistakes they make and correct them in the last 5-10 minutes of the lesson. This means that I now have a notebook full of common mistakes Germans make in English.
Even though this particular group is elementary level, a lot of these mistakes can be found pretty much across the board. So here they are, some of the top mistakes German students of English make:
1. It’s no secret that Germans like long words. Just today I came across this “little” gem in an insurance document – Altersvorsorgeverbesserungsgesetz. Often students will ask you what something is in English. I tell them it’s not a word in English, it’s a paragraph.
It seems that our puny little English words are not complicated enough for them though, so they’ll often add an extra syllable or two to make them more German-friendly – “organisator”, “conversating”, “feministic” and “divorcement” are a few that spring to mind. Maybe it was being too feministic that led to the divorcement…
2. Unlike Latvian or Russian speakers, Germans have no problems with articles (a/an/the) in English. They have them in German – too bloody many of them in fact. However, like most non-native speakers, they still struggle with prepositions. You’ll hear things like:
“I was on a meeting” (at)
“At Sunday” (on)
“I drove at work” (to)
“I reacted on it” (to)
And so on/off/at/in/to/for/from.
3. Another one that gets most non-native speakers is those tricky conditional sentences, so I’ll try to give a few German-appropriate examples of correct usage.
Zero: If it’s a day ending in “day”, Germans drink beer.
First: If I see Karlheinz, I’ll shake his hand. (Germans love shaking hands.)
Second: If I had a poo shelf, there wouldn’t be so much splash-back.
Third: If we hadn’t eaten those sausages, we would have been very hungry.
Mixed: If I hadn’t drunk that last Glühwein, I would feel much better now.
4. Germans really like making literal translations. (Not that I can talk – hoch fünf anyone?) Hearing things like “I have not a car”, “Let’s meet us after the weekend”, “the mother of my wife”, “hand shoes” and “we see us next week” are pretty common.
I’m just waiting for the day that someone tells me they’re grinning like a honey cake horse…
5. Pronouncing every “s” like a “z” and “th” like an “s”, for example:
I sink I will zee you zoon.
Anyway, enough of Germans’ mistakes – for now. I’m off to try to scrub off Saturday night’s mistakes. Again. Yes, it seems that German clubs even stamp more efficiently than any other nation.
Sigh.
Btw my son is so psyched, he’s planning a trip to Dublin with his best bud in September. 🙂
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Huzzah! If he wants some tips, tell him to drop me a line! 🙂
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I will! !! Thanks!
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Happy to help! Students of mine paid feckin’ €9 for a pint of Bulmers so maybe I can spare him that! 🙂
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That’s great! He’s going for 10 days. He wants to see Belfast and Dublin. I suggested Killarney as well. Thoughts? ??
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Have to go to work now but will send you an email soon! 🙂
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Sounds great! Ttyl. 🙂 so good to hear from you.
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You too! 🙂 I’ll mail you tomorrow night – went out tonight after work. As I do 🙂
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Omg! I’ve missed your writing soooo much, Linda! (I’ve been really bogged down with my trial and the fallout, so I haven’t been in here for about a month.) Happy Birthday, btw. When was it? I thought I saw something on Facebook about it.
And Congrats on Berlinblogs!!! Well done!
I was relieved to learn that the wrist thing was a bar stamp and not a bruise.
Gotta get some sleep. I’ve got a gig tomorrow. Thanks for a great laugh before bed. Gonna check to see if I’ve missed any other posts. 🙂
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If someone bruised me like that, I wouldn’t like to see the state of them afterwards 😉 You might have missed me becoming a heathen but I think you’re all caught up now 😉
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At first I thought I might’ve clicked on one of Sharn’s posts about enduring pain!
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Ha, this is far more painful than whips and chains! 😉
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Lol.
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Sorry I missed wishing you a Happy Birsday. I blame ze unreliable Italian internet connection. It’s most inconwenient.
By the way did you find it hard to adapt to those silly German keyboards with the z in the wrong place?
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Yes! Most of the time I write Linda O’Gradz 🙂 It’s really annoying!
