In your opinion what causes christians to believe in Jesus

[emjay]

I used to be passionate about all this stuff; philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, etc, and as a result, I would say, quite knowledgeable, but at some point, who knows, maybe I took a knock on the head or something, but it's just not there for me any more. So he's right, my work is indeed sloppy... it's just remnants of a bygone era, probably better off left unsaid.

Nowadays my passion is learning German, not debating religion... that's where I find my peace; in the endless intricacies of this beautiful language. I recently bought a collection of German board games, for the sake of a bit of immersion in their cultural history, and I really should take the advice of one of them, which I've just been playing tonight. It's called "Mensch ärgere Dich nicht", it's basically a slightly more involved version of the game "Ludo", and it basically translates as "Man (or dude), don't get angry!" (ie when your pieces get bumped off the board, back to the home area). I got angry, I shouldn't have, little good ever comes from it in my experience.

So yeah, sod it

Heya Deeese, hope you're feeling a bit better from your Flu

What level of proficiency do you have in German?

Technically speaking I'm probably about A2 or between A1 and A2, at least in terms of vocabulary learnt, if not conversational ability. I have several books on grammar, I do Duolingo every day, my YouTube is filled with more German stuff than English, more and more of it in German rather than just about German these days; and I can follow it quite well if it's slow german with subtitles, and even sometimes without, but hardly at all if it's fast. And I'm trying to read more and more in German these days, for instance, aiming for one chapter a day of novels from an author that specialises in books for German learners, Angelika Bohn... they're very funny so far, like the Biker complaining that he has to wear all white for his job... 'Ich bin kein Schneemann' So yeah, I feel like I'm coming along, slowly but surely, long way from being conversationally fluent though, unless people were willing to talk very slowly and keep repeating themselves... but that's fine; I know it's a long road and I'm more than happy that I'm making progress reading, even if the speaking takes longer.

Being a German native speaker, I would not consider it to be beautiful 😊

I think that's probably the curse of any Muttersprache... taking it for granted; I take English for granted and certainly don't marvel at its structure, but learning German als Fremdsprache, exploring it from the outside in, I do marvel at its structure. It's such a logical language, almost like a programming language if you don't mind me saying , that really appeals to the way my mind works... a love of rigid rules and categorising and classifying things etc... and even when it's not regular it's still regular in some sense, for instance weak or strong (or mixed), you can deduce not only what type of verb it is but also its full conjugation just from a few simple pieces of information, such as its third person singular in present and simple past tense forms; I just love those sorts of patterns and that sort of regularity, that is so abundant in German.

That said, there is the flip side; there is a lot to learn that feels quite arbitrary (to an outsider, though I'm sure much less to a native speaker) such as which preposition to use with a given verb and in which case if it's a two-way preposition, but each time I manage to internalise another one of those, I feel a quiet sense of achievement... like I'm now confident using sich freuen (Akk) über (Akk) / auf (Akk)... so now I can reliably say that I'm looking forward to something or that I'm excited about something in the present.... now just have to do the same for all the other thousands of German verbs But that's the joy, there's always more to learn, and it's a delicate mix between learning structure and grammar... basically theory, and vocab... practice... you can't have one without the other. For instance Duolingo is great for vocab but hardly teaches grammar/structure at all, so I'd never rely on that alone, but with other things its a valuable tool I think.

As for the sound of the language, personally I do think it is beautiful, and I'm going to demonstrate that to you and Thump in a minute There's flow and subtlety to it that I would never of imagined... like for instance the 'en's at the end of words like verstehen, almost silent, as if the e isn't there. It just really flows nicely from word to word and I just love the sound of it. I hardly ever listen to English music any more, it's almost all German.

Mensch ärgere dich nicht: literally every.single.German knows this game!!!!

That's what I was hoping for Any other recommendations? This compendium of games comes with a few, another of which being Leiterspiel... "Ladder Game", like "Snakes and Ladders" basically, but even more infuriating if that's possible , but it would be nice to play something a bit more cerebral