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- Category: German learning methods
Students of foreign languages sometimes get upset when they get frustrated. They get really frustrated and really upset because what they want most is to speak a foreign language, they've done their homework, they've studied, and somehow the pieces just don't fit together or the pieces they want don't come together when they speak.
It's a hard-core experience.
Some students think I learned German easily because I learned it quickly--it was not easy and my German skills were and are hard-won with hundreds and thousands of hours of listening, reading, and practice behind them; here's a short story to highlight one of my hardest moments.
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- Category: German culture and food
Not far from the German Settlement in St. Croix County and the bake house/smoke house that is still used for bread baking demonstrations is the German Settlement Cemetery. Be sure to visit it if you have time on your way through Hudson, Wisconsin sometime. It's set beautifully and is a peaceful reminder of where so many of us have come from (another place) and connects you with another time.
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- Category: German culture and food
Harald Schmidt, who has since given up his late night spot on German television, is to Germany was Letterman and Leno were to the US. He's also a Schwab, he's an incredible mimic and can reproduce pretty much any German dialect.
Here his Sprachkurs (Crashkurs) Schwäbisch.
If you're not yet familiar with Swabian, here's a comparison that should help you understand how it relates to German:
Swabian is to German as Creole is to North American English.
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- Category: German culture and food
Karneval is known as "die fünfte Jahreszeit" --the 5th season. It's known as Karneval, Fastnacht, or Fasching in many places in southern Germany.
Karneval is a big deal.
Their costumes are pretty fantastic, one of Heidi Klum's favorite things, and their costumes are no exception at the parade on Rosenmontag. But let's back up a few days and a few months to give you the best idea of Karneval.
It begins on November 11th at 11:11 a.m. because 11 is known as the "narrische Zahl," the fool's number, and continues through Faschingsdienstag, Fat Tuesday for Americans, the day before Aschermittwoch (Ash Wednesday).
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- Category: German culture and food
As a follow-up to yesterday's post Wer sind die Schwaben?, here's a wonderful little song, completely in Swabian and entrenched in the Swabian culture.
A few helps for understanding what they're singing:
-Swabians are really frugal, so frugal in fact, that they drop the final 'n' on a lot of words. Thus "Schwabenland" becomes "Schwabeland." "Mein" becomes "Mei." An exception to this is verbs and the final 'n' becomes a 't,' thus "sparen" (to save) becomes "sparet."
-"Wir" is pronounced as "mir" so "Mir sparet unser Geld" translates into German as "Wir sparen unser Geld."
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