(March 13, 2015 at 10:02 am)DeistPaladin Wrote: Wilkommen. Dein Englisch ist besser als mein Deutch.
I hope I just welcomed you and told you your English was better than my German but I could have just had a "Ich bin ein Berliner" moment.
Your sentence totally makes sense except for two minor and irrelevant spelling mistakes.
btw it is an urban legend that Kennedy allegedly said "I am a jelly doughnut" in German with "Ich bin ein Berliner". I heard from it the first time on the internet from Americans. Most Germans don't even know this urban legend. German is sometimes quite subtle.
Some guys think that Kennedy should have said "Ich bin Berliner" instead of "Ich bin ein Berliner". Both sentences are grammatically correct but they differ in their meaning "Ich bin Berliner" means "I am a citizen of Berlin" and that's wrong because Kennedy never was a citizen of Berlin whereas "Ich bin ein Berliner" could also mean "I belong to the Berliners" or "I am feeling with the Berliners". In this context none German would think of jelly doughnuts.
For sure Kennedy had an excellent translator. Maybe a native speaker.
Quote:I can only imagine our spelling rules drove you insane? Or what did you think was the biggest challenge in learning our language?In fact English spelling rules are not consistent but I never had problems with spelling. Neither in German nor English nor French.
For me the biggest challenge in learning English are the tenses. Especially the progressive tenses because we don't have them in German. I often don't know when I have to use which tense. In German we only have 6 tenses and in English you have 15 tenses approximately.
Quote:For me, the biggest challenge in learning yours was the masculine-feminine-neuter rules for nouns, the most confusing of which was how male chest was feminine (die Brust) and the female chest was masculine (der Bosen). Memorization and repetition were the only way I could learn each noun.
Yes that's what i often hear about German. The grammatical gender doesn't make any sense and I think the articles are the most challenging thing for English speakers learning German in general.
English only has 3 articles. The, a and an. We have 12 articles
ein, eine, einer, eines, einen, einem, der, die, das, dem, den and des. With articles the meaning is changing. For example "Ich gehe auf die Straße" means "I go to the street" and "Ich gehe auf der Straße" means "I go on the street".
I think that is really confusing for non-natives.
I also speak low German and some Dutch. There are only two genders but the woman is masculine in Low German^^.
Quote:Anyway, welcome from Jesusland America, the last developed nation on earth that stubbornly clings to this iron-age religion.^^
For me America is the land of extremes.
It is very advanced (good Scientists, high tech...) and backwards (religious fanatism) at the same time.