Just stayed home this weekend and cleaned up, vacuumed, swept, mopped, played guitar, bass, recorded, surfed, emailed, geputzt, aufgeräumt. M’s cousin from Australia is studying in Germany and she is going to be arriving shortly for a three day visit. Should be interesting.
Here is an interesting article written by Kevin Sites.
Sometimes my brain flips out from thinking in German/English. At work I speak about 50/50 at home more English out with friends is usually mostly German. Studying at the Fachhochschule in Lüneburg was very good practice for my German. However, since graduation I feel that my conversational skills and accent have gone down a bit. I can understand almost everything, but I feel I often lack the words or simple conversational dexterity to speak clearly and properly and make myself understood. Huh? Na Denn, schreibe ich auf Deutsch. Fliegender Wechsel. Koooool. Ich habe eigentlich kein Lust morgen zur Arbeit zu gehen. Ich muss bald irgendwohin ins Urlaub fahren. Wir haben uns überlegt, ob wir nach Stockholm während Sylvester gehen möchten. bin nie gewesen. Wäre bestimmt kalt, oder? Was ist richtig zu sagen in dem soeben geschriebenen Satz? “nach Stockholm während Sylvester fahren” oder “während Sylvester nach Stockholm fahren”. Mit der Wortordnung habe ich immer noch Probleme. Auch mit der Verneinung eines Satz(e?)s. Naturlich fallen mir keine Beispiele gerade ein.
I’ll tell this story in English. When I first got here I studied German for 6 months for about 5 hours a day. It was super tough. One day I had a cold and on the next day the teacher asked me if I was sick. I had been anticipating this question so I could show initiative and practice a little conversational dialog. I had already looked up the phrase for “stuffed up.” I said, “Ich war gestern verstopft.” The teacher raised her eyebrows and nodded slightly. The conversation didn’t go any further. I later looked up verstopft in another book and it said; “constipated.” Bada boom.
Schwoooschhh! Wieder auf Deutsch. Krass oder? Ich habe endlich DSL bekommen. Das einschalten von Telekom hat fast 4 wochen gedauert. Warum? Ist das immer so? Auch in Amerika? Hmmm. Aber egal.
The German word for “Mullet” (hairstyle not fish) is Vokuhila. The is a kind of abbreviation.
Vorne = front
kurz = short
Hinten = back
lang = long
See?
I will someday publish my short essay on German mullets I promise. It is going through some rewrites. I need pictures as well. I’m just too big of a wuss to go taking pictures of mullets. There is no predicting how one might react.