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What in the world are hand shoes? Gloves? Mittens?
I think the prepositions are hard on everyone, in every foreign language. The Russians make a lot of the same swaps in English as the Germans do, it seems. So, how did your evaluation go?
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Gloves 🙂 Handschuhe in German 🙂 I have my feedback meeting at 1 today! Hope it goes well!
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Good luck! Say something charming to them in German!
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I’ve got a new song I can sing – alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei 🙂 (Everything has an end, only the sausage has two) 🙂
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Um… #onlyingermany?
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Definitely! So many sausage idioms 🙂
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I thought getting prepositions wrong was just one of those things second-language speakers did because, basically, there’s no logic to them. Or the logic’s different in every language. A phrase comes to mind from the Yiddish-speaking garment workers of my grandparents’ generation: “I work by buttons.” Meaning “I sew on buttons.” As for me, my Spanish is just good enough that I can hear myself getting the prepositions wrong but not good enough to get them right.
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Yeah, I think the main problem is direct translation! I’m not even good enough to attempt prepositions yet – it will be a fun day for Germany when I start butchering those too 😉
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It’s good to have something to look forward to.
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The word “divorcement” makes me laugh!
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Ha, me too! He came out with a few more humdingers today – he’s a really funny guy! 🙂
Thanks for following!
Linda.
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This was so interesting to get a peek inside your life as an English teacher! There are similarities between German and Norwegian, and many of the translations you’ve observed are very similar to those I’ve heard in Norway.
I can only imagine what my Norwegian teachers and friends have thought about MY Norwegian grammar and more-literal-translations from English!
Norwegian compound words are incredible, too.
And: Happy birthday, Linda!
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Thanks Cindi! And wow, that word! Is it any wonder we struggle with these languages?!
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as an English speaker, did you capture the difference between Sie, Ihr and Du? how do you address your students and collegues?
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I get the difference, but with my colleagues I speak English as they’re all English speakers!
And I call my students by their first names. Not sure if it’s inappropriate or not but I’m not sitting in a one-to-one lesson calling someone Mr Müller for an hour and a half!
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haha but thats exactly what we do! the other night I was at the doctors office and he would talk to me for half an hour and he would call me Frau Lorenz even though he is my age. I adress my students at the uni as Herr/Frau its a must around here. btw when some exchange students from Ireland visited here recently and I called one of them Mr Crawford he nearly died of laughter so I gave up on it. I continued to call him Eric but with German students there is still the distance…. and I always address them with SIe of course….
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Ha, if someone insisted on calling me Frau O’Grady, I’d probably die laughing too!
The way I see it is it’s an English class, but it’s not just about the language, it’s also cultural. If these students go to Ireland, the UK, America, etc. they won’t be called Mr/Ms something by everyone so it’s preparation!
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Urg… It kills me when they say ” half nine” here. I once had an argument with a coworker trying to explain to him that for me it sounds like either 8:30 or 4.5, and if it is the latter then I should still be in bed sleeping. 🙂 He did not get it.
Another one is instead of ” I saw it” they pronounce it as ” I sore it” or ” I dear” instead of “idea”. Jees, i don’t even want to start counting how many consonants they drop.
And it is supposed to be the King’s English! Where the hell did I land? :))))))))))))))
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Ha, dropping consonants where they should be, adding them where they shouldn’t be – welcome to Ingerland 😉 Though I’m guilty of the half nine thing myself 😉
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I am now searching for the mirrored blog post that my Dutch teacher might write about the class I’m in. I am sure she has plenty of examples of how we can’t seem to tell the difference between the many forms of “oo” and how we can’t get in the habit of jamming our verbs on the ends of our sentences!
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Ha, that sounds pretty similar to my German class! And the different ways of pronouncing ‘ch’ are another nightmare!
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Um. What are hand shoes?
(Also, Russian observations happened like… twice… before they gave up and decided they had better things to do. Plus, no paperwork! Hurray for mediocrity!)
