Just watched the German Face-Off. Luca’s melody and pronounciation are great, I’d say near native. At times it almost sounded like a foreigner talking to a German. However, the camouflage is not perfect and here and there he is of course revealing himself to be not a native, even though some Germans might think that he has spent a large portion of his life in Germany. I found it odd though that he was taken off-guard by the word “Heizung” which was the perfect word to use in Steve’s opening question. Interestingly Steve then thought he had used the wrong word and said “Wärme” which is in fact a wrong word in this context.
People often mention cases to be among the most common mistakes that German learners make, but I find that word order and gender are maybe even bigger challenges. Wrong gender and wrong word order unfortunately sound very wrong in German. German has a very special word order, very different from romance languages and English. Steve often used an English word order when speaking German. Having said that, I really enjoyed this little exchange!
Language is of course a powerful sword to wield and sometimes little mishaps cannot be avoided, even by natives. 4:33 into the video Steve said that he did business in Germany back in the 90ies, but the way he says it in German, “Geschäft gemacht” it almost sounds like “relieve oneself” like in going to the bathroom, which I don’t think is what he wanted to say. I couldn’t but chuckle a bit, but hey, I love Steve’s hit and run approach, he is fearless! Kudos to him! And on a more serious note, he would be fully understood by native speakers, and if he himself, as he says, understands most of what he hears, that is a great basis for further improvement if he wants to invest the time.
And as a final word of consolation for our host, here is one of my favourite mishaps a German reporter had while commenting a wintersports event. Referring to the large crowd of spectators who had gathered at the venue he said: “Die Zuschauer standen an den Hängen und Pisten.” Try to figure that one out and have a good laugh! To all others, stay tuned for the explanation.
Friedemann, thanks for the comments. I do believe that it is easier to maintain one’s comprehension skills and that this is a strong base from which to recover speaking skills when the opportunity arises. That opportunity, however, needs to be more than a short 5-10 minute conversation. A few weeks in Germany and a little effort on my part to notice what is happening in the language, including continued work in LingQ, would, I think, bring my German up to speed.
Wait till you hear my Italian, in the next conversation, even worse. But again, I think I am in a position to improve quite quickly with some intensive immersion.
I have to hand it to Luca. I think that English is the only language where I am, perhaps, more fluent than he is, at least among European languages. He is awesome!
As to subjects of discussion, I have to say that in my meet ups, whether in Europe, Japan or Australia, including a delightful evening last night here in Sydney, with Bob (budz888) and Andrew, all we talk about is language learning. So there appears to be quite an appetite for discussions on this subject.
I do hope your Chinese is better than Luca’s, otherwise I’ll have to fly to Paris and steal all his computers and iPods!! How much of his achievement is about talent and how much is about hard work you think?
Friedemann, while talent might enter into it, I think language learning is mostly a matter of attitude and time on task. I believe Luca has lived in Spain and even studied Spanish there. He is living in Paris right now which gives him an advantage over me. As to his German I do not know where he learned it, but he may also have spent more time on it than me.
I believe that our ability to approximate native accents depends on talent but that is not all there is to language learning. Nevertheless I am full of awe of his achievements. His Chinese is really quite good as you will soon hear.
ad Friedemann: (…) “Die Zuschauer standen an den Hängen und Pisten.” (…)
That’s a good one, even though we rarely use “pissen” in Austria (but, of course, we know what it means ;-).
The tricky thing is that “Geschäfte gemacht” (the plural form) would have been totally fine. I have to add that listening to the conversation I did not even think about the meaning Friedemann hinted to although I can now see that others might have
I have very much enjoyed all four conversations so far.
"That’s a good one, even though we rarely use “pissen” in Austria (but, of course, we know what it means ;-). "
Well, it’s not exactly common use on the evening news, but I’d say the word gets its fair share of daily use in Germany… I could have also mentioned many other memorable glitches by our German politicians inflicting their English on the wider public (“Can I become a beef steak please?”)
ad Friedemann:(… “Can I become a beef steak please?” (…)
That is one of my all-time favourites and you won’t believe how often you hear stuff like that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to put anyone down I have had my share of blunders as well and I’m sure I’ll keep producing them. Maybe in different contexts, but they are still there
Another one which I have heard quite often and which can really ruin a conversation is this one: As a kid I loved playing with buggers.
“bugger” sounding like the German “Bagger” (excavator, in this context toy excavators).
Maybe we should open a new thread with the most hilarious and/or embarrassing false friends between English and German.
In keeping with this theme, as an English speaker who knows very little German, I might say something like: “Ich sandte dir ein Gift, eine Flasche. Hast du es verbraucht?”
@Robert: “…The tricky thing is that “Geschäfte gemacht” (the plural form) would have been totally fine.”
That’s very interesting, because while I was reading Friedemann’s earlier post, it did occur to me that I would probably have used the plural rather than the singular. Yet I couldn’t explain to myself why - it was just a kind of ‘feeling’. (I’m pleased that this was right!)
This is the slightly weird and scary thing about foreign languages - when you’re speaking live, you often have to fall back on pure instinct and intuition!
@Steve
Kudos for taking on Luca in German! The guy is very impressive. He must have a very special talent for languages, I believe. (But no doubt he works at it very hard too!)
After going over it in my head I’d say that we don’t really use the German equivalent of “do business” in German. “Geschäfte machen” sounds kind of unnatural to me. Good German would be:
geschäftlich in Deutschland unterwegs sein
auf Dienstreise sein
beruflich/geschäftlich in Deutschland sein / zu tun haben
Geschäftspartner treffen
etc.
Yeah, languages are really rich and complex and in some cases, even for related languages like German and English there are not always equivalent expressions in both languages.
ad Friedemann: (…) After going over it in my head I’d say that we don’t really use the German equivalent of “do business” in German. “Geschäfte machen” sounds kind of unnatural to me. Good German would be: (…)
Yes and no.
I think it depends on the context.
Take this sentence for example: Die Verantwortlichen kümmern sich nicht um die Umwelt, ihnen geht es nur darum, Geschäfte zu machen.
Or: Heute lassen sich in China auf Grund der geänderten Verhältnisse auch für westliche Unternehmen gute Geschäfte machen.
These sentences all sound very natural to me and I’m sure you will hear and read them quite often.
All the example sentences you mentioned, are perfectly correct but the context is a different one.
Example: Ich bin oft geschäftlich in Deutschland unterwegs.
But, of course, you could say: Mit Deutschen Geschäfte zu machen, ist nicht immer so einfach. (Or: Mit Deutschen ins Geschäft zu kommen…). We also have the noun “Geschäftemacherei”, which, however, has a clearly negative connotation.
As you said, languages are indeed complex and can be quite tricky. Just as a general note I’d like to add that I very much enjoy your detailed and precise comments on various questions here in the forum.
I would understand “Ich bin oft geschäftlich in Deutschland unterwegs” as “I’m often over in Germany doing business” - i.e. there would seem to be an implication that one often travels over there to do business, as opposed to being based there all of the time?
(Of course, that may be exactly the kind of context that Steve was referring to?)
thanks for your kind words! I have been called worse things on this forum…(LOL!)
I don’t have to teach you German and you are of course right with your examples. I meant to say that the German equivalent to “Back in the 90ies I was in Germany to do business” does not sound natural to me: “In den Neunzigern war ich in Deutschland, um Geschäfte zu machen.” However as you pointed out the expression “Geschäfte machen” does exist in German but is used in different contexts and has slightly different connotations.
Friedemann - there is a difference between going to “Germany on business” and “do business in Germany” and of course “travelling to Germany on business class”.
