h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As I have stated in various places, although I understand spoken german as used in films, etc, It appears that my understanding of the written form seems to be somewhat less than perfect.

What I have been doing to get aroung this is translating the german posts into english, and trying to enjoy the conversations until my german is good enough to participate in them.

Unfortunately, I have a slight problem with this. Being a forum for german speakers, there seem to be quite a large slice of the vocabulary that is used that does not appear in any of the english - german german - english dictionaries that I have got.

If I was a native german speaker, this wouldn't be a problem, but it leaves me getting a vague idea of what is being said, without being able to look up the words that I don't understand.

As you can imagine, this can be quite frustrating, especially as the vocabularies go into 60+ thousand words in each dictionary with some overlap, but not as much as you would think.

Can anyone suggest to me a solution to this problem. If so, it would be greatly appreciated.

love from your freind xyroth.

hi xyroth

I think the best way round this is a Spoken German forum. I'm sure there is plenty of people, both English and German around that would enjoy discussing the finer points of spoken German. Do any others reading this conversation agree? TC? In any case you can just post me a message with any queries you may have.

I just wrote a pages long answer to this and it's disappeared.

So here we go again. Sorry if it's a bit curt, but it's a sod having to write it twice.

Points made were: Please don't expect the Germans in their forums to modify their language to cater for the non-German-speaking participants.

you wouldn't expect to do it the other way round.

The Germans here speak very good English and are normal, nice people.

What I shall do is start a "German Class" page. URL will be posted forthwith on the "GerManiaConnection" start page.

How's that for service. You will be welcome to copy and paste lumps of German conversation and ask for someone to help translate it for you, or better still, talk you through it, because just translation doesn't help, isn't much fun and is not a good way of learning.

It is also a good starting point for further discussions on the German language, but as my experience of language classes has often shown, these will develop into conversations on general topics.

We are prepared to help you in any way which suits you (see also my e-mail of this morning re suitable reading material) but would ask that the conversations should not be stopped in their flow.

*trundles off to prepare "The German Class"*

*turning back* .. java, have you got another idea, perhaps, a better idea?

No TC I'm practically in love with the idea that you want to take it on.

I think a format similar to the British English forum would be best - we could try to get it started by advertising it on the egroup? I think it may be quite an interesting project since most of us deal with both languages on an everyday basis.

PS: Didn't you mean to say that Germans were "normally nice peolpe"?!

It is important to me to emphasise that they are normal. And nice. Normally nice would mean that sometimes they are not. Nice. But then, nor is anybody.

German Class is ready: go to http://www.h2g2.com/A487415. Hope you don't mind me quoting your name!

no problem, and I wasn't suggesting that the germans were not nice, or that they modify their language, only that there is someway to look up the words that are not known.
Also, when I say "translate", I mean thatI try to read as much of it as possible in german, and if I encounter a problem, I try to translate it to see if my understanding is any good. the only problem withthat is the inability to look up the missing words, hence the vocabulary problem.

Am working on it - and I have found a few things. Please go to the German Class!!!

http://www.h2g2.com/A487415

I've made a thread where you can post your questions http://www.h2g2.com/F59873?thread=92955

Good idea Wonko - Engländer and Bossel were saying at the weekend that it is better to start a thread of your own at the bottom of an entry rather than waiting for someone to come along and do it.

I am planning a "German Lesson Calendar" to start next year. Where we take a tiny part of the language and explain it day by day. We will have ideas of our own and some will arise from questions asked (I hope) by our eager public.

Any Germans reading this: I would be grateful for small daily units (ready marked up in GuideML) to this end.

And I am continually on to the italics to promote the GMC. At the moment I've got a conversation going with Abi.

Good, I'll contribute to it!

By the way, could you please tell me what ttfn means?

tata for now (a kind of slang word for bye-bye)

What do you think of the idea about the German Class. I could suggest that the daily lesson is included in the "Post", too.

Why don't you join the e-group - you can do it anonymously. Although you probably know better than I do that nothing is anonymous, really.

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Engländer would enjoy that, too.