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Yeah, it was like that in LV too – a lot to be said for it! 😉
Hand shoes are gloves 🙂 Handschuhe in German – brilliant 🙂
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Happy (early) Birthday! Since it is your birthday, I’m sure the observation will go well. I love the correction notebook … I could use that on myself 😉
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Ha, I think a lot of people could! 🙂 You’re probably not one of them though 😉
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I have a life long problem with tenses and the use of lay and lie 😉
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Solved 🙂
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/lay-versus-lie
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Thanks 🙂
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A honey cake horse???
I am laughing about Altersvorsorgeverbesserungsgesetz. What is the longest word in German?
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God knows! Or Simone might 🙂
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You know, I always thought Simone’s blog was actually God telling us to eat more cake.
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Ha ha ha! She’d love that 🙂
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It was something with Rindfleischetikettierung something or another blaaaah, but now the law it refers to doesn’t exist any more, so in theory neither does the word.
Here: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-22762040
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Thanks! That’s a heck of a word. Surely the longest in any European language!
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With the possible exception of Welsh maybe… but maybe not!
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Actually, Norwegian could be a contender 🙂
Dampskipsundervannsstyrkeprøvemaskinerikonstruksjonsvanskeligheter!
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OMG. That’s fantastic. Google translates “Steamship Underwater Styrkeprøven Machinery Construction Difficulties.” I like how it capitalizes each word 🙂
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You have to capitalise all nouns in German – maybe it’s the same in Norwegian?
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Maybe. In English, it gives it this strange nineteenth-century feel.
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Well, this is a very classy, 19th century-style blog 😉
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Bloody brilliant 🙂
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Good luck! I have yet to be observed here (knocks on wood, presses thumb), but had them regularly in Prague. No fun, no fun at all. But that’s great that you have it with a good group. That makes a huge difference!
Side note: the correction notebook is a great idea, I may have to borrow it. I struggle with correction, and I’m sure I don’t do enough of it. Like you said, it’s hard to break in without them clamming up, or losing their train of thought. May have to give it a whirl… but do you think 5 minutes is enough time? Some of my classes are only 60 minutes, so it’s almost impossible to get anything done some days. Darn chatty Germans!
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I know, right?! Well, it depends on the level and how complicated the mistakes are. I usually allow 10 – I write them up on the board and get the students to spot the mistakes. Most of the time they spot them immediately – it’s not that they don’t know the stuff, just that they’re focusing on getting the words out rather than grammatical correctness! Give it a try! And get the students to write down ‘what I said’ and ‘what I should have said’ over the course of a few weeks – they’ll see the same mistakes popping up over and over so it eventually starts to sink in! 🙂
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Oooh, I like that. Will give it a try, thanks!
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Let me know how it goes! 🙂
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I HATED being observed….it only happened a few times and I was lucky because it was SUPER laid back AND – no documents involved. 🙂 I still hated it. Now I teach privately, so I can do whatever I want. 🙂
So it looks like you went to the deeeeescoteca (as they say in Italy) on Saturday….did you have fun?? Love the cheesy deeeeescotecas in Germany…they are a lot of fun!
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Ha, I was at a karaoke bar called Monster Ronson’s 🙂 It was great! You could sing with a live band – but I was too shy 😉 Next time 😉
At least I have today to relax/freak out about the ob – free day on Tuesday now, yay 🙂
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Oh, the prepositions! They’ll trip you up in any language. I still have trouble with prepositions in Italian. Problem is when you try to think of what the preposition would be in your native language and then translate that word. It’s almost never the same. @*&#) Prepositions!
Happy early birthday! Eat cake. Drink beer. And hoch fünf!
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Ha, yeah, I think phrasal verbs and prepositions are the worst part of the English language for foreigners! If you screw up verb tenses or pronunciation, someone will probably still understand you. If you say ‘knock up’ instead of ‘knock out’ (as in Lafemmet’s example!), it could lead to big trouble 😉
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Honestly, you will thank your students for all the mistakes they make as it will aid you in learning the German language. I was teaching in Taiwan a year before I started going to Chinese class and my teacher was amazed at my ability to catch on to the grammar so easily. No, I am not a whiz – I just heard the same mistake every day for a year. Yes, indeed I am a ‘Canadian person’ and ‘My home have a TV.’ 🙂
Good luck with your observation. I actually partied with the one who used to observe my classes. 😉
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Mine don’t seem like big party girls 😉 I think there will be two of them which is even worse!
