// Index
Das War Selstam!
One of my goals for this year has been to learn German again. I did a bit of it at school because we were pretty much forced to learn a language of sorts, but I was never very good at it and had other things on my mind anyway.
But I’ve been to Berlin twice and loved it. And the more I get to know about Germany and its citizens the more I like them. They’re a very forward-looking people, and very tolerant – although this tolerance apparently doesn’t extend to Scientology, which is banned (so frankly I love them all the more).
I’ve even gone as far as watching extracts of Verbotene Liebe, the Das Erste version of Sons and Daughters. It’s gained a certain amount of international attention of late due to the gay couple Christian and Olli being amongst the hottest, sweetest and above all best acted gay couple on primetime telly. (And for a change, they get some. They’re not neutered and sexless like most TV gays.)
Admitedly it’s a good job someone’s been doing some fairly free translations for the subtitles, but I’ve been drawn into the story like you wouldn’t believe. Even to the point I want to watch whole episodes of the show from now on if I could just find them!
So I’ve been digging out the language aids. Getting some tuition podcasts, ripping Chris’ NLP German course to iTunes and flicking through my Lonely Planet phrasebook – a little book with a huge amount of humour to be had.
It contains, for example, German translations of the following phrases in its romance section:
- I’d rather not.
- Your ego is out of control
- That was weird
And my absolute favourite:
- Before this goes any further, I must be upfront. I’m an accountant.
Either the compiler of this volume has a very dry sense of humour, or they had a lousy time in Germany last time they were there…
Posted on January 25, 2009 | Filed Under Film, TV, Theatre, My So-Called Life, The World we Live In
Comments
Response left by Emma on January 26th, 2009
Ich bin Ben und ich nicht spraken Deutsche. But I could try Schweitzer Deutche, or je parle franglais anytime…
Response left by Ben on January 28th, 2009
I did recall a little more than my name and age, I’m glad to say, but not much!
It’s amazing how much of it I am recalling actually. I keep finding things that make me go “oh yeah! I remember that!”…
Response left by Rob on January 28th, 2009
Got something to say?
Mein name ist Emma und ich bin nuenundzwanzig jahre alt……my entire knowledge of German after five years of study at school…I may learn another language at some point but perhaps i should start with something easy….American perhaps