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Gertrude Susanne


Member

Posted Thu Apr 5th, 2007 7:25pm Post subject: english


Anyway, it's easier than conjugating spanish verbs.

I find that hard to believe conjugating Spanish verbs is pretty easy... and reading the above is pretty confusing but VERY interesting, indeed

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AxmxZ


Moderator

Posted Thu Apr 5th, 2007 7:30pm Post subject: english


Anyway, it's easier than conjugating spanish verbs.

I find that hard to believe conjugating Spanish verbs is pretty easy... and reading the above is pretty confusing but VERY interesting, indeed

Spanish verbs are pretty easy until you get to the subjunctive... but even that doesn't compaire to all the permutations of French past tenses.

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joan


Member

Posted Fri Apr 6th, 2007 5:00am Post subject: english
I always think that students of English as a second language must be pleasantly surprised at our easy conjugations (only later does the awful truth dawn, about our complicated auxiliary verbs.....) And we don't have a subjunctive - not really anyway. Where they use the subjuctive in German journalism, we have to get round it by words like 'alleged'.

German can be pretty grim for beginners. I used to paste a huge chart of irregular verb conjugations inside the toilet door.

And as for the declensions of adjectives and articles - 16 different ways of saying 'the' for instance - well, it really is awful. I would never have managed that language without time spent in language immersion in Vienna.

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joan


Member

Posted Fri Apr 6th, 2007 5:17am Post subject: english
"Dingolstadt radio is broadcast from a small attic in Schrobenhausen"

I don't know why, but that sentence reads like the start of a novel , or a short story. Anyway, I'll be listening.......adding a dissident English leftie in a small house in semi-rural Australian suburbia to the other listeners.

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AxmxZ


Moderator

Posted Fri Apr 6th, 2007 5:55am Post subject: english
"Dingolstadt radio is broadcast from a small attic in Schrobenhausen"

I don't know why, but that sentence reads like the start of a novel , or a short story. Anyway, I'll be listening.......adding a dissident English leftie in a small house in semi-rural Australian suburbia to the other listeners.

It does, doesn't it! You're so right!.. damn, now I want to read it.

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joan


Member

Posted Fri Apr 6th, 2007 7:52am Post subject: english
Well, all we need is a Bavarian creative writer forum member who understands the dynamics of radio stations.

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Anonymous


Unregistered

Posted Wed Apr 11th, 2007 10:34am Post subject: english
Hi all,
As a non-native english speaker, I was wondering the other day while having a bath : The word "gentleman". Is there a female equivalent???! Since all I could come up with was "lady" (has bit posh connotation, someone with an upper class status), "madam" (same), "good woman" (which sounds like God-fearing house wife)etc. The word gentleman to my knowledge can ba applied to anyone despite their social status just as long as they behave like a - well, a gentleman. All the female ones I could think of to me they all had a meaning which had something to do with being submissive house wife?!!

As you can see, I have been bit bored lately and reading too much books!!!

X-D

Do you mean "gentleman" as an ideal ("On my word of honour as a gentleman", as a form of address ("Ladies and gentlemen") or as a gender definition ("Gentlemen's toilets")?
In terms of the ideal I think "lady" is appropriate even if it is rather unfashionable (God knows why).

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karoliina


Member

Posted Wed Apr 11th, 2007 11:13pm Post subject: english
John Steed Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:34 am Post subject: Re: english
Do you mean "gentleman" as an ideal ("On my word of honour as a gentleman", as a form of address ("Ladies and gentlemen") or as a gender definition ("Gentlemen's toilets")?
In terms of the ideal I think "lady" is appropriate even if it is rather unfashionable (God knows why).

Just the generic idea of a "gentleman", as someone who is polite, thoughtful and all that - a well behaved person. I can't think a word for a woman that would have exactly the same meaning! "lady" sounds like a posh person above all, you can't really describe somebodys personality with that word I think?

I am straining my brain while trying to understand all the liguistic conversation that has been going on in this thread - I have never been able to learn the grammar in any language, no matter how hard I tried, not even in my native Finnish. I speak english, swedish, a bit of Italian and French as well, but I couldn't tell you the first thing about grammar even at gunpoint! Maybe that's why French was so difficult..!

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joan


Member

Posted Thu Apr 12th, 2007 7:47am Post subject: english
I can't imagine learning a language without understanding the grammar, though you clearly have managed it well, Karoliina.
Germanic languages are especially awful, with all those different inflections: without total immersion in the language, enabling a lot of instinctive use, I just couldn't do it.
But then again, I sort of need to know how things work, even if I get it wrong. One of my first memories is of taking the back off the radio when I was around 4, in order to find the little people in it who were talking......I learnt something that day: curiosity hurts - well, a wallop round the head does, anyway.

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