And yes, I notice that the German mistakes help with my German! It gives you an idea of how they structure things which is a great help, like ‘I have not a TV’ = ‘Ich habe nicht…’ Makes perfect sense!
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You can hold yourself back from correcting during the lesson? Holy self restraint Batman! My type A innards would explode if I tried that.
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Ha, well if you ever want your students to speak, it’s probably advisable 😉 If it’s truly heinous, I might interrupt but otherwise, it’s best left til the end. I wish I had a list of common mistakes I make in German but the teachers didn’t do it like that. If they correct you on the spot, you repeat it after them, breathe a sigh of relief as they move on to the next person and forget what you said immediately. If the mistakes are all written on the board and you have to help correct them, you remember them better – I think 😉
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One of my favorite ones are sentences about the past which begin with the phrase, “In former times…”
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Oh yes! I keep hearing that! Had it yesterday in fact 🙂
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Happy Birthday for Wednesday! I’ve just added you back to the blogroll on Distant Drumlin. I’m so super-efficient that I had deleted the link to Latvian Eye. Now you’re definitely into your German stride, so you are back on the list!
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Huzzah! Yep, I feel I’m definitely into my stride with this one now – 27 posts and counting 🙂
And thank you for the birthday wishes!
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Observation. The easiest way to put you off doing the right thing.
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Yeah, I still get nervous – even after 5 years!
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Getting on for twenty five here!
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Great, so it gets better 😉
At least they’re lovely students so hopefully it won’t be too bad!
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Ach it’ll be grand. The nerves keep you edgy.
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I’m generally not at my best when I’m edgy 😉
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Not that kind of edgy. As long as you are nervous you care. As long as you care you’ll be enthusiastic. As long as you are enthusiastic you’ll do well.
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Here’s hoping 🙂 This time next week, I could be unemployed again!
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“I’ve been studying English since ten years.” Surely you’ve heard that one…?
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Yeah, or ‘I work here since 10 years’ 😉 I was trying to remember what your pet peeve was – now I know!
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You want my extended list…? It might break WP…
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Ha, give me your top five!
Like I said, I have a notebook full of them – some more common than others. ‘We see us’ had me stumped for a while I must admit 😉
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My head is currently littered with the top 100 mistakes committed by Spaniards. I have a particular issue with “lazy” pronunciation, i.e. dropping of the final consonants. Drives me bonkers.
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The English drop half the consonants in words from what I can hear – then take the piss out of Irish people for pronouncing them 😉
Compu-ah vs CompuTeRRRR 🙂
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Ah, the infamous glottal stop…
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Zigh 😉
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Oh, Spanier, da kann ich mitreden! My Spaniards refuse to understand that b and v are different letters with different pronunciations. One of them teaches English by the way. I told her “it’s like English, b and v are different there too, right?” …….”Are they?” *zigh*
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You should try listening to a Latvian teaching articles 😉
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Hehe 🙂
Hoch fünf and happy birthday and good luck for tomorrow by the way!!!!!!!!! (Now this is another Spanish thing. Why use only one ! if you can use 10?)
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Ha ha! Latvians are the same – they do smileys like this )))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) 😉
And thanks for the birthday wishes! I’ll need the luck ))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
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Haha! Or as the Spanish say: Jajajajajajajajajaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!! (also: ALWAYS use more than one “a” or “o” etc.)
I like ))))))))))))))) Will have to use that. Thanks to you, very soon people won’t be able to unerstand me.
Hoch füüüüüüüüünfffff!!!!!!!!!!! )))))))))))))))))))
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Ha, you’ll be ruined in three languages! 🙂
Jajajajajajajajajaja!
