Answers
Apr 20, 2014 - 07:44 AM
Hi,
You won't sound like a German no matter what you do, but they will understand you. There are many foreigners in Germany and many of them don't speak German well at all. Germans usually just dismiss the mistake and move on. If you're a foreigner, they are usually happy if they can follow along with what you're saying. If your accent is extremely good and you're able to fool them into believing that you are German, but from another area, it is possible that they will just look at you and think you're a bit of a Hill Billy. It's funny because this is exactly how one of my friends from work describes his kids. He's from Georgia and his kids are being raised in the country area here in Germany. They're learning American Hillybilly from him and his wife and German Hillbilly from the German kids in the neighborhood. Of course they are also learning Hoch Deutsch, but most people in regions speak their dialect when talking to someone in the neighborhood.
For example, there are people in this area they say things in the line of. Ich hatte das gehattet. Someone from the city would hear this and cringe. This is something we would probably never say. I just say "ich hatte" or if I wanted to somehow say the equivalent of that, I would say, "ich hatte das gehabt". I think it means something like, "I have had that".
As far as simple mistakes like that. I make them all the time and people here usually just look at you and want you to continue. After a while you pick up an ear for how things are said and it's not really memorization anymore. "auf dem Tisch" just sounds right and if you hear "auf der Tisch", it just sounds wrong. Keep it up. I'm with you. I'm going through Fluenz now and making progress. I'm on Disk 2 17. This DVDs really help.
You won't sound like a German no matter what you do, but they will understand you. There are many foreigners in Germany and many of them don't speak German well at all. Germans usually just dismiss the mistake and move on. If you're a foreigner, they are usually happy if they can follow along with what you're saying. If your accent is extremely good and you're able to fool them into believing that you are German, but from another area, it is possible that they will just look at you and think you're a bit of a Hill Billy. It's funny because this is exactly how one of my friends from work describes his kids. He's from Georgia and his kids are being raised in the country area here in Germany. They're learning American Hillybilly from him and his wife and German Hillbilly from the German kids in the neighborhood. Of course they are also learning Hoch Deutsch, but most people in regions speak their dialect when talking to someone in the neighborhood.
For example, there are people in this area they say things in the line of. Ich hatte das gehattet. Someone from the city would hear this and cringe. This is something we would probably never say. I just say "ich hatte" or if I wanted to somehow say the equivalent of that, I would say, "ich hatte das gehabt". I think it means something like, "I have had that".
As far as simple mistakes like that. I make them all the time and people here usually just look at you and want you to continue. After a while you pick up an ear for how things are said and it's not really memorization anymore. "auf dem Tisch" just sounds right and if you hear "auf der Tisch", it just sounds wrong. Keep it up. I'm with you. I'm going through Fluenz now and making progress. I'm on Disk 2 17. This DVDs really help.
Jun 04, 2014 - 11:29 AM
Contractions are not always mandatory and sometimes only used in spoken German. There are regional variances as well. So don't worry too much about contracting if it means you get the gender of the noun right. But once you are confident with the gender you can really work on making your speech sound more native by using the contractions. In the program we chose to teach the contractions and insist on them because we are focusing on conversation and this is how native German speakers would speak naturally. As for sounding like a hillbilly: think of all those foreigners who say:
I am going to do this and that....
It's not wrong. It's just VERY precise for us - we would probably not use it in spoken English. But it's still better than
I gonna do...
Right?
Below is a blog on contractions and the second link includes a very helpful table of more and less common contractions (about half way down the page).
http://blogs.transparent.com/german/c...
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/german/hmr/G...
I am going to do this and that....
It's not wrong. It's just VERY precise for us - we would probably not use it in spoken English. But it's still better than
I gonna do...
Right?
Below is a blog on contractions and the second link includes a very helpful table of more and less common contractions (about half way down the page).
http://blogs.transparent.com/german/c...
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/german/hmr/G...