Ich glaube, ich spinne
The other day I walked into a restaurant and, much to the surprise of the waiter, ordered a squirrel with two scoops of strawberry ice-cream. However, before you reach for the straightjacket, it's important to know that the caf�, the waiter and indeed the squirrel were all in Germany. In German, Eichh�rnchen is the small, nut-gathering furry animal, while Eish�rnchen is the cone you normally get your ice-cream in. "Go to Frankfurt", they said. "You'll be talking like a native in no time", they said. Now when I heard these words of wisdom I assumed they meant a native speaking German. What they actually meant was that my ability to communicate was about to regress to the level of a jungle-dwelling, pointed-stick-throwing native, of the type that would have almost certainly preferred the squirrel! Learning German is actually quite simple, provided, that is, that you start in the womb. Anything later and you might as well forget it. Whoever invented the German language obviously had a very bad day when he came to do the grammar bits. However, things clearly got worse as he settled down to sort out the Verbs and Nouns. As those of you who have ever tried to learn German will know, every noun has a gender, but there is, unfortunately, no way of predicting whether a particular noun is masculine, feminine or neuter. On this point, Mark Twain observed that "in German a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what cal-lous disrespect for the girl." Picture the scene. "Gretchen - Wilhelm, where is the turnip ?" "Wilhelm - She has gone to the kitchen." "Gretchen - Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden ?" "Wilhelm - It has gone to the opera." Personally I've found the turnips here very pleasant, if a little stand-offish. As far as the maidens are concerned, one big plus is that most of them speak perfect English. German verbs pose an altogether different problem to the would-be language student. For reasons, which as far as I'm concerned have never been adequately explained, verbs are generally to be found, if you're lucky, in the very last line of what are often very long sentences. Only then do you get any idea what's being discussed. If you're un-lucky the verb gets forgotten altogether. Many of the more important verbs are "separable", which means that small, but none-theless vital bits of the verbs can go wandering off through the text until they find a safe place to hide. Of course by the time you eventually catch up with the relevant ab-, an-, aus-, vor- or whatever you've completely forgotten what it was you meant to stick it on to, and settle instead for the much easier "it must be a typing error" option. Whilst this may not help you to understand the text, it will help to preserve your sanity. -- Allzeit bereit f�r Jesus, ------------------------------------------------------------- Stefan Fischer (Fani) Stammwart, Stamm 78 M�tzingen http://www.royal-ranger.com ------------------------------------------------------------- GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet. http://www.gmx.net _______ Let the Golden Rule be your daily rule. Please pray for your list sponsor: http://eBible.org/mpj/ To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe rangernet" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit http://rangernet.org/subscribe.htm http://rangernet.org