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I hear you… I’ve met many Spaniards who are teaching English and who really, really shouldn’t. All they do is create yet another generation of inept “English speakers”, who will only ever be understood by fellow native Spanish speakers. And perhaps a couple of Italians. What’s the bloody point of that?! I guess the root of the problem is a shortage of competent English teachers, and not all native speakers are competent, not by a long shot 😦
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Very true! I remember hearing of a guy who corrected a group of students who were saying ‘should have/would have’. He told them it should be ‘should of/would of’. Cringe.
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My Aussie friends and I overheard some Americans explaining the conditional to some Spanish people in a local bar: “If I would buy potatoes in the supermarket, I would pay less.” WTF?! LOL!
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Ha, I hear that in American movies and on TV shows all the time! I still tell my students it’s horrible grammar though 😉
Thankfully most of my students prefer British English!
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It’s WRONG in any kind of English!
Funnily enough, that happens in German as well, with the same screwed-up construction (in the conditional, I mean). I’m sure I’ve sinned plenty of times myself. But to explain it wrongly to other learners… *cringe*. You can always add some explanation regarding colloquial usage.
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Yeah, I still have English English teachers justifying ‘I was sat there’ to me 😉 NEIN!
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Ha ha! I think that’s quintessentially English English 😉 Or do the Irish say that, too?
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The Irish most certainly do not! I’m not sure if it’s regional but I’ve heard it from pretty much every English person I’ve ever met!
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Yes, it’s pretty widespread 😉
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God, I hate it…
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Any idea what the longest word in German is? Linnet wants to know!
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You can create compound nouns as long as you like, so It really is a matter of ‘how long is a piece of string’!?
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I hope I haven’t shared this before… but my hubby has trouble with the prepositions too. He once told me to “Knock myself up”. I then fell on the bed laughing.
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I just had a little pee laughing at that 😉
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So, if every s is a z, shouldn’t it be Zigh? 😛
The Hot German I dated used to lisp, too. Instead of “Ich” it would be “iscth.” I try and try and try but I can’t make sense of those long words and pronunciations.
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Ha, it would probably be ‘Zig-huh’ 🙂
The long words actually aren’t nearly as troublesome as all the pesky little ones…
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Ein, eine, kine, keine…all that….I say give me a beer and then we all speak German 🙂
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I’ll drink to that! 🙂 Prost!
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Haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden sein.
(Bonus points if you can tell me who said that without looking it up. I think I got the quote right.)
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I’ve been an English teacher for over a decade here in Germany, and all I can say is, ‘it’ll only get better.’ 🙂
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Ha, I really enjoy it! Some of it makes me laugh though – especially the literal translations. Luckily my students can laugh at themselves too!
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Ha, yeah… feministic. Haven’t heard divorcement yet.
One of my German friends always pronounces “cheap” as “sheep”.
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The divorcement guy just LOVES making up words – or rather saying what he thinks really are words. He’s brilliant 🙂
I have a few students who do the cheap/sheep thing as well! Much and many is also a source of great confusion 🙂
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Ugh, good luck with the observation. Tell them it’s your birthday and that you can’t fail!
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Ha, I already told her it’s my birthday so she has to be nice to me 😉
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Good job!
With that they should give you the highest grade 😉
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They’re not normally graded – more like general feedback on what’s good and what could be improved. But then, this is Germany, so who knows!
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Ohhhhh! Well good in luck either way. I’m sure you’ll smash it!
And happy future birthday! ❤
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Thank you! 🙂 It’s the big 3-7… dun, dun, DUN!
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Hey! I’ll be that next month!
I’ll have a shot of tequila for you on mine 😉
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I’ll have a whiskey for you (and one for me) on Wednesday 😉
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Zigh! My cousin works at Hard Rock Cafe in Hamburg – I’ll check to see how much ink they use, and how durable it is.
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Ha, if it’s not gone by tomorrow evening, I’ll get the nail varnish removal to it! Have to look professional on/in/at Wednesday morning 😉
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At first glance I thought it was a bruise! Can you not get a superefficientinkfromskinremoverandkonditioningmoisturiserer?
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LOL! It probably is possible here! 🙂
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Get someone to apply a cast that covers it. Then you’ll get a sympathy vote from the observers, perhaps.
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Trying to think if I know any doctors 😉
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