Not much happenin'
Busy doing nothing
Somehow I've been so busy doing "stuff" I haven't had time to write. But, you know, other than visiting my family over Easter, I don't really remember what I've been busy doing...
You know, I don't even consider it "mowing the yard" any more. Instead, I'm aiding evolution in developing dandelions that have learned to duck.
Dagmar's mother recorded a bunch of TV shows in German, so I've been watching sitcoms "auf Deutsch" the past few days. At least I think they're sitcoms... It's hard to tell until you see blood, really. For all I know I'm watching the German version of "Cops." But it looks funny, whatever it is. I just heard the phrase "Made in Turkey." The guy who said it was pointing at his pants. That's funny. Isn't it?
Somehow I've been so busy doing "stuff" I haven't had time to write. But, you know, other than visiting my family over Easter, I don't really remember what I've been busy doing...
You know, I don't even consider it "mowing the yard" any more. Instead, I'm aiding evolution in developing dandelions that have learned to duck.
Dagmar's mother recorded a bunch of TV shows in German, so I've been watching sitcoms "auf Deutsch" the past few days. At least I think they're sitcoms... It's hard to tell until you see blood, really. For all I know I'm watching the German version of "Cops." But it looks funny, whatever it is. I just heard the phrase "Made in Turkey." The guy who said it was pointing at his pants. That's funny. Isn't it?
posted by Chris the Hippie at
6:08 PM
4 Comments:
Do you speak German?
Thats funny to me!
I took two years of German and, much to my suprise, remember just enough random bits for it to amuse me.
I can understand about 50 to 75% of what I hear, but I miss most of the subtle nuances. I can't speak German at all, other than to order a beer or find a bathroom - my grammar sucks, and I can never remember which of the three versions of "the" to use. I am hoping to learn, though. We're going to Vienna for a few weeks next summer.
What screws me up the most about the whole thing, though, is that Dagmar's family, being from Austria, has a different dialect and a very distinct accent as compared to "German" German. (Kind of like the difference between slangy urban American English and proper high-class British English, squared, from what I understand.) So my high school German isn't really applicable. In spite of listening to my wife and her mama for the last six years, I can still understand "regular" German better than Austrian German. (My wife told me once that each little village in Austria has their own dialect. Not just an accent, mind you, but different words altogether. It's possible for people who were raised ten miles apart to be nearly incomprehensible to each other. This is due to the isolation caused by the Alps. I imagine that's been changing a bit in the past 75 years or so, though.)
I'm sure almost everything I just said is incorrect. Dagmar's family tried to explain it to me in German, of course... They may have been talking about what mustard they like on their wurst for all I know...
But man, no matter what they say, they sound MAD!
My mother-in-law is German and her accent always makes everything seem like a bigger deal than it is. Maybe that's just her.
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