Multilingual and Polyglot Wannabee Thread! MK I

That's honestly just something that will come with time and exposure. It's something called a modal particle, if you want to look that up - you mind find some enlightening info. I only started feeling really comfortable with them (and then only a couple of them) a fair way into uni. Reading German novels and watching German TV/film is the best way to absorb the rules for their usage, in my experience.


She's just a little shaky on word order, it'll get better with time and exposure.

It should probably have been 'ich weiss aber nicht, wenn ich es benützen soll', too.

Unless you're planning on spending any considerable time in Denmark, honestly, no, not really. Unless you're especially interested in the Scandinavian languages and want to learn some of each. I was about to suggest that Swedish would be a better idea because of population size, but they're still only at 9 million. So... if either interests you, sure, go for it. You won't get a huge amount of use out of them unless you plan on moving here or to Sweden though.

Ja. I'm half-way through my first novel written for adults, and I can feel the (very, very, very, very) slight improvement already!

Because it was obvious! Staat and statt don't sound the same, though.

(And it's die Vereinigten Staaten by the way, unless that bracket was a continuation of a clause meaning 'and state (of the United States)' )

I remember the feeling of reading novels for the first time in my languages. Unadulterated pain. It gets easier very quickly though. I feel like I improve fastest when I'm picking stuff up from reading.

Ah, well, I'm kind of cheating, so it isn't actually painful yet. I'm reading one of my favourite English books translated into German!

Ah, well, I'm kind of cheating, so it isn't actually painful yet. I'm reading one of my favourite English books translated into German!

I'm guessing this book is not about the GDR or any of the other cultural stuff that will come up in that A2 exam you have in 2 weeks

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I had Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen but never read it after realising how lame it would be to read it in German. Lame in the sense of feeling rubbish, not in the sense of being uncool.

I make a point not to read anything that is translated out of a language I am capable of reading. I want to stick to authentic language as much as possible, and there's always a risk of it being marked by the original language if it's translated (though ideally it shouldn't be). I've read a few books translated from languages I didn't speak into German/Danish/Spanish though, which I'll make an exception for, since otherwise I wouldn't get to read them at all. I recently 'accidentally' read A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini in Danish though - I presumed it was translated into English, but I've since gained the impression that he wrote it in English to start with.

You just reminded me of what I think was the first novel I read in German - Das zweite Land by Asta Scheib. I need to go dig that out at home sometime soon, I'd love for it to be my first German novel in a while, and I read it all the way back in 2006 or something!

Du hast recht. It's Jurassic Park I have considered the concept of sticking to authentic original texts, but it turns out that under that rule, I don't read anything non-English that's also longer than a magazine article.

So I decided to pick Jurassic Park. I thought it would be appropriate if it was one of my first German books, because it was one of the first two proper books I read when I was little and moving on from Enid Blyton books about Noddy. To tell the truth, the German language rather suits the plot!

I have learnt so much new vocabulary, rather like the first time I ever read it in English. Admittedly, it's still vocabulary about dinosaurs, simple fractal mathematics, dinosaurs, corpses, dinosaurs, chaos theory, and the bad breath of dinosaurs, but hey... Can't have everything.

That seems like useful vocab to me

Can anyone recommend some German literature for me to read? I was given in Year 9 Ich fühl mich so 50-50 but never read it after I read a lot of people saying it was ****

Das zweite Land - Asta Scheib
Die Häupter meiner Lieben - Ingrid Noll
Der Richter und sein Henker - Friedrich Dürrenmatt <--- really short (the book, not the author)
Die Liebhaberinnen - Elfriede Jelinek <--- tricky but amazing (book and author)

Other stuff is mainly things I've read for my course (as is Die Liebhaberinnen) but I'll try to recall some more awesome novels.

Edit: Just remembered that the odd writing method Jelinek uses in Die Liebhaberinnen extends beyond exclusive use of lowercase, and includes frequent mutations of words (not to mention the Austrian dialect). I'd save it for when you're pretty damn good.

*mein Geburtstag
*auch dasselbe

*sonst jemand

Edit: Forgot to read your corrections! *no mein! *-'dasselbe' ("Hat sonst jemand hier auch?" - though I might put the 'hier' after 'auch', not sure)

Not sure if 'gewoehnen' is 'mir' or 'mich'
What do you think....Poisson Distribution??!

Shows I've been around for a long time...
(Ich bin hier seit langer Zeit!) Du musst sehr schnell Deutsch lernen, bevor ich abstudiere!

Ich habe am zweiten Oktober Geburtstag. Hat jemand anders hier auch das selbte?? 
Ich sehe dich an...OCTOPUS!! ;D